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- #41
Skybreaker Sin K'al
Troubadour
Well, actually, isn't that realistic? Is not our world painstakingly detailed?
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- Thread starter Skybreaker Sin K'al
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Well, actually, isn't that realistic? Is not our world painstakingly detailed?
Genre is way more than a label. It's a promise to the reader, mostly.
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- #43
Malik
Auror
Detail and logical function are separate concepts.
The absolute, fundamental concept driving the entire series--this whole idea that they have no idea how long any given winter is going to last--is batshit insane. Besides the orbital mechanics involved (work it out; I'll wait), society would collapse every winter. There would be no way to plan for the next growing season, and no way to know how much food to store; you'd be basically gambling every few years whether you were going to live. (I'm not even certain how life would evolve in such a world, frankly; it would likely be a rock hurtling through space with flourishing bacteria and moss for a few months between winters.) If humans could somehow have evolved in (or portaled into) such a world, they'd be nomadic bands driven by the edge of winter. Which is what the Wildlings more or less are, so there's that. There shouldn't be any civilization at all to speak of, much less should every country have a thriving capital city.
And don't even get me started on the fight scenes. Just, Oh, God.
They're fantastic books, and spectacularly written and detailed, but realistic is just about the last word that comes to mind.
Hallen
Scribe
I would think that it depends on what you are promising.
Are you saying that there will be swords and elves and dragons and sorcery in all fantasy novels?
I did say that it was for marketing purposes. That is a way of categorizing, or labeling, a story for easier display and organizing. It does help customers narrow down their search. Start with the label "Fantasy" and then start sorting. But there is a lot of sorting after that.
How many forms of Fantasy are there? Dozens now? It's a really broad category. The only promise is speculative fiction that generally contains fantastical elements. What those elements are and how you put them together is totally up to you. That is the promise. So, my point was that there is no responsibility to expand the category since it really is just a general label and your story is what your story is.
Just a few more thoughts to try to illustrate my thinking:
Are you breaking a promise if you have revolvers in your story like Sanderson does in the Mistborn series? Is the Belgariad even remotely in the same space as ASoIF? How about the Dresden Files compared to The Golden Compass? Is Twilight fantasy, romance, paranormal romance, or what? Do you see what I mean? These things are just labels.
Malik
Auror
Thank you. I've been very blessed. Book I succeeded far beyond any hopes I could have had. Book II drops in September and the initial reviews have been exceptional. It's a long time between now and Book III, though, so we'll see what happens.
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- #47
Skybreaker Sin K'al
Troubadour
What I meant was that a sense of detail is in itself realistic, even if what it is being applied to is not. But yeah, I agree.
Could it be you think of believability rather than realism. The details and the way they combine and match up might make the world seem real and believable even though at a deeper level it may not be at all.
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- #49
Skybreaker Sin K'al
Troubadour
Yeah, exactly. Most things have a level of nuance to them, and to reflect this in unrealistic concepts makes it come off as realistic, does it not? Besides, applying believability to a concept can add realism to it, for example, consequences of magic use, even if magic itself is an unrealistic concept.
Malik
Auror
Yes and no. The problem here is that magic only goes so far. Unless your entire world was literally shat into existence teeming with midichlorian gut flora from the colon of a benevolent god, you have to get the details right. I can sell a realism-focused reader on flying horses and gryphon fights because the saddles make sense.
Of course, individual mileage may vary. If you're writing YA or MG, you can get away with considerable handwavium, but my experience has been that adult readers of fantasy love to call authors on their bullshit. We hear again and again that people read fantasy to escape, and that nobody who reads fantasy really cares about realism. I heard this line for fifteen years from major publishing houses, and heard it again from my first editor before I sent him packing. There are far many more fantasy readers who scrutinize the whys and hows--and rightfully, because they've been at this longer than we have, and they know a thing or two--than many authors want to admit. I would even go so far as to say that such readers are the rule and not the exception (EDIT: among adult readers of adult fantasy).
Go to a con sometime and just hang out and eavesdrop; listen to the fans argue about how Ser What's His Nuts couldn't have stabbed that guy through his coat of plates outside the Tower of Joy, Valeryian Steel or no. I've witnessed shouting matches over the existence of a global trading economy vis a vis the nonexistence of rule of law in ASOIAF. It happened on a panel about how to use celestial navigation on alien planets. It devolved quickly; one dude had the costs of each major battle calculated and memorized, FFS. People with that kind of time and attention to detail read a ****ton of books.
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Malik describes one cadre of reader, and that cadre has many members, without a doubt. There are others, quite adult, who let much of that slide. Otherwise, how to explain the popularity of Peter S. Beagle or Philip Pullman? One of my favorite recent reads has been Josiah Bancroft's Babel series, which is utterly unbelievable in terms of physics or sociology. Indeed, the lack of realism is its own reward there because I just don't know what he's going to pull out of the hat next, and that's delightful.
What I do know, from each of these authors, is that they are going to write well. I come to a book looking for a story first. Verisimilitude is a distant second, and I don't worry much about realism (though I have to confess that I could never get past the core assumptions of The Hunger Games). But for those who long for realism, it's a deal-breaker. I present my stories as alternate history, so I know that many of my readers are going to have a keen eye for historical mistakes.
Every story is, in part, a promise to the reader. Know the promises you are making, and be sure not to break them.
What I do know, from each of these authors, is that they are going to write well. I come to a book looking for a story first. Verisimilitude is a distant second, and I don't worry much about realism (though I have to confess that I could never get past the core assumptions of The Hunger Games). But for those who long for realism, it's a deal-breaker. I present my stories as alternate history, so I know that many of my readers are going to have a keen eye for historical mistakes.
Every story is, in part, a promise to the reader. Know the promises you are making, and be sure not to break them.
While we're off topic anyway, I'd like to state that believability and realism aren't as closely related as perhaps it might first seem.
Believability is how readily the reader accepts what the writer is telling them. This may or may not have anything to do with realism, but will have a whole lot to do with the internal consistency of the story. Another way of putting it is that Realism is about not breaking the laws of nature, while Believability is about not breaking the rules of the story.
...sort of.
Believability is how readily the reader accepts what the writer is telling them. This may or may not have anything to do with realism, but will have a whole lot to do with the internal consistency of the story. Another way of putting it is that Realism is about not breaking the laws of nature, while Believability is about not breaking the rules of the story.
...sort of.
Yeah, I totally agree with your post. I was adding, not contradicting.
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- #54
Skybreaker Sin K'al
Troubadour
Given as fantasy already has sub-genres, one could try to expand those sub-genres. I totally agree that fantasy is basically an umbrella term.Yeah, I totally agree with your post. I was adding, not contradicting.
Also, I'd just like to clear something up, because in my original post I think I may have come off like: "oH mY g0d yU hAveE to eXpanD yoUr GenRE beCause If y0u d0Nut yoU are A tRashA uth0r aNd yOu wiLl nEvER bE RemMebred". This is not what I meant.
I just mean that sometimes we do need people to try new things occasionally, or the various sub-genres of fantasy start to feel stale. This isn't all of us.
Oh, and one more thing: the whole "what are you bringing to the table" thing is basically just "what is your story about and what's cool about it?"
Also, I recognize that my claims of "Martin brought us realism" have been torn to shreds, and I agree with everyone who did so. You guys changed my mind.
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My stories try to focus on the characters and their personal problems. The fantastic aspects of the setting are largely secondary to the plot.
For example, it's not "the hero must break the curse in order to live free" but rather "the hero must make up his mind in order to live free" - if that makes sense?
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- #56
Skybreaker Sin K'al
Troubadour
Hey, that's really cool! I recently rewatched "good will hunting", and I've always loved it. Very character driven movie.
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Hallen
Scribe
I think we all should strive to be fresh and engaging. I have no disagreement with that concept at all. It is challenging. And, in order to do so, yeah, you may want to stretch the bounds of your genre beyond what people would normally expect.
I can agree that we should all strive to be fresh and engaging and push the boundaries of the genre.... but I would do so in the same way that I think everyone should learn a second language, read Shakespeare, and watch Avatar: The Last Airbender. I know that it's not realistic. I know that people have a great many other priorities. I know that I can't really fault someone for living their life in a way that's askew from what I would want for them (especially when I barely know them). And yet I can't help but believe learning how to push your creative potential would be a good thing, not just for the writer or the work, but for readers and the rest of us looking on over your shoulder.
So sure, advocate that we push..... just don't overstep it because we all have our own lives and our own careers and our own goals with our work.
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- #59
Skybreaker Sin K'al
Troubadour
Yeah, exactly. Its not for everyone, and of course I have no say in how someone else I don't even know lives their life: that would be incredibly arrogant of me.
Annoyingkid
Banned
Well I noticed the big high fantasy stories were all in prose. Very few if any were specifically written for the graphic novel format. So I thought I'd bring that to the genre.
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