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/lit/ - Literature

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1089616 No.1089616 [Reply] [Original]

How the hell does one write fantasy without it being cliched as fuck?

>> No.1089617

>>1089616
By avoiding cliches. Next question?

>> No.1089619

Don't use typical fantasy races. Use original things. Read China Mieville for an idea.

>> No.1089623

Bumping. I'm actually getting ready to write a fantasy novel and I would appreciate some tips on averting or at least disguising cliches that I arrive on.

>> No.1089628

Sage for fantasy

>> No.1089631

>fantasy
>avoiding cliches

That's not how you're supposed to do it. The trick is to dress up old cliches (the lone hero, the evil parent, the dark secret) in new clothes and send 'em out. As long as they're necessary to your story, use as many as you wish.

>> No.1089635

You make like Pratchett and villify the hell out of any of the cliches you end up writing yourself into.

>> No.1089636

That whale is impossible. Whales have to dive to eat. That whale would starve to death.

You want to be a good fantasy writer? Explain to me why that whale is not dead.

>> No.1089641

Gene Wolfe, M. John Harrison, Lord Dunsany, Hope Miralees, E.R.Eddison, Mervyn Peake, Tim Powers, George MacDonald.

>> No.1089642

>>1089636

It's a magic whale. Duh!

>> No.1089643

>>1089623
>>1089616

ITT: the slush pile

>> No.1089645

OP read Poul Anderson, Leigh Brackett, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Lord Dunsany, E.R. Eddison, Robert E. Howard, Ursula K. Le Guin, Fritz Leiber, Mervyn Peake, Clark Ashton Smith, Jack Vance, Evangeline Walton, Gene Wolfe
and Michael Moorcocks essays and articles like Epic Pooh (not not his fiction)
>>1089623
Don't even try writing a novel, submit short stories to the magazines, even if its online and pays fuck all. Try writers workshops at conventions, literature courses at colleges, etc.
You can't write a book if you don't know how to first write 3,000 words.

>> No.1089647

>>1089645
I should have explained, it teaches you the craft.
Structure, maintaining your focus, plotting, characters, dialogue, etc

>> No.1089650

>>1089636

It's a robotic steampunk whale. It takes in water, boils it using heat from the sun (which is why there are so many black rocks along the edge, to assist in absorbing the radiation). The plume is not water, it is steam.

>> No.1089654

>>1089636
>I am willing to believe that a whale can grow trees on its back, but not that it can find an alternate food source.

I think I read an article about these differences in suspension of disbelief once.

>> No.1089657

Read a lot of fantasy. I'm no writer but I expect it to be easier to eliminate/avoid/disguise/"reinvent" cliches if you have a sound grasp of them yourself instead of consulting a bunch of post it notes if you've done this or that.

>> No.1089659

>>1089636
the whale is your father

FROM THE FUTURE

>> No.1089660

Clearly, it is chlorophyll whale.

>> No.1089669

Obviously, the tree elves that live on it's back are angaged in a symbiotic relationship with the whale, wherein they fish for it and it carries them.

>> No.1089670

Include as many cliches as possible for irony.

>> No.1089673

>>1089631
It's not enough to simply 'dress-up' the genre's cliches; you have to invert and deconstruct them.

>> No.1089677

Set it in a middle easterny setting.

>> No.1089686

>>1089673
That, too, has been done to death.

>> No.1089690

The best way to avoid cliches is to not write at all. They are inevitable, the second best you can do is write them gracefully.

>> No.1089693

I don't think genre fiction has to be about cliches, but I tend to believe that the more you emphasize the genre, the less you let your writing be original. Its a semantic difference, but if you think of it as a book with fantasy elements, you're more likely to produce something original than if you think of it as a fantasy novel.
Also, a mistake that people often make in fantasy is equating originality with whimsy. The less grounded in something else your work is, the harder it is to relate to. Classic fantasy, like classic science fiction, tends to be firmly grounded in reality. The difference is that while SciFi is generally symbolic of modern politics or exploratory of modern technology, fantasy is usually symbolic of foreign or exotic cultures or exploratory of the humanities, which I think is why so many people are suggesting Arabic influences. Tolkien wrote about Germanic and Gaelic culture, LeGuin wrote about contemporary Anthropology, and so forth. The cliches of fantasy have been generated by the re-hashing of old fantasy, so there's not a whole lot of point in going over the same old Western European shit. I believe that the future of fantasy is in cultures and mythologies still seen as mysterious. That means the Middle East, Russia, and some pockets of the Far East and Eastern Europe that haven't fully become part of Western popular culture.

>> No.1089756

>>1089693
Your post speaks to me. I never looked at it that way.

>> No.1089781

1. No mysterious elves
2. No warmongering orcs
3. No crafty dwarves

There, you're good to go.

>> No.1089784

>>1089693
First of all, I would love to read some fantasy set to the backdrop of Russian or Balkan mythologies and superstitions.

Second of all, I agree with you that if you set out to write a book, viewing it as a novel with fantasy elements would be better (cliches-wise) than viewing it as a fantasy novel. However, I want to believe that some people don't approach writing from this angle. You're assuming somebody is sitting there, saying to himself that he is going to write a book and then tries to decide what he wants to write, as opposed to just sitting down and writing out a story that he has in his head and wants to put it on paper.

It's this whole idea of wanting to be published and successful, or just plain selling copies, that I don't understand. I always thought that the good books were written by people that just had something to say. Something that they had to get out, that it was in them and inevitable.

>> No.1089786

>>1089784

I think the Geralt saga mostly uses creatures from slavic folklore.

>> No.1089792

>>1089781

Actually, while we are on the subject of Dwarves. I haven't heard about anyone really exploring Dwarves in his writings. I'd love to read more about Tolkien's Dwarves, for example, but the man never got around to it. To me they are a bigger unknown than the "mysterious Elves."
Tolkien spent an entire book talking about Elves and their origins and barely spared a paragraph for the Dwarves...

Bah. Sometimes I feel like Tolkien ruined all other fantasy for me because he did such a job job of giving me what I'm looking for.

>> No.1089805

honestly my friend nobody really cares about whether it's cliched. The thing that most fantasies flop is they spend all this time going over and over their own worlds they never spend the time to create truly interesting characters, and that is the folly of all fantasy

>> No.1089811

Use the fantasy elements as a vehicle to deliver a mind-blowing story, rather than focusing on how cool magic/elves/whatever are.

>> No.1089815

>>1089805

Shit, the guy just behind you me beat me to the punch. But yea... It doesn't have to be about interesting characters. In a sense an interesting character means one that is developed and relates to the world, which means content and background, and that means a good story.

It's all about the story. Even if all else fails, if you have a good story to tell, that's interesting, I think it redeems the book.

>> No.1089832

A story could be cliche as fuck but if it has interesting characters, I won't mind.

>> No.1089852

>>1089792
they're talked about a little in the silmarillion.

i think they said that some ainu or maia jumped the gun and created intelligent beings before they were supposed to, and those beings were the dwarves. quick to both friendship and enmity. or something like that.

>> No.1089864

Non-cliched fantasy writers: Amos Tutuola, Franz Kafka, R. A. Lafferty, Lucian of Samosata, William Hope Hodgeson, Mark Z. Danielewski, Wu Ch'eng-En, Angela Carter, Mikhail Bulgakov, Italo Calvino, Gustav Meyrinck, etc. Any of these names new to you, Anon?

>>1089693
I approve of this comment.

>> No.1089891

In my opinion, originality is one of the key points in making science fiction or fantasy literature. That being said, I don't say that cliches are bad. You can get ridiculous generic and still make a better story than everyone else, if you perhaps plunge your new ideas into something else.

For example, gonzo journalism. I saw modern stuff (Hunter S Thompson), I saw sci-fi stuff (transmetropolitan the comic book), but nothing in the fantasy setting. A guy running a controversial newspaper in a tolkien-kinda of a world. Striking at issues and doing his shit for fame and money, that kind of a deal. You combine two cliches and you come up with something mildly interesting.

>> No.1090266

>>1089673
Gene Wolfe already did that, Book of the New Sun and most especially The Wizard Knight

>> No.1090284

>>1089636
It has a symbiotic relationship with the vegetation on its back, gaining its energy through photosynthesis.

next

>> No.1090601

>>1089781

What about warmongering elves, crafty orcs, and mysterious dwarves?

>> No.1090615
File: 25 KB, 400x400, psychotic fundamendalist.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1090615

>>1090601
now you're thinking outside the box

>> No.1090625

>>1089616
By subverting or inverting common fantasy tropes.

>> No.1090653
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1090653

Take the film Willow. It was meant to be cliched.
You want a non-cliche fantasy, put Tolkien away and think about the story, the point or moral of what it is you want to do.

>> No.1090671

>>1089891

I think the example he picked was just terrible, but I agree with what he was saying. Taking two things, and trying to make them work together, does make for something interesting at the end. At the very least, just out of plain curiosity to see how the author managed his bastardized creation.

I can't really put my finger on the distinction, but I'd read an old fairy tale, knowing full well that it is cliched and predictable, but I wouldn't read a cheap-o fantasy book, BECAUSE it is cliched as fuck and predictable. What am I missing here? Is it the authenticity? The integrity of the story?

Aside from the story itself, I think the atmosphere and the visual images the author creates are important. At least for me they are. For the most part I don't mind long descriptions, as long as they create atmosphere and paint a pretty picture... Hmm I think I'm missing something again. What would you say is the difference between a good description, let's say a well worded and picturesque one of a Dwarf Hall, and the somewhat generic description of, let's say an emo vampire. What makes one of them good and the other painfully bad?

I'd really like to hear your thoughts on any of these points, if you have any.

>> No.1090687

>>1090653

Why do you automatically assume that it has to be like that, that you have to make a concious effort to identify the cliches and then make an effort to avoid them? I honestly believe that most people that have an interest in these things could just come up with a story, or make one as the go along, and it will find its own way to avoid the cliches, or reverse them, or just ignore them and leave you with a product that is distinct.

I think that if you tried to make a concious effort to avoid cliches, most people, would end up with something that will be transparent as an anti-cliche, and it would be almost as bad as writing all cliches. The few people who would manage it, are probably very clever and genuinely talented.

>> No.1090709
File: 38 KB, 400x300, Krull_l.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
1090709

>>1090687
Thats a good way to go about it too. I guess all I was trying to say is to start with the point. Have a general ending in sight and work on the twists of your plots and characters.
Picture of Krull. This came to mind just now. It had some cliches but was very different for most fantasy films

>> No.1090752

>>1090709
Sometimes a bit of cliche is a good thing. There's a reason why the classics are the classics.

>> No.1090770

>>1089784

It's funny that you say that, most of my stories have been in Russia/Balkans/Caucasus inspired settings.

>> No.1090779

If you seek to write fantasy, you will do so. If you have something you want to communicate, you can do it through fantasy, if you so desire.

My advice- stop trying so hard. Live a little, gain some more experience, have a message.

>> No.1090781

TAKE ACID.

>> No.1090789

DANCE HARD TECHNO

>> No.1090787

>>1090781
if i might second that anon's suggestion, you can either A) spend weeks analyzing fantasy tropes and figuring out how you'll deconstruct them in a novel and engaging fashion or B) spend 9 hours actually IN fantasy world and then write about the experience

>> No.1090796

I disagree.
No acid.
If you must try drugs: 1. Writing may not be your thing. 2. Try shrooms first.

>> No.1090794

>>1090770
Care to post something? Or send me a mail with something you wrote if I gave you one?

>> No.1090817

Bumping because I'm genuinely interested in that writefags stuff.
>>1090770