In the Gryphon Forest: Fantasy Writing

Readers write. Do what you love, right? Not every bibliophile aspires to become a writer. This is for the ones who do. As a reader, I’ve noticed a few trends that should be left for dead in the fantasy genre. Although specified for fantasy, the principles can be applied to any writing.  

• Say what?

Over 6,000 languages exist in our world. Why, then, should only one language exist in your fantasy realm? This one, I’ve noticed, is most prevalent in more amateur writers. For whatever reason, every character in the story speaks the same language, the same dialect in the same accent. For a story situated in an enclave, isolated from other communities, this could be expected, but for any story that travels beyond a single community, multiple languages (or at least multiple dialects, multiple accents) should logically exist.

• Haven’t I seen you before?

Overwhelmingly, the cast of a fantasy story is white, heterosexual, able-bodied cis-men, sometimes a tomboy girl or a princess thrown in for fun. The lack of female characters has become less of an issue lately, with books like Graceling and Snow Like Ashes, but the rest remains true. As a quick note, I am not saying that fantasy authors are racist, sexist, ableist, or homophobic. I am not saying people who enjoy those books shouldn’t. I am not blaming white, heterosexual, able-bodied, cis-men. Any time I broach this subject, some people get defensive.  

Some people might argue that the story’s setting resembles medieval Europe, in which a white, heterosexual cast would be appropriate. Those people, however, are forgetting that this is a fantasy story, not historical fiction. Last I checked, dragons, elves, and magic did not dominate thirteenth century Europe. If you’re breaking reality already, why not include a more diverse cast? If you include elves and dwarves, why not a black or Asian guy?

• Where’s God?

Several fantasy stories forget to include religion in their stories. It’s an integral part of our society (for good or bad), why leave it out? In others, it plays a minor part, like a rushed addition in post.

Forgetfulness in worldbuilding is not limited to religion. Economics, art, cults, and science (yes, even in medieval Europe, scholars read texts and conducted their own experiments; even in a magic system, you should still expect to find people who devote their lives to studying) are often neglected.

•  Farmer to Hero

You know it. We’ve all seen it before. The good-looking, orphan farmer boy who is nobly kind, generous, teased and bullied, smart, skilled with a sword as if he was a natural, and sometimes has noble ancestry. They appear again and again and again in fantasy stories. In more recent ones, the character is sometimes a girl serving her king in some capacity, but the trope lives on.

• Overnight success

“He’s a natural.” This one is a contender for most irritating. The protagonist just happens to be proficient with magic or a weapon without ever having touched one. Without putting in the work, they reap their rewards. Instant badass, pour in conflict and stir. By the enchantment of storytelling, they manage to beat trained soldiers without ever having been in a fight before. Somehow, the simple farmer (who realistically is probably illiterate if you’re trying to simulate medieval times) is smarter than all the king’s court and scholars who devoted their lives to debating ideas and studying thick texts. He comes up with the grand solution that no one else imagined. Make your protagonist learn, train, work, improve. He or she shouldn’t always be right. Let your darlings lose, massively. Let them make mistakes with dreadful consequences. Avoid the lazy route that makes him or her inexplicably better than everyone else.

Give me a twisted, flawed character who screws up and sometimes chooses evil over good, who blurs that line and becomes relatable. Give me a character on the edge of villainy over a sappy, groomed, and perfected hero.

And, yes, I am looking at Ender in Ender’s Game whose proficiency, fighting skills, and the reasoning behind them are bullshit and the many other (usually pre-teen to teenage boys) protagonists in stories. Fuck no. Give me a break.

•  Magic is Science

In a magical world, magic should be treated as science. There should be skeptics who see parts of it as a hoax. There should be people who entertain conspiracy theories about it. There should be people who believe it is outright dangerous and (at least parts of it) should be banned. There should be people who misunderstand magic or who spread false stories about it. There should be people who do nothing but study magic. People should perform magical experiments. It should have complex rules and guidelines.

• In the mirror, a hero

In fantasy, there is a trend to depict the villain as a sadistic, raping, selfish man with either nonexistent or ridiculous motives. It makes for a weak character. Make the villain sympathetic. Give him or her redeemable characteristics. In Harry Potter, the Malfoy family has numerous flaws, but they still love each other. Give some basis to the antagonist’s ideology. Maybe the villain entrusts higher, more powerful positions to women than the protagonist’s side. Luke Castellan from the Percy Jackson series was right about the gods basically abandoning their children; the means of enacting his motive was his flaw.

• Red Fish, Blue Fish 

In a lot of books I have read (fantasy or otherwise), the social hierarchy is painfully simplified. Frostblood, Red Queen, Red Rising, and Carve the Mark even divide the population into two simple classes—the dominant and the submissive. This simplistic world building comes off as lazy. The dichotomy of oppressor and oppressed is a simplified tale. During the American Civil Rights Movement, many whites were not explicitly against the movement, but they believed it was causing more trouble than it was worth, didn’t care, or were just silent. It would be like looking at America’s past and saying there are only black and whites, forget Asians, Latinos, and Native Americans. They aren’t as important.

• Forget the Bard

Poetry and sentiment are not gruesome additives, when handled with care. Do not be afraid of frank ugliness. Do not shy away from damaging your protagonist but do so with care. Tragic backstory for the simple sake of tragic backstory is useless. Giving your sympathetic character all the bad history is, to put it simply, stupid.

• Let It Rot

Two things that I feel every author should stop doing: prophecies and resurrections. They’re cheap as dog shit.

This is just a list of some issues I have with fantasy writing. Most of them are nitpicking details that simply follow logic but can be easily forgotten when the writer is wrapped up in plot and characterization. Tell me what literary tropes you find irritating, not limited to fantasy.