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Originally posted by Aegis
You make a lot fo references to Sterotypes stories, anc characters. Now, I do agree, but my question is, how would one break free of those sterotypes? In essence, the second you deny one sterotype, they are just becoming another. The way I see it now, it's one big loop.

I agree that it easily becomes a loop instead. Another genre that I think suffers from the same type of problems as the fantasy genre is the thriller genre. During the 1980's in Europe, the thriller genre was viewed as doomed, as stuck in it's own cliches. Nobody wanted to write thrillers, and no editors were interested in publishing thrillers. Then, during the 1990's, a new generation of mostly female thriller writers turned up, portraying women as detectives rather than men. Out went the old cliche of a male police officer or private eye solving murders, instead the new murder solvers were female doctors, journalists or other professionals. Good - but over the past 10 years a new cliche has been established instead, the one of the tough, professional female who solves murders with her intellectual abilites.

I don't read much thrillers for the same reasons that I don't read much fantasy, the genre has limited itself in repeating stereotypes. But I do think the development in the thriller genre demostrated some good examples of how such stereoypes can be broken - for instance, there is nowadays a tendency to abandon the classical murder mysteries and instead, the crime can be about rapists, child abuse, threats or other kind of crimes. They can also be written from a different perspective, so that the main person or the narrator is not the person/s who solves the crime, instead it's the victim or somebody close to the victim.

I think such tricks applies also to the fanasty genre. Fable has already posted some really good advice how to break stereotypes, I can't really add to that but in general, I think working with deep characters making their goals and motives nuances as well as working with the environment and the setting of a story can go a long way. Or, if one is writing in a familiar surrounding ie some preset AD&D world, an unusual plot can be used to force people to make non-stereotypic choices and actions. Personally, I think change due to circumstances is a good way to break both stereotypes and predictability. You seem to use this yourself in your story here - Aenarion is a mightly elven warrior, a noble hero who have many times saved the elves from the evil orcs. But it's obvious that something is happening to him - you describe states of hate and bloodthirst that is far from noble. So there you use his inner events to break a stereotype, and the reader (at least me) gets interested and curious in what is happening to Aenarion and why.

@Humanflyz: Shakespeare uses a lot of stereotypes in his work, but as Aegis points out, Shakespeare was limited to the much stricter writing forms that were used during his time. A tragedy wasn't only a sad story, there was a set of highly specific rules for how a tragedy should be written. A chronicle was an even stricter form of writing. The modern novel wasn't yet invented, free prose as we know it today didn't exist. Modern writers don't have those limits, the entry of modernism made literature structures almost limitless. So it's not really valid to compare antique classical or renaissance works to modern works, I think.
Also, we have to remember that some stereoypes weren't stereotypes when they first appeared. To me it's a vast difference to read Homer's standing eptihomes than to see Tolkien use a similar trick 2000 years later.

posted by Fable
Note, I agree with your conclusion, though: that nearly all literary work, reduced to it essence, is cliched. It isn't the plot, so much as the treatment, the language, and/or the characterization, that sells the work.

Yep, I agree with this. Also, I'd like to stress that everything in a literary work must not be free from stereotypes, my objection to mainstream fantasy is that most aspects are stereotypical and predictable. Environment, plot, people, action - all the major components of the story. Only one of these need to be changed for the story to become 1000 times more interesting.

Originally posted by C Elegans


Yep, I agree with this. Also, I'd like to stress that everything in a literary work must not be free from stereotypes, my objection to mainstream fantasy is that most aspects are stereotypical and predictable. Environment, plot, people, action - all the major components of the story. Only one of these need to be changed for the story to become 1000 times more interesting.

What makes a cliche effective in literature is precisely the same thing that makes it work in endless pop songs: its universality. How many times have we read something up here on the net with an horrific quote from some pre-teen or teen pop idol whose only talent is for putting sentiments into the most simplistic, uninspired context? Yet those commonly shared sentiments get 'em everytime.

So Romeo and Juliet are your standard pair of star-crossed lovers, doomed from the first time they meet. Cyrano de Bergerac is love, gallantry, and wit trapped in a body he considers ugly and unlovable. Jurgen goes on a quest for his wife, and after visiting sundry goddesses, mythical lands, heaven and hell, returns, a tarnished but wise hero, home. The thread-bare theme in all three instances is like a salesman's foot in the door; it opens our sympathies, and prepares the way with familiarity for what will prove a unique and unforgettable treatment of those same themes. I think this is how some of the greatest writers work, by crafting the finest ideas out of the most ordinary of materials.

Much of the ideas for improving the genre sound good, and I agree it is getting stale, predictable plots, perhaps though that is what the people want, a nice stable world where good and evil are not as hard to figure out as it is in the real world. Where there are noble heros and horrifying villains.

Perhaps tell it from the viewpoint of a bloodthirsty human conquerer who rapes and pillages his way across the world, in his quest for world dominance, only tell it from his viewpoint, because from his viewpoint all the people who think he is evil and horrifying are the bad ones, he himself thinks he is doing good. The problem I think is that there is not enough complexity in the fantasy genre, telling a good story is hard, one that is interesting, and making it darker would only make it more like the real world, which is what people are trying to escape right? Anyway, maybe something along the lines of Pulp fiction, or maybe from the viewpoint of a assasin, darker but more interesting, growing up in a city of Calimport, murdering, and stealing his way up the hierarchy, how he thinks all those heroes are just so silly,occasionally he does something that others might consider good, not a nice guy, but told from a certain perspective in that you are cheering him on anyway, even as he does things which you personally might find personally repugnant. I have read the Cleric Quintet, it is a good book, bought it last week and finished reading it. There are some dark heros out there, like for example the Punisher, or try reading the magazine Heavy Metal for some really interesting stories. Anyway that is my long spiel.

To be honest, I have read Sword & Sorcery novels in years. I really looked down on the whole genre... and was reluctant to check out BG because of it. I find the whole genre as formulaic as romance novels. That being said, there are some good fantasy novels out there that are rather unusual. Check out Jonathan Carroll's "The Wooden Sea", Graham Joyce's novels, China Mieville's " Perdido Street Station", Neal Barrett's "The Prophecy Machine" and "The Treachery of Kings". I know some of these writers personally and one of the things they battle with is that they are relegated to the fantasy section of the bookstore, so more mainstream readers don't check them out, and the fantasy readers are too narrow-minded to deal with them. For a lot of them, it's resulted in moving into other more lucrative genre's, like mystery, or having to do hack work like writing for the comics and writing novelizations. Actually, I myself dealt with this problem--when I was trying to publish my sort-of-horror short fiction. Editors would write me and say that my stories were good, but that their audience would find my work too literary. Literary editors would tell me that my stories were too genre. Part of the problem for me here in the states is that the real literary tradition is one of realism, and there is little place in American writing for true fantasy writers.

Literary editors would tell me that my stories were too genre. Part of the problem for me here in the states is that the real literary tradition is one of realism, and there is little place in American writing for true fantasy writers.

Congratulations! You have come upon one of my ranting hobby horses: the tyranny of realism in art in the US that affects everything: films, painting, sculpture, fiction, plays, etc. Anything that isn't given a "surface" reality with little else gets ignored. Maybe we should set up our own publishing company, so we can go bankrupt in peace and contentment.

@Fable: I've been ranting about that for years... Part of the problem, I think, is that Americans are not exposed to much writing outside of the American tradition in school. (That relates, BTW, to my education rant--Americans are only taught about the USA and are pretty ignorant of everywhere else, even Europe). My father was really amazing in that he exposed me to so much of this stuff when I was really young--he had me watching Cocteau movies, reading Kafka in grade school (I've been permanently warped ever since), and exposed me to the whole German literature of the fantastic--writers like ETA Hoffman, Ludwig Tieck, Kleist, the brothers Grimm (unexpurgated) etc. I also read a lot of the eastern european stuff--Bulgakov, Gogol, and Witold Gombrowicz. Plus Italy had folks like Calvino and Tomasso Landolfi. Britain also has more of a tradition with people like Angela Carter. America's fantastic literature seems to have ended with Nathaniel Hawthorne and Poe, and I believe that neither of those writers are taken as seriously in academia here in the US as they are in Europe. The only literature that seemed to stretch the boundaries a bit here was southern gothic--like Flannery O'Connor. I like Magic Realism from latin america also, but prefer the darker or more absurd sensibilities of the european writers. SYM'ers, don't get me wrong--I did read all of Tolkien and CS Lewis in grade school, and I totally loved the stuff--I guess I just never wanted to read variations of the same--I wanted fantasy to be edgier and take me farther out to somewhere unexpected.

Originally posted by VoodooDali
@Fable: I've been ranting about that for years... Part of the problem, I think, is that Americans are not exposed to much writing outside of the American tradition in school. (That relates, BTW, to my education rant--Americans are only taught about the USA and are pretty ignorant of everywhere else, even Europe). My father was really amazing in that he exposed me to so much of this stuff when I was really young--he had me watching Cocteau movies, reading Kafka in grade school (I've been permanently warped ever since), and exposed me to the whole German literature of the fantastic--writers like ETA Hoffman, Ludwig Tieck, Kleist, the brothers Grimm (unexpurgated) etc. I also read a lot of the eastern european stuff--Bulgakov, Gogol, and Witold Gombrowicz. Plus Italy had folks like Calvino and Tomasso Landolfi.

Check out Leonid Andreyev when you get a chance: turn of the 20th century symbolist. His short story Lazarus has been a favorite of mine for about twenty-five years, and I spent a long time looking for a copy of his stuff. Now, Lazarus and a few other things are online, at http://www.geocities.com/ruslitonweb/#position20

Britain also has more of a tradition with people like Angela Carter. America's fantastic literature seems to have ended with Nathaniel Hawthorne and Poe, and I believe that neither of those writers are taken as seriously in academia here in the US as they are in Europe.

I recommend to all people looking for dedicated, involuted fantasticists, James Branch Cabell--as I did, recently, elsewhere in this forum. He was an extremely erudite Virginian author of patrician descent who never had to give a sniff for conventional disdain or outright hostility to his ideas. His series of novels and short stories in the so-called "Lineage of Manuel" (about twenty-eight books, one of which is strictly genealogical, and pure nonsense) are pretty amazing--with plenty of satire on religion and government, lots of salty humor, and more than a twinkle in his eye over sex (which got Jurgen, arguably his best work, banned in NYC briefly). His style is based on late medieval French, even when he's using it to poke fun at itself. Jurgen's online (in a repro of a valuable facsimile edition) at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/CABELL/title.htm

A good place to go to study some non-professional writing is http://www.fanfiction.net . This place is awesome (I got three stories there myself) and is a great place to veiw amatuer writing.

Originally posted by Aegis
A good place to go to study some non-professional writing is http://www.fanfiction.net . This place is awesome (I got three stories there myself) and is a great place to veiw amatuer writing.

Very amateur. I don't wish to start an argument with this (and I know this is a completely subjective reaction), but although there's some good fiction among the rest, most of it is truly abominable comicbook style stuff: dialog only, loud noises (*BANG!!!!!!!!*), stereotyped behavior, endless misspellings, poor formatting, and drenched in sentimentality when it doesn't reek of senseless violence. Avoid if you hate endless superheroes and martial artists attacking one another for no particular reason in poor English, or just wish to keep your insulin count at a moderate level.

I agree with Fable on this. Fanfiction.net is mostly, notice I said mostly, consisted of crap. I know I am sort of making a blanket statement, but more than often the good writers with the potentials get drowned among the sea of horrible writings.

Originally posted by fable


Very amateur. I don't wish to start an argument with this (and I know this is a completely subjective reaction), but although there's some good fiction among the rest, most of it is truly abominable comicbook style stuff: dialog only, loud noises (*BANG!!!!!!!!*), stereotyped behavior, endless misspellings, poor formatting, and drenched in sentimentality when it doesn't reek of senseless violence. Avoid if you hate endless superheroes and martial artists attacking one another for no particular reason in poor English, or just wish to keep your insulin count at a moderate level.

Originally posted by humanflyz
I agree with Fable on this. Fanfiction.net is mostly, notice I said mostly, consisted of crap. I know I am sort of making a blanket statement, but more than often the good writers with the potentials get drowned among the sea of horrible writings.

I agree with you both on this, but it's not too far out there to find a diamond in the rough. I've found one or two. I'm just saying it's a good place to see what others are doing, and they are interpreting the fantasy genre.

For a very amusing and well written take on the fantasy genre in general a real must is terry pratchet's the last hero

It pretty much guts the whole good and evil thing, is incredibly funny and smart and the only bad thing I can say for it is that its too short

Btw Im a big fan of the whole dicworld thing and I think in those books are one of the few examples of non stale fantasy, and while they are written with comedic motives the plot line ect is always well conceived and far from transparent the characters themselves are very refreshing and unique

Another book though is good omens, written by pratchet with neil giamen I would consider it fantasy its less comedic then the discworld series but personally I think its better, an absolute must read

Now me, I try to avoid most books written within the confines of a pre existing mythos and while there are no doubt exeptions the vast number of them are written by people who are reasonable writters from a more techinical standpoint the lack of imagination that often comes coupled with borrowing somone elses world to stage you tale in often shines through in poor and unimaginative characters, bland dialogue and a host of other things
Lets be truthfull for a moment. If writers like salvatore really had imagination and creativity they wouldnt need to borrow the forgotten realms to stage there epics btw this is not a slur on salvatores writing abilitie by any means, as I have never read any of his books I am not exactly equiped to critisize anything other than his lack of imagination for writting in a pre made world with its own races / cultures ect

Though that statment demands a question... can a better book be written in a pre made world. where it can be assumed the reader knows of the physical and cultural aspects of the races nations ect contained within, where less time can be spent detailing geograhical lay out, racial atributes ect and more time be spent on character development and the unfolding of the storie?
Theoreticly yes, for one thing this is shown in books like lotr which having been preceeded by other books detailing the specifics of the 'world' ie silmarilion and the hobbit, tolkein can focus more on stories / characters ect rather than having to explain to you just exactly why numenor fell or what manner of being sauron is though this was tolkeins world, not somone elses
Could the same inherit bonus' be aplied to somone setting his tale in anothers mythos ie salvatore setting his drizzt stories in the forgotten realms? I sure as hell dont know and If anyone reading this is a writter, consider this a challenge, break a tired old sterotype by writting a good original and creative book in somone elses mythos




Btw... in any style of art there is more garbage than good stuff, do not think a genre lost becouse you cant find anything worthwhile in it, your probably just not looking hard enough

It pretty much guts the whole good and evil thing, is incredibly funny and smart and the only bad thing I can say for it is that its too short...

It was gutted generations ago, and better than Pratchett, IMO. Cabell delighted in twisting good and evil in most of his fantasy works. For more mainstream fantasy, however, L. Sprague de Camp did a wonderfully wicked job on showing how contextual good and evil were according to culture and circumstance. There are plenty of other authors who did this well, but those two come immediately to mind.

Has anybody read Weiss and Hickman: de poort des doods (sorry about the Dutch title, I think it may originally have been the Portal of Death)? I think this series gives a new perspective on the whole Good/Bad cliché and it introduces the use of magic, based on a rune system, combined with mystic tattoos, which I found to be quite innovating. It's been a while since I read the series, but I bought the first book before the entire series was complete (or at least published) and I remember how I couldn't wait till the next book would come out.

Originally posted by Eerhardt
Has anybody read Weiss and Hickman: de poort des doods

"The Death Gate Cycle" - yep. Read it.

Nice characters and nice plt, but after the 4th book some of the thrill gets lost....

No worries,

Beldin

It never ceases to amaze me that when I go into a book store and look for fantasy and science fiction that

1). There is probably 90% Fantasy and 10% Sci Fi.
2). The Sci Fi that is there is probably 80% old (i.e. Clasic - Azimov, Clarke, et al) and 20% New (being generous here)
3). Of the Fantasy, 20% (or more) - by volume - is AD&D branded, 10%-20% - again by volume - is Tolkein and 10% -20% is Pratchett.
4). It is nigh on imposible to find a fantasy story that is a single book and not a continuation of some other book or series.
5). When I look through the mass of titles available, there is generally nothing I want to read. (Sci Fi and Fantasy have been the staple of my reading since I can remember).

Things that I have read and enjoyed are:-
Grunts - Can't remember Author, but is writen from the point of the bad guys minions in the eternal battle of good and evil.
Anything by Rodger Zelzany. (Shadow Jack is a good one that looks at the hollowness of victory)
Book of the New Sun - Gene Wolfe. The Best of all his stuff.

To end this rather stuctureless rant, I think I agree. The Genre is stale and will remain that way as long as people keep buying the stale rubbish that publishers put out.

Agreed, @Jace. I think what happened to fantasy is exactly what happened to rock after the 60s, and computer games after the early 90's: it became an obvious Big Business in the Making, so the industry moved in and mechanized it. Fantasy novels are being turned out to order, with all characters and plot preassigned (something that was unheard of before Gary Gygax and TSR appeared on the scene). There are good writers out there, but very, very few, and you really have to look in the cracks between the screaming publicity to discover the books that aren't being poured out by the machine.

@Jace: I think the reason for the dearth of new sci-fi writers is a similar problem to the fantasy problem. There are 2 mains sub-genre's of sci-fi: space opera (like Star Trek)--basically soap operas in space, and hard sci-fi. The readers seem to prefer space opera in settings they are already familiar with (like Star Trek), and hard sci-fi requires that the scientific ideas in the novel are feasible given what we know about science. Both categories really limit writer's imaginations.

I was reading on an interview with Bioware (I think) that the reason they find it easier to work with FR characters is that the gamers already know what to expect from the categories. For example, gamers know what a dwarf will be like, so they don't have to explain as much. Every attempt that Black Isle or Bioware has made at more cutting edge games--like PS:T or Fallout series--has had mediocre sales. Isn't that sad?

Originally posted by VoodooDali
I was reading on an interview with Bioware (I think) that the reason they find it easier to work with FR characters is that the gamers already know what to expect from the categories. For example, gamers know what a dwarf will be like, so they don't have to explain as much. Every attempt that Black Isle or Bioware has made at more cutting edge games--like PS:T or Fallout series--has had mediocre sales. Isn't that sad?

When I worked on DragonRealms, we would periodically receive complaints in the forum that our elves or dwarves weren't truly elves or dwarves. When asked why, we were always told with arrogance that we clearly hadn't read the AD&D books.

Originally posted by fable
It pretty much guts the whole good and evil thing, is incredibly funny and smart and the only bad thing I can say for it is that its too short...

It was gutted generations ago, and better than Pratchett, IMO. Cabell delighted in twisting good and evil in most of his fantasy works. For more mainstream fantasy, however, L. Sprague de Camp did a wonderfully wicked job on showing how contextual good and evil were according to culture and circumstance. There are plenty of other authors who did this well, but those two come immediately to mind.

Though I cant say ive read anything by either of those two people, the reason I used pratchet as an example is becouse its recent, Im just trying to say that the fantasy genre hansnt really gone stale