has anybody mentioned wrote:"alas"?
Fantasy Cliche
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The Laughing Man
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onewyteduck
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It's exceptionally...errr...strange at the beginning and it takes 40 or 50 pages to get used to the way it's written but after that it really starts to flow. I would say that the characters are accessable and the language is straightforward so it's a light read in that sense.onewyteduck wrote:I've eye-balled Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell several times. Is it a light read? Need something light for my road trip.
I finished it all inside a week. However it's pretty long-around a 1000 pages from memory.
It'd take you a long time to blow up or shoot all the sheep in this country, but one diseased banana...could kill 'em all.
I didn't even know sheep ate bananas.
I didn't even know sheep ate bananas.
It is excellent, although from memory, it took me a couple of months to read, as my exams were on at that point.Marvin The Magnificent wrote:It's exceptionally...errr...strange at the beginning and it takes 40 or 50 pages to get used to the way it's written but after that it really starts to flow. I would say that the characters are accessable and the language is straightforward so it's a light read in that sense.onewyteduck wrote:I've eye-balled Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell several times. Is it a light read? Need something light for my road trip.
I finished it all inside a week. However it's pretty long-around a 1000 pages from memory.
But if you're all about the destination, then take a fucking flight.
We're going nowhere slowly, but we're seeing all the sights.
And we're definitely going to hell, but we'll have all the best stories to tell.
Full of the heavens and time.
We're going nowhere slowly, but we're seeing all the sights.
And we're definitely going to hell, but we'll have all the best stories to tell.
Full of the heavens and time.
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onewyteduck
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Ducky....read Outlander!! diana gabaldon. trust me on this one! 
you're more advanced than a cockroach,
have you ever tried explaining yourself
to one of them?
~ alan bates, the mothman prophecies
i've had this with actors before, on the set,
where they get upset about the [size of my]
trailer, and i'm always like...take my trailer,
cause... i'm from Kentucky
and that's not what we brag about.
~ george clooney, inside the actor's studio
a straight edge for legends at
the fold - searching for our
lost cities of gold. burnt tar,
gravel pits. sixteen gears switch.
Haphazard Lucy strolls by.
~ dennis r wood ~
have you ever tried explaining yourself
to one of them?
~ alan bates, the mothman prophecies
i've had this with actors before, on the set,
where they get upset about the [size of my]
trailer, and i'm always like...take my trailer,
cause... i'm from Kentucky
and that's not what we brag about.
~ george clooney, inside the actor's studio
a straight edge for legends at
the fold - searching for our
lost cities of gold. burnt tar,
gravel pits. sixteen gears switch.
Haphazard Lucy strolls by.
~ dennis r wood ~
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onewyteduck
- The Gap Into Spam
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Will add it to the "honeydo" list for the hubby tomorrow:Lucimay wrote:Ducky....read Outlander!! diana gabaldon. trust me on this one!
1.) cut grass
2.) take dogs to babysitter
3.) change litter box and make sure psycho cat has plenty of food and water.
4.) go to books-a-million and buy Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. If you don't I'm gonna tell Lucimay on you and she's gonna whup your ass......
(no, I'm not being lazy, gotta work tomorrow!)
Be kind to your web-footed friends, for a duck may be somebody's mother.
It's not the cliche... it's what you do with it.
There really aren't any original ideas left. Ideas become cliches because they work. Now, sure, as we grow older, we get tired of the same old same old, because we've seen it all before. Yet, if the characters are compelling and the story is emotional or really gets you thinking, you're more likely to overlook the "oh, yeah, this guy's the Gandalf-like wizard character, and this one's the boy-who-will-become-king."
I'm going to toot my own horn here for a minute, and relate the subject to my novel, The Talisman of Faerie. When I started writing it, my goal was to write a straight-forward sword and sorcery fantasy tale, but do it in my own way. I wanted to have the wizard character, the fallen hero of noble blood charcter, the reluctant boy hero who is unaware of his own power, even elves (I call them Fairies).
Yet, with all these cliche elements, I still think I wrote an original story. My "wizard" is not an old man (or at least, he does not appear old), has completely lost his faith, and at the story's opening has no power. He does not believe in prophesy, except in that he believes the gods are against mankind and work through a dark agent to bring about our eventual and certain destruction. My boy hero is chubby and unathletic, and although there is something special about him that makes him important, he is in no way the subject of any prophesy. And my "Return of the King"-ish noble character begins his story arc as a hopeless drunk.
Good stories can be told in old tried-and-true forms, cliches and all. But don't let me tell you my story's good... just click on my sig and find out for yourself
Better yet, if you're interested, you can get a sample here: www.council-of-elrond.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6999
Oh... there's no dragons in it.
PS--or you can just get the Kevin's Watch Anthology 2006 to get a sample of my writing style... as well as a bunch of other really great stories. We have a lot of fantastic writers on the Watch!
Jason
There really aren't any original ideas left. Ideas become cliches because they work. Now, sure, as we grow older, we get tired of the same old same old, because we've seen it all before. Yet, if the characters are compelling and the story is emotional or really gets you thinking, you're more likely to overlook the "oh, yeah, this guy's the Gandalf-like wizard character, and this one's the boy-who-will-become-king."
I'm going to toot my own horn here for a minute, and relate the subject to my novel, The Talisman of Faerie. When I started writing it, my goal was to write a straight-forward sword and sorcery fantasy tale, but do it in my own way. I wanted to have the wizard character, the fallen hero of noble blood charcter, the reluctant boy hero who is unaware of his own power, even elves (I call them Fairies).
Yet, with all these cliche elements, I still think I wrote an original story. My "wizard" is not an old man (or at least, he does not appear old), has completely lost his faith, and at the story's opening has no power. He does not believe in prophesy, except in that he believes the gods are against mankind and work through a dark agent to bring about our eventual and certain destruction. My boy hero is chubby and unathletic, and although there is something special about him that makes him important, he is in no way the subject of any prophesy. And my "Return of the King"-ish noble character begins his story arc as a hopeless drunk.
Good stories can be told in old tried-and-true forms, cliches and all. But don't let me tell you my story's good... just click on my sig and find out for yourself
Better yet, if you're interested, you can get a sample here: www.council-of-elrond.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6999
Oh... there's no dragons in it.
PS--or you can just get the Kevin's Watch Anthology 2006 to get a sample of my writing style... as well as a bunch of other really great stories. We have a lot of fantastic writers on the Watch!
Jason
i agree entirely, BT. i MAY have mentioned this before elsewhere in other threads (or maybe even in this one) - and stop groaning people, i'm gonna bring it up yet again - the cliches that this thread is referring to are NOT cliches...(even if you think of them that way)...it's a formula. and it has been in place in EVERY kind of literature since we (humans) started writing stories down....and BEFORE even, when it was just oral tradition.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL. HERO JOURNEY. recurring dramtis personae. i think it's time for me to elaborate on this subject. Campbell calls this "formula" the "monomyth". it is present in all mythologies that he studied (and he spent most of his academic life studing mythology and world religions).
first off here's a link to a diagram that will explain...
ias.berkeley.edu/orias/hero/
here's the wikipedia entry which is pretty concise
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
and here's Chris Vogler's now infamous memo that he circulated while working at Disney..
www.skepticfiles.org/atheist2/hero.htm
if you're really really interested in the subject of literary cliches...i highly recommend that you check out these links.
if you just want to b*tch about it...don't bother.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL. HERO JOURNEY. recurring dramtis personae. i think it's time for me to elaborate on this subject. Campbell calls this "formula" the "monomyth". it is present in all mythologies that he studied (and he spent most of his academic life studing mythology and world religions).
first off here's a link to a diagram that will explain...
ias.berkeley.edu/orias/hero/
here's the wikipedia entry which is pretty concise
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomyth
and here's Chris Vogler's now infamous memo that he circulated while working at Disney..
www.skepticfiles.org/atheist2/hero.htm
if you're really really interested in the subject of literary cliches...i highly recommend that you check out these links.
if you just want to b*tch about it...don't bother.
you're more advanced than a cockroach,
have you ever tried explaining yourself
to one of them?
~ alan bates, the mothman prophecies
i've had this with actors before, on the set,
where they get upset about the [size of my]
trailer, and i'm always like...take my trailer,
cause... i'm from Kentucky
and that's not what we brag about.
~ george clooney, inside the actor's studio
a straight edge for legends at
the fold - searching for our
lost cities of gold. burnt tar,
gravel pits. sixteen gears switch.
Haphazard Lucy strolls by.
~ dennis r wood ~
have you ever tried explaining yourself
to one of them?
~ alan bates, the mothman prophecies
i've had this with actors before, on the set,
where they get upset about the [size of my]
trailer, and i'm always like...take my trailer,
cause... i'm from Kentucky
and that's not what we brag about.
~ george clooney, inside the actor's studio
a straight edge for legends at
the fold - searching for our
lost cities of gold. burnt tar,
gravel pits. sixteen gears switch.
Haphazard Lucy strolls by.
~ dennis r wood ~
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drew
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I guess the point of this thread, was to see if people are tired of cliche Cliche's--
Obviously in fantasy writting there has to be some typical charactors or stories, or else there'd just be a whole lot of boring pepople standing around doing nothing.
So to take the typical charactors and make them unique...well that's not cliche.
But to use those charators in the smae old way; well that's cliche.
Even to use dragons doesn't have to be tiresome, if they are unique and used in a unique way.
So BT it sounds as though you're story is not cliche...the wizard doesn't sound like a rehash of Gandalf or Merlin...but you'd have to admit that there are a fair amount of stories out there that do rehash of Gandalf or Merlin...and that's the point that I was trying to find out in this thread...what kind of charactor or scene are people tired of.
Obviously in fantasy writting there has to be some typical charactors or stories, or else there'd just be a whole lot of boring pepople standing around doing nothing.
So to take the typical charactors and make them unique...well that's not cliche.
But to use those charators in the smae old way; well that's cliche.
Even to use dragons doesn't have to be tiresome, if they are unique and used in a unique way.
So BT it sounds as though you're story is not cliche...the wizard doesn't sound like a rehash of Gandalf or Merlin...but you'd have to admit that there are a fair amount of stories out there that do rehash of Gandalf or Merlin...and that's the point that I was trying to find out in this thread...what kind of charactor or scene are people tired of.
I thought you were a ripe grape
a cabernet sauvignon
a bottle in the cellar
the kind you keep for a really long time
a cabernet sauvignon
a bottle in the cellar
the kind you keep for a really long time
BT Shire wrote: Good stories can be told in old tried-and-true forms, cliches and all. But don't let me tell you my story's good... just click on my sig and find out for yourself
Better yet, if you're interested, you can get a sample here: www.council-of-elrond.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6999
Jason
Wait a second, you have a book?? 
BT Shire wrote:I have written a book. I've self-published it... sold some copies to some friends and family, but that's about it. They seem to like itIf you want to check it out, I put a big chunk of it online in another forum... www.council-of-elrond.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6999. There's the link for you. Give it a read! If you REALLY love, it, click on the link in my sig to buy it
BT Shire wrote: Another must-read is The Talisman of Faerie! Click my link!!
Keep up the good work BT!
.
Proverbs for Paranoids #3.
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
Yep, I have a book, which is going to be translated into German and published in Austria next year (long story). I'm currently working on a sequel, and also a new short story for the next Kevin's Watch anthology.Tulizar wrote:BT Shire wrote: Good stories can be told in old tried-and-true forms, cliches and all. But don't let me tell you my story's good... just click on my sig and find out for yourself
Better yet, if you're interested, you can get a sample here: www.council-of-elrond.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6999
Jason
Keep up the good work BT!
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Insomniac By Choice
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In my mind, what makes fantasy such a poor genre is that it's regressive instead of progressive. I nearly said that the intended audience of teens and young adolescents was to blame, but science fiction suffers from the same thing and has still managed to transcend that and create many works of thought provoking art, compared to just the handful of fantasies that have done the same thing.
Fantasies focus on the past, on low technology, on spiritual and natural purity, usually being desecrated by some absolute evil of some kind. They want a return to 4,000 years ago and a mindset of stereotypical native americans. In my mind, most of the cliches are beside the point because so many are built with that underlying idea.
Science fiction embraces tragedy, hopelessness, impurity, and dehumanization as subjects, and often lets them win. The post-apocalyptic sci-fi has become it's own cliche, but rarely if ever do you see fantasies use it. There's always a way to win and reverse what's happened. In science fiction, by the time the story has started, often the protagonist has already lost. A fantasy where a "dark lord" ruled from beginning to end eould be rejected as a downer, but in most cyberpunks, no one even tries to fight the corporations, they just accept them.
Science fiction gets to move forward with its topics and therefore move forward with its artform. Fantasy doesn't, so it's stuck repeating itself endlessly.
Fantasies focus on the past, on low technology, on spiritual and natural purity, usually being desecrated by some absolute evil of some kind. They want a return to 4,000 years ago and a mindset of stereotypical native americans. In my mind, most of the cliches are beside the point because so many are built with that underlying idea.
Science fiction embraces tragedy, hopelessness, impurity, and dehumanization as subjects, and often lets them win. The post-apocalyptic sci-fi has become it's own cliche, but rarely if ever do you see fantasies use it. There's always a way to win and reverse what's happened. In science fiction, by the time the story has started, often the protagonist has already lost. A fantasy where a "dark lord" ruled from beginning to end eould be rejected as a downer, but in most cyberpunks, no one even tries to fight the corporations, they just accept them.
Science fiction gets to move forward with its topics and therefore move forward with its artform. Fantasy doesn't, so it's stuck repeating itself endlessly.
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Interesting way of looking at it.
Thinking about it, fantasy in general has seemed to put even more stock than usual in the "happy ending." Perhaps why I was drawn so strongly to the Chrons in fact, as stark contrast.
I'm not sure that sci-fi often lets those aspects win, but it may well do so more readily than fantasy does. Hmmm...
Certainly bears thinking about. (Good post.)
--A
Thinking about it, fantasy in general has seemed to put even more stock than usual in the "happy ending." Perhaps why I was drawn so strongly to the Chrons in fact, as stark contrast.
I'm not sure that sci-fi often lets those aspects win, but it may well do so more readily than fantasy does. Hmmm...
Certainly bears thinking about. (Good post.)
--A
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taraswizard
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Reply to IBC
IBC, you've most likely not read any China Mieville, fantasy writer, however he does not conform to the criteria you describe. Additionally, Mieville has written some non-fiction analytical essays on the criteria you discuss, where he points out those criteria are not essential nor historical components or parts of fantasy literature.
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Insomniac By Choice
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I haven't read any of his stuff, but I have read works that are outside of the fantasy cliche. Despite the Brooks hate I've seen, I quite enjoyed the Word and the Void series, for example. And of course the Covenant books are more non-standard, although I wasn't much of a fan of the end of White Gold Wielder.
But the point is, you really have to dig to find notable examples of those type of fantasy, while with science fiction, the first names to come to mind are likely to be the most worthwhile. You expect a certain level of intellectualism from science fiction that you just don't from fantasy.
Like you said, swords and sorcery aren't necessary for a fantasy story and I completely agree, but the shadow cast by the Lord of the Rings is long and most authors are content to rest in its shade.
But the point is, you really have to dig to find notable examples of those type of fantasy, while with science fiction, the first names to come to mind are likely to be the most worthwhile. You expect a certain level of intellectualism from science fiction that you just don't from fantasy.
Like you said, swords and sorcery aren't necessary for a fantasy story and I completely agree, but the shadow cast by the Lord of the Rings is long and most authors are content to rest in its shade.
Good man. Since we're *sorta* on this subject, i have had the pleasure of publishing a book as well but i won't go into it that much.BT Shire wrote:Yep, I have a book, which is going to be translated into German and published in Austria next year (long story). I'm currently working on a sequel, and also a new short story for the next Kevin's Watch anthology.
One cliche i absolutely hate is the fact that MAGIC IS DYING OUT AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP IT!!! unless you do this and this and this and this and this....and THEN the world will be saved and magic can once again...blah blah blah.
In my series i'm starting, i was hoping to do the exact opposite. the founding of magic and what would happen if magic was founded on an unsuspecting land where the so called 'magicians' use it to their own selfish gains rather than try and delve into it and create all those stupid spells and theories and whatnot.
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Fist and Faith
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