Going off the beaten path

[Yora]

There are a great lot of customs, traditions, and conventions in fantasy storytelling. A good number of which seem to get used almost every time completely unquestioned.

What conventions did you notice as feeling strangely out of place for your own work and that you deliberately decided to contradict?

The big one for me is the default assumption that the majority of people inhabiting the fantasy world are humans. In worlds that tend to have large populations of almost humans, why is this the case? I first had the idea to make humans one of the fringe minorities in my world, but eventually decided that I don't actually need them at all. There are so many fantastic creatures and things in this world, having it populated by humans actually felt somewhat out of place.

Another thing is that protagonists who are able to fight commonly end up killing a lot of people. Dozens get impaled on their swords but only the killing of named villains ever get acknowledged in any way. I decided that for my protagonist it actually is much more appropriate to have less than one enemy killed per story on average. If during her entire career of dangerous and violent action adventures she only ends up killing half a dozen people, that would feel right to me.

 

[Malik]

Oh, so many tropes have I left on a hilltop to die.

There's a scene in The New Magic in which a character dies from an arrow to the shoulder. It passes right through and severs the axillary artery, and he's past saving before anyone can do anything. Because shoulder wounds are ghastly and the "just winged him" trope is idiotic.

Secondarily, I'm now two books into my series, and the knight in shining armor hero and--as readers have noted--the menacing dark-robed wizard villain have yet to actually fight; all they've done is argue over drinks. There are other villains that the hero fights, but I haven't set these two characters directly against each other, yet. (Spoiler alert: we'll get there; there are still three books to go.) I did this because it turns out it's really tricky to get a super-powerful wizard king into a position where you can A.) kill him; and B.) get away with it. Besides, both times he meets up with the villain, the hero has more pressing problems.

I guess most notably, though, The New Magic is a gritty, dark fantasy written for an adult audience, with plenty of realism, violence, gore, swearing, and sex (far more sex than Dragon's Trail), but it has no sexual violence, and not even the threat of it toward any of the female characters. Almost 400 pages, and it doesn't even come up. Not once. I wrote it out of the worldbuilding almost entirely, leaving it in only as a rare aberration. (If you're curious as to how this works, there's a long post on sex and worldbuilding on my blog.)

This demolishes another trope: none of the female warrior / female leader characters became strong by overcoming sexual trauma or an abusive past. That trope is bullshit and it needs to die. The badass women in my stories are badass because they live in a world where it's not uncommon for women to be badass. Rape is lazy writing.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Oh, so many tropes have I left on a hilltop to die.

There's a scene in The New Magic in which a character dies from an arrow to the shoulder. It passes right through and severs the axillary artery, and he's past saving before anyone can do anything. Because shoulder wounds are ghastly and the "just winged him" trope is idiotic.

Secondarily, I'm now two books into my series, and the knight in shining armor hero and--as readers have noted--the menacing dark-robed wizard villain have yet to actually fight; all they've done is argue over drinks. There are other villains that the hero fights, but I haven't set these two characters directly against each other, yet. (Spoiler alert: we'll get there; there are still three books to go.) I did this because it turns out it's really tricky to get a super-powerful wizard king into a position where you can A.) kill him; and B.) get away with it. Besides, both times he meets up with the villain, the hero has more pressing problems.

I guess most notably, though, The New Magic is a gritty, dark fantasy written for an adult audience, with plenty of realism, violence, gore, swearing, and sex (far more sex than Dragon's Trail), but it has no sexual violence, and not even the threat of it toward any of the female characters. Almost 400 pages, and it doesn't even come up. Not once. I wrote it out of the worldbuilding almost entirely, leaving it in only as a rare aberration. (If you're curious as to how this works, there's a long post on sex and worldbuilding on my blog.)

This demolishes another trope: none of the female warrior / female leader characters became strong by overcoming sexual trauma or an abusive past. That trope is bullshit and it needs to die. The badass women in my stories are badass because they live in a world where it's not uncommon for women to be badass. Rape is lazy writing.

So refreshing to have a story that isn't full of sexual violence against basically every female character. I read one author who used rape as a plot device every other page and that was one too many.

 

[Malik]

So refreshing to have a story that isn't full of sexual violence against basically every female character. I read one author who used rape as a plot device every other page and that was one too many.

I've read a lot of books like this lately. It's just so damned tedious.

What I found interesting was the amount of work it took to build backstories for these powerful women that didn't involve some sort of trauma; figuring out how they reached these positions as knights, generals, royal advisers, etc. and realizing that they did it through talent, skill, and sheer force of will, not through overcoming any adversity that a man wouldn't ordinarily face in the same situations: court intrigue, kicking ass on the field, a life of service and duty. This also had the bonus of forcing me to flesh out their stories and motivations to the point where I already have spinoffs planned for two of the female characters, and likely a series for one of them.

Additionally, I had to work to put them into situations where the reader would truly feel that they're in some sort of jeopardy, without making that danger the threat of rape around every corner. That also took some doing. It was amazing how easy the book would have been to write if I'd made a typical rape-happy male-dominated grimdark 'verse. Writing sexual violence out of the society made for much deeper motivations, as I'd said, and also much deeper characterization and chemistry between the characters overall. I think that the characterization in this book is far stronger than the last, and having to work around this trope is a major reason why. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. The story is definitely better for it in a lot of ways.

 

[Heliotrope]

I see rape as lazy writing, like Malik, and I see the suffering alcoholic character as lazy writing and avoid it at all cost. I try to avoid substance abuse in general, but the suffering alcoholic is the top of my eye-roll category. I get that alcoholism exists, and I get that many people use it as their way to escape, but it has been used so often now in fiction it has become synonymous with sunset photography... it is pretty in a gallery, but dated and no one actually wants to hang it in their house.

The suffering alcoholic is done, IMO. Lets find another way to create the suffering character.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

I see rape as lazy writing, like Malik, and I see the suffering alcoholic character as lazy writing and avoid it at all cost. I try to avoid substance abuse in general, but the suffering alcoholic is the top of my eye-roll category. I get that alcoholism exists, and I get that many people use it as their way to escape, but it has been used so often now in fiction it has become synonymous with sunset photography... it is pretty in a gallery, but dated and no one actually wants to hang it in their house.

The suffering alcoholic is done, IMO. Lets find another way to create the suffering character.

Suffering chocoholic?

 

[skip.knox]

The one I want to do, though I haven't even the whisper of a story for it, is honor.

Honor is a huge matter in traditional societies. It's a theme rich with nuance. It would be something about external codes of honor versus the MC's internal code of honor. It would play off honor as it's understood by at least one other non-human character. Everyone, regardless of gender, has a sense of what is honorable.

Another theme to explore is old age. Specifically, what happens to the warrior who is getting old. Not too old, yet. Just old enough that s/he can't react quite as quickly, isn't quite as strong, has this old injury that nags. The old warhorse who doesn't quite realize yet it's time to stop.

Related would be the aging wizard. They're always portrayed as being at the top of their game, even if it's only to soldier up one last time. But what about the wizard whose spells are starting to misfire? When does he start to realize his limitations? And who is he going to harm on the way to that realization?

Old age is a peril from which no one, not even a princess, gets rescued.

 

[Yora]

I've seen honor come up a lot. Which practically means beating everyone to death who contradicts you and always having everything going your way.
Which is obviously not how honor actually works.

Another thing that I've never seen properly used is revenge. It's not simply about wanting to make someone suffer who hurt one of your friends and relatives. Societies accepted it because it has a major component of crime prevention that made it kind of mandatory even when the avenging side knew it would cost them a lot more than the original offense. In western fiction, revenge is alwaya just about anger and spite, which is obviously wrong. The real thing is ethically much more complex. I don't want to write a revenge story, but I like to have the prospect of revenge to be an important consideration when the protagonist have to deal with their enemies. You can't simply attack abd kill someone and get away without consequences.

 

[skip.knox]

I don't much care for how honor gets handled, either. It's a complicated concept, and one that often horrifies modern readers. It's at the root of vendetta, influences gang behavior, and forms a part of honor killings. It was part and parcel of much of medieval violence. It's also part of the chivalric ideal and part of astonishing acts of courage. It's woven all through marriage negotiations. It's tangled up with ideas about justice.

It would be a difficult theme to carry off, at least without appalling or offending or just plain confusing most readers. But it still fascinates me.

 

[TheKillerBs]

I don't much care for how honor gets handled, either. It's a complicated concept, and one that often horrifies modern readers. It's at the root of vendetta, influences gang behavior, and forms a part of honor killings. It was part and parcel of much of medieval violence. It's also part of the chivalric ideal and part of astonishing acts of courage. It's woven all through marriage negotiations. It's tangled up with ideas about justice.

It would be a difficult theme to carry off, at least without appalling or offending or just plain confusing most readers. But it still fascinates me.

Eastern works handle honour much better, I've found.

 

[Corwynn]

The big one for me is the default assumption that the majority of people inhabiting the fantasy world are humans. In worlds that tend to have large populations of almost humans, why is this the case? I first had the idea to make humans one of the fringe minorities in my world, but eventually decided that I don't actually need them at all. There are so many fantastic creatures and things in this world, having it populated by humans actually felt somewhat out of place.

I too want to challenge the anthropocentric assumption. While I do have humans in my setting, they are not the majority, nor even a plurality. They serve to ground the setting so it doesn't become totally unrecognizable, yet the influences of the other species have a significant impact on society. Some things are familiar, others are bizarre or even horrifying. At the same time, I wanted to explore what a multispecies society would look like. All too often in fantasy, each race (who generally have fewer physical differences than mine) is off in their own separate kingdom. So, I made my fictional races different enough from each other that living together would require significant adaptations, but not so different that living together becomes practically unworkable.

The one I want to do, though I haven't even the whisper of a story for it, is honor.

Honor is a huge matter in traditional societies. It's a theme rich with nuance. It would be something about external codes of honor versus the MC's internal code of honor. It would play off honor as it's understood by at least one other non-human character. Everyone, regardless of gender, has a sense of what is honorable.

Another theme to explore is old age. Specifically, what happens to the warrior who is getting old. Not too old, yet. Just old enough that s/he can't react quite as quickly, isn't quite as strong, has this old injury that nags. The old warhorse who doesn't quite realize yet it's time to stop.

Related would be the aging wizard. They're always portrayed as being at the top of their game, even if it's only to soldier up one last time. But what about the wizard whose spells are starting to misfire? When does he start to realize his limitations? And who is he going to harm on the way to that realization?

Old age is a peril from which no one, not even a princess, gets rescued.

I've contemplated writing a story whose protagonist is an old man who feels like he has missed out on life, and now, in his autumn years finally gets a chance at adventure that he never had before.

As for honour, I think the reason it is so poorly-written (at least in Western works), is that modern Western culture has largely discarded the concept of honour (whether for good or ill is another debate). As a result, contemporary Western writers struggle to wrap their heads around the notion (I know I do), and don't really understand why it was such a big deal, and what upholding one's honour required.

For my own rejected assumptions, I decided that I don't want my world to be static or flat.

Often, fantasy worlds are flat, conceptually if not literally. All of the action takes place on once main continent, and nobody even considers the possibility that there might be something beyond the ocean. My world is very much a world, with multiple continents that people can and do travel between, and with people able and willing to probe into uncharted territory.

Also, many fantasy (and sci-fi for that matter) universes seem to be stuck in a cultural and technological rut, in which nothing much changes, even after centuries. My world has changed, is changing, and will continue to change. The world is roughly reminiscent of the 19th century because of both the way things changed then, and they ways they didn't. Both the ancient and the modern existed side by side (at least for a little while), and this transition and/or awkward coexistence makes for some fascinating possibilities.

 

[Orc Knight]

Well, like Corwyn, I don't try to let my world go into technological stagnation. Though they have to get it all back after the apocalypse happened and it still takes years as the undead keep stealing magic to get by. Humanity is also not so big though they have one powerful kingdom that was once an empire until it stretched it's reach too far. They also depend far more on magitech then anyone else as it was how they managed to overcome a lot of their lack of strengths to the other races involved with the world. They are coming to the fore in the world but they never quite reach super power sort of status before the world get's all mixed together and nations are no longer separated by races. And technology goes up after the aliens invade.

Also tend to get rid of the always evil races. Everyone has their reasons, even if it isn't so great, for what they do. Have also gone back to elves that are rather vicious and territorial. Cut down the wrong tree and entire villages killed and burned sort of thing. Until they cool down. The world changes and that is the entire focus of it. From entire social structures to the technology. Though not above lampooning the old cliches.

As for the mention of alcoholic characters, I do use it. As an outgrowth of something just as serious, usually PTSD due to how many of them tend to be common soldiers (and not so common) or just whats been happening to them. Generally also avoid the rape and that as it just plain make me uncomfortable anyways. And there are other parts to the world that get explored, though it does start in the standard fantasy setting (after the apocalypse though).

 

[pmmg]

I see rape as lazy writing, like Malik, and I see the suffering alcoholic character as lazy writing and avoid it at all cost. I try to avoid substance abuse in general, but the suffering alcoholic is the top of my eye-roll category. I get that alcoholism exists, and I get that many people use it as their way to escape, but it has been used so often now in fiction it has become synonymous with sunset photography... it is pretty in a gallery, but dated and no one actually wants to hang it in their house.

I cant say as I run across the suffering alcoholic too much, but then I accept I don't read as much as many others. I can see where any type of writing might drift into the category of lazy, but conversely, these things are things that are just part of diverse world. I would not discount them out of hand as simply being lazy in a story. It may be true that avoiding rape as a motivation has done a lot to force an author to find new ways to provide motivation, sometimes rape is what the story requires, and just too plainly the most likely outcome of a dangerous encounter. I don't see avoiding it just because. I do see making it something that matters to story. Things happen and people change and are effected. So if such occurs, I expect something will come of it. Ultimately, I think lazy speaks for itself and shows up in just about any format.

I cant say as I find myself in opposition to things that seem to appear a lot, and don't find myself looking for ways just to be different. I think like all things, Fantasy Fiction is an evolving art and so I would expect others to be building upon stuff that seems the well worn path. But, I am quite sure there are a lot of things I include as a reaction to stuff I would like to question about what I see in the genre. I don't really go for villains and bad-assery the way I see many seem to enjoy, but that is just me. I think I am counter culture enough that it will show in its own way.

I guess I might ask, if the trend is away from all things traditional fantasy, doesn't that make the traditional fantasy writer the less likely one?

Anyway...I just set out to tell the story in my head and in my heart. I don't really care if it matches up well to what I should have written instead.