Mainstream Fantasy

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Well, I really have two responses:

1) if your racial personalities are still divisible by "tribal" or "subracial" lines, it's still too homogenous. Take any group of guys from, say, an Indian reservation. Their attitudes toward the dominant culture will vary quite a bit. So will the way they act on those attitudes. That's not something we often see in fantasy. That's why non-human races are difficult to use well.

2) let me just point out that, as you probably know, you've got people here who are generally more open-minded about things, but are also more realistic. If you're having difficulty convincing us, think of the reaction someone will have who doesn't speak with you openly. All they see is an elf on the cover. What's going to be their reaction? Even if a buddy tells them about it and they hear "elf" they're going to put you in the same category as D&D novels. It may not be fair, but there's your market.

As a writing decision, I don't know your ability, but I think it's possible to pull it off. As a business decision, I think you'll be hurting yourself.

[The Jade Knight]

1.  You mean individual v. tribe?  I'm actually reminded of the Elfquest novels I've read. . .

2.  I understand.  I think it's too bad, though.  Not that that changes anything.

[Fellfrosch]

So what you're saying, JadeKnight, if I may be permitted to paraphrase 8 pages of discussion into one sentence, is that you know there's a million reasons not to write a Tolkienesque fantasy, but you're going to do it anyway because that's "who you are" as a writer. Am I close?

[The Jade Knight]

Nope, not really.

It isn't so much about "who I am".  If you said it was about "what I like" you'd be closer to the mark.

And the only good reason NOT to write Tolkienesque Fantasy I've heard is that it doesn't sell.  Don't give me any of that blarney about originality.  I don't feel a burning need to be more original than Tolkien, who borrowed extensively from Norse, English (/Anglo-Saxon) and Celtic lore.  Ultimately, THE reason to avoid Tolkienesque Fantasy is because the editors wont bother with you if you do.  That's what I've taken away from this discussion, at any rate.

In fact, because of this discussion, I'm thinking that my novels, at least initially, will have to take place in the human nations of the world, and will generally have to ignore the large Fay portion.  The world is big enough to not HAVE to include the Elves in any stories I should need to write.  And I could just as easily leave out Orcs or any other more traditional "bad guy", though I'm still not entirely sure I want to.  Leave off Orcs, maybe.

Would editors have just as big of a problem with me if I used trolls or ogres?


My policy is that, if you're looking for something to fit a world-building "gap", for example, you've come up with a creature or race or something, that you want to have look and act a certain way to fill a certain world-"niche", see if there's already one out there in the [public domain] that you can use.  If there's already one that fits perfectly, use it.  If not, invent your own.

This is why we [I confess - "my" world is actually a group effort]  have some standard races, and then others which are very different, such as the "K'Sharr".

But I guess the default in the Fantasy world today is that there's something wrong with using the Fay and Dragons and the ilk.  We've heard those words too often, so we'd prefer it if people invented things that served the same function and were named differently.


While I'm at it:

What is it with Fantasy and prophecies?  Wheel of Time, Sword of Truth, Darksword . . . it seems that practically (if not actually) a majority of Fantasy novels deal with prophecies.  Why?  I find the whole prophecy shindig getting older than Elves or Orcs.

...or has this topic already been discussed?

[Entsuropi]

They are good plot devices, and allows the reader to try to figure out what the author is getting at.

That's why they are used in RPGs as well

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

as far as orcs go, why not just name them something else? Call them goblins, which is a fairly generic and easily recognizable term, but also allows them to be of various physical appearance.

I still want to stand by the originality argument. Your work will be more original the less you borrow from sources that have already be borrowed from. It will be different from them. Different is what people want to read, and that's partially because originality is a virtue in our modern climate of artistic endeavor.

As for prophecy, that indicates destiny. It's an easy way to create a source of information for characters and readers to learn together. I think that is why it is used so often. Plus it is something we're fascinated by. If it's a true prophecy, then it HAS to come true, right? That means that we have a free will/fate conflict. Can you defy the prophecy? Can someone else fulfill it? Was it a true prophecy in the first place? There's a lot of things to explore, and if maturely handled, it can still be very insightful in terms of theme and conceptualization of our world. Adding an elf to a story doesn't have that same benefit.

[Entsuropi]

as far as orcs go, why not just name them something else? Call them goblins, which is a fairly generic and easily recognizable term, but also allows them to be of various physical appearance.

Wait, so you bash jordan for trollocs and then turn around and suggest that jade does the same?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

nooooooo.... that's not exactly what I did. But even what Jordan did is better than just using "orcs"

[The Jade Knight]

I actually disagree, personally.

I think it would have been better to see orcs.  I see nothing inherently redeeming about Trollocs, especially not their name.


There was an element of my world, the Telyar, Druidism, etc., that I was originally planning on generally ignoring.

However, in order to cater to the "need" for something different, basing "forces" along Telyar-divided lines might make for something rather interesting.  Instead of using more traditional enemies, like I had planned, I can focus more on shadow and darkness (one of the Telyar, the Artificer, is sort of a Lord of Shadow, but in a very different way than in the Jordanian style).  Always lots of room to play there.  Unfortunately, to me, that smacks of too many other worlds.  I don't know.  I might be able to come up with something creative.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I guess I'm just clinging to the "make it different" attitude. I think you can ditch elves, come up with something new, which will change your world, obviously, but will make it better. If you're using original ME sources, why not go ahead and name them like the norse did? Isn't it "Aelf" or something like that? Aelfheim being their realm?

[Fellfrosch]

What you have to realize, Jade, is that your attitude regarding original vs borrowed sources is 180 degrees removed from almost everyone on this board. We could all talk 'til we're blue in the face, but the root of the issue is that you see certain similarities as positive, while we see them as inherently negative.

Remarkable, really, that we've all stayed pretty civil about it despite that fundamental rift.

[Skar]

As I read this thread I'm starting to move my position.  The reason Trolloc felt so stupid to me was because the name felt like an obvious combination of troll and orc.  It felt forced and artificial, like all the apostrophes in people's names in that series.

I read several books by a dead guy named Paul Edwin Zimmer (Marion Zimmer Bradley's brother) that had elves in them and dwarves and so on.  I loved his stuff.  Not because it was more of the same but because he did medieval fighting more realistically than anyone I've ever read and made it entertaining.  He focused a great deal on human warriors in his work and it was dense hard hitting character driven stuff.

So there's a case where an author "copied tolkien" but made it different enough that I was enthralled anew.  I think it would have bugged me if he'd called his elves by some other name, especially since they were so obviously elves, woodland creatures of light and music etc...

Now, there's a definite catch here.  Zimmer was publishing during the Tolkien craze but he didn't sell well and none of you have probably ever heard of him.  He did commit suicide when he was really young so that may have had something to do with it.

Maybe there *is* room for "Tolkein redone" in today's market as long as you don't really redo Tolkien but just borrow from his world. (or type of world in JadeKnight's case)

[Entsuropi]

Funny, the jordan names never bothered me. I never even stopped and realised that Shai'tan and Trolloc are Satan and Troll Orc. Didn't even clip my radar that the names were worth thinking about.

[The Jade Knight]

Yay, one sympathizer!

Regarding Jordan names:

Yeah, a lot of language-related things bug me that few other people seem to notice.

How many people were irritated by Goodkinds names?  How many were annoyed by the linguistic inconsistencies in Jordans treatment of dialect and language?

I'm a hardcore conlanger.  Comes with the territory, I suppose.

I'm not planning on using Norse names as much as I can avoid them except where they've already been Tolkienized.  I may use Middle English words so long as they are not mere respellings of Tolkien names.  For example, I might be okay with referring to Elves as simply "the Fae" or some such in context.

I may have to keep them out of my first novel to keep the editors around, though.  What do you all think?

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

well, I've said what I think. If you want to keep editors around, make up new races entirely.

Another, slightly less "keep editors around" option but more friendly than what it sounds like you're proposing, is to make it feel like a historical novel, like many treatments of Arthur do. Again, using Middle English or Norse names will distinguish you from Tolkien a littl emore, and if you want it published, I think you need to consider those options. Using "the Fey" I think would be a good alternative.

Yeah, Ent, just about everything Jordan uses is a term from the real world. The biggest problem is that he's not consistant. He borrows from Arabic and Celt customs, but he doesn't make those customs fit in with the rest of what's going on. That's what bugged me about them. Not that he used Beltane and Shai'tan, but that they didn't work the way he took them out of context.