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Note: this is about literature, not  Fantasy.
My library is a pretty weird place. It’s just two bookcases, so everything I own gets to crash together. You’ve got the non-fiction somewhere between graphic novels and anthologies of poetry, and then there’s Banana Yoshimoto cruising on top of volume two of the Decameron, and I mustn’t fail to mention Homer hanging out with Hemingway. I’ve read pretty much everything I’ve got, so I like to think I’m pretty well read for my age. I won’t lie, though. I’ve still got a ton to read. For instance, I’ve never read Alice in Wonderland. It just slipped me by. I’ve also never read The Dead Souls or War and Peace, but I have read The Brothers Karamazov and Lolita.Time is valuable, I suppose, and those are the trades that happen.
All these books get an equal spot in my library. Even if I owned, say, Twilight, I would still put it up there. But you know, I don’t love them all the same. I’ve got Suttree on my reading list. I know it’s not its time yet, but sometimes I sneak a peak and read a paragraph, maybe just the starting one, and I get a little giddy, and I think to myself: holy hell, this is good. Because it is. I consider the words, they way they are arranged. I note how they go together to form a beautiful whole. They chain together and channel meaning in the way that only Cormac McCarthy can and it is actually scary how good the result is. There is a kind of fierce poetry at work, and something from the language of the ancient hebrew prophets. Who else can write like that save him?
Right next to Suttree I keep Game of Thrones. A Song of Ice and Fire is a story through and through. It doesn’t care about style or literature or anything at all. If you take away the plot there is nothing left, neither the joy of writing, nor the agony, nor the power of it. This is true for most of the genre literature I read. I find authors who write with no voice of their own, instead embracing this toneless dialect I refer to as Workshop Standard because it works according to the credo “murder your darlings”, which invites writers to cut any particular turn of phrase which is theirs and theirs alone, because it involves taking a risk, and because it is threatening by virtue of poetic effort. If all you want to do is tell a story, then you must kill your style, because then it would be more than just a story, and after all, that’s all that people want.
Listen: I don’t mean to offend people who enjoy George R.R. Martin, but the least part of any work of literature shall always be the story. What is the plot anyway? The Iliad is about a bunch of chauvinist men fighting it out over a woman, but it is so much more. Romeo and Juliet is a banal love story, but it is transformed by Shakespeare’s poetry. All the great classics are more than just stories. They are statements, they are aesthetic experiences, they are something the author had to say. They are not just entertainment, and that is what many of these books are trying to be, to their cost.
Let me tell you about this book series called The Kingkiller Chronicles. The first novel is The Name of the Wind. It is my favorite fantasy book. I like it so much because the author does have a voice of his own, and because although his writing is nowhere near perfect, he talks about humanity. There are others things going in the books. There are all the typical fantasy trappings. There is the girl, the antagonist, the mystery, the master, everything, you name it. I don’t care about all that. I read it because the protagonist is a musician, and because his passion is well represented. I read it because the author can (at times) write beautifully and with great vigour. I like it because he has a sense of poetry. That is what touches me. Epic battles, tragic love stories - all that I have seen over and over again. Heroism is as common as triteness, and they often go together. You know who isn’t a hero? Elmer Fudd, but look how great a character that is, even if it’s only slapstick.
I like fantasy, or rather, I like the idea of fantasy. I want it to succeed. I have seen science fiction garnering more academic acceptance because it is in the hands of some authors more than just stories, and I think that’s great.
Until then, I just hope people will stop saying The Wheel of Time is good.
 
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i like his vultures
(sorry, couldn't resist the troll opportunity)
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What. This wasn't about Fantasy
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DUDE. The Kingkiller Chronicles are absolutely fantastic! did you read the second book yet? i loved it and i can't wait for the third one!
i like a game of thrones myself, but i do find it hard to get through the books sometimes. it just isn't engaging enough sometimes, instead just having plot after plot after plot, and not enough action or, well... something.
I would also recommend Jim Butcher's The Codex Alera. I really liked that series and the pacing of everything.
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It's weird how you say that GRRM's aSoIaF series are plot-driven. I thought of them as being very character-driven novels set in a fantasy medieval world. Even the way that the books are structured is such that chapters are written from different PoVs, and it's fascinating to see how different characters perceive each other and interact with one another. For one, I definitely want to see how Tyrion and Dany react to each other, and Littlefinger and Dany even more so.
The plot itself is very convoluted and not that fantastic by my own admission.
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I thought this was about the Crown Prince
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In A Dance With Dragons, + Show Spoiler +I was generally pretty disappointed with the plot development, but some of the writing really resonated with me. Not in a high culture literature sense, but in the sense that his POV writing does a great job putting you inside the characters heads. I'm specifically thinking of the Reek chapters here. Jeyne, Jeyne, it rhymes with pain.
And I agree with the above poster. Though ASOIF's characters are notoriously short-lived, I think of them as the focus. I don't really care about who ends up on the Iron Throne or what ends up happening to the city of Meereen, I care about watching how the characters will deal with the world around them, and seeing events from their eyes.
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jung laden, bombing this thread
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I thought this was about that terrible player oov transfers souls with to make good.
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On August 04 2011 07:42 Thrill wrote:Damn the blog titles today! Fantasy
On August 04 2011 08:03 a176 wrote:
What. This wasn't about Fantasy
On August 04 2011 08:24 zerious wrote:
I thought this was about the Crown Prince
On August 04 2011 09:04 Kaal wrote:
I thought this was about that terrible player oov transfers souls with to make good.
I'm sorry for unintentionally deceiving you!
On August 04 2011 08:07 dinosaurcow wrote:
DUDE. The Kingkiller Chronicles are absolutely fantastic! did you read the second book yet? i loved it and i can't wait for the third one!
I laughed so much at the story of the boy with the golden screw in his bellybutton. Also, I'm glad Kvothe is becoming a more tragic character. However, I'd say that the second book expanded on the first book's strength, but was weaker overall.
On August 04 2011 08:20 tyCe wrote:
It's weird how you say that GRRM's aSoIaF series are plot-driven. I thought of them as being very character-driven novels set in a fantasy medieval world. Even the way that the books are structured is such that chapters are written from different PoVs, and it's fascinating to see how different characters perceive each other and interact with one another. For one, I definitely want to see how Tyrion and Dany react to each other, and Littlefinger and Dany even more so.
I can see why you'd think that, but it's simply not true that they are more "character driven" than any other novel. It's just that Martin uses a type of narration which is limited to a single character at a time, and so his chapters are essentially parts of text where he follows a particular character. The thing is, he could have easily done away with separate chapters and done larger chapters where he talked about all the characters using a 3rd person omniscient narrator and achieved pretty much the same thing. The problem was the action was geographically dispersed so doing it would have been awkward. Even so, the novel is still defined by action. It does not take place entirely in the minds of the protagonists. They do things, and things happen to them, and that's what we get to follow.
On August 04 2011 08:28 Iranon wrote:In A Dance With Dragons, + Show Spoiler +I was generally pretty disappointed with the plot development, but some of the writing really resonated with me. Not in a high culture literature sense, but in the sense that his POV writing does a great job putting you inside the characters heads. I'm specifically thinking of the Reek chapters here. Jeyne, Jeyne, it rhymes with pain.
See, I actually thought the writing was pretty hammy and possibly worse than his other books. Also, I wished he would stop repeating the same phrases over and over again. (I get it, Martin, you have a rhyming dictionary. Good for you.) Oh, well.
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On August 04 2011 09:18 procyonlotor wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2011 08:28 Iranon wrote:In A Dance With Dragons, + Show Spoiler +I was generally pretty disappointed with the plot development, but some of the writing really resonated with me. Not in a high culture literature sense, but in the sense that his POV writing does a great job putting you inside the characters heads. I'm specifically thinking of the Reek chapters here. Jeyne, Jeyne, it rhymes with pain. See, I actually thought the writing was pretty hammy and possibly worse than his other books. Also, I wished he would stop repeating the same phrases over and over again. (I get it, Martin, you have a rhyming dictionary. Good for you.) Oh, well.
Meh. I guess I should clarify that Reek's mantra was the only use of repetition I thought worked really well. "You know nothing, Jon Snow", the thrumming sound, the floppy ears metaphor, and probably more that I'm forgetting about, those all got very old.
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Different people like different things, So you saying something is 'not good' is wrong. You dont like it, other people might have different criteria. I read to relax, so books with lots of hidden meanings and lots of complex plotlines are just bothersome. Most fantasy is just simple and light to read, nothing wrong with that imo.
I strongly disagree when you say that the least part of a bok is the story. For me, a light reader, the story is the most important part of the book, which is allso why I like fantasy books.
I agree thought that a lot of fantasy writers are not very creative and a lot of them follow the line. Which is kind of ironic. Fantasy write should be creative and not just copy the genre to death.
I like it when a book is just a story and doesn't try to teach you anything or has a deeper meaning.
Ps.
The wheel of time is good. You know why?
Because people like reading it.
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Until then, I just hope people will stop saying The Wheel of Time is good.
I don't really want to debate this, I'm really just a sucker who read the first 5 books or so and then just had to know the end of the story. But I think The Wheel of Time is a good example of what you're talking about re use of language versus shoving a plot down your throat.
My feelings about Robert Jordan were that I found his writing very involving. He took a lot time out from plot development to describe the world that he was writing about. Everything detail of that world and how it functioned had been thought about and developed in Jordan's mind to the highest degree, and he communicated his vision beautifully.
Having said that, perhaps it did make his novels a bit long-winded but the point of this is not to criticise Robert Jordan but to compare his writing style with Brandon Sanderson. Who I probably will criticise.
Brandon Sanderson, I would like to put into the same category as George RR Martin (whose books admittedly I haven't read), as being entirely devoted to telling the story. To use your words, he doesn't care about style or literature or anything. Yes, his books move a bit faster, yes he tells the story quite well, but his writing style (for want of a better word) is full of standard, overused phrases and devices, and his character's personalities described in such an obnoxious and hyberbolic [is that a word] fashion that I find it impossible to empathise with anything that he writes.
Care to comment?
Also, I hate JK Rowling for not putting in 1% as much effort into writing her books as authors like Stephen Donaldson, Tolkien, Feist etc. Harry Potter could have been such an awesome fantasy series!
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Because I am currently writing a book myself, and because I have worked with this area of fiction, I have some already-formed thoughts about this topic. It just happens that I recently discussed this very topic with friends of mine. I thought that I would share with you what I told them:
Fantasy and Science Fiction are two sides of the same coin, a la "any technology sufficiently advanced can appear as magic." If you want to escape to a fantastical place, you have two seemingly equal choices. That said, why does science fiction still manage to beat out fantasy in cultural traction, being taken seriously, popularity, contributions to cultural dialogue?
I believe it is a confluence of factors.
1) On the whole, fantasy authors are not making an effort to produce literature. Most of fantasy is purely entertainment fluff. I like to believe there's quite a lot of potential for literary value in fantasy. Take, for example, an immortal elf, and contrast his outlook on life with that of a human being who lives at most 100 years - you produce a conversation about how to live and what we value and so forth. But most of what's produced is like AD&D, the book version; nobody seems to be lifting fantasy up to its full potential.
Science fiction, meanwhile, has successfully produced many long-lasting entrants into cultural dialogue, and this appears quite intentional.
2) This seems to happen because as a piece of art, science fiction has a lot of advantages over fantasy. A discussion of where we are are going very soon / want to go as a species and society is important and welcomed, while a fantasy book can only discuss where we've never been and can never go. The "magic" in fantasy is much less attainable than the "technology" in science fiction, and scifi has already inspired many inventions that were realized before the authors had even died.
In a collaboration I once worked on, our concept was to deal with the misguided notion in escapist fantasy of being able to retreat to a world of black and white morality, where "evil" manifests in physical ugliness, so you can always tell the "good guys" from the "bad guys," and straight-out murder the bad ones because they are "evil," guilt-free. Their guilt was apparent from their ugliness! We wanted to shock our main character with the shades of gray morality that appears in real life. People who escape with this kind of story don't want to have to think, and would prefer a place where everything is black and white. Science fiction rarely falls into this trap.
Since the OP wants to see fantasy do well, can you think of a way that fantasy can succeed in the same manner as science fiction? Is that even feasible, considering the inherent challenges to its success?
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On August 05 2011 00:12 Delerium wrote:
Since the OP wants to see fantasy do well, can you think of a way that fantasy can succeed in the same manner as science fiction? Is that even feasible, considering the inherent challenges to its success?
Thanks for your thoughts on the matter. I find myself agreeing with everything you said.
The crux of the matter is that at the heart of fantasy literature there has always been adventure and excitement. The escapism inherent in any genre is the one major factor as to why it is difficult to make fantasy succeed. Firstly, many people read fantasy because it is escapism. It helps them lay aside their troubles, their daily worries. It helps them relax without forcing needless intellectual exertion onto them. Like one poster was kind enough to point out, it makes for light reading, and “books with lots of hidden meanings and lots of complex plotlines are just bothersome”. People want fantasy this way. It is this expectation that contributes to slow down its progress. As long as there will be this kind of demand, authors will have less incentive to develop a different type of fantasy literature, readers will come to expect the same products, and aspiring writers will strive to emulate the more successful ones.
However, if a writer feels he has something to say, he can do so without resorting to fantasy. This means that if you use fantasy as your medium, you must strive to give value to those elements which are specific to that genre. You must use those elements in such a way as to make your statement “unsayable” using different devices. I’m thinking of speculative fiction, which embraces any branch of genre literature so long as it used to investigate and explore ideas. This use of fantasy is certainly closer to what we are looking for, but to my knowledge, it is still not very widespread, probably because behemoths such as the deceased Robert Jordan still cast their shadow over everything.
I want to point you toward the work of Neil Gaiman, who consistently uses fantasy efficiently without resorting to conventional tropes. I believe his Sandman series is the perfect representation of what we are talking about, and his novel American Gods makes a relevant statement which would not have been possible without the use of elements of fantasy. However, I honestly do not see epic or high fantasy being possible unless used as satire or parody, because it requires a straight-faced use and celebration of fantasy tropes.
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EPT
