In Defense of Fantasy Writers Everywhere
Needless to say, most, if not everything, talked about in this blog, can be applied to Science-Fiction as well. Both genres often share fans, and both get the same stigma attached to them. However I will focus on Fantasy because that's where I feel more comfortable, and I simply haven't read many science-fiction books in general.
"The grandfather of Fantasy."
Fantasy, from it's inception, is built around its 'tropes' (we will discuss tropes in greater detail later). So basically, if your book has elves, than it's Fantasy. If it's in another world, another universe, then it's Fantasy. And of course if we go on we will blur the line between Fantasy and Science-Fiction, but these genres do attract the same type of person for a reason. They are "sister genres" exploring unknown and infinite possibilities with their themes and stories. If its a dragon then it's Fantasy, if its a mecha-dragon then its most likely Science-Fiction. The aforementioned 'exploring unknown and infinite possibilities' is what makes Fantasy so awesome! The opportunities are endless when writing Fantasy. And at the end of the day, it's just plain fun. :)
The Rise and Fall, and Rise, of Fantasy
So grandpa Tolkien started this huge new thing, and all through the 70s and 80s Fantasy had been gaining Steem (ayyyy). Of course there weren't any new huge bestsellers yet. Jump to the 90s, and we're having a Fantasy boom! People like Robin Hobb, George R R Martin, Robert Jordan etc, sold hardcover books in bulk (until eBooks came along, hardcovers made the most money for publishers). Publishers saw fantasy authors selling bestseller after bestseller, and thought they had figured out a formula for success. So they bought a bunch of similar books - with similar tone, cover and tropes - backed them up with huge advances and advertising, pushed them out to the public - and they all flopped. Every genre needs to evolve and change in order to stay relevant, and industry people at the time learned that the hard way. Of course, as new authors entered the scene and started putting their own unique twists to the genre, fans started to experience new original ideas (instead of the same old Tolkien-like stories). By the time J K Rowling finished Harry Potter, the YA (young-adult) market jumped at the chance to produce Fantasy, and eBooks were starting to become a thing. Forging the way for new innovative Fantasy writers everywhere.
As I previously stated, Fantasy is built around its tropes, and not the other way around. If your story is a Fantasy it doesn't automatically have to have elves, it can have anything you want! And this argument, that tropes are the reason why Fantasy can't be taken seriously, is actually my main counter-argument.
People who criticize Fantasy say that it relies too much on its tropes. That it has become too predictable. They associate it with lazy writing, hence the whole 'lesser literature'. Let's put aside the notion that tropes are actually not exclusive to Fantasy. For the sake of argument let's say they are. I would still say that Fantasy is as much literature as anything else.
We saw what happened when the same tropes were used in the same way above: a lot of people lost a lot of money due to flops. And this problem of repetition is not exclusive to Fantasy and can be found everywhere. If the readers keep getting the same old same old, they will get tired of it.
However, great authors use tropes as tools in a toolbox. They don't let the trope define their work, they take that expectation and flip it on its head. Producing something of much greater value than if it didn't have the trope in the first place.
Magic! Fantasy critics will say that magic is used as a cop out, a scapegoat. Oh, you're having problems with your plot? Just say 'magic did it' and you're good to go! Yes, people have done that, a lot. But again, just because it doesn't follow our conventional rules, doesn't mean it's cardinally bad.
The fact that Fantasy has so many options is, I think, off putting for some people. Is Fantasy the easiest genre to start writing in? Yes. But I would add that it's the hardest to master.
I again want to take the critics' argument, and use it as my counter-argument. Good authors see these endless possibilities as tools, not as scapegoats. Truly great Fantasy novels are made when everything is used correctly, to its maximum potential. And doing that is a very, very hard thing to accomplish.
The amount of work needed to complete a truly good Fantasy novel is staggering.
I believe critics don't understand the complexity of the craft in general. The amount a time a Fantasy author can spend on building his world can be more than some spend writing 5 books. Every detail needs to be meticulously crafted to coincide with one another, and make sense. And that is just the beginning. Once the world has been painstakingly made, then you have the plot and characters on top of that, and those need to coincide with the world. As I've said time and time again, the possibilities are endless.
The reason why I love Fantasy so much is because it's just...fun. You can have all of the things the other genres have. You can have a literary styling of the caliber of Gene Wolfe. You can have a romance as powerful as any love story, and horror that's so scary it will make Stephen King cringe. And - you can also have flame haired Valkyries that ride Dragons!
Thank you for reading!
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Great post! I'm a fantasy writer myself and can confirm the amount of years spent fantasy world-building, lol. I think one of the problems today is that "lazy" writers Google the Hero's Journey then spend all of about 5 minutes writing a sentence for each set, then write their fantasy novel from that blueprint. Which is why i wrote "PUNCHING BABIES: a how-to guide" btw, shameless plug ;-P. What i really hate in bad fantasy writing is a horribly planned magic system. ALL magic should have equal or worse cons and the pros it provides, otherwise why not just go around using magic all day and night? I hate it when a writer simply makes their character "tired" from using magic and that's it. Such a cop-out and just lazy world-building. Excellent first blog, btw. I just signed up to Steemit it yesterday to post all my fantasy novels and more and I'm lovin' it :-)
Sadly, fantasy genre is also underrated and usually not considered "serious" in music and illustration too (that´s what I do). There is a misconception that it´s just for children, or as pure entertainment, it can carry as depth and meaning as any other genre, sometimes even more cos it´s not limited by the boundaries of reality.
YES!!! Well said. I am an avid reader of fantasy and Science fiction. I am also a writer and understand the time and effort that goes into creating a believable world. Not to mention in depth charecters and an ingaging plot. Now if I could just get my grammer straighened out. To many years since I sat in a class room!
I will also mention that good fantasy art has a tendency to get snubbed also!