What is it with new writers and fantasy?

Discussion in 'Fantasy' started by EdFromNY, Jun 25, 2013.

  1. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    When you start writing, do you have a specific story you want to tell, or are you more oriented toward having a world you want to build and then you find a story to go with it?

    It's kinda a weird question, but for me it's helpful for this discussion. When I start writing I generally have a story in mind (or at least a starting scenario) and it's almost all character-based. So then the next step for me is to figure out the world in which these characters are going to come to their realizations or whatever it is I want them to do. So it's easier (simpler? less convoluted? requires fewer changes to my goals?) to build the world around the characters when I'm not constrained by real-world limitations.

    But if you're a world-builder first, then I don't think all this would apply. For you, the equivalent might be... I don't know, if you had to stock your finely developed fantasy world with either a set of pre-determined characters or with characters you got to create all yourself. It would probably be easier/simpler/whatever for you to have readers explore your world if you had the freedom to create your own characters without being limited by "reality".

    Does any of that make sense?
     
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  2. 8Bit Bob

    8Bit Bob Here ;) Contributor

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    Writing is art, making art well is never easy, if it were, artists would be a dime a dozen. Making "good"* art takes time, practice, and thought. Sure, certain "projects" will be easier/harder then others. A short story about two friends that find a haunted house is arguably easier to write then an epic (in terms of length) three book fantasy saga, just like this is easier to paint then this (I know some people will disagree with me here, but that's my opinion).

    I think fantasy, just like other generas, has it's aspects that are "easier" and "harder". In historical fiction you don't have to world build, but you have to research, in fantasy it's the opposite. Now again, what you're writing also comes into play. If you're writing a fantasy short story, there is minimal world building involved, if you're writing a novel/series of novels, you're going to have to put a lot more thought into it.

    To conclude I would like to quote my favorite poet, Robert Frost - “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” I believe this is true, if the writer doesn't put hard work into his/her work, the reader will notice.

    *I know what is "good" art is subjective, but there are certain aspects, especially in writing, that most people agree on that make it "good" or not. e.g. believable characters, a strong plot line, a thought out world, etc.
     
  3. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    It makes sense if that's not the predisposition of the person/writer in question. You couldn't get me to do it. It would feel like me wanting an office space in a building, but the only way to get that office space is to build the building. Now, I realise perfectly well that the exact same analogy can be made for writing fantasy, that to tell the story you would seem to need to build the world first, but as @BayView stated above, that's only one narrow window of Fantasy. It's not representative of every Fantasy writer's process. I don't have a worldbuilding folder that I've slaved over for years. I knew the story I wanted to tell and it came to me in a vaguely fantasy-esque wardrobe, so I've spent a little time dressing the set, but the story is the people, not the location. For me. In my story.

    ETA: And not only could you not get me to do research for a historical novel, the way that member's in writing forums obsess and worry about how their audience will nitpick every tiny little factual detail would absolutely ensure that I never write it. That's a totally avoidable headache that I would completely avoid because I don't want to do the thing that causes the headache in the first place.

    So, when Bayview says:
    ... I agree with this as pretty much an axiom. I don't in any way feel diminished by the idea that I'm playing to my strengths. In my regular work-work I do the same thing. I am a much better translator than I am an interpreter (translation is written, interpretation is spoken), and I focus on that and offer services in that arena that other translators don't. It makes the most sense.
     
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  4. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    Just wanted to point out that there's no inherent shame in picking a genre that makes your writing goals easier to accomplish.

    I'm assuming that not everyone here thinks they have the hardest day job, either.

    Most of us here probably agree that getting any sort of novel published is a big feat. So what if other people think you wrote in a genre that was "easier?" Remember, when you try to get your fantasy novel published, a lot of the novels you're competing with are also fantasy, which means they get the same advantages your novel does.
     
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  5. TheRealStegblob

    TheRealStegblob Kill All Mages Contributor

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    It's funny that you mention the White Walkers because they're actually very boring and uninteresting villains, so they're not a very strong case for you.

    They also don't just "exist", they do have a backstory and supposedly have some kind of comprehensive (if not shallow and boring) endgame. As for Dany being immune to high temperatures, there's actually a massive amount of comprehensive logic behind stuff like that. Martin went so far as to actually plan out genetics when it comes to Targaryens and their ability to ride dragons and their immunity to heat.

    The point is that if you don't lay out at least even simple rules for how magical portals work, people will nitpick at their usage. Why can't the heroes just make a portal everywhere they go, why do they bother to walk? It's like the infamous "why don't Sam and Frodo just ride an eagle to Mordor?" only that actually has the logical answer (that people aren't aware of) that the eagles are unsafe to use because Sauron would immediately notice where Frodo was and the eagles would be shot down by arrows.
     
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  6. TheRealStegblob

    TheRealStegblob Kill All Mages Contributor

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    I very much agree with this to a point. On one hand, history is already written for you and you have everything from political networks to country borders and ethnicity drawn out for you. On the other hand, though, you have to stay within the confines of actual history and that results in a lot of researching and fact-checking.

    In your own fictional world, you're the one making everything up and writing your own history. Depending on how convoluted you make this, it can either be harder or easier than using real history. I am a co-author/creator of an incredibly expansive fantasy canon with its own world and history and I can say from my own experience that even with how expansive our canon currently is, it's much easier than if we tried to set our story in IRL history. You have to go to pretty lengthy world building heights to get to the point where your fantasy history is getting as convoluted as real history.
     
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  7. LastMindToSanity

    LastMindToSanity Contributor Contributor

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    Right, sorry, this one is out of context, huh?

    A couple of us got into a discussion about whether or not Fantasy is easier than other genres to write. I wrote this as a way for me to remove myself from that discussion, as I had no more to offer it. It wasn't a direct response to the original topic, but rather that discussion.
     
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  8. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    Speaking of geography...they had a series of posts on Tor.com where a geologist criticizes certain maps in fantasy fiction for not adequately following known principles of geology and geologic formation :D
     
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2018
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  9. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I should note, as a disclaimer, that I'm not a big fantasy reader. This should worry me, since my WIP is fantasy.

    That said, fantasy is a genre where the solution to problems is totally up to you, and not dependent on any other person or fact. The decisionmaker for all decisions is internal. And this probably sounds like what I already said, but somehow it sounds different to me. :)

    I like the freedom of knowing that I can have anything I want, if I can come up with a plausible justification for it. Of being limited or served by my own brain, instead of by existing facts.

    Random example: If you're writing historical fiction and you need, say, inheritance to go to a daughter instead of past them to the nearest male relative, you need to find a setting where that was true, and then that setting may break a dozen other things that you needed.

    If you're writing fantasy, you can decide that that's true. And then that might seem inconsistent with the fact that you need that setting to be otherwise incredibly patriarchal, but YOU have the freedom to thrash around with that and find a piece of philosophy/culture/whatever that makes those two things work. You may read a dozen books about patriarchal cultures, but those books are serving as a buffet of ideas, rather than bosses who are telling you what to do.

    I think that's one large part of why I, a person who isn't a huge fan of a lot of fantasy, am writing a fantasy WIP. I like the buffet of ideas.

    There's also the fact that I get my writing interest from character interactions. I'm never (ever) going to start with world-building; I'm always going to start with characters. And with character interactions and what I think of as "emotional facts".

    The opening of my WIP, which pretty much by coincidence is the first part of the WIP that I wrote, is a low-ranked person committing an offense against a high-ranked person and getting caught. Those were the emotional facts. My energy in writing the scene came from watching to see how that got resolved--watching fear and negotiation and mercy or lack thereof.

    The setting existed to serve that. It was a setting that was sloshing in my brain from a past thing that I created, but every element of that past setting that didn't fit the emotion of the moment was thrown out. I needed a reason for her rank and his, a reason why she would commit this offense despite the danger, a reason why he didn't go full ruthless, but also a reason why he didn't just let it go. Those reasons didn't get fully fleshed out until later, but I knew that the facts that I eventually declared had to serve this scene. (Or, of course, I could throw the scene out and start a new one. But I didn't.)

    I'd guess that a huge percentage of the facts of this world stem from that one scene, in a sort of Kevin Bacon six degrees sort of way. (For example, I needed that seafaring country because I needed their role in ending the war because I needed the war to have happened but I needed it to be over because I needed these two people from the two previously warring cultures to interact in this particular way and if Y culture had been able to win the war on their own the power differential would have been, well, different....)
     
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  10. grimshawl

    grimshawl Member

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    what I mean by that is that unlike many other genres which require you to have an extensive knowledge of a subject or field of study or do a lot of research as you write about it. Fantasy settings and stories can be drawn primarily from your own imagination. You make up the rules about the imaginary place you write about and how the laws of that place work. if you want magic you just come up with whatever type of magic suits you for instance. Where if you were writing a historical piece you would first have to know quite a bit about the period to write a believable story. Even science fiction and speculative fiction often needs you to have a fair understanding of cutting edge technology and potential advancements so you can extrapolate them for your story. That's what I was saying.
     
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  11. Safety Turtle

    Safety Turtle Senior Member

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    Unless of course you write Star Wars/Star Trek type sci-fi, then you can just make up whatever you want and call it "science" without having to explain anything.
     
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  12. John Calligan

    John Calligan Contributor Contributor

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    My wife isn’t a big Star Trek fan, but she’ll watch the new movies. To get her over the nonsense, I asked her to replace any technobabble with the word “magic”.

    Sir, the mage field is failing. We need more magic crystals in the magic reactor or it’s gonna blow.
     
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  13. Stormburn

    Stormburn Contributor Contributor

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    That is a failing of so many fantasy fiction writers; the mechanics of their setting is plot dependent and does not work with any consistency as a real world would. While a great writer might make this work (Nora Robert's romance fantasy novels are a good example)most fall flat; at least to me. Research is the difference between contrived and immersive, in my opinion.
    I agree with you about the difficulty of period/historical pieces. But, that's related to research, which is not everyone's cup of tea. Bernard Cromwell is one of my favorite historical fiction writers, by the way. James Clavell was, at one time, the Nora Roberts of historical fiction.
    Robert E. Howard was a history buff and wanted to write historical fiction. But, he considered the assets available to him to be too limited to properly research historical fiction novels so he wrote fantasy. He poured that love of history into his stories. Now, it can be argued that the world of Hyboria is equally as famous as the character Conan.
    Godspeed!
     
  14. isaac223

    isaac223 Senior Member

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    Just felt like reiterating in response to the "fantasy is relatively easy to write" comment:
     
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  15. isaac223

    isaac223 Senior Member

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    Rather, as with any other story and setting, fantasy requires consistency, and creating paranatural entities and forces that can both be very blatantly fantastical while ostensibly realistic requires any amount of skill you'd expect from faithfully adapting historical or scientific fact or principle to writing.

    Not to mention-- your rules are too vague and you stray too far into the realms of convenience? Contrived, lazy. Your rules are too specific or too tightly knit to allow variation? Predictable, samey (also lazy, apparently). Contrary to popular belief, a lot of fantasy's audience has a high standard for magical rulesets that are defined tightly enough to allow for any suddenly established skills or spells to be reasonably derived or extrapolated from what the audience already knows, while being flexible enough to allow for versatility so that an author cannot do so without considering their own rules and so it isn't seen as contrived.
     
  16. X Equestris

    X Equestris Contributor Contributor

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    One appears in the last paragraph or two of "A Game of Thrones"'s prologue. The point of view character's unit has a run in with a few Others/White Walkers. The POV character hides up a tree while his commander fights. His commander is killed, the Others move on without noticing him, and he climbs down thinking it's safe. Then he gets attacked by the reanimated body of his commander.

    I happened to recall this discussion after reading the prologue for research on well-executed prologues, and figured I'd weigh in on this point.
     
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  17. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    I'm so not into zombie stories that I didn't even recognise this reanimated commander as being a 'zombie.' Urkkk. :eek:
     
  18. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    Just remember that whatever "rules" you make will never be as complicated and complex as the rules that we believe govern our actual reality, something that spans hundreds of fields and has seen contributions from countless experts over thousands of years.
     
  19. isaac223

    isaac223 Senior Member

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    And we're presuming that when real world concepts are adapted to narrative it doesn't always focus on those which are limited to the specific, specialized information and knowledge belonging to the author? The real world is more complex in concept, but it isn't as if any one novel extends so far as to do it any justice. On paper, what we see from a fantasy world in just one novel could and would very well be just as if not more intricate than what any one book could tell us about our own without it becoming patronizing and pointless.
     
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  20. Hublocker

    Hublocker Active Member

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    Probably because it is what they grew up with.

    I'm 64. I grew up reading R.L. Stevenson at first, Jules Verne, then Hemingway and Michener and yes, the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, then into adulthood dozens if not hundreds of mysteries and non-fiction survival at sea and survival in the jungle and survival in the frozen North stories. I read a lot of Kurt Vonnegut and Isaac Asimov and Ursula K. Leguin too. What is my latest unpublished novel about? Survival on a remote beach.
     
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  21. The Dapper Hooligan

    The Dapper Hooligan (V) ( ;,,;) (v) Contributor

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    Are you secretly Nevil Shute?
     
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  22. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    Yeah, the "real world" rules comment really misses the mark, unless you're writing hard science fiction that relies heavily on those rules. All of those same rules are presupposed to exist in the fantasy world, except to the extent that the author makes clear it does not. The gravity that holds characters to the ground, for example, is presumed to function in a fantasy world by the same principles as gravity does in the real world, except to the extent the author provides a magic system that can provide a (usually transient) alteration of those laws. It's the same as how gravity applies normally by default in a science fiction novel, except to the extent the author creates some technology that can alter those laws.
     
  23. Hublocker

    Hublocker Active Member

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    Haha.

    Fishing vessel crew on the remote West Coast of Canada.
     
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  24. CAROLINE J. THIBEAUX

    CAROLINE J. THIBEAUX Member

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    I think the advances in CGI is why we are seeing this increase. I grew up reading Enid Blyton books but such things were rare on TV back then. An interest in the genre plus ancient world history is what got me into the genre but yes, in the last few years it has mushroomed. An agent who was interested in my book proposal declined it when I finished because of the changes in the industry, self-publication and the growth of the genre. I was very lucky to finally find a traditional publisher for my book as well as one for a recorded version.

    The gaming industry has also added to this. But mostly it is the possibility that a book could be taken up for TV or a movie and done well is what has caused this mushrooming of the genre. No rubber Godzillas anymore. I can see the attraction to new and younger writers, you are as limited as your mind. Fantasy adventure and sci-fi, however, need more details than other genre's. The world building must be done right. You have to work to convince a reader of a completely new world order. Too many new books focus on the action rather than anything else. Now that might be due to the gaming industry. In the long run, blood and gore are not what makes a world memorable. Then again, that is just my opinion and that might be the new world order, lol.

    All in all, it is encouraging to see an increase in new, young writers as the process of writing takes time and thought and that in itself is something to value.
     
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  25. BlitzGirl

    BlitzGirl Contributor Contributor

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    I write fantasy (and sci-fi) because I like to set stories in completely fictional worlds, with my own rules. Writing stories that are set in the real world or follow real world rules are boring to me, because I write for my own enjoyment. If I'm not enjoying myself, what's the point?

    And yes, I grew up watching, reading, and playing a lot of fantasy (and sci-fi) things. Nothing wrong with that.
     
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