Tag: fantasy cliches

Can’t Miss! ‘Throne of Games’

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Image result for images of funny game of thrones

While I’m waiting for them to print The Silver Trumpet, I’ve got an idea for another fantasy series that just can’t help but make boxcar-loads of money.

I’ll call it A Throne of Games–I’m already offering the TV and movie rights–and it will feature beloved fantasy characters with really cool names.

Tydibol, the drop-dead gorgeous Invincible Female Warrior who does jumpin’, spinnin’ kicks.

Gassex the Crusty But Benign Old Wizard who talks like a text message.

Clairol the Buxom Tavern Wench, always up for a good time.

The Duke of Pez, villainous beyond belief, with a castlefull of monsters.

Solgar the Strong, the drop-dead gorgeous Hunk, Invincible Male Warrior with this really thick neck, it’s hard to tell where his head begins, who does jumpin’, spinnin’ kicks.

Plus a multitude of drop-dead gorgeous know-it-all Elves, insatiably lusty Dwarves, and all sorts of supporting characters who have absolutely no morals and commit all manner of revolting crimes.

Because, you see, in A Throne of Games, everyone’s bad–unless they’re, like, this total victim who’ll be lucky to survive two pages–and so the reader doesn’t have to decide who to root for, he can just sit back and enjoy the sex and carnage. In fact, these characters are so loathsome, even I’m turned off. Whose idea was it to get me to write this garbage? Well, confound it, I won’t! And I am withdrawing those movie and TV offers as of this confounded minute!

‘Yes, the Culture Really Does Matter’ (2015)

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Why is it so hard to convince people that this is so–that the world’s in such a mess because of what’s in people’s heads and hearts?

Somehow waving sin around as glamorous and desirable just doesn’t work out well for people born with Original Sin.

https://leeduigon.com/2015/01/29/yes-the-culture-really-does-matter/

What’s So Hard About Writing Fantasy?

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When I first read J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings in high school–and I’m currently re-reading it, I don’t know how many times–it blew me away. I didn’t know it was possible to write such stories; but a couple of chapters into it, I knew I wanted to write fantasy. It took me over 40 years to come up with Bell Mountain.

A lot of people write fantasy, but according to any number of readers, few write it well. After Tim Wildmon interviewed me on his internet TV show, he turned to his assistant and shook his head. And said, “He made the whole thing up! Whew! I don’t know how you do that.”

Practice, man, practice…

People ask me why I have to sit outside to write it. Well, the phone doesn’t ring outside. I’ve got trees and sky, birds and squirrels, to keep me company. And I have to get myself into a world that doesn’t exist except in my imagination. I have to be able, in my mind, to see it and hear it and touch it. This takes a great deal of concentration, easily broken.

I have to relate to characters that I invented as if they were real. Although I’m inventing what they say and do, think and feel, I can’t just have them do anything I want. They have to behave as if they really live. Again, lots and lots of concentration. A character like Helki the Rod doesn’t just grow on trees. He has to say and do whatever he would say and do if he were real.

I have to see these landscapes, it has to be a movie in my mind. And I have to resist the temptation to load my story with elves and dwarves and wizards and all the other stock characters that burden so many other fantasies. No invincible female warriors, no crusty but benign old sages. Impossibly beautiful, know-it-all elves, uh-uh. Otherwise, next thing you know, all you’ve got is a pile of cliches.

It’s all very difficult, a constant challenge–but it’s the kind of work that I love best. The finished product has to be very different from everybody else’s finished product. I reach back into vanished worlds of the long-gone past and pluck out animals that most of my readers never heard of before. Creatures known to us only imperfectly, from bones and scientific speculations that may or may not be accurate.

Nor can I do any of this without prayer. Lots and lots of prayer.

Which leaves me, when a book is finally done, figuratively gasping for breath and wondering, “Well, now what do I do???” But the Bell Mountain stories are a kind of history, and in history there’s always yet another chapter.

Stop the Lousy Writing, Please!

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Again, yet again, I plead with my fellow fantasy novelists: enough already with the rotten writing! Please don’t do it anymore. Please!

Do what? Please lay off the following:

Don’t try to write your book as if it were a graphic novel–that is, a flaming comic book. Just for once try to write as if you thought grownups might read it.

Don’t make all your characters talk like you think teenagers talk. Come on, now–a lot of teens are nowhere near as dumb as all that, and the ones who are, are not going to read anything anyway. Do try to lift your dialogue some distance above the level of a text message.

Don’t resort to the bleeding obvious. I mean, don’t call the bad guys “bad” or “diabolical” or “reprehensible,” etc. Don’t editorialize about your characters. “And then the nefarious villain, Maalox the Dwarf, snickered evilly, distorting his tremendously ugly face, and spoke with unpardonable disrespect to the beautiful princess with nice knockers and incredibly lovely blond hair that was like something indescribably beautiful, ‘Hah! You’re all tied up, now you can’t do your jumpin’, spinnin’ kicks…” If I never again read anything like this, it’ll be too soon.

Try to avoid, in your narrative passages, such contemporary slang terms as “taking them out” or “being there for her” or “got a problem with that,” and all the rest, too depressingly numerous to mention.

Please don’t write like this anymore. It gives fiction a bad name, and contributes to the non-development of the reader’s brain. It might even actually kill off brain cells–we’re waiting for the research to be published.

 

A Silly Name Can Ruin Your Fantasy Novel

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

I am currently reading a fantasy novel by an established Christian thriller writer who is writing fantasy under a pseudonym.

It looks like the pseudonym was a good idea. A paper bag with eye-holes might be useful to him, too.

This fantasy, published by a major Christian publisher, has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity and no reference to it. (For those who must know, it’s Merchant of Alyss by Thomas Locke, aka Davis Bunn, published by the Baker Publishing Group.) What it is, is a compendium of everybody else’s fantasy cliches. You name it, it’s in here–know-it-all elves, super-powerful wizards, invincible female warriors, a beautiful girl who knows kung-fu, a crusty but benign old mentor… Gimme a break already.

But where this book really belly-flops is with a single name.

The really, really bad guys, you see, are… Milantians. From the country of Mylanta.

What was he thinking of? We expect at any moment to hear of the enchanted kingdom of Maalox, or the Forest of Tums.

If you are writing a fantasy, please do not name any people or places after well-known digestive products.

It just flat-out doesn’t work.