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How to make Elves interesting?

AJ Stevens

Minstrel
Steven Erikson's 'Tiste' races are often seen as a different take on elves. Other sources will do a better job of describing them than me, but it's worth a look.

Incidentally, I always thought that the Night Elves in World of Warcraft (for those who've played it) were strikingly similar to the Tiste Edur, and the Blood Elves much like the Tiste Liosan.
 

Nomadica

Troubadour
I like to think of elves as rogueish forest dwellers, something more feral. But still lean, gracful, acrobatic and good with a bow and magic. I imagine them with slightly pronounced eyeteeth but not to the extent of a vampire. The eyeteeth to me represents an animalistic trait, slightly predatory, gives them an edg. And of course pointy ears. I'm not as into the fancy celtic cathedral architecture of elves in LOTR.
 

Nomadica

Troubadour
But I do like the architecture of the small villages of the nightelves in WOW. It's a mix of Nors and old Japanese
 
I just leave them out entirely. I am done with the forest dwelling, pointy eared, in tune with nature, immortals.

Tolkien did it best as far as I'm concerned. I don't like elves enough to try and create something different.

That being said, The Elder Scrolls games do a pretty good job with elves by giving them some actual diversity.
 
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I personally enjoy seeing the gnome-like lighthearted elves. Like Santa's elves or the keebler elves. And that's probably because its used less often and are the farthest from the standard elf.
 

glutton

Inkling
On a somewhat related note I have a group of hippies/druids in my WIP who wear fake elf ears in imitation of 'a magical race of legend.' Their leader, the Queen of Mercy who the heroine gets a bad feeling about since her name implies (to the MC) treading dangerously close to being worshiped as a false god, may or may not turn out to actually be a powerful mystical being though.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
>well making anything immortal makes them less interesting IMO

I agree, Nomadica, but I'm curious to hear your reasons.
 
I just leave them out entirely. I am done with the forest dwelling, pointy eared, in tune with nature, immortals.

Gosh darn it. This pulled some of us away from our tree-hugging long enough to protest.

'You may take away our immortality, you may change our physical appearance' and so on. . . but there's still a place in contemporary fiction for elf-like harmony creatures, even if they are blown into a new mould by an original author (as musket-ball shredded aggressors for example as I saw earlier on the thread), or changed so much they cease to be elves at all.

I think that, however irritating people find pastoral based races, there is still a significant section of readers who identify with pastoral themes as an accessible and relevant source of symbology and inspiration. Far more so perhaps than themes closer to 1960's architectural brutalism for example. High-tech sci fi worlds and steampunk urban settings all benefit from their counterpoints : )
 

Nomadica

Troubadour
Well I've never put it to words before. I like life to be visible on a character, and lots of flaws. When my husband was hired to do some landscaping for his moms rich friend there were these old white stone statues of lions in her yard that were stained, covered in lichens and moss. They looked hundreds of years old and were full of character. Like old runes, full of stories and mystery. There was so much beauty in those flaws. Unfortunately his mom's friend didn't see it the same way and wanted them scrubbed till they were shiny. Things are just more interesting and beautiful to me when they are full of these king of flaws. something immortal is like a boring new looking statue, too perfect, easy and clean.
 
Well I've never put it to words before. I like life to be visible on a character, and lots of flaws. When my husband was hired to do some landscaping for his moms rich friend there were these old white stone statues of lions in her yard that were stained, covered in lichens and moss. They looked hundreds of years old and were full of character. Like old runes, full of stories and mystery. There was so much beauty in those flaws. Unfortunately his mom's friend didn't see it the same way and wanted them scrubbed till they were shiny. Things are just more interesting and beautiful to me when they are full of these king of flaws. something immortal is like a boring new looking statue, too perfect, easy and clean.

The conditions of the character's immortality can change this.
 

Queshire

Auror
When it comes to immortality there's the old classic of the heartbreak of everyone you know growing old and dying, but that's a bit overplayed for me personally. There's so much more that you can do with it! Just imagine the shenanigans that you could come up with if you have an immortal with, well, Medieval is a bit too obvious an example for me, but say Ancient Roman morals and sensibilities in modern day.
 
My MC is close to a thousand years old. I want to try and depict one example of what a person would be like after all that time without the typical cliches. Someone that has been tempered by centuries of experiencing human nature in action.
 

Nomadica

Troubadour
Just imagine the shenanigans that you could come up with if you have an immortal with, well, Medieval is a bit too obvious an example for me, but say Ancient Roman morals and sensibilities in modern day.

Well that is an interesting scenario, it's not the same as just haveing a whole race be imortal just becaus. Not that it is bad, just not as interesting to me personaly. Though I'd be more interested in immortal character if it was part of the story like that.
 
On making Elves more interesting, I found that thinking with a scientific mind rather than trying magic through it is easiest. It gives not only a more adaptable view that can grow and change as you think of different attributes that would give a species the extra edge, but also a more grey view that is more true to human nature than incorruptible or extreme sides of light and dark. Starting out small, changing height, abilities, muscle structures and densities and the like can easily lead to a three hour crash course on the feeding habits of tube worms to give a subspecies of "elves" the ability to ignore the lack of food in their native region/realm/worldď

In short, look not only to other sources invented and developed by authors but to the world we live in. There's plenty of crazy things to pull from whose only copyright is God's (I'm looking at you platypus).
 
Unlike a lot of people my first encounter with elves was actually in mythology and those are the elves I liked best so I would back back to them.

I avoid using elves in my books simply because they've been done so much and I like to be creative. There's nothing wrong with blending elves with another race. But I try to avoid using all the common creatures (elves, dwarves, orcs). I create new things, especially if my world is not earth. A new planet would have it's own things. And if I use humans I make sure to say how humans got to this planet.
 
Unlike a lot of people my first encounter with elves was actually in mythology and those are the elves I liked best so I would back back to them.

I avoid using elves in my books simply because they've been done so much and I like to be creative. There's nothing wrong with blending elves with another race. But I try to avoid using all the common creatures (elves, dwarves, orcs). I create new things, especially if my world is not earth. A new planet would have it's own things. And if I use humans I make sure to say how humans got to this planet.

I'm the same. You create a lot of preconceived notions when you use the more classical fantasy races.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
"Use" is an interesting verb in this context. How do you "use" elves in a story?

One way would be to have a character say "hi, I'm an elf." Or the narrator simply says, "a dwarf, and elf, and a gnome walk into a giant."

With no context or description, the author is letting the reader fall back on stereotypes to envision the scene. The author does not create the preconceived notions but allows the reader to summon them. At best, this is lazy writing. I mean, would you really say, "he was a human" and let it go at that? It's still worse if the author goes on to try to break the stereotype, after having first allowed the reader to envision it.

But there are many other ways to go about this. There's an author in my writer's group whose story looks at first sight to be science fiction. We have a scientist in a lab. But then she tucks her hair behind one pointed ear. And a few paragraphs later, she's explicitly called an elf. This effectively tells the reader, I know you think you know elves, but you don't know my elves. We have an author using the stereotype to her advantage.

Or, to take my own case, I have monsters invading the Roman Empire. I describe them. Later, I have some of the soldiers hear the locals' word for the monsters. They repeat it clumsily. Cobbel. Later, the better-educated Roman officer gives them a more Latinized name: ghobellensi. And, finally, goblins. I let the reader figure out the "real" name at whatever point they figure it out, because it doesn't really matter. By that time, they know that my goblins don't fit any traditional mold anyway. I did this partly to add verisimilitude (what Roman is going to say, "oh, goblins"?) but partly also because I did not want the reader to haul out any preconceived notions about my monsters. At the same time, I had reasons not to invent wholly new names, either.

>I avoid using elves in my books simply because they've been done so much and I like to be creative.

As I think the above examples show, there's no reason why you cannot be creative using elves. Conversely, there's nothing intrinsic to using elves that somehow makes it un-creative.

In other words, and this is said by many in many ways: it's not the idea, it's the execution. It's not what you think, it's what you write.
 
Since dwarfs are basically tied into the idea of living in mountains, mining and excavating, etc., I just made my dwarfs these rock creatures, like the minerals and ores the dwarfs might dig up.
 
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