/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.7199734]

I'm plotting a fantasy book and making a list of tired fantasy tropes and stereotypes to avoid, stuff we've seen over and over. Anyone care to name a few?

[Anonymous No.7199734,1]

rape, incest

[Anonymous No.7199840]

rape, incest

[Anonymous No.7199845]

>>7199734
>thinking your book will be good just because you think your book is "different"
Nigger how about you focus on making a good piece of fiction before you wonder about whether or not you're doing something the same as everyone else.
Because you are, nothing is new under the sun, and if you're not ripping off of Tolkien then you've probably retold some ancient myth without even thinking about it.
But if you insist, I hate when the hero is offered a reward of some kind for his great service to the people by his God/King or whatever and arbitrarily turns it down for literally no discernible reason except to maintain the status quo. Pissed me off since I was like 12 reading the finale to Percy Jackson.

[Anonymous No.7199862]

Parents of the protagonist killed by antagonists is a big one.

[Anonymous No.7199869]

character later turns out to be heir to the kingdom

[Anonymous No.7199871]

>>7199734
The chosen one/secret royal protagonist. Simply avoid that one.

[Anonymous No.7199877]

The twist later in the story that OP doesn't suck dick should be avoided

[Anonymous No.7199890]

>>7199734
the split McGuffin that must be reassembled.

[Anonymous No.7199895]

visit tvtropes, and they'll give you more things to avoid than you ever knew existed.

[Anonymous No.7199900]

>>7199895
But not all tropes are equal. The key is to avoid the worst.

[Anonymous No.7199927]

>>7199900
elf orphan raised by humans or human orphan raised by elves

[Anonymous No.7199939]

I don't know about tropes but I would avoid using that old fashioned stuffy style fantasy often has, I would also avoid having 3000 characters in a book, and I wouldn't have any cliche mythical creatures in your work.

I would also avoid getting too bogged down in the minutia of the world you are creating, or becoming too hot for your own magic system or whatever.

[Anonymous No.7199944]

>avoiding tropes and clichés
>not doing a gene wolfe and using them to transcend the genre

[Anonymous No.7199946]

>>7199927
Wolf orphan raised by humans

[Anonymous No.7200125]

While it's not a trope, the Joseph Campbell/heroes journey tends to be the training wheels for a lot of writers. Should you decide to use it, see if you can put an original twist on an established platform

[Anonymous No.7200135]

>>7199944
this tbh. Make the tropes do what you want

[Anonymous No.7200139]

I absolutely hate it whenever the main character has to take an evil ring of power to the bad guy's lair to destroy it. Ruins the book every time.

[Anonymous No.7200144]

magic.

[Anonymous No.7200149]

Avoid self-indulgant sex scenes. They're stupid and tired and nobody wants to read several paragraphs waxing poetic about the shape of some woman's pouty red lips.

[Anonymous No.7200155]

tvtropes.org/

[Anonymous No.7200186]

>>7199734

"My fantasy is different than the rest" is just a trope.

Write a good book, as long as every element of your setting is there for a reason and as long as the reason is 'it's how fantasy is or isn't done' it can work out fine.

But if you absolutely need some, the most awful are sex scenes, excess exposition, and prophecies.

[Anonymous No.7200396]

If you want to write a good novel then just come up with an idea and build the book around it. And by idea I mean a message of sorts. something you consider to be real. If you don't have an idea yet then read until you do

[Muck Bulligan !!ryE2gEjGbpu No.7200399]

>>7199734
>thinking of your work as a list of potential tropes
burn the manuscript

[Anonymous No.7200416]

>>7199734
Check out World Lore Fantasy.

[Anonymous No.7200439]

Dont set your fantasy book in a western European setting

[Anonymous No.7200447]

>>7199946
Wolf human raised by orphans

[Anonymous No.7200454]

>>7200439
This.

Set your story in an Indian/southern Asian-inspired setting, OP. Then you can sit back and watch as you're proclaimed as the next great exoticizer of Oriental culture.

[Anonymous No.7200459]

>>7200454
>a fantasy book
Well...most of them. If we're talking spells, or dragons, or vampires, or any of that kind of thing, it's already been done to death. It's a clogged genre, try and think of what hasn't been done before you think about what has.

[Anonymous No.7200482]

>>7199734

Why tropes to avoid? why not use them to do a satire out of them?

[Anonymous No.7200486]

People who read fantasy books want tropes, lots of them. They want a comforting, familiar landscape where the only surprises are recognising an inverted version of a trope. "Ohh the badguy maybe isn't the badguy!"

[Anonymous No.7200493]

>>7200454
He could set it an american setting.

I would say the old west is comparable to European medieval times and outlaws/gunmen to knights.

[Anonymous No.7200498]

things are cliche for a reason, its because people are dumb and like them, people who read fantasy are especially dumb and want the same shit they read all the time just in different settings and with different characters

[Anonymous No.7200510]

Set it in a purely abstract mathematical manifold where each chapter is chart into a an R^n space and people are tangent vectors.

[Anonymous No.7200513]

>>7200510
tbh I cried when I learned the function was not only one-to-one but also onto

[Anonymous No.7200516]

That feel when I want to write an American old west fantasy in some weird alternate fantasy world just so i could also include American mythical creatures like the sasquatch because thats funny and cool.

[Anonymous No.7200529]

>>7200516
Sounds fun

[Anonymous No.7200534]

>>7200516
Why make it a fantasy? Cryptozoology in and on itself sounds pretty fresh as a concept for a story.

[Anonymous No.7200539]

>>7200529
I think another cool idea would be to take some cliché western European fantasy character and have hear about this new world, and then transport him to fantasy america were there are all new monsters and ideas and people.
America would be an unexplored land filled with all kinds of people and creatures like bigfoots and gremlins and chupacabras and mothmen

[Anonymous No.7200547]

>>7200493

This. Dark Tower was a really creative approach to fantasy, at least as far as setting is concerned.

[Anonymous No.7200548]

>>7199734
So you want to write an "original" fantasy, eh?

>no dragons
>no elves (fuck elves, bunch of hippie fucks done to death)
>no orcs/generic bad guy minions
>no magic sword/ring/whatever driving the plot
>no "da chosen one of the prophsey!!11!1" bullshit
>if there is magic, make it mystical in a "what the fuck is going on" way, not a "casting fireball for 12 mana" way
>please, PLEASE, resist the urge to burn down the protagonist's hometown
>do at least minor research into medieval life; a traveling character carrying a "few gold coins" could buy the whole fucking tavern, not just a few pints of beer and a warm bed
>avoid mythical creatures in general, make your own (its fantasy after all)
>make the badguy/bad organization do evil things for GOOD reasons, not simply for being evil

Also, like >>7200454 and >>7200439 said, you could also make it into a non-European setting. Imagine a world ruled by the Meso-Americans but they have iron and concrete and build pyramids of obsidian to their gods; or a world dominated by pacific islanders-like people that have turned the raising of great stones from the seabed to the surface into an art form and live on artificial islands of quartz rock. Or just make a complete hybrid setting where (for example) the people are red, the architecture is Ancient Roman, the society is Ancient Norse, and the setting is Alaska-like and the last habitable place in the world.

Fantasy is supposed to be fantastic, so don't hold back (just make sure there's a basic sense to it all, a logic constistancy).

[Anonymous No.7200639]

>>7200548
>>7200548
I agree with most of these, but I wouldn't say you have to make magic mysterious and rare. If you do, fine, but that's no less cliche than everyday, widespread magic. Instead, I would say that you should establish some basic rules about magic (where it comes from, what it can/cannot do), and even if you never reveal them to the audience, you should stick to them. That way, you avoid certain plot holes and have some emergent ideas for complications/resolutions.

For example, if you choose to have emotion-powered magic, (I know, it's just an example) then you have a reason a character can lose an early fight with a villain but make a dramatic comeback during a climactic later one. Conversely, that same character can get into a lot of trouble by losing his/her temper over something trivial. Or if you choose to have magic based on communion with metaphysical beings (angels/demons/whatev), you can raise a lot of philosophical questions about what it means to be a corporeal being, and whether or not it's "right" to take advantage of forces not understood.

[Anonymous No.7200706]

>>7199845
Couldn't agree more.

Write what you're passionate about. Different for the sake of being different often just comes off as contrived, in my experience. Like the author is just connecting the dots from a list of things not to do. Let your ideas flow naturally.

[Anonymous No.7200761]

>>7199734
I dont think avoiding things is the way to do it.

on a side note, i have been worldbuilding for months now, and i just keep realizing i dont have a story. It takes place during the diadochi wars, but I have no idea who to make the enemy here, or how to make it so that they are a threat. The idea is that the conqueror has one last place to capture, but then falls to an illnes and dies, leaving the kingdom to "whoever can keep it". The kingdom inevitably breaks up into smaller territories, and all of them are run by people who have different beliefs on who should run it. I dont know if i want to make it so that there is a rightful heir, or if w want it to be a free for fall. I might be thinking of making a rightful heir but a free for all anyway due to something like his age. However the ending i am sure about, i need them to all be brought together by a single person, or in a form of league in order to band against the druids of my world. the druids would be depicted as intelligent but barbaric men who practice human sacrifice on a massive scale. I do not think I want to add magic though, but i am interested in finding out about objects that they believed existed like the elixir of life and the philosophers stone.

[Anonymous No.7200877]

Combine it with another genre. Sword and sorcery + hard boiled detective novel would be sweet

[Anonymous No.7200897]

>>7200877
Not bad/10

[Anonymous No.7200901]

>>7200498
This. If you look at things like eragon where atleast the first book is litterally Starwars you realize that people don't want new things. There are so many well selling books which are basically the same just look at some bestseller lists for fantasy.

[Anonymous No.7200906]

>>7199734
>I'm plotting a fantasy book
>a fantasy book
>fantasy
You poor delusional fool. Quit while you're ahead.

[Anonymous No.7200994]

>>7200877
>>7200897
that would honestly rule and I would love to read it

[Anonymous No.7201635]

>>7199734
Avoiding cliches is good! It's good in the sense that creativity thrives when you set out self-imposed restraints like that, BUUUUT

at the same time cliches aren't inherently bad, it's just that they're often used incorrectly. When you're well read enough almost everything is going to feel cliche because you're better at making connections through things. The real key to getting genuinely good at making stuff is finding novel ways to use cliches which is often a lot harder than just picking up patterns.

I'm not saying you can't add anything new, I'm just saying that setting out with the specific intent of making something new will drive you fucking crazy. Find something you badly want to say and find the right ways to say it. That's where originality comes from IMO.

[Anonymous No.7202301]

>fantasy racism
>it turns out the racists are right
BUTCHER THE FAIRIES. THEY'RE ALL LYING CUNTS.