The Gaming Den

I want to start writing more seriously. My preferred genre is fantasy, but to keep it from being completely self indulgent tripe, I'm looking for people's input on things they like in a fantasy story. Tropes, archetypes, types of storyline, antagonists, protagonists, etc.

However, there are going to be certain non-negotiable things because of who I am, and what I'm like. For example, I don't have much of a science background, so eventually the cop out of "it's magic" or "a wizard did it" is going to pop up, or, I tend to write up morally ambiguous author avatar as a main protagonist.

But I am looking for input and to see what people like when they read fantasy, so tell me what you'd want to see.

The first and foremost is "Don't take yourself seriously". Christopher Paolini rips off as much stuff as David Eddings, yet Eddings is a better read because he's capable of writing a scene to make fun of junk. There's a scene in Sapphire Rose where a goddess tries to give an info dump in super-flowerly language and every just stares at her. Someone has to take her aside and tell her to knock it down to normal speech and don't use thee and thou.

A decent second "Avoid the fantasy semi-formal junk". Dialogue really helps a story with me.

And for me, third, I like weird environments. One reason I read Simon Green's Nightside series is because the Nightside itself is so awesome. I mean, it's a city where it's always night, always three o'clock in the morning, with blazing billions of stars, a moon a dozen times the width of the one here, and lots of cities and neon.

So, yeah. Bring on the huge mountain cities and the forests where it always rains and seaport cities where the air is so humid you can swim it and the city where gravity means "Down is whatever surface I put my foot on"

First of all, you need characters; one or more people to hold a reader's attention. These characters need to have real depth to them; solid backgrounds that you keep to your damn self. (The background is really about keeping the character consistantly interesting; it will come out in the story if it needs to.)

The world is nice, you need one, but that is not the story.
The fantasy is nice, you need one, but that is also not the story.

Once you have your characters, throw them a few bones and develop a plot. Toy with them if you must, but characters are the geese that lay the golden eggs of novels.

Fantasy is a vague genre; you need to settle on what type of fantasy you want. You can have high and down and dirty fantasy (in fact many classic stroies have been written in both; there are gritty stories based on King Arthur and high fantasy stories based on King Arthur).

Characters are eveything.

The important thing to remember is that characters need limitations. I mean, the story is about overcoming some obstacle, but each character need limitations to things they cannot do.

Mary Sues are famous for being good at everything, and their only real "limitation" is that they cannot decide who to fvck because everyone is in love with them.

That being said, fantasy characters are often iconically better than everyone at one thing. Lawrence Watt Evans is famous for his common man heroes, but everyone else seems to always make the protagonist some uber something..... fighter, mage, whatever.

If you can do that, being witty helps. Wit is never bad.

After that, you need a world that makes sense, I mean, if teleportation is common then sometimes the hero needs to sit down to a fancy dinner and wonder if the exotic fruit on the table was teleported in for the occasion. Stuff like that goes a long way in fantasy.

K brings up an interesting point about character limitations. In a lot of older literature (I would include pulp fantasy in this as well) the characters were badass enough to handle whatever the author threw at them. The "character with limitations" was the original form of the anti-hero and I suspect its popularity is due to the fact that such characters are often easier to relate to than the "classic hero" who is essentially wish fulfillment.

You can also cheer for them when they overcome those seemingly insurmountable odds, and marvel at how they have grown and changed over the course of the story.

Anyway, what I actually wanted to say to you was that you need to have some sort of writing schedule. Well... you don't need one, you can always write whenever the mood takes you, but make sure you actually write when this happens. If you want to be a serious writer you have to take writing seriously and treat it like your job. Most of the writers I've spoken with agree that ideally you should be writing every day. Two to four hours seems to be the average, as far as I can tell. You can take a day or two off every week if you want.

The point is that you should be writing something at least five days a week. If you're stuck on your current project, take thirty to sixty minutes off (but avoid human contact) to get yourself relaxed. If you're really stuck on your current project try writing something else that day.

You may also wish to join (or even start) a writing club, or find another writer to mentor you. The point of that would be to have something ready for someone else to read on a regular basis. If you're accountable to someone else, it will help you to get your ass in gear.

There's also getting an agent, negotiating with publishers, promoting your book, etc. You can try putting up your work online as well, if you want. It worked for Hugh Macleod and David Wong.

Of course, you may already be aware of (or even already doing) everything I've written here... so... yeah.

My break's almost over so good luck and keep us posted. I'd be interested in hearing about your progress in the crapsack world of fiction writing.

If you want to write more seriously, just keep writing.

Write even if what you create doesn't yet form a coherent story. You'll get there eventually and you can use the little bits you've written down later.

Thanks guys. I've necro'ed a thread from a couple years back where I shared what I was working on then, if anyone's willing to give it a read through and give specific feedback.

I'm glad for all of the generic feedback, it's easier to use and follow, and probably a lot more helpful than "put in bioweapons!"

But, that said, I'd also like to know that kind of subjective stuff, like the exotic worlds thing, as it might spur some idea for a story.

I keep toying with this writing thing. Maybe eventually I'll actually have some kind of product.

Prak_Anima wrote:However, there are going to be certain non-negotiable things because of who I am, and what I'm like. For example, I don't have much of a science background, so eventually the cop out of "it's magic" or "a wizard did it" is going to pop up, or, I tend to write up morally ambiguous author avatar as a main protagonist.

Nobody has ever complained about "a wizard did it" explanations for things, as long as that explanation makes sense. I usually don't care for the sci-fi that has "hard science" in some kind of winking manner (The mystery is solved because of a kinematic equation? Yawn.) and super-advanced technology with no explanation (FTL travel, immortality treatments, sentient computers, time travel) is basically just magic anyway.

What I care about is if the evil Vizier is forcing people to try and assassinate the Sultan by controlling their minds, why doesn't he just control the Sultan's mind and force him to jump off a bridge? And the explanation should be better than no signal

Sashi wrote:Nobody has ever complained about "a wizard did it" explanations for things, as long as that explanation makes sense.

I think the biggest problem is one needs to avoid the God from the machine problem solver. You can have that both in fantasy and sci-fi. It's ok for general plot development, but not for plot solutions. When used for plot development, there needs to be a good reason why it can't be used for plot solutions. Yes, you could get away with it in the old 60's Star Trek epsiodes where God from the machine was used (and then thrown away) every epsiode, but other than short stories, it will not work for any larger works.

Magic, (and technology as well) should never be "free." There needs to be a cost somewhere. It doesn't have to be obvious, and it doesn't have to be at the level of the old Dark Sun, but it needs to be there in order to keep magic from turning into the solution for everything.

Sashi wrote:
What I care about is if the evil Vizier is forcing people to try and assassinate the Sultan by controlling their minds, why doesn't he just control the Sultan's mind and force him to jump off a bridge? And the explanation should be better than no signal

I can -sort- of see a workaround for that, if the Sultan is protected from most harmful magical effects.