So, how do you make a fantasy stand out? Some authors seem to strive for new and different settings, creatures, circumstances, like in urban fantasy. Others meld different traditions or ideas. I like a good old fashioned fantasy (_not_ necessarily Tolkienesque), but I don't want to write something that feels, well, familiar.

If you feel that your story is an original take on a fantasy, I'm willing to bet it is. Will a hug help? Don't give up on "traditional" fantasies because some people prefer urban or whatever. They are still highly popular with READERS and publishers. That's why they sell.

As for what makes a fantasy different, it's the same as what makes a work in any genre different. It's an individual vision that the author brings to it. If we worry about not having the fantasy elements, then it turns into a "not fantasy" the same as a romance would if people said: But books have already had a romance! *rolls eyes*

Hang in there. I have confidence in you.

Edit: As for what makes a story different, I know I didn't really answer it and gave you a pep talk instead.

It's hard to say and don't count on it EVER working. I found something I thought would be a quite original way of going at my NiP. Guess what! This year I've read three books with a similar element. I'll have to count on the story and the characters. LOL

By the way, where are you getting your work critted and are they critting it as a whole or in parts? I'd advise not getting it critted until it's completed as a first draft at least. (Not that you asked. lol) Are they fantasy writers? Do they write and (as important) read epic fantasy? I learned the hard way that it does make a difference.

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Will a hug help?

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Indeed I'm working on the second draft, so I'm pretty confident of what the story is, maybe not yet how to tell it. I'm getting it critted at chapter at a time, by folks who read (and write) fantasy.

I'm beginning to see the sense in what you're saying--to have people read through it all the way. On the other hand, if folks don't want to read through the first few chapters, what's the point?

He advises this because most people will be likely to come up with the first or second idea (because those ideas are rather obvious to everyone). It's when you really apply your creativity to dig deeper and find the third or fourth or fifth idea that you get interesting stuff.

When OSC does his "1000 Ideas in an Hour" sessions, he usually spends part of the time on character and part of it on ideas (and the kind of idea he usually focusses on is the price of magic -- what it costs someone to be able to do magic).

In those sessions, he asks people to call out suggestions, and he tells people that all suggestions are free, that anyone who wants to can write something up from any of the suggestions. He also shoots down ideas he thinks fit in the "first or second idea" category, and he gets quite excited about the ones that dig deeper.

He also tells people to ask themselves, as they are developing ideas, two main questions: "what does the character try next?" and "what can go wrong?"

You can go through your story and ask yourself if the things you are doing in it seem like "first or second ideas" and if they do, can you dig deeper? You may not want to change what you actually have in the story, but you can dig deeper into the motivations of the characters to come up with things that will seem fresh and different and not "just another fantasy."

For my part, if I can't care about the characters, the plot had better be phenomenal, or I won't keep reading. So I'd encourage you to make sure your characters are well-developed, believable, and have interesting motivations.

Also, like it was said before, make sure the characters are unique. Take Star Wars for instance: not the best plot, not the best dialogue, but you just cannot forget the characters in it. Everyone had their motives and backgrounds, and they were so real. I always ask myself what would my characters do in the same situation? If wizards from an ancient time attacked what would Luke do? Would would Yoda do? What would Vader do?

In fantasy you need everything you have in other genres: Character development, substantive themes, conflict, and some whopper of a problem to solve. I think the best fantasy carries with it a good dose of nobility and some kind of moral orientation to it.

As long as you write a good story, I really don't care if it has a lot of typical fantasy stuff in it any more than I care if a crime novel has a lot of typical crime stuff in it.

The Lord of the Rings has deep themes of temptation, duty, loyalty, and sacrifice. Frodo, Sam, and Faramir carry a nobility that is extremely rare in fiction. (Both were botched big-time in the movies--so I'm not referring to those adulterations of them.)

These things transcend the genre, and the most important things in fantasy should transcend the genre.

I think the "cost of magic" thing is worth considering, but I also think it is over-emphasized. After all, did it ever cost Gandalf to use his power? (Other than the normal way human beings get tired.) The approach seems a bit too materialistic in nature to me, and fantasy doesn't have to be materialistic. (Although that seems to be the trend.) To be sure--magic shouldn't be incoherent. Arbitrary and random magic turns into uninteresting gobble-dee-gook very quickly.

It doesn't surprise me that OSC supports that way of thinking because he has a very materialistic way of describing magic in his works. It's basically a fantastic "science" to him. (Assuming I understood Kathleen correctly.)

All that being said, I've tried my hands at a number of genres now, and fantasy is, by far, the most difficult one for me. If you are writing <i>readable</i> stories in the genre, you are well ahead of me.

If you would like me to give your story a read, I'd be happy to give you my thoughts on it. Either way--keep at it!

There is a huge difference between Salvador Dali's The Temptation of Saint Anthony (brief nudity, but it's art!) and this random Forgotten Realms dragon picture (edit: fixed bad link)

For horror it is the same thing when you compare Francis Bacon's Tryptich to that silly Chucky doll monster thing. I would rather take on a thousand Chucky dolls then have to deal with that eyeless, bloody thing on that coffee table.

I think writers can get lost in trying to make it 'fantasy' and forgetting about the base - it needs to just be a good story. The same way that artists loose the meaning of what they are creating by, well, over-creating it.

A good story shouldn't reference 25 locations in the first paragraph (And he looked over the Ocean of Chian'ta where in the distance he could see the castle of Morginia and the bay of Kilingao where a thousand years ago the great elvish battle of Ikibat happened).

A good piece of art doesn't need a black dragon blowing smoke at some perfectly shaped warrior-princess with a flaming sword, jade beaded necklace, and chain-mail-teddy. There is nothing left to really think or imagine.

But this is just me, and as usual, I can really only relate to what my own faults are. I love abstract, I love writing something that is so abstract it's abstracty. I love anti-descriptions and strange sentence structures... but when I'm done I usually get something like this when I really wanted this.

I was simply outlining what I consider fantasy that doesn't seperate itself from the pool. That's what her question was... or at least one of her questions.

My impression was that halogen was expressing a desire for more of the really great fantasy, not dissing all fantasy as bad.

Are your readers being fair to your story? Do you trust them?

Assuming there's something in what they say, then ...

"but there is a good story there that I believe in, one that hasn't yet been told."

So it's not "just another fantasy," there's something unique about it. Can you focus the story on that somehow, and cut away the peripheral stuff?

Would it help to write down, in a sentence or two, what the good story is? Perhaps that way you could focus your mind--and more importantly your passion--on that while you're rewriting. Perhaps give the core aspects more depth, colour, vibrancy--more of the passion you feel for the story--so that they stand out from the world around them?

Annepin, as a fantasy writer, my own great "quest" is to write characters, especially my heroes, who I care desperately about, so my readers will care desperately about them too. The story has to be good, but the characters, IMO, have to be GREAT for me to be drawn into a fantasy. (And they have to be flawed somehow, not perfect - perfect people are boring.)

Lots of fantasies are "ho-hum" to me and I don't read past the first page. Urban fantasies, for instance, leave me cold, farm girl that I am (JMO - I can't relate to urban stuff much, having always lived on farms). So it could be just your critters' genre preferences showing.

Most often, fantasies (any book, really) I start and then put down without reading further have something that bothers me about the characters. Their names, for instance, may be too "foreign" (with so many apostrophes and vowels that I can't make sense of them) and then I'm turned off (which is why my sf reading has dropped off in recent years - so many people seem to think that kind of name is necessary for their characters).

I liked the Star Wars comparison someone made here, and it backs up my character name complaint - Leia, Luke, Han Solo, Yoda, Jabba - all are "easy to pronounce and remember" names. So's Chewbacca (sounds like "chews tobacco" and his fur was the right color for it, which makes it a good memory-nudge for his name - most "odd" names in sf/f stories don't have any such reminders, so it's easy to lose track of who's who). If a book has a big cast of characters and they don't have individual names and voices that are easily discernable to me, my reading is slowed and I'll just put the book down (the way my life is, the only reads I can manage these days are "fast reads" - the only "slow reads" I'll stick with are "how-to" books I need to read for my business or other interests.)

You have to have great characters, an intriguing story, and you have to begin the story at the right place. For months, my novel, "Star Sons: Dawn of the Two," began with my boys being teenagers, with mentions of how they got into the circumstances they're in interwoven throughout the story, as needed for clarity. The novel was complete and I was revising it, trying to make it "sing," when someone said it might be better with a different beginning. So I added two chapters to the beginning. I've just posted the first chapter as a sample on a couple of sites and it's already getting great reviews and people begging to pre-order the book! Yay! Changing where my novel began gave it a different flavor, although I didn't change anything in the rest of it (other than to remove some of those references to their past, since I showed the past in the new first two chapters). It also made the reader more empathetic to my main characters, I believe, which is important to me.

So evaluate the names you're using - are they pronounceable? Will the reader have to stop and sound them out to make sense of them? If so, you've slowed the reader's eye, and you'll lose a lot of readers if you do that very often. Evaluate your characters - will the reader cry if they get hurt, I mean seriously have tears fall from their eyes, rather than just going, "Gee, too bad"? If so, they care enough to keep reading to find out what happens to those characters! Do each of your main characters have voices different enough, personalities different enough, for the reader to keep track of who's who? These are the things that make me a fan of a particular author. If they succeed in these things, whatever the genre, I'll probably read every book of theirs I can find.

There are only so many plots in the world. I read somewhere there were only 12 basic plots and Shakespeare did all of them (I can't quote you where I read it, sorry - that was ages--as in literally "decades"--ago). So your plot may be similar to many, many others in the world (if it's a "hero quest" story, for instance, that style of story has been told for literally thousands of years). What your reader wants to know is, how are you gonna put a new spin on that plot?

I have only read your posts on here, not your fiction, Annepin, but from the posts I've read, you know how to WRITE (your posts are well expressed and often eloquent, IMO). It's writing characters that people ache for when they hurt, rejoice with when they succeed that's the biggest trick, IMO. That's the kind of book I want to read, and I believe a lot of other folks feel that way.

I've been as frustrated as you are right now, and thought I'd never get it right. But usually, after hitting rock bottom ("I can't write! Whatever gave me the idea I could?!?"), a writer who's going to succeed (IMO) will bounce back and find a new way to look at the problem, which leads to the solution she's seeking (if she works at it hard enough!)

I'm a writer AND an artist - both very solitary professions. I ache to get feedback on what I'm doing, and whatever I'm doing has my heart wrapped up in it. Getting negative feedback can be soul-destroying - at least for a while (it helps to develop a thick skin, but some comments can cut right through even the thickest skin). What really helped me was to say, "You know what? I like what I'm doing. I don't like these negative people" (a good critique includes encouragement as well as criticism, but not everyone "gets" that). You have to understand that their comments are only their opinion, and you DO have a right to disagree with them. But they should encourage you as well as pointing out the flaws in your writing. If the critique group you're in isn't giving you positive comments as well as negative, find another group before you become too discouraged.

Good luck with your story!

Lynda

Of course my science fiction resembles fantasy in that you can take out some of the science fiction tropes (say, replace "nanotechnology" with "magic" in my latest novel) and it'd still work. (I may just do that. I've had trouble rationalizing the background of some characters, and the story does involve mysterious powers and raising someone from the dead.)

I think we disagree rather radically on what "really great fantasy" is. Trying to write the way Dali painted isn't really great fantasy in my opinion. Neither is "something that is so abstract it's abstracty." There now that's my opinion.

I'll take the fire breathing dragon, actually, AND the warrior princess which there are far too few of. Again my opinion.

In fact, you just gave me my basis for my next novel. I've never used either, but I will this time. Ha! They fit right in with an idea that's been rattling around. And there will be nothing even slightly resembling Dali.

A wizard can conjure up the metaphysical forces on a whim. The rogue can use a spell to cast an invisibility field around him. A combat sorceror makes the most impressive fireball ever and sends it hurtling at his foes. These are all impressive uses of magic, but at the same time incredibly boring. So magic is an end-all device. That just subtracts from the story. If you use magic, I'd recommend making it more subtle and costly. Not everyone can know it, and certainly young people (such as below thirty) can't master it.

The best example for what I'm talking about can be found, I think, in George Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. Magic there is mostly regarded as fiction, but as the books carry on it slowly becomes more and more "real," seeming to regenerate because of various devices in the story itself.

You could take it the opposite way. Throughout the story you could say that magic is on the decline. Treat it like a rising wave; for some eras it's a strong and potent force, able to be touched upon by many souls. At the same time, however, there are down times when magic is all but completely nonexistent.

We had HUNDREDS of customers and I reckon most of them, at some point, told us their novel ideas (usually based on their game and group of gamer friends) and their scenario ideas over the years.

They were customers... we HAD to listen.
It was exhausting.

What was most tiresome was shallow, cookie cutter characters running a default course through an obvious plot.

What was exciting/envigorating was new ideas, a different take on something we THOUGHT we knew inside out.

As Kathleen said, don't pick the first, second and maybe not even the third idea. Like a good carpenter, measure twice (or three times) and cut once. MHO

And I feel bad that I think I was overly rough on halogen. I apologize for that. We have totally different taste in fantasy. If someone doesn't like epic fantasy, that's own taste. Of course, as I've mentioned a couple of times, I do so I felt a bit defensive.

What seems to me to matter the most is telling a good story. And I am absolutely confident that Annepin can do that. So... that's all I have to say on THAT subject.

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Being one of the foul people who ripped on it, I can say the writing wasn't the problem.

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On occasion I have let the claws come out and the results aren't pretty. It is a bit unfair that you are competing (in a small way) with many other fantasy stories that I've read over the years. The Elric series which features a race of evil beings of whom the main character is one...but he has compassion...and an evil sword that drinks peoples souls. Or the Kingdoms series by Angus Wells, the Deathgate Cycle by Weis and Hickman, The Crystal Gryphon series by Andre Norton, the Black Company by Gen Cook....and on and on and on. I've read as much or more fantasy as I have scifi. I read a book about elves that I forget the title and author, but remember that the elf women had to cross from elf lands to human lands to mate with a human to have an elf child, the children she has with her husband never turn out to be an elf. So, yes, there can be new elf stories that aren't like all the rest.

I'm not going to argue purism or high idealistic concepts. Reality is that we take what we can from wherever we get it and use it to write our stories. Unless someone else is writing my story...It's my story, just like any story annepin writes will remain annepin's story. If we have to come up with every idea all on our own then this site and others like them are responsible for making many stories not those writers stories?

Some things, you know, aren't a matter of right or wrong but of what works for me doesn't work for you.

Reality is that not everyone works that way. I never have and never will post asking for ideas. They simply wouldn't work for me. They wouldn't be mine.

Is there any rule that we have to look at it the same way?