Avoiding the rehashed themes/plots/mechanics of Fantasy

Let me know when I do.

 

People complain of overused fantasy races, but there are only so many ideas floating around in the ether. Sure, you can create a new race, but it will have likely been done before to some degree. Also, people tend to like what they know. I think for some people that would be humans and for others it is elves, etc. I mean, humans have been done to death.

 

That is right.

And I also pointed out why I don't read much fantasy & which fantasy I do read and why.

If I pick a book in a store, brows it, read a bit here and another there and don't get interested about it, it's my thing. It does not mean I don't know anything about that book. It means I know enough to put it away and not spend my money and time to it.

Opening question was: what's overdone. I gave my answer.

 

Correctly pointing out that an ill-informed opinion is, in fact, ill-informed (by the poster's own admission!) isn't a personal attack.

I never expect that I can make a post immune to criticism by using the O-word.

 

I can only speak for myself - but if I pick up a book in a store and read a few pages here and there, and then put it back on the shelf. I could explain the reasons why I didn't feel compelled to buy it, but I wouldn't believe that I could give an honest and informed review of said book.

And that's not even considering the credit I would afford the book if I knew it had a lot of admirers.

 

Firstly, make sure your literary passport is up to date and valid and book a one-way flight out of Faux Northern Medieval Europe. If I never see that setting again, it will be too soon. And leave The Five Races where you found them.

No, no, put the dwarf down. He stays here.

The world is huge and replete with so much great fodder from which to form Fantasy stories. The mythologies of Eastern Asia, South America, Oceania, Africa.... It's an embarrassment of riches. And yet, elves and halflings and dwarves and Orcs serve as a kind of heroin we keep cooking up in the spoon and banging into our respective veins.

If you keep playing with the same tired, threadbare stage props, the same tired scripts come with it.

 

In my opinion you don't need to avoid anyting. What you need to do is to execute it well. A well done cliché is better than a crappy original. So don't worry about not doing the same thing and focus on doing things well. And if you really want to stand out, think instead of how to give a classic a twist and make it your own, rather than reject the classic itself.

 

It's weird, I love the fantasy genre, but I've never taken a liking to HARD fantasy. I like adventure fantasy that focuses on the journey. Sure there may be magical elements, like sorcerers, and in one instance, I started a series where the main character was from a race that turned in to dragons at will.
But I've never read anything with elves and orcs, and dwarves etc (asside for medeival romances for class). It was never appealing to me.
So what I write is fantasy that focuses on a journey, and there is magic.

When I was in high school, I did start writing a story about fairies. The meadow fairies had butterfly wings and we're very rich and beautiful. The Outsiders had useless vestigial wings and we're seen as less than. There was a conspiracy in the palace where the king was poisoned and his son made a deal with these Outsiders and the princess was collateral. She had her beautiful butterfly wings ripped out in her escape and was found by the only human in the realm (the human race was wiped out by the fairies). She goes through an identity crisis. Like most things I write, it gets really dark.
I don't know why I stopped writing it. Thats, I believe, is the only thing I've written that I consider "hard fantasy" lol.
I think the trope that's over done in fantasy is vamps and werewolves. (I read the first 2 pages of this thread and skimmed the rest, so forgive me if this was already talked about)

 

It's always seemed to me that common trappings are more of a symptom of overly-derivative writing rather than a cause, though it could be a bidirectional arrow over all. I think that's why historians write some of the best fantasy; never mind other parts of the world, some writers don't seem to even look into European history at all for inspiration (or shreds of verisimilitude-invoking thoughtfulness. Looking at you, last half of GOT show). Does the genre attract writers who don't like research? I don't know.

To give fantasy a break, it seems that a lot of mainstream content across genres and mediums is suffering from a source material bankruptcy at the moment.

 

Nah... Have never had an interest in Tolkien or his realms. I liked watching the movies (I watched the first one when I was like in Middle School before I knew it was a book series... and even then, I thought it started as an old cartoon series that my grandpa watched!), but not interested in the books, or elves, dwarves, and orcs.
I'm more of a David Eddings person. I read the first book in the Belgrariad series and thought it was interesting. Took me a while to get into it though. I think I gravitate more toward Magic and Sorcory.
I know there is a hero's journey in LOTR and its a big part of it... but also the magical races are a big part of it too.
For example, one of my favorite trilogies growining up (and the first one that introduced me to the "hero's journey" trope) was Chanters of Tremaris by Kate Constable. Calwyn was an ice chanter (i forget the exact term they called themselves), living at a convent surrounded by an ice wall in the mountains. She was basically like a Water Bender from Avatar. Another chanter who can magic earth into doing what he wanted is on the run from his Master and climbs the ice wall. The hero's journey begins when this stranger tells Calwyn that he must stop his Master from learning all of the enchantments and becoming all powerful, and Calwyn, having never left the convent, wants to go with him and see the world.
They meet other chanters, and go to other continents and cities, and etc.
I thought it was amazing! And as i got older, i found books with similar themes.

I think, even if I wanted to read Tolkien's work, I would be thinking of the movies. For me, if I read the book(s) first, then I can see the movie/series. If I see the movie/series first, I cant go back and read the book.

 

I could comment on a lot of different things in this thread. However, I would like to make one simple statement.

People who are saying, "I'm sick of seeing orcs, elves, dwarves and etc." should also keep in mind that making a statement like that is no different than me making a post in the romance section saying, "I'm sick of seeing stories about love. I'm sick of seeing stories about humans in love." It's important to remember that many things have been done before or rehashed. This doesn't mean we abandon it and start from scratch. Nothing is completely original and with a little research you'll find a variation of your "unique" idea out there. It's not what you do it's how you do it. There are thousands of stories about humans, but we aren't sick of those. We are sick of things like orcs, elves, and dwarves because they've become a stereotype rather than a complex race like humans. It's also important to mention that these tropes and cliches are an agreement with readers. It lets them know what to expect in a genre. Without these "agreements" how does anyone know what a genre is. I wrote this quickly at work so hopefully my thoughts make sense. That is all.

 

Freaking fantasy YA novels with their hot sun-kissed glistening elves with chiseled chests and long luscious hair make me want to kill myself. The only thing separating them from Michelangelo's David is that they have pointy ears.

 

And then they dare put it as a YA instead of a New Adult novel od you buy such a book to your 13 year old niece because she loves all things magical only to find out later you bought her an elf erotica.

 

Ok, so now there's a New Adult category. Sheesh! They're over-categorizing it all. And it's a shame the name Young Adult stuck for the earlier one—technically it would make more sense to just call it Adolescent, since that's already the accepted term for the age group. Now we have a Young Adult which isn't really adult except at the top end of the range (and questionably so even there), and a New Adult.

This is starting to remind me of all the ridiculous sub-categories of heavy metal music that sprouted like mushrooms starting in the 80's. I don't think it's a good idea to fragmentize things to such an extent.

 

I know some people who would definitely disagree: "thrash and doom aren't heavy enough for me man, I only listen to Swedish Brutal Death Metal and Deathcore; also Black Metal, as long as it's been recorded in a dark Scandinavian/Polish/Belorussian cave onto a potato while the goat blood pools around the band's feet. \M/."

 

For my money the best heavy metal bands happened before the fragmentations, when it was hard to even define exactly the difference between hard rock and heavy metal. Albums would be made organically and categorized later. I think if you start off aiming at a particular subcategory and the rules are too hidebound, it stifles creativity. Or forces you into too small of a box.

I get the feeling some of the greatest stories in YA, which were stuffed in that box retroactively long after they were written, such as Lord of the Flies and The Outsiders, would not be accepted by today's publishers without substantial censorship. Of course that's not so much an indictment of the category itself as the publishing industry, but then the degradation of the industry itself is what's causing it to fragment this way and spin too many rules around the writers.

Just my own admittedly uninformed opinion. I'm not very knowledgeable about these categories, but thinking about what I saw happen in the music industry when it went in what I think is a similar direction. Might be very different though, I have no idea what went on behind the scenes in either or what drives this desire to categorize things to death.

 

Skid Row is the perfect example of this.

 

Oh man, don't even get me started on the hair bands! They're called metal, but they're more like a super-light alloy and they do mostly love ballads, only of course love refers to sex (Ok, that last part applies across the board to all rock lyrics actually). When the metal categories started to subdivide like cells splitting, each new category was defined by what they removed from the general category of metal. It was restrictive definition through subtraction. The great metal bands of the era, Guns n Roses and Metallica, just made great music with no idea of shaving off everything except for their own tiny area of specialization.

 

Not to derail the thread, but Skid Row wasn't really hair metal. They had some radio friendly ballads, but check out the rest of the songs on their debut and especially Slave to the Grind. That album is heavy as shit. I love hair metal, too, but Skid Row was completely different.

 

Oh they're one of the better so-called hair bands of the 80's, and I don't hate all hair bands. But something had happened at the end of the 70's/beginning of the 80's—it was no longer an artist's field, but now the record companies re-asserted control and started choosing bands to fit categories rather than letting the bands do their own thing and then promote them. Even the absolute best of the so-called hair bands couldn't hold a candle to the great bands of the 70's they they were weakly imitating, and the way the band looked became more important than talent or ability, thanks MTV. They had to look like bad boys from the wrong side of the tracks (and be that) but also they had to look good in leather and spandex and be able to toss their hair around properly. Looks didn't factor into it in the 70's except for a few bands that got in thanks to gimmicks, like Kiss and Alice Cooper (and I believe Black Sabbath wasn't really Satanic, I think that was also a gimmick. Gimmicks were huge in the early 70's, but once the gimmick got them a spotlight, they still had to have massive talent and knowledge).

I should know better than to use music as a comparison, people's feeling start to get involved and it becomes a gigantic mess.

 

As an aside, to differ with your view of subgenre and category in metal--there is a lot more diversity and organically-made metal now than ever in the past. You have bands that write to category, of course. Always have. But so many who do not. I agree that the proliferation of subgenre categories in metal gets ridiculous, but in my view it was a response to the myriad directions bands have gone (instead of them staying in their box). You can look at a lot of Opeth's discog. Look at Agalloch's album The Mantle. Sunn O))). Om. Works by Swallow the Sun. I'd argue Bell Witch's Mirror Reaper album doesn't stay rooted in its ostensible subcategory. Ahab's Boats of the Glen Carrig (and other work by them) moves out of subgenre into prog. Candiria. Inter Arma. Green Carnation (new album just out, but I'm thinking of the one that has the single track for over an hour).

A lot of the bands writing to category are the retro ones revisiting 80s thrash or NWOBHM (some are pretty good; some aren't). But there are now plenty of metal bands that do whatever they want, combine whatever influences they want, and put out an album where people say "What the heck is this?" And then some more bands tinker in the area and you have a new subgenre from people trying to keep track of it all.