Kill the King!

I'd read that.

I think it's the problem of trends. Trends catch on--the medieval, the mysteriously gifted farm boy, the returning king, and of course there has to be a castle--and they tend to stick for a while. You see it in romance, thrillers, sci-fi--you name it. They've all got parameters that many seem to love, but that die-hards are secretly sick of.

For some reason it seems like fantasy has been in a particularly long rut.

Do you think this is because the Other Stories aren't being written, or because they are just not being published?

I'm tempted to believe it's the latter. But if that is the case, then what can writers and readers do about it?

 

Lol @ the pun.
Unfortunately, I think fantasy might be rolling its way out of the sword-and-sorcery rut only to fall into a new (and, IMO, even bigger) ditch with the paranormal/urban fantasy.

Now we have the choice of: gifted farm boy/lost king saves the medieval peasant village OR stunningly beautiful (and moral) vampire/werewolf/demon saves the plane-jane.
But don't get carried away by the illusion of choice! The same rules apply in both categories: the protagonists are beautiful and powerful, they're "special" among their kind but think that they are not, and they have to fall in love/hook up.

We've traded one set of boundaries for another.

But then, what's the difference between having oppressive boundaries and sticking to the tried and true, in other words giving people what they like?

After all, while I'm no fan of most of the new wave of fantasy, it does seem to be wildly popular.


Is the only option to flood the desks of agents and publishers with out-of-the-box manuscripts? Think they'll eventually catch on? Or will the slushpile just languish and grow to new heights?

 

I'm far more interested in an Iron Age-styled setting. It's grittier, more brutish, and suits a world where the elder gods took away all the advanced, enlightened people to the next realm before hurling the traitor god at the planet, boiling away the southern seas, and letting the people that remained to scrape out existences in harsh climates and harsh biomes. I enjoyed the "knights galloping resplendent across rolling meadows" thing in others' works, but I'm not so much interested in writing in that way.

Now if only I could come up with a half-decent plot.

 

These days, we just create more and more subgenres with each book, until every individual novel is its own genre and the entire functionality behind it is forever lost. Urban fantasy - or paranormal romance or whatever it is called that day - and epic fantasy are the two big ones, but we have steampunk, New Weird, elfpunk, Low Fantasy, slipstream, Magic Realism, dieselpunk, science fantasy, oceanpunk, clockpunk, Wuxia, bangsian fantasy, engine punk, decopunk, arcanepunk... really, it's already gotten to a point where half of these terms mean nothing to me, and I am pretty well versed in the nonstandard fantasy fandom.

 

I don't think there is any one particular group you can blame for it. Well you could but maybe not accurately.
Is fantasy stuck in a rut? Yes. I think that rut has widened slightly, but perhaps simply at the hands of the stocking clerk at your local bookstore. There is a lot of stuff being shelved in fantasy that I personally feel belongs in romance. I'm sure others have different opinions, but they're wrong.
It's a question of what works, I think. Authors know that a book containing XYZ is more likely to be published, so that's what they write. Publishers look for books containing XYZ, because that's what sells. Readers buy books containing XYZ because it was touted as an awesome book, even though its probably mediocre at best, and so your next cycle begins.
Look at music. Songwriting hasn't changed dramatically in decades. You get two verses, a bridge, and a repeat of the chorus and you're done. Do some artists do it differently? Yes, with varying degrees of success, but I'd say 95% of music written follows that pattern because they know it works. Writing is no different.
We get paranoid as hell when it's time to submit a manuscript. What if they don't like it? What if they tell me it sucks? What if they tell me to chop all my fingers off with a meat cleaver to spare their eyes the horror of my work? So we do what we can to ease our way in.

Personally I write medieval fantasy because that's what I love. Honestly I'd give up all my fancy techno-crap and go live in that time period if I could make it happen. Unfortunately my time travel device hasn't quite gotten all the kinks worked out yet, so I'll be remaining in the present for the forseeable future. Have fun with the temporal mechanics of that one, lol.

 

Lol I didn't say I was going to trade in what I knew in the process

 

Nicely structured piece, Dusk - it certainly cuts to the heart of the matter.

I could not agree more. This new trend is even more depressing than the days when I used to stand in bookstores and look for something, anything, that didn't feature a low-born peasant boy fighting the advance of evil and darkness... Sometimes it seems like we're stuck between Eragon, Edward Cullen and a load of pretentious writers who try to break the boundaries of the genre and end up taking themselves way too seriously in the process. Sometimes, though, you end up following some obscure internet trail, or picking something up in a second hand store, and there you have a book that's unique enough to restore your love for fantasy. It just takes a bit of questing, a sharp sword and a good pair of glasses

 

A student from Britain that I was dating a little while back had brought one of Terry Pratchett's books with her, A hat full of sky I think it was. She got me reading more of his books, and I really like his way of writing fantasy. There are times when it's like he is making fun of fantasy, and makes it ridiculous and funny. I would like to write that way but I am not good at writing funny yet.

 

Another Pratchett mega-fan here. His books occupy a special (long) shelf above my bed. His influence seeped fairly heavily into my early writing style, which I suppose is natural for a new writer with a heavy obsession with one author. After realising that I branched out a fair bit, which hopefully has made me less of a poor Pratchett clone (which is, I agree with Chilari, not so good).

I've been told that my writing can be humourous, although that can often be unhelpful when trying to write off-kilter epics with a dark core. My advice for writing funny is to absorb funny - read humour novels, watch comedy shows - the more you understand what's funny to you, the better you'll be able to come up with something funny yourself. Although again, as Chilari said, some people absorb huge amounts of comedy, and still can't seem to be funny themselves. I know I personally always mess up jokes in person because of my terrible delivery.

What was the topic again?

 

My problem with the "medieval" setting is that it is so loosely defined. Most medieval setings have near to nothing in common with european middle ages.
I have a world which is strongly leand towards sumerian antiquity. Readers took a glance at it and were all "Oh, you have no electricity, no cars and a king. It's that medieval stuff again." Readers make it very hard to break out of that medieval genre. And it's not for lack of trying.

On the other hand it's hard for me to find good fantasy books. I don't like vampires and angels (maybe, if you give me some pre Stoker vampires we could talk) and I really loathe the one true hero, often lowly born and with no education that would qualify him to face his fate, destined to save the world. What's with that destination? When you read someone is destined to ... you know how the story will end. In most cases at least. Where is the fun in that?

So, break out of all prisons. Doesn't matter. Critics and readers will still see you inside them.

 

Depends how much they like their paycheck.

We live in an age where online publishing is free, or close to it. The readership is lower because of all the crap that ends up on the net, but there are people who prefer to read online. If publisher filtering is a significant effect, it will go away slowly. People publish things a publisher won't touch online, for free. Readers looking for something new read them and recommend good ones to their friends. New cliches will be embraced and, presumably, accepted as standard by publishers given time.

 

I respectably disagree with you. Just because a story has castles, dragons and the like, doesn't mean that it's not a great story, or that fantasy is stuck in a rut. Hell, how many cop dramas can people watch, and they're all set in the same "time period" or "setting". I think everyone is putting too much of an emphasis on the setting, rather than the story. I could read an endless number of stories set in Tolkein-esque worlds, as long as the stories are fresh. While I'm not saying that variety isn't needed, I don't mind the Middle Ages setting of many fantasy stories at all.

 

The stereotypical fantasy happens in a stylized medieval Europe, typically England or Scotland from my exposure. The ones that break this are quite good, but some that haven't have been good as well. It provides a good expected environment that people are familiar with. Pern is the first that comes to mind, a few medieval cues but different in its own right.

I have taken a few cues from these stereotypes, but not a lot. I want less magic, no dragons, and more advanced technology / science in my story. I think stereotypes are a good starting point, but an environment for me can be secondary to the human interaction.