Worst Fantasy World Cliches

[Devor]

I think my biggest pet peeve is when the hero, or the villain, or another character, has all these powers and resources, like magic or an army, but they end up spending most of the story going unused.

 

[D. Gray Warrior]

Character who are evil for the sake of being evil.

It never rings true. No one is all evil all the time. Even the worst people in history never committed evil acts just to be evil, they did so for a reason, even if that reason was completely misguided.

I can see it if it is a god or something and it’s the god of evil or destruction, but for mortals it’s pretty unbelievable.

A bigger sin to me is having an evil race and every member of that race being evil. One of my stories toyed with the Orcs, and telling thr typical fantays talen from their POV. Of course the humans saw them as monsters needing to be slain, but the Orcs saw the humans as invading their territory in order to expand their kingdom and the Orcs rally behind the Dark Lord as he tells them he can stop the human kingdom and preserve the Orcs’ way of life.

 

[skip.knox]

I do something similar with orcs, though I've not written anything yet that includes them. When orcs came into Altearth, they copied the system they found, which was the Roman Empire. So, them having an emperor is immediately a rival which means they're at least potentially an enemy. As an empire. This leaves the door open for individual nuance.

The orcs were different, though, in that they are monotheists. They worship the sun. Polytheism does not get along well with monotheism, and Roman state religion insists you perform the public rites regardless of personal beliefs. And of course this flies directly in the face of the orc faith. So it's loggerheads from the beginning, with room for truces of convenience and even honest attempts at ecumenicalism. I haven't worked through any of this; it so far has sat quietly in the background. Plenty of other stories to tell.

 

[C. L. Larson]

I'm not sure if they are cliches but what bothers me is the over doing of the foreign aspects of a world. I speak English not elvish or orcish etc. I don't need half a paragraph of gibberish to get the idea they speak a different language. I also find made up obscenities tiresome.

On the flip side it is also annoying when writers include modern cultural references or dialog that is inconsistent to the rest of the world.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Made up obscenties are another “it depends” thing for me. I mean, hell, there are real world sayings in non-American English that I would think a joke if I didn’t know better. Hello, Canada. And in real life, if I hurt myself in front of my kids, I can get creative, heh heh. I have a lot of fun with one character’s sayings when she gets pissed. I for one am iffy with the F-bomb in non Earth settings... To me, it tends to feel too modernunless used judiciously.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

And thinking on created languages... I don’t want a language lesson in a book, that’s for sure. Non-english should be used like spice, give me a little flavor, then lay off. I think this goes for using real world languages in an english novel as well. A sprinkle of foreign is fine, but pretend it’s ghost pepper in your chili... don’t use enough to burn my eyeballs.

 

[MrBrightsider]

I don't know if it's been said yet, but one of the biggest annoyances for me when it comes to fantasy world cliches is the absolute SMALLNESS of the world. Like, I know it's a lot to ask to come up with an entire multi-civilization world complete with religions and anthropology and reasons for why people are they way the are in the story, but that's kind of our job as writers. Your northern european society has magic, yeah? When did they master it? How has it affected their culture? Can they use it to produce food? Have they ever gotten into a terrible civil war over it? Did any other culture look at them and say "Ah ha, those might make useful slaves," and maraud them into oblivion? What skills and technology have they failed to develop because of a reliance on magic? How has religion shaped this culture? Etc. etc.

When your northern European city knows exactly what your mesoamerican Aztec culture is up to half way around the world, then the world is too small. I know we can fly just about anywhere in 15 hours in a jet these days, but the world is a pretty big place. When I jump into a fantasy world, I'd like to have that sense of scale.

 

[Darkfantasy]

I agree with every one else but another I'd like to add is 'the Chosen One' who is often named the "savour" before they've even done anything to earn that title.
The poor little Orphan who is the rejected child of royalty or power.
Super powerful main character. Sometimes others have the same abilities but the MC's abilities surpass everyone else's. They are the best at everything they do and worshipped by their 'mob' even though they are an arse to people.
Hero's who are completely and utterly selfless ALL the time and never put a foot wrong of think of themselves, even in a life and death situation.
Having a totally perfect, loyal friend just to kill them off and spur the MC into final action against the villain. No problem with killing off anyone, this method is done because it works. But make that "sacrifice character" important. Make them there throughout the whole story be important, don't just make them important for those few moments.

 

[Firefly]

I was this thread a few days ago and am just getting around to posting, but I've been thinking about it in the meantime and this actually took a lot more thinking than I thought it would. I did come up with a few, but most of the cliches people typically complain about really don't bother me that much if the story is good. Maybe I'm just to young to have gotten sick of it yet, but I feel like I could happily read about prophecies and love triangles and elves for the rest of my life as long as they're well written. I'd much rather read a story where a familiar, well-loved concept is deepened and looked at from a new angle than something that is completely alien and original.
The key part of that though is the "deepened and looked at from a new angle" bit. Too often authors just shove tropes into their manuscripts without putting any thought into things, and the result is inevitably two dimensional and full of holes. And since the authors aren't really thinking about those parts of their stories, they inevitably get filled in with cliches. It's not the tropes themselves that are the problem, most of the time, it's that they've been lazily written in the exact same way so many times there's no longer any depth, surprise or suspense left in them.

I also think people have a tendency to label elements we don't like as cliches, even if the trope in question isn't really all that overused or common. Things that bug you tend to stand out more and bother you more when they do. I have a thing about steampunk, for example. There isn't really anything wrong with it, but something about it has always felt obnoxious to me, which tends to make me extra nitpicky and critical. Same thing with swear words. I could go on forever about how lazy they are and how little sense they make in fantasy, or all of the many, many, other reasons they bug me, but I'm not sure they can even be a cliche, even if they are ubiquitous. It's just the way a lot of people talk.

 

[ThinkerX]

We had a Challenge dedicated to this concept years ago:

https://mythicscribes.com/community/threads/the-jim-butcher-idea-challenge.10016/

We demonstrated via short stories that even the most tired clichés can be salvaged and made into interesting tales.

I was inspired enough to write two stories.

 

[skip.knox]

I agree with Firefly, but let me say a word in defense of all the "too often" authors.

Writing is hard. Writing well is even harder. Most folks who start stories never finish them, so the tired cliche stories we read are already in a successful minority. Doesn't make it any more bearable to read; just adding a bit of perspective here.

Also, there's a tone--I recognize it because I strike the same note myself, often--that the "too often" authors are just being lazy. Maybe they are, although lazy doesn't usually get all the way to published. Sometimes, sure. But I'm more inclined to think that they are not very good writers, or are newbies making newbie mistakes, or that maybe they don't even recognize they've used a cliche. With writing there are way more ways to do it wrong than there are to do it right.

All that said, I'll still pounce on a manuscript and point out the mistakes. I'll still call on an author to do better. But I do so recognizing how wretchedly difficult it is to do it at all, and how much harder to do it better.

 

[Firefly]

I agree with Firefly, but let me say a word in defense of all the "too often" authors.

Writing is hard. Writing well is even harder. Most folks who start stories never finish them, so the tired cliche stories we read are already in a successful minority. Doesn't make it any more bearable to read; just adding a bit of perspective here.

Also, there's a tone--I recognize it because I strike the same note myself, often--that the "too often" authors are just being lazy. Maybe they are, although lazy doesn't usually get all the way to published. Sometimes, sure. But I'm more inclined to think that they are not very good writers, or are newbies making newbie mistakes, or that maybe they don't even recognize they've used a cliche. With writing there are way more ways to do it wrong than there are to do it right.

All that said, I'll still pounce on a manuscript and point out the mistakes. I'll still call on an author to do better. But I do so recognizing how wretchedly difficult it is to do it at all, and how much harder to do it better.

I'm sorry if I sounded condescending, I struggle with this a lot in my own work, and I think that some of my own self-frustration may be showing through here. Finishing a book is herculean task and I in no way mean to denigrate the efforts of anyone who has done so. (After all, I still haven't managed that myself, so anyone who has is already ahead of me .) When I say "lazy writing" I'm more talking about things that haven't been thought out well--which can be due to laziness but is more likely to be because of ignorance, or even just sheer overwhelm at the enormous number of things you need to worry about in order to write a novel.
I think maybe that's why I (and other new writers) have such a hard time with this. We're so focused on the basic mechanics and simply getting out words that we don't have much brainpower left over.
I'm not sure that's the whole of it though. There's costs and benefits to putting a lot of thought into something. It usually makes the story better, but it takes time and energy that is sometimes better spent elsewhere. If the element you're getting hung up on isn't important to you or your target audience, I think sometimes it's okay to just let it be what it it is and move on.

 

[skip.knox]

FTR, I didn't detect any sort of condescension in your post. I should have been clearer that when I said "there is a tone" I was speaking much more broadly.

 

[Ross]

The most cliché … It's got to be the Forbidden Forest - there's one in every fantasy book more or less. It's so overdone ... but still so mysterious and enticing!

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

I'm probably going to start a fire with this, but my most hated fantasy cliché--the one that really makes me want to punch another writer in the crotch--is the pervasive misogyny in the genre, and the idiotic concept that patriarchy is somehow humanity's resting state. Bonus punches for writing rape scenes as some kind of half-assed titillation.

You had it coming, pal.​

I was just reading the first book of a series by an author who I love and have loved for decades, and no joke, every single female character in the book ends up getting raped.

Just, stop, already.

Ditto with the cliché of a woman warrior / knight / leader "finding her strength" by overcoming some kind of abusive past and then fighting her way through a patriarchal system. I understand its analogue to modern society but holy shit, enough already. It's lazy writing. It's tired, it's tone-deaf, it's dismissive, and worst of all, it's absolutely moronic from a worldbuilding perspective. In a world made of monsters, you can't afford to marginalize half your population and expect your civilization to survive. Think of how much further ahead we'd be right now if we had actually listened to women all this time and given them equity.

On top of that, once I wrote a gender-equal society into my books and created women who were badasses--soldiers, mercenaries, knights, military commanders--for no other reason than they decided they wanted to grow up to be badasses and it never crossed anyone's mind to stop them, it created some fascinating character dynamics. It's also really fun writing scenes where you make the reader fear for a woman's safety and it's not because someone's going to rape her--yawn--again. Granted, it's a lot more work, but it results in much deeper character development.

This trope needs to die. The cliché needs to find its rightful place in the dustbin of history.

This is so real. People don't bat an eye at 18,000 pound dragons flying, people shapeshifting into monsters, magic, twenty-pound swords, armor that would actually get you killed faster rather than slower, worlds covered in huge predators that apparently subsist on questing parties venturing into their Doom Forest because there are no herbivores anywhere...but a society that isn't misogynistic is just too damn hard to imagine, is it?

"Realism!" they will moan. Mmmm. Where are your unshaven armpits and rotting teeth?

"But that's gross and no one wants to read about that--" EX-F*CKING-ACTLY!!!

I do not give one single shit if misogyny is realistic, even. This is fantasy. You can do literally whatever you want. Like I said. Dragons. Shape-shifting. Sentient tapioca pudding. ANYTHING GOES. But you don't even have the excuse of "realism" half the time, because history has a very wide variety of societies in it, and not all of them are as misogynistic as others. i've found in my own research of various cultures that actually, misogyny isn't as universal as we think it is, and we think it's so universal because european cultures are actually...well...worse than many, many others. example: Ancient Egypt and Assyria had far, far better divorce laws than colonial America.

oh yeah and i was reading this tablet that was I think assyrian laws?? Something in the mesopotamian river valley area. and there was something in it about how a dude could get his lips cut off if he kissed a woman without permission. So, realism, ya kno?

 

[Ban]

oh yeah and i was reading this tablet that was I think assyrian laws?? Something in the mesopotamian river valley area. and there was something in it about how a dude could get his lips cut off if he kissed a woman without permission. So, realism, ya kno?

Seeing as the Assyrians were known for their almost comically brutal rule, I'm going to say that's a yes.
Here's a lovely text written by the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal the 2nd

“I built a pillar over his city gate and I flayed all the chiefs who had revolted, and I covered the pillar with their skin. Some I walled up within the pillar, some I impaled upon the pillar on stakes, and others I bound to stakes round about the pillar…And I cut the limbs of the officers, of the royal officers who had rebelled…Many captives from among them I burned with fire, and many I took as living captives. From some I cut off their noses, their ears, their fingers, of many I put out the eyes. I made one pillar of the living and another of heads, and I bound their heads to tree trunks round the city. Their young men and maidens I burned in the fire.”

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Seeing as the Assyrians were known for their almost comically brutal rule, I'm going to say that's a yes.
Here's a lovely text written by the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal the 2nd

Oh yea, I remember reading this exact text studying in ancient history. The Assyrians were...overeager with the mutilation thing.

 

[pmmg]

I do not give one single shit if misogyny is realistic, even. This is fantasy. You can do literally whatever you want. Like I said. Dragons. Shape-shifting. Sentient tapioca pudding. ANYTHING GOES. But you don't even have the excuse of "realism" half the time, because history has a very wide variety of societies in it, and not all of them are as misogynistic as others. i've found in my own research of various cultures that actually, misogyny isn't as universal as we think it is, and we think it's so universal because european cultures are actually...well...worse than many, many others. example: Ancient Egypt and Assyria had far, far better divorce laws than colonial America.

Oh Gosh... I am sorry DOTA but I find I cannot agree with this sentiment. While it is entirely fine for yourself (or others) to decide this is not your cup of tea, I find the argument that as there are dragons flying about, therefore everything should not meet some standard of realism to be a non-sequitur, because many times we are asking the question 'given a world in which there would be dragons flying about, how might that change everything?' And then we apply what seems most realistic given that different quality. I see no reason to expect men and women would change roles because of the introduction of one additional big creature in the world, and so I think it more logically follows that not much in the way of gender roles and attitudes would change. You can have those changes if you like, but there is no logic which says one must.

I further take issue with the notion that a society with a wider proportion of males in important roles (typically those of combatants and lordship) equates to some type of defacto misogyny. Any society can organize itself in one way or another, and such organization need not be the result of hatred of others, it can just seem like the most effective way to organize. Further, to call such organization misogyny is to discount the role the women did play as partners in these societies. The roles they played were equally important and necessary for the survival of the peoples and cultures. They were not idle standers by waiting for some wheel of justice to come make it right. They were brave, and made sacrifices, and carried their weight just like everyone else did. The fact many were not King does not mean they were less needed. I reject the term misogyny as a blanket statement to cast over the whole of western culture because we found other places that may have acted differently. While I am sure there were many who did not enjoy the prevailing attitudes of their days, all societies are diverse and dynamic and come to their shape by so many different factors that none of them can be said to be most true or even universal. These things shaped organically over time by peoples and people doing what needed to be done in their given circumstance.

Ultimately, I just disagree with any argument that says we should discount what seems like what would realistically be given the things we must bring into the story as givens. Dragons may exist in a world where apples are blue and pumpkins are purple, but their inclusion does not mean everything should change colors. If we bring in no realism at all, the story will be too hard to ground. Maybe that's the point of some, I don't know...but I think we expect readers to bring something into the story first before we show it to be different.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Oh Gosh... I am sorry DOTA but I find I cannot agree with this sentiment. While it is entirely fine for yourself (or others) to decide this is not your cup of tea, I find the argument that as there are dragons flying about, therefore everything should not meet some standard of realism to be a non-sequitur, because many times we are asking the question 'given a world in which there would be dragons flying about, how might that change everything?' And then we apply what seems most realistic given that different quality. I see no reason to expect men and women would change roles because of the introduction of one additional big creature in the world, and so I think it more logically follows that not much in the way of gender roles and attitudes would change. You can have those changes if you like, but there is no logic which says one must.

I further take issue with the notion that a society with a wider proportion of males in important roles (typically those of combatants and lordship) equates to some type of defacto misogyny. Any society can organize itself in one way or another, and such organization need not be the result of hatred of others, it can just seem like the most effective way to organize. Further, to call such organization misogyny is to discount the role the women did play as partners in these societies. The roles they played were equally important and necessary for the survival of the peoples and cultures. They were not idle standers by waiting for some wheel of justice to come make it right. They were brave, and made sacrifices, and carried their weight just like everyone else did. The fact many were not King does not mean they were less needed. I reject the term misogyny as a blanket statement to cast over the whole of western culture because we found other places that may have acted differently. While I am sure there were many who did not enjoy the prevailing attitudes of their days, all societies are diverse and dynamic and come to their shape by so many different factors that none of them can be said to be most true or even universal. These things shaped organically over time by peoples and people doing what needed to be done in their given circumstance.

Ultimately, I just disagree with any argument that says we should discount what seems like what would realistically be given the things we must bring into the story as givens. Dragons may exist in a world where apples are blue and pumpkins are purple, but their inclusion does not mean everything should change colors. If we bring in no realism at all, the story will be too hard to ground. Maybe that's the point of some, I don't know...but I think we expect readers to bring something into the story first before we show it to be different.

I’m not talking about the roles of men and women and society or women being generals or fighters necessarily (though that’s part of how Malik goes about portraying an equal society) I’m talking about women not having any rights. and how every female character has to get raped, because realism. It’s not entirely or even mostly an organization thing.

I don’t consider a society where women aren’t warriors to necessarily be misogynistic. The high proportion of male leaders in European history isn’t why I’m calling it misogynistic. The misogyny is in the fact that women didnt have the ability to make important choices about their lives, escape abusive situations, or be really anything other than property. That’s why I brought up divorce...it’s not so much about career options as the ability to say no to your husband’s advances, or escape from him if he’s harming you. In colonial America a woman who escaped her husband could be charged with theft... of herself. It was a hell of a lot worse than women not being able to go and be a knight or something.

Am I saying you *can’t* have a patriarchal society in a fantasy? No. I’m saying that there’s no reason why you *must.* At all. You can decide to do anything. You might as well ask yourself *why* your society must be misogynistic as *why not.*

Anyway, I read Malik’s comment as mostly being about rape, so...here are my thoughts on that. Rape is common in real life. A whole quarter of women have been or will be raped or sexually assaulted, and those numbers are probably extremely low due to how those things aren’t often reported. But you’re not obligated to follow the laws of freaking physics in a fantasy, so there’s no reason why it’s “necessary” for “realism” to include rape.

Again. Am I saying you can’t write about your female characters getting raped? No. I can’t creep through your window and take your computer.

What I AM saying is that authors duck out of criticism for writing rapey stories by saying “Well, it’s just realism! It has to be in there!” And it doesn’t. It just doesn’t. A romance novel has to include romance. A fantasy novel does not have to include rape. To clarify what I’m getting at: If an author’s fantasy novel includes rape, it’s not because “they had to because realism,” it’s because ***they wanted to include it.***

Personally, I find it really disturbing when people consider misogyny to be such an inherent quality of the world that it requires very discrete reasons to write a story that doesn’t include it. More reasons than you need to disregard a basic law of physics. There’s no inherent physical law that says one in six women must be raped. The statistic is that way because *we as a society allow it to be.* I don’t consider a misogynistic society and rape scenes to be the default setting of fantasy.

As for the story being too hard to ground without realism...If my readers can’t relate to a story without misogyny, they’re not my intended audience. That’s all.

 

[Ban]

So to summarise, and correct me if I'm wrong DragonOfTheAerie , you believe that it is fine for the institutions and social sphered of a fictional society to be tilted to one gender, race or whatever binary division if the world justifies it, but you don't think it's fine for the individual mindset of people subject to that society to be wholly dominated by it?

To give an example, a fantasy society might be modeled after roman times where women wouldn't be able to hold public office, but that doesn't mean that Aggripina or Julia just sit on the sidelines and let themselves be entirely marginalized. Society might be against them, but they'll still go out and say it as they see it.


Edit: Before the roman nerds come in , yes there were a handful of powerful women in roman politics, but they were by far the exception to the rule.