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Jaded with the whole Fantasy/Sci-fi genre

C

Chessie

Guest
Tastes are a very individual thing. But what about quality? There's a standard for books in a genre and just because I polish my manuscript, have it edited by a professional, give it a genre appropriate cover that costs a pretty penny, spend weeks to months on a sharp blurb, doesn't mean that my book will be "quality" with all the others in its genre niche. Why? Because even though I'm not an amateur writer, I'm an amateur publisher, and my shit is going to stink for a bit until I get the hang of publishing.

So I see this discussion in that light: quality and standards in genres definitely exist but it's the readers who choose depending on taste. The OPs tastes are not being satiated by the current products on the market. They are separate discussions entirely.
 
Tastes are a very individual thing. But what about quality? There's a standard for books in a genre and just because I polish my manuscript, have it edited by a professional, give it a genre appropriate cover that costs a pretty penny, spend weeks to months on a sharp blurb, doesn't mean that my book will be "quality" with all the others in its genre niche. Why? Because even though I'm not an amateur writer, I'm an amateur publisher, and my shit is going to stink for a bit until I get the hang of publishing.

So I see this discussion in that light: quality and standards in genres definitely exist but it's the readers who choose depending on taste. The OPs tastes are not being satiated by the current products on the market. They are separate discussions entirely.

Thank you.
 

Ronald T.

Troubadour
I haven't been around for awhile (not that I expected my absence to be noticed :p), and mainly because I am just bored to death with pretty much all contemporary fantasy and Sci-Fi. Thus my motivation/inspiration to write has been waning. I just see all that is offered up today as cookie cutter and streamlined for mass consumption. Doesn't matter what format it takes, or what country produces it. It's just the copycat syndrome taken to the extreme. Or it's reboot after reboot. Just one gigantic void that sucks the life and soul out of creativity.

Just sick of all of it.

/End of rant

Sounds like it's time for you to move to a different genre for a few weeks or months. I suppose too much of anything can become tiresome. Clearly, you've consumed too much SFF at this point, and you've lost the excitement you used to feel.

Abandon SFF for a month, six months, a year. Read something completely different without so much as looking at fantasy or science fiction. When you return to these two genres that seem to bore you now, perhaps you will once again discover what you liked about them originally.

I hope you can eliminate your distaste for the kind of stories I love so much, the stories that you probably used to love, as well.

Good Luck!
 
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I'm reading more non-fiction in terms of history, philosophy, biographies, etc. In terms of story ideas I find those far more useful.
 
I'm reading more non-fiction in terms of history, philosophy, biographies, etc. In terms of story ideas I find those far more useful.

I've always been interested in archeology, and lately I'm reading more in that field and watching various documentaries about ancient cultures. The more I do, the more I want to create fantasy worlds inspired by early historic or pre-historic civilizations. So much has been lost, and yet what we do learn suggests complex, vibrant cultures and civilizations from that time period.

We've been discussing elsewhere the importance of learning how to be a storyteller rather than just how to write clear and/or pretty prose. I'd say that being observant of and learning more about human behavior, history, and so forth are at least as important as learning the various techniques involved in telling stories.
 
C

Chessie

Guest
I've always been interested in archeology, and lately I'm reading more in that field and watching various documentaries about ancient cultures. The more I do, the more I want to create fantasy worlds inspired by early historic or pre-historic civilizations. So much has been lost, and yet what we do learn suggests complex, vibrant cultures and civilizations from that time period.

We've been discussing elsewhere the importance of learning how to be a storyteller rather than just how to write clear and/or pretty prose. I'd say that being observant of and learning more about human behavior, history, and so forth are at least as important as learning the various techniques involved in telling stories.

Absolutely. Ultimately, the more we learn, the better stories we'll tell. Oh, oh! May I give an example?? :D

So, ever since I can remember, I've had a fascination with everything vintage. Movies, books, the fashion...everything. I've watched a ton of vintage era movies and have read bios of many movie stars from that time. I was able to use this knowledge, which by all means is completely pointless and meaningless in the world, to write a scene for my WIP. The heroes are discussing a movie they've seen and the actor's other performances, and I was able to write an entire scene just off this cinema history I have in the back of my head. It gave the scene life and I got to nerd it up about how much I love Gene Tierney.

All of this information comes in handy at some point!
 
Absolutely. Ultimately, the more we learn, the better stories we'll tell. Oh, oh! May I give an example?? :D

So, ever since I can remember, I've had a fascination with everything vintage. Movies, books, the fashion...everything. I've watched a ton of vintage era movies and have read bios of many movie stars from that time. I was able to use this knowledge, which by all means is completely pointless and meaningless in the world, to write a scene for my WIP. The heroes are discussing a movie they've seen and the actor's other performances, and I was able to write an entire scene just off this cinema history I have in the back of my head. It gave the scene life and I got to nerd it up about how much I love Gene Tierney.

All of this information comes in handy at some point!

That's really cool :D

My own example: so when I was like 9-10 I had this huge Lewis and Clark obsession. Huge. (It's a great adventure story, still.) I read Undaunted Courage (by Stephen E. Ambrose) when I was 9. Idk how much I comprehended...but still it was no joke.

Now this huge pointless reservoir of knowledge I have in my head is paying off as I'm writing a story about an expedition into the unknown in a world based on colonial America. But, you know, there are dragons.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
There's a lot happening in this thread. And I'm not well-read enough to respond properly to everything. But I have a few things I'd like to add.

The first is that I think we sometimes see too much embedded in the word "fantasy," and that we could take a broader view of it. It's not all dwarves, schooling wizards, and grimdark, although I appreciate the flagship stories for each one of those categories. This is one of the reasons I'm excited about our reading group and reading quest series. I think most writers could benefit from seeing the wider genre instead of the narrower angles of it.

The second thing I want to say, I read the OP and thought it was truer for movies than for books. It's probably truer for commercial, "popular," found-in-Walmart books than it is in the deeper shelves of a good bookstore or the hidden archives of Amazon. But those are deeper waters, harder to navigate, riskier to spend money or time on. I know that I often feel intimidated by books with fewer reviews or smaller niches, and have no idea what's worth my attention when I feel like there are so many other, more common, more spoken about books that I know I would benefit from reading. Maybe everyone doesn't feel that way, but as a reader I often feel like I want a gatekeeper, and can't find one I trust.

Third, the industry has been changing in a lot of more subtle ways that many people don't realize because we're distracted by the big and obvious ones. As Russ said, industries are spending much less time on developmental editing. When Napster was still killing the music industry, an executive told me flatly, at a business school event, that the "industry" would be fine, but they weren't going to be developing new artists. "In ten years you'll still be downloading music, and we'll still be making money, but you won't even realize the music will just be crap." In the long run that didn't last long with music because of the iPod. But I'm not surprised if we're going through a bit of it now in publishing, especially as book stores have been closing. Basically, the thinking goes, instead of investing heavily in big names, the idea is that they would spread the risks among a larger number of smaller names to hold up as a "billboard" against the hoards of weak talent.

Finally, it takes one person to write a novel. Compared to, for instance, a movie or a television show, it's a much smaller investment on an industry level. It's a lot easier to take risks and do something "out there" with a novel than it is with a movie. You've got to do what's right for you, but I personally would encourage writers generally to embrace risk taking with their stories.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Hey Miskatonic, and anyone else who might be interested, I just stumbled across this site
Best Fantasy Books | #1 Guide to the best fantasy books, games, movies, and more! | BestFantasyBooks.com

Their About section says the site's been around since 2005. Has some great lists, so if you're looking for fantasy, it'd be a place to start.

I saw that site and to me it was full of red flags, such as reviews that don't credit the reviewer. I kind of see it as just an elaborate sales page.

Fantasy Book Review: Reviews, interviews, biographies

^ This one gets high marks from me. I had even emailed them this week about helping with book recommendations for the book club.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Hm. I saw it as the work of a single individual. Most of the entries are written in first person and the voice is the same in all. There's a great deal of personal opinion in there, but the lists themselves, taken all together, provide a pretty good launching pad.

Just took a quick look at the site you cite (I love doing that, especially if I can work "sight" into the sentence too). Looks promising and I'll delve deeper. Really, there's no excuse for wondering what to read!
 

AnonymousNobody

New Member
Those books have some interesting voices, so very distinct from one another, and I love it. Some make me feel uncomfortable. Some make me feel cozy. Others I'm not so sure of. The point being that they make me feel something.

Modern literature is bland for the most part.... The older books have much better storytelling voices that actually keep me engaged. When I download a book on my Kindle by a modern author, I yawn. There's one romance author who is selling like hotcakes in trad pub and her name is all over the historical romance genre I have my eye on. Her work is boring. WHY!?!? It's because the greater powers that be, those in charge of everything writing and literature, say:

-don't use contractions
-don't use adverbs
-don't use italics
-don't use ellipses

...etc!

It's good that Miskatonic started this thread, because the concept of being who you are when you write, instead of being like everyone else, seems to be fading fast.

-don't use morals (either kind) ...

THIS!!! ALL OF THIS!!! (Pardon my caps!)

There is very little that gets under my skin, as reading mags or sites for writers, by "pros," and every one has their own idea "how to write" or "how NOT to write". And then the article sometimes closes with an excerpt from the work of this AWARD WINNING, BEST SELLING author. And I skim it. And I'm staring blankly. And I'm thinking... "What the freaking $*%R&?! ... Do people actually READ this?!! How can you even take this seriously?!!"

I can't do it. Almost every time I see anything that came from a modern book, I am just dumbstruck. It looks like a submission to a prose contest. It looks like a grammar assignment. It looks like somebody smoked too much weed on a starry night. Or maybe they got confused and smoked their socks instead. I don't know WHAT they ingested! All I know is I could not take it seriously enough to get past the author, enough to actually make meaningful contact with the story that they're supposed to be telling. (And if I could, it'd be a smut scene a minute, after the prosy intro, and the book would be in the trash can before chapter three.) And these are the folks who are going to tell me to cut out this, and don't use those, and so on? Are you kidding me?! If anything, I should write down what they say NOT to do, and make sure to do it, because I certainly don't want my stuff to end up reading anything like theirs!

Rewind to old books? Ahhh... a breath of fresh air! As you said, each has their own voice, most of them are at least charming stories, they've got personality, and many of the characters actually have personality! And best of all, in my opinion, they do not rely on smut and violence to keep me reading. They assume I have a working brain, and can deal with words, and ideas and stuff, and that THAT will be interesting to me. And they're right, mostly. (The working brain, maybe not always so much so... -grin-)

But like you said... I think that's gone now. People get it beaten into their heads that you may not write as your gut tells you to write. Period. But if they had to live up to today's standards, I think very few old classics would be here right now. Jules Verne, in particular, would have been toast! The editorial swearing would have been as long as the scientific explanations in the manuscripts were. (And some of those were even longer than many translations allowed them to be!) And yet the "pros" whose books I cannot stomach, are the experts. Fine. They can keep their expertise. I'll keep Captain Nemo. (And I know which of us will have gotten the better deal.) I'm going to write according to my ear for it, not compete for a prose prize.

But I agree the content has gone down hill just as much as the narrative has. It really does seem like across the whole spectrum of fiction (books, games, movies, series...) it really is just one continuous re-hash of the same old, same old, same old...

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Russ

Istar
It is a pity you are missing out on all the amazing, unique, quality fiction that is being written these days.
 
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