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Rules for Writing Fantasy
Monday, October 31st, 2005 02:27 pmI've just finished reading Robin Hobb's Tawny Man trilogy, which is some of the best-written fantasy fiction I've read in years. Of course, this isn't saying much, since most fantasy fiction is dross*, but it got me thinking about how to write a fantasy epic that isn't embarrassingly bad. Here are some rules I thought up for budding fantasy writers.
Go easy on the magic.
If you have no magic at all, then you're not really writing fantasy, you're writing a kind of historical novel with the disadvantage of having no actual history. On the other hand, a surfeit of magic can make the rest of the action impotent. What is the point of brushing up your martial skills when some passing wizard can conjure up a fireball that will lay waste to an entire barbarian horde? A society in which magic was both effective and commonplace would not resemble the quasi-feudal societies of most fantasy fiction, but would be something much, much weirder. One thing which makes Hobb's writing good is that the magic is fairly subtle (most of it is just different forms of telepathy) and it is introduced gradually, with most of the characters not really knowing its full potential. George R.R. Martin goes even further: in A Game of Thrones, there are only hints of long-forgotten magics. In other words, for sword and sorcery, you want nine parts swords to one part sorcery.
Note: if you can come up with a pseudoscientific explanation for the magic (as in Sheri S. Tepper's books) that's a big plus.
Think about economics.
Economics may sound like a dull subject for a fantasy writer to be concerned with - they don't call it "the dismal science" for nothing - but considering the mundane underpinnings of your imaginary society pays off in believability. Most fantasy worlds are, as I just said, quasi-feudal, so they need a feudal economy. If you want to play around with the social structure, you need to change the economy as well. Let's say we want, in contrast to our classic feudal society, an egalitarian, freedom-loving one. How would these fantasy anarchists make a living? Would they have common ownership of land (and if so, why?), or would they have a non-agricultural economy (herding the great Gruntha beasts, for example).
Oh yes, and on the subject of economics, please remember that unless your fantasy planet has a radically different mineral composition to Earth, a gold piece is a hell of a lot of money, and not something an adventurer would blow on a night in a seedy inn.
Brass bikinis do not a feminist novel make
We all like warrior women. Female readers like them because they represent strong women, and male readers like them because chicks in skimpy armour are hot. However, unless you're going for the token warrior woman who can be explained by some social or magical anomaly, you need to think a bit more. If a society offers equal slaying rights to women, what other changes would that require? What kind of economy would it have in order to allow its womenfolk to rush off on quests?
You also need to consider the physical aspect of combat. Women can fight pretty well, but not in the conventional medieval style that is standard in sword and sorcery novels. Those swords were heavy; most men who don't work out at the gym couldn't wield them effectively, let alone the willowy warrior women beloved of fantasy writers (see the opening scene of Red Sonja for a particularly absurd example of skinny girls brandishing swords that would make even Arnie's muscles burn). Look at examples of how women have actually fought in history, such as the Scythian "warrior princesses" or the naginata-wielding samurai women.
Of course you can have powerful women without the brass bikinis. Robin Hobb's Outislanders are quite matriarchal, not because their women go to war, but because the women own and farm the land while the men go fishing or raiding (economics again!). Then of course you can always resort to magic, as in Andre Norton's Witchworld books.
Only plunder two features from any historical culture
Let's say you want a bunch of scary sea-raiders in your story. This automatically says "Vikings" to the reader, so you need to be careful not to bring in all the other cultural baggage as well. Following the two cultural features rule, this leaves you a choice of only one of the following:
Don't use silly spelling
One thing that did irritate me about Hobb was her spelling of the dragon's name: Icefyre. What is it with fantasy writers that they need to change I's to Y's (and vice versa)? And anyone who spells "fairy" "faerie" needs to be shot with a faerie dart. You are not Edmund Spenser, and you don't live in the sixteenth century. At the other extreme, don't go so far from traditional English spelling that the reader is left with no idea of how to pronounce the characters' names. Please think about the phonology of your mythical languages, rather than typing consonants and apostrophes at random. If I see more than two weird names on the back of a book, I put it back on the shelf.
Forget that you ever read The Lord of the Rings
Another thing that makes me put a book back on the shelf is when the blurb says "comparable to Tolkien at his best".** If your publisher feels obliged to exaggerate your writerly skill to this extent, it probably means your book is so unoriginal, they can only think of comparing it to The Lord of the Rings because, well, it's got elves and stuff. Elves, orcs, halflings and the other stock characters are fine for Dungeons and Dragons scenarios, but usually spell death for a novel. Either make up your own mythology from scratch, or do as Tolkien did and rewrite folklore, not other people's fantasy worlds.
* There again, most fiction of any variety is dross, and I'd still rather read dross which has sword-fights in it than dross about ordinary people wrestling with the ordinary problems of their ordinary lives.
** This raises the question of who Tolkien was compared to. Fortunately I have the answer: the original blurb for The Lord of the Rings compared it to Spenser's Faerie Queene. This shows how original Tolkien was - the only author they could think of comparing to died several centuries ago.
Go easy on the magic.
If you have no magic at all, then you're not really writing fantasy, you're writing a kind of historical novel with the disadvantage of having no actual history. On the other hand, a surfeit of magic can make the rest of the action impotent. What is the point of brushing up your martial skills when some passing wizard can conjure up a fireball that will lay waste to an entire barbarian horde? A society in which magic was both effective and commonplace would not resemble the quasi-feudal societies of most fantasy fiction, but would be something much, much weirder. One thing which makes Hobb's writing good is that the magic is fairly subtle (most of it is just different forms of telepathy) and it is introduced gradually, with most of the characters not really knowing its full potential. George R.R. Martin goes even further: in A Game of Thrones, there are only hints of long-forgotten magics. In other words, for sword and sorcery, you want nine parts swords to one part sorcery.
Note: if you can come up with a pseudoscientific explanation for the magic (as in Sheri S. Tepper's books) that's a big plus.
Think about economics.
Economics may sound like a dull subject for a fantasy writer to be concerned with - they don't call it "the dismal science" for nothing - but considering the mundane underpinnings of your imaginary society pays off in believability. Most fantasy worlds are, as I just said, quasi-feudal, so they need a feudal economy. If you want to play around with the social structure, you need to change the economy as well. Let's say we want, in contrast to our classic feudal society, an egalitarian, freedom-loving one. How would these fantasy anarchists make a living? Would they have common ownership of land (and if so, why?), or would they have a non-agricultural economy (herding the great Gruntha beasts, for example).
Oh yes, and on the subject of economics, please remember that unless your fantasy planet has a radically different mineral composition to Earth, a gold piece is a hell of a lot of money, and not something an adventurer would blow on a night in a seedy inn.
Brass bikinis do not a feminist novel make
We all like warrior women. Female readers like them because they represent strong women, and male readers like them because chicks in skimpy armour are hot. However, unless you're going for the token warrior woman who can be explained by some social or magical anomaly, you need to think a bit more. If a society offers equal slaying rights to women, what other changes would that require? What kind of economy would it have in order to allow its womenfolk to rush off on quests?
You also need to consider the physical aspect of combat. Women can fight pretty well, but not in the conventional medieval style that is standard in sword and sorcery novels. Those swords were heavy; most men who don't work out at the gym couldn't wield them effectively, let alone the willowy warrior women beloved of fantasy writers (see the opening scene of Red Sonja for a particularly absurd example of skinny girls brandishing swords that would make even Arnie's muscles burn). Look at examples of how women have actually fought in history, such as the Scythian "warrior princesses" or the naginata-wielding samurai women.
Of course you can have powerful women without the brass bikinis. Robin Hobb's Outislanders are quite matriarchal, not because their women go to war, but because the women own and farm the land while the men go fishing or raiding (economics again!). Then of course you can always resort to magic, as in Andre Norton's Witchworld books.
Only plunder two features from any historical culture
Let's say you want a bunch of scary sea-raiders in your story. This automatically says "Vikings" to the reader, so you need to be careful not to bring in all the other cultural baggage as well. Following the two cultural features rule, this leaves you a choice of only one of the following:
- blond hair
- battle axes
- long ships with dragon's heads
- long epic poems
- fjords
- names like Erik Bloodaxe
Don't use silly spelling
One thing that did irritate me about Hobb was her spelling of the dragon's name: Icefyre. What is it with fantasy writers that they need to change I's to Y's (and vice versa)? And anyone who spells "fairy" "faerie" needs to be shot with a faerie dart. You are not Edmund Spenser, and you don't live in the sixteenth century. At the other extreme, don't go so far from traditional English spelling that the reader is left with no idea of how to pronounce the characters' names. Please think about the phonology of your mythical languages, rather than typing consonants and apostrophes at random. If I see more than two weird names on the back of a book, I put it back on the shelf.
Forget that you ever read The Lord of the Rings
Another thing that makes me put a book back on the shelf is when the blurb says "comparable to Tolkien at his best".** If your publisher feels obliged to exaggerate your writerly skill to this extent, it probably means your book is so unoriginal, they can only think of comparing it to The Lord of the Rings because, well, it's got elves and stuff. Elves, orcs, halflings and the other stock characters are fine for Dungeons and Dragons scenarios, but usually spell death for a novel. Either make up your own mythology from scratch, or do as Tolkien did and rewrite folklore, not other people's fantasy worlds.
* There again, most fiction of any variety is dross, and I'd still rather read dross which has sword-fights in it than dross about ordinary people wrestling with the ordinary problems of their ordinary lives.
** This raises the question of who Tolkien was compared to. Fortunately I have the answer: the original blurb for The Lord of the Rings compared it to Spenser's Faerie Queene. This shows how original Tolkien was - the only author they could think of comparing to died several centuries ago.
