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What is fantasy?

Mad Swede

Auror
I'm not sure I agree with you. That was why I suggested that the idea of fantasy as a genre is modern.

There's been a tendency over the last thirty years or so to try to classifiy things and people, to give them an overt identity. Fantasy as a genre is an example. But the best works don't fit that neatly. Take the Discworld books about the Watch as an example. Are they fantasy? Are they police procedurals? Are they satire or some form of social commentary? Or are they all of these?

Or, to turn the question around slightly. Joe Abercrombie's books are fantasy only in terms of their setting. The rest is noir fiction, their plots driven by a very cynical view of humanity and how people manipulate one another and deceive themselves. You could take any of the works by Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett and transpose them into that setting and they'd work. No need for any other element of fantasy. So are Joe Abercombie's books fantasy?

I'm not always sure we need to classify literature by genre, and I'm not sure it always helps us as authors.
 
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skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
We don't need to classify literature by genre, yet somehow we seem to keep doing it. At the very least, there's the practical angle. On what shelf does the bookstore put my book? Or, what keywords do I enter for my online book? Because I know that readers are going to head to the SF/Fantasy section, and not to the Romance shelves. And I know that readers are going to enter grimdark, or epic fantasy, or similar search strings. They aren't going to enter 'police procedural' and be happy to find my book featuring the Trouveres.

As to whether classifications help us as writers, that's rather a different question. On one side I'd say no, or even that it hinders us, for it might cramp creativity. On the other side, learning to write in genre, learning the conventions and honing our craft to employ those in an interesting and engaging way can be helpful and even liberating (the same dynamic happens in the other arts as well). My take is that it is healthy for a writer to know the conventions of various genres, if nothing else to discover what the author might want to employ, but that it's probably a waste of time to try to construct a philosophically rigorous definition.
 

Mad Swede

Auror
We don't need to classify literature by genre, yet somehow we seem to keep doing it. At the very least, there's the practical angle. On what shelf does the bookstore put my book? Or, what keywords do I enter for my online book? Because I know that readers are going to head to the SF/Fantasy section, and not to the Romance shelves. And I know that readers are going to enter grimdark, or epic fantasy, or similar search strings. They aren't going to enter 'police procedural' and be happy to find my book featuring the Trouveres.

As to whether classifications help us as writers, that's rather a different question. On one side I'd say no, or even that it hinders us, for it might cramp creativity. On the other side, learning to write in genre, learning the conventions and honing our craft to employ those in an interesting and engaging way can be helpful and even liberating (the same dynamic happens in the other arts as well). My take is that it is healthy for a writer to know the conventions of various genres, if nothing else to discover what the author might want to employ, but that it's probably a waste of time to try to construct a philosophically rigorous definition.
Right, so now tell me why we should follow conventions in the genre? Take fantasy. Convention is that fantasy worlds have elves, dwarves, etc running around, that orcs are always the bad guys. That's modern fantasy. Nordic mythology and folk tales don't build on that, yet by modern definitions of the genre they're fantasy. And where are these conventions in grimdark fantasy like Joe Abercrombie's books?

I sometimes think we as authors spend too much time worrying about genre. Here I'm thinking about the SF bookshop down in Stockholm. There's a rough divide into SF and fantasy and SF, but that's it. If I were to walk into a Swedish book shop there wouldn't even be that for the Swedish language books, it would just be alphabetical order.

This tendency to try to classify books by genre is one of the reasons my books aren't out in English yet. We can't find a publisher who understands that the books cross between genres - it isn't a problem over here, but trying to explain this to certain US publishers is proving to be a real challenge.
 

Ankari

Hero Breaker
Moderator
While I do agree that one can abstract story elements to the point where they are application (and, arguably, useful) to any genre, I also hold that most readers will instantly be able to say this is a romance novel, that's a detective story, and this over here, this one's fantasy. So there must be characteristics of such stories to which readers are responding in a relatively consistent way. If someone says they want to write a fantasy story so what components are necessary to the genre, there's a reply to be made.

Genre's exist to primarily as a promise to the reader. The romance genre promises a plot focused on a relationship or relationships. Scifi promises a story heavily dependent on technology and fantasy promises a story with heavy doses of imagined, unfounded elements.

I am primarily a fantasy consumer. Not just fantasy, but epic and grimdark. Recently, after exploring story structure more, I've opened myself up to other forms of fantasy. Now I'm writing urban fantasy with bits of scifi (superhero). I'm considering broadening my reading/consumption to other genres. The expanded understanding of what a story is has made me accept and appreciate other genres.

I like this discussion, by the way. It helps expand our understanding of the entire writing process. I would like to see a topic, or attend a presentation on Why Fantasy? I think the exploration of the reasons writers chose to write in the fantasy genre may be beneficial, and, force writers to see the parallels between fantasy and the rest of the genres.
 

Miles Lacey

Archmage
skip.knox -

Instead of asking fantasy writers like us what we think fantasy is perhaps you should ask the people who are doing your writing course what they think fantasy is when you begin teaching your course.

Not only could it lead to a very interesting discussion but it may encourage them to explore areas of fantasy they might not know about or haven't given much thought to before.

I generally define fantasy as any story that has magic and creatures that are based upon myth or legend in part or in full.
 

Stevie

Minstrel
Genre's exist to primarily as a promise to the reader. The romance genre promises a plot focused on a relationship or relationships. Scifi promises a story heavily dependent on technology and fantasy promises a story with heavy doses of imagined, unfounded elements.

Doesn't that contradict what you said a bit earlier, that talk of sub-genre plot is inaccurate? (or am I picking up your earlier post wrong?) I agree a plot consists of protagonist etc, across all writing, at a high level. But if you are going to make a promise to the reader as you say, you need certain elements in the story and those elements have to be intrinsic to the plot. So a plot with fantasy elements is a fantasy plot?

To get on to the second half of the original question, are there fantasy themes? I'd argue no, not really. I'd say most themes are based around issues and feelings readers can identify and relate to in there own lives. A fantasy theme? Are we going to go with something like "All dragons are bad" or "magic has lost a lot of its magic"? A fantasy theme has to have a fantasy element to define it as such. I doubt its going to get much traction in the real world.
 

Ankari

Hero Breaker
Moderator
Genres offer promises. A relationship isn’t a plot, it’s a subplot. Technology isn’t isn’t a plot, it’s setting. Imagined and unfounded elements are setting pieces or internal logic.

Plots specific to fantasy doesn’t exist. Even the most epic, such as world/universe saving plots are not specific to fantasy. You can find the same in sci-fi. And thrillers.

but break the plot to the fundamentals and you’ll discover the only thing that will change is the scope of a plot.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Instead of asking fantasy writers like us what we think fantasy is perhaps you should ask the people who are doing your writing course what they think fantasy is when you begin teaching your course.

Yes, absolutely plan to do that. Part of my reason for starting a discussion here is to see the range of questions that might come up, so I'm not trying to do improv. <g>
 
The best definition of Fantasy I've come across is "stories that make the impossible plausible".

It's the only definition that fits modern fantasy. If you go back to the 90's or earlier, then the Fantasy genre was fairly easy to define based on tropes, plot, setting and so on. Since then, the genre has exploded and there's no single convention or trope or plot that covers most fantasy novels. Right now, a Fantasy novel can be a superhero story, a heist, a police procedure, a thriller, an epic tale, a love story and pretty much anything else you can think of.

Another definition is "Fantasy books are those that go into the Fantasy section of a bookshop". In the end, genre is mostly a marketing tool. It's used to give a promisse of the type of story you'll find.

Of course, this is no different from other broad genres. It's only when you drill down into the smaller subgenres that you can start thinking about specific plots, tropes, settings and so on. A Romance novel is simply a novel where the romance between the two main characters is central. That's all you know when you buy a Romance novel. But there's a big difference between a sweet holiday romance novel and a steamy MM shapeshifter paranormal romance.

Same with Fantasy. All the label says is that there will be something fantastical element in there. But that could be anything from a simple alternate timeline story to Discworld.
 

Insolent Lad

Maester
Jonathan Swift's Gullivers Travels has all the ingredients of what we would now call fantasy - and it was published in 1726. It is also generally regarded as a satirical novel, not as fantasy.
There is absolutely no reason it can not be both. I might consider it the first comic fantasy novel, the forerunner to Pratchett, Bramah, Adams, etc.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
>The best definition of Fantasy I've come across is "stories that make the impossible plausible".
Close (for me), but not quite. That definition feels more at home in SF than in fantasy. But to ring a change, perhaps fantasy is "stories that make the impossible irrelevant."

That is, most times, I don't really care if the story persuades me this or that magic is plausible. It's just part of the story. I grant it entry as soon as I willingly suspend my disbelief.

It's funny, now I think about it, as readers of fantasy we get far more exercised about verisimilitude with horses and stews than we do with fireballs and conjurations. But we're a funny bunch.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Although I’m not big on defining such things… I would call Epic Fantasy the examination of reality (the possible) through the lens of Grandiose Impossibility.

In a way, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory even does that, though in a different way than epics.
 

ButlerianHeretic

Troubadour
"The lens of gandiose impossibility" made me laugh in a good way. I'll see what I find applying the lens to my writing. It certainly applies to a lot of advertising I see. And politicians I probably shouldn't name...
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
There is nothing more epic fantasy than politics and political commentary. Epic posturing at least, but that also can help in actual Epic Fatasy, where conspiracy theories can go great gangbusters like a Bond villain on magic steroids.

"The lens of gandiose impossibility" made me laugh in a good way. I'll see what I find applying the lens to my writing. It certainly applies to a lot of advertising I see. And politicians I probably shouldn't name...
 

ButlerianHeretic

Troubadour
Haha. I dislike when some wise mentor explains the backstory and it is presumably what actually happened not their subjective understanding if not propaganda spin on what happened. Obi Wan's propaganda might have influenced me a bit haha. And real life of course. I've been trying to figure out how different factions would spin the actual backstory of the world.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
I think even obi wan siad it mattered from a certain point of view… which was not pleasing to fans.

Those old guys who explain are usually believed because they are presented as capable of knowing and because the story often depends on readers buying in.
 

ButlerianHeretic

Troubadour
It messed with my head because I was too young to know what a retcon was. :p It got me thinking about dishonesty though, which I guess is good. What really made me think was someone in a discussion who gave a very well reasoned analysis of why in his opinion America won the Vietnam War, or in his naming the Second Vietnam War, after the first with France and before the third which the US didn't participate in. From a particular point of view, you could say.
 

Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
It does make sense in Vietnam, one of those perspective issues and a matter of definition of events. Did the US lose to the Taliban? In one perspective no and in another yes, depending on definition and perspective. One could easily argue that the US defeated the Taliban rather quickly, but were defeated in the goal of nation building. Not really a point to it, outside of scoring political points or a mental exercise, but it is interesting.

It messed with my head because I was too young to know what a retcon was. :p It got me thinking about dishonesty though, which I guess is good. What really made me think was someone in a discussion who gave a very well reasoned analysis of why in his opinion America won the Vietnam War, or in his naming the Second Vietnam War, after the first with France and before the third which the US didn't participate in. From a particular point of view, you could say.
 
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