# Rules of SF/Fantasy to Break



## KC Trae Becker (Sep 5, 2016)

I just discovered an older article on breaking unspoken rules for writing SF/Fantasy stories. 10 Writing "Rules" We Wish More Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Would Break

I found it an interesting article and would love to hear it discussed here. Any opinions about it are welcome.

Though the article was suggesting more people do these things I was surprised to see that publishers and readers are shying away from prologues, portals and FLT. Can anyone confirm this article's assumption that these devices have fallen out of vogue? I'm especially wondering what the complaint is about portals. (I have heard minor complaints and the reasoning behind them about the other two.)


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## bdcharles (Sep 5, 2016)

Well, I don't want other fantasy writers to break with these cliches because I want to be the one to do it! 

I suppose a portal is a bit of a lazy device. Why not invent some interesting way for your characters to get from A to B? I tend to sympathise with alot of these points. Dwarves is another one - though of course Tyrion Lannister now admirably carries the flag for non cliched dwarfism. Dragons - reboot or retire? Prophecies and psychic visions - often used as a band aid on a sucking plot chest wound. Magical tree-dwelling elves - bah! Give them base street narcotics and see what happens.


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## Guy (Sep 5, 2016)

I break the first three on a regular basis. No third person omniscient is as stupid as the no adverbs rule - like adverbs, it serves a purpose and can easily be used right. 

Prologues can be great for setting a hook. A prologue that runs ten pages should just be made chapter 1, but if it only goes a couple of pages, it can work great. I've read lots of books in which the prologue drew me in and made me want to see what was going to happen. 

The no infodumps rule always struck me as absurd for fantasy. I've created a world that exists only in my head. The only way the reader can know about it is if I tell them. Like everything, there are right ways and wrong ways to go about it, but if the story takes place in a fictitious world, it's going to have to be done. My world has magic in it, and one of my characters is a very powerful sorceress, so a logical question a reader would have is, "Why can't she just make her enemies disappear with a wave of her hand?" I answer this by having a non-magic using character ask this of my sorceress character. In answering the character's question, she also answers the reader's question and explains an aspect of the world.

You can't have magic? In a fantasy?! Seriously? What's next, no swords? If you don't want to write about magic, fine, but to flat out forbid it?

I guess I should've said in the thread about pet peeves, but one of mine is the so-called "rules" I see all over the internet, this idea that you don't dare violate any of these rules, and if you do, you're a sucky writer. It would be so much better if they called them guidelines instead of rules. I know it sounds nit picky, but the way these ideas are presented makes them sound as unalterable as the rules of physics and woe unto any soul who tries to alter them. Use them as general guidelines, but if you adhere to a formula of strict rules, your writing will be formulaic, your voice will be lost, and your work completely indistinguishable from all the other formulaic crap out there.


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## KC Trae Becker (Sep 5, 2016)

bdcharles said:


> I suppose a portal is a bit of a lazy device. Why not invent some interesting way for your characters to get from A to B?



So you object to doorways that lead exactly where someone is going, like teleportation vs. a portal to another dimension like say Narnia?


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Sep 5, 2016)

I've seen this article before, and it makes some good points. 

The thing about series is so true. There are VERY few standalones in fantasy. A lot of it is just the nature of the genre; the plots tend to be large scale (involving entire countries or worlds rather than individuals) and the worlds require lots of development. There's also the fact that there's more $$$ in a series than in a standalone. I'm sure many trilogies and series in existence now could have done well or even better condensed into a standalone...

I also agree with the thing about portal fantasy. Portal fantasy has practically vanished now. I can't think of any popular portal fantasies published within the last...like, fifty years. That aren't middle grade novels, anyway. But...is there anything necessarily WRONG with it? 

The last several "rules" I've never heard before, or at least haven't seen. No present tense? In YA it's epidemic. Thats just the way YA books are written nowadays; there's no reason for it, and 90% of them would be better in past. And, no unsympathetic characters? Maybe that's because we need to relate to/sympathize with/somewhat LIKE characters to care about them and thus, care about the story? 

Let me adad one of my own to the list: 

11) Fantasy Has to be Large-Scale 

I mentioned this earlier. Plotlines in fantasy tend to involve entire countries and worlds. Wars, the threatening of all humankind...stuff like that. But where are all the stories about normal individuals that just happen to live in a fantasy world going about their lives are dealing with their personal problems? Why are there no stories about a werewolf finding love in the shape of an unemployed necromancer after a messy divorce? Or stories about a girl who gets a job at a rescue center for magical creatures after being expelled from her magic school? We all know about weapons, wars and politics in fantasy, but what about camping trips, job interviews and movie dates in fantasy worlds? Why does fantasy=stories about saving the world? What about saving one's marriage, or saving one's magical smoothie business?  

I could start my own thread on this...


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## glutton (Sep 5, 2016)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> 11) Fantasy Has to be Large-Scale
> 
> I mentioned this earlier. Plotlines in fantasy tend to involve entire countries and worlds. Wars, the threatening of all humankind...stuff like that. But where are all the stories about normal individuals that just happen to live in a fantasy world going about their lives are dealing with their personal problems? Why are there no stories about a werewolf finding love in the shape of an unemployed necromancer after a messy divorce? Or stories about a girl who gets a job at a rescue center for magical creatures after being expelled from her magic school? We all know about weapons, wars and politics in fantasy, but what about camping trips, job interviews and movie dates in fantasy worlds? Why does fantasy=stories about saving the world? What about saving one's marriage, or saving one's magical smoothie business?



I like action plots with larger than life figures, but I do have some books where the MC's main goal throughout the story is not saving the world/country/etc, but protecting or saving a single friend... they just end up facing a major threat at the end, but the larger stakes are not known for a vast majority of the plot so the motivation is more personal. In my current WIP the climax will involve a princess being convinced to embrace her adopted status, and gaining the acceptance of the people as heir despite not having legitimate royal blood. The princess herself is 'epic' though as described in other posts lol.


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## Malik (Sep 5, 2016)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I also agree with the thing about portal fantasy. Portal fantasy has practically vanished now. I can't think of any popular portal fantasies published within the last...like, fifty years. That aren't middle grade novels, anyway. But...is there anything necessarily WRONG with it?



It's almost all YA or MG. The _Outlander_ series is a time-travel romance aimed at adults. Time travel isn't necessarily portal fantasy, but the books keep popping up in Fantasy, so there it is. Also, _Timeline_ by Michael Crichton, as silly as it was.

There was a series back in the 80's about an artist who creates a portal back to Viking times during an artist's exercise when he has to draw something like 200 perfect circles on top of each other on a canvas. I don't remember the name, though. Still, it was 30 years ago.

Harry Potter really killed the portal fantasy / crossworlds fantasy market; I am 99% certain that _Dragon's Trail _didn't get picked up because it was a YA coming-of-age portal fantasy that I was shopping at the same time that HP was happening. Every portal fantasy that I have seen recently -- and I've been through the Look Insides of dozens if not hundreds of them in the past few months -- have been aimed at kids, either YA or children, and they all use the exploration of the new world and the protagonists' eventual dominance in it as a metaphor for Coming of Age. 

This is why I'm hoping my series, rewritten for adults over the past few years, resonates with a new market. Adult characters, redemption arcs, swearing, elf boobs, scary fight scenes, and the employment of the portal trope as a metaphor for an arms race, but also as a vehicle for moral and ethical examinations of our society, which I can't believe ten thousand other authors aren't doing. It seemed so painfully obvious to me to use the story to make a series of philosophical arguments and observations that I've almost taken the higher levels of allegory out several times, but it has been pointed out to me numerous times now that nobody has ever done this in a portal fantasy, at least not recently. (_Glory Road_ had some insights, but that was fifty years ago.)


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## FifthView (Sep 5, 2016)

bdcharles said:


> I suppose a portal is a bit of a lazy device. Why not invent some interesting way for your characters to get from A to B?





KC Trae Becker said:


> So you object to doorways that lead exactly where someone is going, like teleportation vs. a portal to another dimension like say Narnia?



I think horror stories use portals in a peculiar way.  Something like _Stranger Things_, where there's a monster on the other side who breaks into our world.  Demons, ghosts, faeries, etc., traveling from one world to the primary world of the MC.

I suppose the method of sending people from our world to a fantasy world—a fairly common type tale from, what, the 80's?—might carry the onus of being a Milieu story a la Card's MICE quotient.  The story ends when the characters return to their own world when their adventure is done or, in some cases, decide to stay.  Thomas Covenant.  Narnia.  There are some special requirements, or expectations, of such stories.  They can be wonderful, but a lot of people don't want to write a Milieu story.  I think that might be the least common of the 4 MICE approaches?

But if we insert a portal into an Event, Idea, or Character story, with our MC traveling to a strange place?  Maybe that upsets the thrust of those types of tales.  I don't know.  I've not actually given it too much thought.


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## bdcharles (Sep 5, 2016)

KC Trae Becker said:


> So you object to doorways that lead exactly where someone is going, like teleportation vs. a portal to another dimension like say Narnia?



I suppose it depends on how big a plot device they are, and where they fit in the suspension of disbelief spectrum. With the doorway to Narnia, it was never a straightforward matter of just waltzing on in there and bang, you're in Narnia. Sometimes it didn't work, time went funny, it was a challenge, and so on, plus it made the ordinary extraordinary. In the case of teleportation, I don't object to them in things like Star Trek but, I dunno, I think the time is ripe for new ideas, or to at least rethink the old ones.


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## Heliotrope (Sep 5, 2016)

Crap. 

(Hides time travel portal heist fantasy for middle grades under desk....)


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## FifthView (Sep 5, 2016)

Heliotrope said:


> Crap.
> 
> (Hides time travel portal heist fantasy for middle grades under desk....)



When the men on the chessboard
Get up and tell you where to go
And you've just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice
I think she'll know


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## Heliotrope (Sep 5, 2016)

Fifthview and I have been having a great discussion about "rules" and telling people what, and what not to do in fiction. 

I'm a firm believer in execution. 

I'm a firm believer in "You can do whatever you want as long as it is interesting."


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## skip.knox (Sep 5, 2016)

Sorry, but the article did not persuade me in the least. Anything that can be done can be done badly. And every rule can be followed well. If there's one thing I'd like to see, it's fewer prescriptive blog posts. Oh, and an end to numbered lists of every stripe.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Sep 5, 2016)

skip.knox said:


> Sorry, but the article did not persuade me in the least. Anything that can be done can be done badly. And every rule can be followed well. If there's one thing I'd like to see, it's fewer prescriptive blog posts. Oh, and an end to numbered lists of every stripe.



Anything that can be done, can be done well too


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## Reaver (Sep 6, 2016)

skip.knox said:


> Sorry, but the article did not persuade me in the least. Anything that can be done can be done badly. And every rule can be followed well. If there's one thing I'd like to see, it's fewer prescriptive blog posts. Oh, and an end to numbered lists of every stripe.



I agree with you for the following reasons:

1) I've personally written some terrible fiction.

2) Apart from the basic rules of grammar, I don't believe fantasy fiction should be limited by rules save the ones you've already established within your creation.

3) People who write blogs telling other people how to write and be creative are egocentric assclowns.

4) Numbered lists are overused these days.


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## FifthView (Sep 6, 2016)

skip.knox said:


> Sorry, but the article did not persuade me in the least. Anything that can be done can be done badly. And every rule can be followed well. If there's one thing I'd like to see, it's fewer prescriptive blog posts. Oh, and an end to numbered lists of every stripe.



I read this like this.

Sorry, but the article did not persuade me in the least:



Anything that can be done can be done badly.
Every rule can be followed well.
If there's one thing I'd like to proscribe, it's prescriptive blog posts.
If there are two, then:  numbered lists of every stripe.


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## Heliotrope (Sep 6, 2016)

FifthView said:


> When the men on the chessboard
> Get up and tell you where to go
> And you've just had some kind of mushroom
> And your mind is moving low
> ...



When the men in the chess board start telling you where to go, it's time to learn the game better than they do.


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## FifthView (Sep 6, 2016)

Heliotrope said:


> When the men in the chess board start telling you where to go, it's time to learn the game better than they do.



When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head
Feed your head

[Heh, but maybe this one belongs in that other thread.....if not for the portal thing.  Here's another portal: link.]


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## Heliotrope (Sep 6, 2016)

I've always loved that song.


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## SaltyDog (Sep 6, 2016)

KC Trae Becker said:


> I just discovered an older article on breaking unspoken rules for writing SF/Fantasy stories. 10 Writing "Rules" We Wish More Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Would Break
> 
> I found it an interesting article and would love to hear it discussed here. Any opinions about it are welcome.
> 
> Though the article was suggesting more people do these things I was surprised to see that publishers and readers are shying away from prologues, portals and FLT. Can anyone confirm this article's assumption that these devices have fallen out of vogue? I'm especially wondering what the complaint is about portals. (I have heard minor complaints and the reasoning behind them about the other two.)



Prologues for me, if not done right, are boring and useless.  That's why I tend not to use them, so maybe that could be what is happening with them.


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## Malik (Sep 6, 2016)

The problem with prologues is that they're misused about 90% of the time.

In epic fantasy, the world has to be changed at the end through the main characters' actions. This is one of the immutable and defining characteristics of epic fantasy. The world is a character with its own arc.

The prologue is a scene with the world as a character. It introduces the world at the outset so that we can see how much it has changed at the end. This gets overlooked, especially by inexperienced authors who think that the prologue is a story on its own, or a place to info-dump all the backstory. (This is also why a lot of first-effort epic fantasy falls flat; the MC's "win" but don't actually change anything. But that will be another thread. Or, more likely, a blog post.)

Anyway, the prologue is not backstory. It's introducing your world. There's a huge difference. It can be done through a scene, or a conversation, or a short story, sure; but however you do your prologue, you have to set up the world with it so we know what effect the characters had by the end. If you skip the prologue, you will have a shit-ton of worldbuilding breadcrumbs and Easter Eggs to drop in. Which is cool, too. It's just a lot more work.


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## FifthView (Sep 6, 2016)

I am generally against the use of prologues, but as with anything their use can make a large difference.

In my current WIP, which is still in the planning phase, I've contemplated using a prologue to show an earlier life event for one of the characters.  I like the example from _Guardians of the Galaxy_. Quill's experience in childhood gives us a frame of reference for his life later and, importantly, will play a major effect in the experience of the climax to that story.  But that's a movie.  We only have 2 hours to go from A to Z, so the prologue will remain fairly strong in memory for the viewers.  Many prologues I've read, I've forgotten fairly quickly once I've entered the main story.   By the end of the book, I almost always have entirely forgotten the prologue.

The prologue to the first book of ASOIAF actually sets the stage and plants an idea of the looming, lurking danger that will come later.  I think this works well because as we enter the main story we see these nobles going about their mundane lives oblivious to what lurks elsewhere.  Importantly, GRRM inserts reminders of that prologue later (from what I remember) but these are cast as tall tales of strange things in the past and stories about previous winters.  This works to keep both in mind, what lurks and the obliviousness of the main cast, so the readers don't forget the prologue and continue to move forward in anticipation of what will come.


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## glutton (Sep 6, 2016)

I used my opening scene, which is not labeled as a prologue but pretty much is, to introduce the badass princess who is one of the most important characters way before she ever meets the POV character and show a contrast between her past and current selves.


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## Miskatonic (Sep 6, 2016)

I'm using the prologue as a means to briefly depict the event that sets everything in motion. No long back story or anything, just one seemingly simple event that has far reaching consequences later on.


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## WooHooMan (Sep 6, 2016)

I regularly break 9 of these rules.  In fact, I've never followed those 9 rules.
Does anyone have a better score?


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## Reaver (Sep 6, 2016)

WooHooMan said:


> I regularly break 9 of these rules.  In fact, I've never followed those 9 rules.
> Does anyone have a better score?



Yes, WHM. My rule breaking amp goes to 11.


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## skip.knox (Sep 6, 2016)

>The problem with prologues is that they're misused about 90% of the time.

No, 70% of the time. See Sturgeon's Law.


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## AElisabet (Sep 6, 2016)

Yes to all of these but especially 1, 2, and 3.

The ill will towards omniscient never made any sense to me.  I always got a feeling from some online writing forums that being able to do 3rd Limited well just became a lazy shorthand for "knows how to do POV," like a secret handshake into the "real writers" club.  Yet actual bestselling authors continue to use it and use it well, and there is no actual evidence that readers hate it as much as writing forums do.  Yes, please MORE OMNISCIENT. 

Prologues can be good, Prologues can be bad.  Ditto for info dumps.  Is it interesting?  Keep it.  Again, I think people have confused cutting stuff that is actually boring (and some prologues and info dumps are) with cutting the stuff that makes a story rich and fully realized.  Is the entire first chapter to LOTR, with Bilbo's birthday party or all the local hobbit politics really necessary to the "plot"?  Is the prologue to Game of Thrones?  Are all the many info dumps through out both?  Who cares?  It's fun, it's endearing, its scary, its fascinating.  I don't read fantasy for a quick bare bones skim of what is "necessary" to the "plot".  I read fantasy to be sunk into another world.

If a 30 page prologue or info dump is well written and interesting and enriches my immersion into the world, then bring it on.  

The key is "well written and interesting".  But doesn't that apply to everything in a book?


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## SaltyDog (Sep 6, 2016)

Malik said:


> The problem with prologues is that they're misused about 90% of the time.
> 
> In epic fantasy, the world has to be changed at the end through the main characters' actions. This is one of the immutable and defining characteristics of epic fantasy. The world is a character with its own arc.
> 
> ...



Yep, I agree there.  I do like to add the crumbs and Easter eggs, I end up building my world as I write and work on the story.  I also like to start the book with something that immediately grabs the reader's attention, say a battle.  I give them action and then start dropping the crumbs.  Hopefully it will be enough to draw them in, but I have yet to publish, though I do get good feed back.  So we'll have to see, once I can finish the rough draft.

And my method is probably not everybody's cup of tea, but it's my style.  Quite excited with the prospects of my series.  I do know it'll be a lot of fun writing it, let's hope it will be a success lol.


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## Malik (Sep 6, 2016)

AElisabet said:


> The ill will towards omniscient never made any sense to me.  I always got a feeling from some online writing forums that being able to do 3rd Limited well just became a lazy shorthand for "knows how to do POV," like a secret handshake into the "real writers" club.  Yet actual bestselling authors continue to use it and use it well, and there is no actual evidence that readers hate it as much as writing forums do.  Yes, please MORE OMNISCIENT.



1.) Buy my book. I wrote it like I'm in your living room with a drink in my hand. And I had a bitch of a time finding an editor who'd let me get away with it.

2.) Voice | Joseph Malik ADULT CONTENT WARNING: profanity, literary theory.


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## Heliotrope (Sep 6, 2016)

^^^^ 

@Malik, a post of mine from a while back re: voice 

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/wri...ye-old-storyteller.html?highlight=storyteller


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## Malik (Sep 6, 2016)

Heliotrope said:


> ^^^^
> 
> @Malik, a post of mine from a while back re: voice
> 
> http://mythicscribes.com/forums/wri...ye-old-storyteller.html?highlight=storyteller



Amen. 

Also, you write beautifully. I can't wait to see what you turn out.


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## Chessie (Sep 7, 2016)

Malik said:


> 1.) Buy my book. I wrote it like I'm in your living room with a drink in my hand. And I had a bitch of a time finding an editor who'd let me get away with it.
> 
> 2.) Voice | Joseph Malik ADULT CONTENT WARNING: profanity, literary theory.


Malik, I enjoyed your post. This is something I've been thinking a lot about the last two days since I received an interesting critique on a story. I don't really have writerly feelings when it comes to my work. It's art, therefore tastes vary. What gets on my nerves is when other writers think they can improve my piece by taking out adverbs or critiquing the way I write my sentences.

Please don't try to make me sound like someone else. Stop trying to make me write the way YOU would write. Just...ugh. After a heavy round of critiquing, my novel is the better for it yes, but nothing irritates me more than when writers go "slash all these paragraphs here, take out those adverbs there, I have no idea why you wrote that sentence in that way, etc".

I reserve the right to write in the way I believe best communicates the story, gives readers interesting characters to connect with, and a well-written plot that will hopefully stimulate emotions. Everything else comes last.

P.S.
(I agree with you about GRRM lol)


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## AElisabet (Sep 7, 2016)

Malik said:


> 1.) Buy my book. I wrote it like I'm in your living room with a drink in my hand. And I had a bitch of a time finding an editor who'd let me get away with it.
> 
> 2.) Voice | Joseph Malik ADULT CONTENT WARNING: profanity, literary theory.



Loved your rant 

James Wood's book _How Fiction Works_ does a great job talking about the complexities of the relationship between narrators' and characters' voices (he's very "literary" and not as big on plot, but whatever).

I generally can't get into something written in straight up, no rules broken, close 3rd person limited.  I love first, can love second, love omni.  But I need a narrator.


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## La Volpe (Sep 7, 2016)

AElisabet said:


> I generally can't get into something written in straight up, no rules broken, close 3rd person limited.  I love first, can love second, love omni.  But I need a narrator.



If I'm allowed to nitpick here: What are the notable differences between 1st person and close 3rd person, in terms of a narrator voice?

They're practically the same in that regard, except for the fact that 3rd can more easily utilise multiple viewpoints (i.e. multiple narrators). If the multiple narrators are the issue, does that mean that books written in close 3rd limited with only one POV is fine, but adding more POVs ruins it for you?


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## AElisabet (Sep 7, 2016)

La Volpe said:


> If I'm allowed to nitpick here: What are the notable differences between 1st person and close 3rd person, in terms of a narrator voice?
> 
> They're practically the same in that regard, except for the fact that 3rd can more easily utilize multiple viewpoints (i.e. multiple narrators). If the multiple narrators are the issue, does that mean that books written in close 3rd limited with only one POV is fine, but adding more POVs ruins it for you?



I would say 3rd Limited and 1st Person are very different.  I think 1st is actually closer to Omni in terms of tone - there is a narrator telling the story.  They can be funny, serious, unreliable, ironic, etc.  But there is a person telling the story.  They own that story.  A connection with that voice is one of the key joys of fiction for me.  I feel that close, limited 3rd is often lacking that voice, and it frequently falls flat.  (Not always, but often).

I don't want to *be* a character.  I don't like fiction that feels like a virtual reality escape.  I want a character to be their own rich, separate person, who is either grabbing me by the throat to tell their own story (1st) or whose story is so epic and compelling that someone else just must tell it to me (Omni).  

I have no issue with multiple POVs - I like to dip in and out of the perspective of multiple characters.  I just want a narrative presence to tie it all together.


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## FifthView (Sep 7, 2016)

AElisabet said:


> I would say 3rd Limited and 1st Person are very different.  I think 1st is actually closer to Omni in terms of tone - there is a narrator telling the story.  They can be funny, serious, unreliable, ironic, etc.  But there is a person telling the story.  They own that story.  A connection with that voice is one of the key joys of fiction for me.  I feel that close, limited 3rd is often lacking that voice, and it frequently falls flat.  (Not always, but often).



I think this is very interesting.  I don't have a particular preference, or my preferences would be too complicated for me to try delineating them.  (Combinations of character type, story type, POV, narrative strategy....)  But I think you hit something on the head.  3rd limited always has a narrator that isn't the character, but often that narrator is flat, matter-of-fact, without personality.  This is effectively a "stepping back" in order to avoid interfering with the character's voice.  There are portions which may seem to be narrated by the POV character, and so will be similar to 1st, but every time there's a pull back and/or "He" or "She" is used, the real narrator becomes visible again.

In my current WIP, I'd originally planned to write 3rd omniscient.  Very early stages, that was my goal.  But I have this tendency to write scenes in my head as I'm conceptualizing a project, and for this story every scene kept coming out 3rd limited.  I'll begin the actual writing soon, so who knows.


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## KC Trae Becker (Sep 7, 2016)

Thanks everyone for responding to this thread. I agree, rules for writing are mostly stupid. I do like to know what are common objections to different writing devices so that when I decide to use them I can use them well. 

People who feel their opinions and "rules" are set in stone are funny. Successful authors who break the "rules" get "good enough to get away with it" by trying different styles and techniques and seeing if they can pull them off, not by following rules. 

That said, knowing common pitfalls to avoid help us learn from other's mistakes. Not being afraid to make our own mistakes is the fastest track to improving any skill.

Keep your ideas and opinions flowing. I feel smarter just reading all of your posts.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Sep 7, 2016)

KC Trae Becker said:


> Thanks everyone for responding to this thread. I agree, rules for writing are mostly stupid. I do like to know what are common objections to different writing devices so that when I decide to use them I can use them well.
> 
> People who feel their opinions and "rules" are set in stone are funny. Successful authors who break the "rules" get "good enough to get away with it" by trying different styles and techniques and seeing if they can pull them off, not by following rules.
> 
> ...



Rules are made to be carefully studied and evaluated so they then can be skillfully broken  

Actually, I may have missed the careful study and evaluation part. I don't care for rules, and natural rebelliousness+study of logic has left me extremely leery of absolutes. The only absolutes in writing are the basic rules of language, and even those can be bent into pretzels to suit your ends. When someone says "X always..." "You should never do Y..." my first instinct is to do the exact opposite of the recommendation. I question, question, question. Everything. 

This is how I ended up a fantasy writer, anyway. In fantasy you can do anything you want as long as you do it well. In other types of stories you can't have tentacled unicorns or telepathic corals and it's downright frustrating. 

Even the conventions of fantasy frustrate me (elves, magic swords...you've probably heard me talk about those), not because there's anything wrong with those things (there is not) but because I wish more people would step outside of them. Step outside of what people expect from fantasy and bring something completely weird and new.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Sep 7, 2016)

On the subject of POVs: I have always preferred first person for my long projects, but I usually use limited third for my short stories and more minor projects. I do third omni very rarely. I wrote a short story in third omni inspired by the Two Steps From Hell song "Blackheart," but the narration was something of an experiment. I don't know if I've done something in that POV since. 

My favorite POV is the first person. I like the intimacy. The ability to hear my characters' voices speaking to me brings me close to them in a way that other POV's can't. It gives the characters a tremendous amount of influence over the story. I'm not speaking in "my" voice, but theirs, which makes every story and POV different and unique.


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## Malik (Sep 8, 2016)

Third omni is hard. I do believe that it should be avoided by beginning writers because when it's done badly, it's painful. 

To really make third omni work, you have to have your own, individual narrative voice (and a new one for each book or project!), plus you need to have individual and distinguishable character internal monologues and voices. If you're doing third omni right, the audience should be able to tell whose eyes they're looking through even before you tell them. This is really, really, freaking hard. It takes years of character development and moving words around, plus an insane amount of subtlety and sleight-of-hand. You're not going to pull this off in a first-try, pulp genre fantasy that you crank out in three months. You're just not. So much of the market right now seems to be written so fast (Gotta get those sequels out! Gotta get ten books out before you can make any money!) that I think that first or close-third, with their limited perspectives, are the only ways that people can keep their word counts up.


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## Devora (Sep 8, 2016)

My main WIP is planned to be a stand-alone. I dislike that so many authors are trying to do epic fantasy at epic lengths more frequently. I agree with the writer: why can't we have a single book story?


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## Steerpike (Sep 8, 2016)

Re: portal fantasy, there was a new one aimed at adults just released by Angry Robot - An Accident of Stars.

There are plenty of books that break these rules and plenty that don't. The important thing is that you can write a great book either way, and whether you do or not is what counts in the end, not whether you've checked the boxes from some internet article.


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## Russ (Sep 8, 2016)

One of the reasons that both publishers and self-published writers lean towards series rather than stand-alones because they tend to make more money.


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## psychotick (Sep 10, 2016)

Hi,

Yes I break many of these rules - I think?! The problem being that every rule presented in the list is given with pro's and con's and it was hard to tell what the rule was before you could decide whether it should be broken.

But for me the big three I break are:

Prologs - I absolutely love them. As a sci fi / fantasy author with usually an enormous world build to put in place a prolog is fantastic. It sets up the world build and the conflict if it's done right and saves the info-dumps later on.

Stand alones - all my books are stand alones. Not because I believe in them versus series, but simply because that's the way I write. I have a story, I tell it. After that, next story. So it's a pointless rule for me.

No FTL - and my response is WTF! No FTL means more or less no space opera - and I love space opera. I mean think how boring Star Trek would be without warp drive. They get in their ship, jump in their suspended animation tanks, and four hundred years later arrive at their destination to carry out the next phase of their interstellar mission! Or else their entire mission isto explore the solar system. The reality is that this rule absolutely needs to be broken in order to have a whole class of story. So what they're really saying is no space opera. And what I'm saying is no thank you.

Cheers, Greg.


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## Darkfantasy (Sep 10, 2016)

Me too though I didn't understand the song until I got older. I really thought it was just about Alice

Anyway I have seen this list before and although I think all rules can be broken it is a good idea to learn how to break them correctly and more importantly how not to do it. Fantasy is probably the most unlimited genre, I mean you can do anything and get away with it and yet all you seem to see is the same stuff being repeated. The same magical creatures being re-used, the same settings and characters. 
We are seeing more variation though people are beginning to think outside the box more.


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## Chessie (Sep 10, 2016)

I still write prologues for my fantasy stories. Something is missing without them.


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## FifthView (Sep 10, 2016)

Incidentally, anyone write epilogues?  Samuel R. Delany's epilogue to _Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand_ is one of the finest things I've ever read.

I've never written an epilogue, but that example makes me want to.


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## Chessie (Sep 10, 2016)

Yes. I write epilogues for my romance books. They provide a window for the reader to see the heroes happily in love months into the future. It's pretty wdespread with romance books but I don't see them done often in fantasy.


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## FifthView (Sep 10, 2016)

That's interesting considering Delany's epilogue, given the romantic elements in the book, but it's not a happily ever after epilogue.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Sep 10, 2016)

I don't have a prologue (my opening scene is really good and I want to keep it at the front, and anyway, one is not necessary) and probably won't have an epilogue either. 

Epilogues...I have mixed feelings about them, mostly negative. Often epilogues end up giving information I don't want when the story should have just ended. Giving Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows an epilogue was the worst decision in the entire series. Why not leave us to imagine what stupid names the main characters gave their children? The story is over...! 

I suppose an epilogue would work if it was more impersonal, showing how the world as a whole had changed...but most epilogues are just extraneous information that could be left off...

I used to skip prologues. They hardly ever contained useful information.


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Sep 10, 2016)

I'm planning a couple fantasy standalones, but they aren't what you would call "epic" fantasy. One is more along the lines of historical fantasy/magical realism, the other is more like...weird fiction? It doesn't really obey the rules of time and space and logic, and it's just really bizarre, no magic or elves or anything. Epic fantasy is hard to fit in a standalone. There's a ton of world-building you have to do, the plots are often large scale...


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## SaltyDog (Sep 10, 2016)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I don't have a prologue (my opening scene is really good and I want to keep it at the front, and anyway, one is not necessary) and probably won't have an epilogue either.
> 
> Epilogues...I have mixed feelings about them, mostly negative. Often epilogues end up giving information I don't want when the story should have just ended. Giving Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows an epilogue was the worst decision in the entire series. Why not leave us to imagine what stupid names the main characters gave their children? The story is over...!
> 
> ...



Agreed with the prologues.  Epilogues?  I don't know.


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## SaltyDog (Sep 10, 2016)

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I'm planning a couple fantasy standalones, but they aren't what you would call "epic" fantasy. One is more along the lines of historical fantasy/magical realism, the other is more like...weird fiction? It doesn't really obey the rules of time and space and logic, and it's just really bizarre, no magic or elves or anything. Epic fantasy is hard to fit in a standalone. There's a ton of world-building you have to do, the plots are often large scale...



No Elves?  What is this? lol.


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## skip.knox (Sep 10, 2016)

Next book I'm going to have a prologue about elves. 
<gdr>


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## psychotick (Sep 10, 2016)

Hi,

I don't do epilogs per se, but I often have a short final chapter set some time after the story has ended, just to show how things wound up for everyone. Zelazny used to do some brilliant final chapter / epilogs. The one to Damnation Alley had me laughing for days.

Cheers, Greg.


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