/lit/ - Literature

>>4151153

fantasy becomes fantasy by using fantasy cliches.

there's no way around it.

All genre fiction is going to have a necessary amount of cliche to it. That's what a genre ultimately is. Any fantasy is likely gonna have castles and swords and elves and dragons. And sure, a writer can forgo some of these, but when you avoid all of them, you're suddenly not in the genre anymore.

In short, cliche is what makes a genre. And that's okay. Don't worry about excluding things that have already been done -worry about including things that haven't.

>>4151160
>>4151161
thanks guys. That's literally all I needed to hear. I'm gonna start building my world tomorrow morning.

It doesn't matter if it's already been done. Do what comes naturally to you, and it'll be the best you can do.
You're always going to be original because you're you. You'll become unoriginal and engaging if you try to be original and avoid repeating the past, even when it fits.
Write a good story. Don't worry about being original. You'll get there.

>>4151165
Thanks man. I mean I guess I'm doing one thing more original then having the main character be a human. He is instead a Half Orc Monk. OP pic related

The best way to approach something tired like high fantasy is to tackle it one cliche at a time. Use the cliches. Make them your own. If you're setting out with that genre in mind, then play to its strengths and let the genre guide you. Work within it to find something worthwhile.

>>4151170
I would add one important reminder: even though cliche is okay to an extent in fantasy, that's not a free pass to do things for no reason. Tolkien made the fellowship a bunch of different races for a reason. Don't do fantasy things just because they're a fantasy thing. Use them.

>>4151173
Well I kind of wanted a group of people who were different races. The main character isn't even really the leader. I wanted to do it because it allows for more character development and to make each character more unique.

>>4151189
Something important to remember is that when you take the reader to a place they are unfamiliar with (i.e. middle earth, or outer space) they need a character who they can identify with that doesn't seem foreign to them.
The reason that the Hobbits are main characters in LoTR is because they don't know much about middle earth and they experience a lot of it for the first time same as the reader does.
Having a character that is easily relateable allows the author to lead the reader through the world much easier.

>>4151199
Well, I will have to rework the beginning of the story a bit but I still think my Half Orc will work . That's really good advice. Thanks!

>>4151153

>>4149125 did it and did it gud. You're just limited by your pool of references. Study Hindi or Thai or any mythology other than Greek/Roman, Celtic and Norse, you'll get tons of things to write about.

>>4151153
>Why is it so hard to write a story based in fantasy that isn't so cliche?
I don't know. There's an orc in your picture, and orcs were created by Tolkein, and have been reused by hundreds of fantasy writers since. Don't try to write something that fits in the "fantasy genre", that you've seen, let your mind wander, create your on creatures, your own ideas for settings, and weave a story from that. That's what TRUE fantasy is, not trying to follow in the footsteps of another writer.

>>4151170
>Half Orc Monk
What matters now is how you develop that. Orcs are a more warlike race. What inspired your character to be a monk? What drives him? How does he deal with his mixed heritage?

>>4151266
This guy gets it.

>>4151153
>Why is it so hard to write a story based in fantasy that isn't so cliche?
Have a solid religious and mythological foundation underneath your storytelling.

_All_ successful classic fantasy writers did this.

Ignore the plebs that will tell you about inventing new races, new settings, worldbuilding, etc.; they're complete idiots.

A novel is a not an AD&D adventure. It doesn't matter if your races and magical artifacts are fresh. All that matters is the power of impact of your writing, and to do that you need a 'false bottom' in your writing, a second layer of meaning.

The first million words of fiction you write in your life suck. That is not an exaggeration. Also originality is overrated, learn proper craft and just don't go maximum cliche.

>>4151160
No. Not really. The western literature needs to get away from the Tolken trap. All it does is limit the fantasy genre. Move into fantasy genre without falling into the Tolken trap and you have made a better fantasy story than thousands of different story.

>>4151403
A story is not an RPG adventure, you neckbeard dipshit.

>>4151406
have you been missing out on your dose of Abercrombie, Sanderson and Rothfuss? Fantasy has become "DnD Homebrew: The Novel". Stories can be found not only in Tolkien's pool of references, unless you're a little shit who thinks anything not from Norse/English mythology is subhuman. Wouldn't put it past /lit/ lurkers.

>>4151403
I f you read the top one hundred fantasy classics you'll find only one or two that have much to do with Tolkien at all, or for that matter the generic D&D races/quests/dungeons. This is more found in game based fantasy paperbacks like dragonlance and pastiches like Eragon. The big guys, like Eddison, Peake, Crowley, Dunsany, T.H. White, Howard, Leiber and Powers base their stuff on history, myth and previous works like Shakespeare and Spenser. The "everybody rips off Tolkien" is more a myth and a thing yyou see in unpublished authors and fan fiction than anything real. Go through the winners and Nominees of the World Fantasy Award and you'll find very little hobbitish stuff.
And if you're trying to create a world for your story to take place in, the story will do that for you. Your characters and events will require things that will suggest ideas to you that you can then integrate into a coherent world. World-building is over-rated.

>>4151410
>Fantasy has become "DnD Homebrew: The Novel".
'Become'? Mass-market fantasy novels have _always_ been that.

The reasons you don't remember this shit is twofold:

a) You're an underage moron who should be banned from this site
b) The 90% of shitty shit that makes up the 'fantasy' shelf of bookstores thankfully has a half-life of about five years. Anything older than 15 years is thankfully completely wiped from collective memory.

The best part about it is that shit like 'Abercrombie', 'Sanderson' and 'Rothfuss' will be totally forgotten in a decade.

What is a good fantasy book that isn't tolkein inspired or copied from it?

Don't make it a series you dweeb

It shouldnt be hard at all to be original. It's fucking fantasy.

You can have naked hermapheodite rabbis riding giant horned snails in a planet of peppermint trees slaying huge fuzzy manta rays that turn people into sluts. Originality!

>>4151509
Little, Big
Once and Future King
Dragon Waiting
Worm Ouroboros
Well at World's End
King of Elfland's Duagter
Last Call
Drawing of the Dark
Dying Earth
Sorceror's House
Wizard Knight
Red Nails
Conjure Wife
Nine Princes in Amber

you're welcome

>>4151535
>wizard knight

such a generic name

is it good?

>>4151153
Cliches (like dragons and hero's quest and shit) only embody the high concept aspect of the story, you can still do low concept character development as long as you don't fall into character cliches or deus ex machinas. Focus on narrative rather than content.

I'm planning on trying to find some way to get a standard fantasy hero's quest kind of thing but inspired by Wedekind/Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande style of disjointed impressionistic scenes.

>>4151520
naah, i think that's already an episode of futurama

>>4151546
Yeah, it's a first person narrative about a boy who has to become a knight in a world based on the Nine Worlds of Norse mythology. The first half has a subtext of keeping honor and accomodating the consequences of decsions you make as a young man, the second half takes place after he has been killed and gone to Valhalla and returns, and it's about redeeming promises to your friends and somewhat about the obligations of gods to men.

Inside that is a war between men and giants on earth mirrored by a war between gods and giants in asgard, and the idea of the coexistance and interdependance of worlds and races that interact only occasionally and temporarilly.

It's a very good, tight story too.

>>4151161
>>4151160
>>4151199
>>4151344
>>4151544

All of these here people are beating the shit out of the nail's head, OP. Fantasy is a genre, and if you're writing within that genre then your work is necessarily going to have much in common with its kin. Tropes, clichés, archetypes--whatever; dragons, magic, other races, or maybe a heroic protagonist whose story is more about generally "coming of age" than anything in particular character-wise. As has been said, you'll be like the other things you're trying, uh, to be like.

Be original when possible, of course. There's no point in making something that's already been made a hundred times.

Just make sure you have good characters, and try to subvert or reinvent your chosen genre's tropes. Really, focus on character. Make them original, at least. Their situation doesn't even have to be original ("SON OF FARMER PRESENTED WITH CRAZY THING GROWS INTO MAN-WARRIOR"), as long as their psyche/inner issues and relationships with other characters are.

>>4151571
This is a good point. In Last Call for instance, a thirty year old poker champion with one good eye is haunted by the ghost of his wife, related somehow to the power of keeping her last cup of coffee from getting cold, His best friend is an alcoholic with cancer who needs to go on a quest to Las Vegas so he can use odds magic to maybe reverse his cancer. The professional gambler Scott Crane has to use poker and tarot magic which he is only vaguley beginning to comprehend to win the rights to his own body back from the heir of King Arthur and Bugsy Siegal in their "castle in the desert" in an ultimate card game. He must confron his father, now inhabiting the body of his older brother and save his sister and his friends from his father with the help of the man who raised him.

Now, it might be hard to see the tropes in this, but there are kings, destinies, magic, epic battles involving ancient lineages, ghosts and oracles and a mysterious world of gods only vaguely understood.

These things are fundamental to the fantasy story.

You can take out the elves, troolls, magic rings, wizards, dragons and swords, remove the thees and thous and set it in nevada in the fifties with a bunch of drunken poker players and it's still basically going to have a lot in common with Tolkien and Dracula and The Tempest. It's unavaoidable. Now that doesn't mean it can't be a great story, those all are, but if you go out of your way to eliminate all fantasy aspects you're swatting flies. Just write a good story and don't worry about it. If you didn't like a little magic and weirdness you would be writing a different kind of book.

>>4151571
>"SON OF FARMER PRESENTED WITH CRAZY THING GROWS INTO MAN-WARRIOR"

What about the strongest warrior experiencing a collapse of faith and utter deconstruction of everything he stood for leaving him completely broken and shattered physically and mentally until through long hardship he gains new strengths and new meanings?

>>4151571
Wasn't that " A Princess of Oz"? but the farmer's son grows up to be the princess of a magical land.

>>4151153
>Why is it so hard to write a story based in fantasy that isn't so cliche?
Probably because you're not a very good writer.

>>4151153
it doesn't matter if you do something someone else did first, so long as you do it better.