Your Most Hated Tropes

[Incanus]

Clone may not be the best word here, as it is an exact copy.

But if I did include a Dark Lord in my fantasy novel, I would fully expect to be compared to Tolkien, at least on that one idea. It might not be fair, but I find precious little in life to be fair anyway, and this one would be relatively minor.

Though I'm a huge Tolkien fan, I have no interest in borrowing his creations from him. I use only one major takeaway--a detailed and consistent secondary world as background for an immersive fantasy story. That's the only way in which I'm similar to Tolkien. I'm rather surprised at how many people use his elves or orcs or cursed magical talismans, etc. Inventing my own stuff is half the fun for me--I don't want to use the creations of others directly.

 

[pmmg]

Well...that's kind of what I mean by grabbing the low hanging fruit.


Use a magic sword, must be Tolkien.
Use a dark lord, must be Tolkien
Use a different race, must be Tolkien
Use a strange language, must be Tolkien
Use an evil artifact, must be Tolkien.

Tolkien grabbed up so much stuff, its hard to get away from his shadow.

Just thinking about the way a fantasy world works, well, there might be magic and strange languages. Languages are not the result of copying Tolkien, but just a consequence of traveling to unfamiliar places in the world. So, an illusion is created, that the inspiration was to try and be like him, when really, it was trying to portray a more authentic world. Tolkien and I just answered the question the same way. The question only left itself with such an answer.

That is not to say Tolkien did not get to the higher fruit, its just to say, that any fantasy author, writing just about anything, will have someone say, you tried to copy Tolkien. But you know what, I actually hate his writing. Its too long winded and full of stuff that just wastes my time. I want my stories to stand on their own and not be thought of as a Tolkien clone. Its probably an impossible feat, cause Fantasy...must be Tolkien. Probably it more a problem of the Zeitgeist than Tolkien himself, but its still an inaccurate measure.

 

[Incanus]

I can see how that would be a problem. I have not been having this experience myself. I can't think of a single instance of my work being written off as a Tolkien copy. However, very few have read my first failed novel, and not many have read my short stories, so I have admittedly limited exposure.

However, if I was getting that kind of feedback, I would likely ignore it. Anyone saying that is clearly not very well read and\ or largely ignorant about fantasy. (Not that it is important for a given person to know about that stuff--I don't think I could name a single football player that is active these days.)

I guess one would have to choose: ignore such sentiments, or change your work so that it does not draw such comparisons.

I have to ask, though: are there really a ton of people out there reacting to all fantasy writing with: Tolkien rip off! Tolkien copy! Tolkien clone! I am extremely skeptical that this is so. So far, you are the only one I've been hearing this from. I don't doubt there are others, but how common is it?