Common Fantasy Trends

by Breaking Quills Lt.

1.) Starting off with a prophecy.

2.) Starting each chapter with a poem/song/quote. Okay, this one goes for other books, too. The thing is, I just don't care. I want to read the story. I usually pass them over.

3.) The concealment of information. Look, I know that revealing things a little at a time is good for keeping a reader's interest, but I am so so SO sick of being teased and then getting some lame excuse as to why I - and the main character - can't know the information. "It will be revealed at the appropriate time." UGH! I've done the reverse of this with my current rewrite. The stuff that I was saving and teasing the reader with? I lay it all out there in the first few chapters. If it's interesting enough, the reader will keep reading. And on a side note, you can keep information from the reader and reveal it later, but it's the telling the reader that there's info and not divulging it that annoys me.

4.) Characters that are dumber than the reader. If you've figured something out before the character figures it out - and I'm not talking "predicting" something, I'm talking about you put all of the clues together - then I figure there's really no point in continuing to read. To me that says that the author thinks I'm stupid.

5) Bad guys that are EVIL!!!11!!!ELEVEN for no reason what so ever. I don’t mind them being evil, just as long as there is a decent reason for it.

6.) The preconception that the setting is 'more important' than the plot or characters, and that we fantasy scribes must waste pages and pages blathering on about cities, cultures and histories that don't have a lot to do with anything except nothing, in order to show off how much time we spent on worldbuilding.

7.) How fantasy characters tend to act. I'm very tired of how unrealistic they are. Fantasy characters always seem so... naive and optimistic. They're so aware of being fantasy characters that they spend their every waking hour doing 'fantasy' stuff like looking for ways to defeat the Dark Lord, instead of acting like real people and wondering vaguely about what's for dinner. And real people are about 80000 times more cynical than fantasy characters. They don't automatically believe everything or celebrate when something good happens, or pay attention when they should be. Real people, if faced by some crazy old lady telling them 'Thou shalt be KING!!!', snort and say 'yeah, whatever' and then wander off instead of staying to listen any further. When a real person sees someone else waxing lyrical and making grand proclaimations about the meaning of life or whatever, they laugh and tell them to stop being melodramatic. Real people have short attention spans and short memories. If someone else drops some vital and dramatic clue about the quest they're on, it's more than likely that a real person won't be listening, will fail to pick up on it, or will forget about it by the next day.

8.) If I may, where the author is so proud of this great place that he/she's created that it becomes the foreground rather than the background against which the story takes place.
The story and the characters are the important thing. The story is about that, not the architechure. The history and background should be put into the fore only as relevant to the story. If the place's atmosphere matters to what occurs than it's important. We don't need a discourse on the history of dragons in the world merely because one walks on stage for a cameo. And no lectures from the narrative voice. It's like a guy in a suit walks out with an overhead and starts explaining the background behind some event or country or whatever and the plot just stagnates until the professor is done.

9.) Too many authors do not do any research about pre-modern societies and man does it show. You want to design a culture you have to know how one works. A working knowledge of the patterns of societal development makes things so much easier.

Especially when you realize that certain patterns recur again and again.
1. Warrior/nobility (often living in hilltop forts), they owe obligations to higher lords/kings, they use horses(where available) and often use swords and wear armor,
2. peasants organized into villages are under their protection
3. a specific class who keep records,
4. merchants and craftsmen forming professional groups
5. Institutions of learning supported by the government
6. Organized religious hierarchies
7. Exterior peoples (less developed and often pastoralists) trying to invade and getting what the settled people have
8. War between different groups of people
9. Village organization very similar across broad expanses of cultures.

From ancient times to the Medieval Period and across the world.

Setting versus plot, it's like watching a play. What's more important the sets or the actors and story?