 Fantasy: July 24, 2013 Issue [#5802] |
  Fantasy
This week: Not All Elves Have Pointy Ears Edited by: Kitti the Red-Nosed Feline  
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Not all elves have pointy ears. At least, they don't have to. It's your story, and your creations can be whatever you want them to be, and look however you want them to look.
This week's Fantasy Newsletter is all about giving your own twist to well-established races and species. Or perhaps you can come up with a creature of your own!
Your guest editor - kittiara |
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Elves. Dwarves. Dragons. Trolls. When I think of fantasy novels, those are the races and species that I sort of expect to exist on whatever world I am about to explore. The problem is, wherever you go, they all seem to be similar.
Elves tend to be tall, and beautiful, with a love of nature and natural magic. Dwarves like to live underground, have a love of various metals, and they tend to be great smiths and fierce fighters. Trolls are dim. There's a bit more variety when it comes to dragons – they can be vicious, horrible beasts or beautiful, ancient beings full of wisdom. Whilst the sense of the familiar is comforting, I like it when an author gets creative and takes a different view of things.
Take Terry Pratchett, for example. In his novel Lords and Ladies, elves find a way into his world and they are not at all nice. They do have magic, but they use it to oppress people. They cast a glamor about themselves, so that they appear beautiful, and make everyone else feel infinitely inferior. Once you get past that, there is no beauty to be found.
His witches are practical ladies. They assist the inhabitants of surrounding villages with childbirth and death, ailments and general advice. One of his main characters, Granny Weatherwax, uses something called “headology”, which can best be summed up through the following quote - Granny Weatherwax had never heard of psychiatry and would have had no truck with it even if she had. There are some arts too black even for a witch. She practiced headology---practiced, in fact, until she was very good at it. And though there may be some superficial similarities between a psychiatrist and a headologist, there is a huge practical difference. A psychiatrist, dealing with a man who fears he is being followed by a huge and terrible monster, will endeavor to convince him that monsters don't exist. Granny Weatherwax would simply give him a chair to stand on and a very heavy stick. - from Maskerade by Terry Pratchett.
Twists on the expected can be fun. They can inspire. They tell the reader, and other writers, that it's okay to write about a different kind of elf than those found in The Lord of the Rings. Whilst J. R. R. Tolkien was, no doubt, an excellent writer, he didn't lay down the rules for every fantasy author who dreams up a new world.
You don't have to have good elves and dark elves. Your dwarves don't have to sing songs about gold, or do battle with an ax. Who says that dwarves can't favour the crossbow, or, in fact, can't be peace-loving forest dwellers? They don't even have to have beards...
The wonderful thing about fantasy is that it is indeed fantasy, and the only limit is an author's imagination. Sure, if you create a world so strange, so different, that the reader is likely to get completely lost, your audience may well be limited. People like it when there's something to hold on to, something they recognize and can relate to. That doesn't mean that you can't surprise them.
Back to Terry Pratchett's Discworld – when I introduced the series to some of my family members, they couldn't get past the idea that the Discworld is a disc that rests on four gigantic elephants who, in turn, stand on the back of Great A'Tuin, the space turtle. It's a shame, because there is a lot that's familiar. Pratchett displays an amazing insight into human nature.
I've read a lot of fantasy novels and series over the years, from DragonLance, to Raymond E. Feist, to, most recently, the A Song of Ice and Fire series (still making my way through that one, to be truthful). Half the fun is in the exploration.
I love it when an author invents an entirely new species. I also love to create my own. It doesn't matter if the species is good or evil, or somewhere in-between. It's great to bring your imagination to life, and see the effect it has on other people.
We've got an excellent opportunity right here on this site to test out our ideas. Are your stories too complex to follow? Do your unique creations fill your readers with dread? Were they meant to? Whilst every reader is as different as every author, and one or two comments shouldn't drive you to shelf your drafts, feedback is helpful when you want to fine-tune your work.
So, why not try out a twist or creation of your own? You never know, it might catch on  .
kittiara
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Here are some of the latest additions to the Fantasy genre .
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The Fantasy Newsletter team welcomes any and all questions, suggestions, thoughts and feedback, so please don't hesitate to write in!
As your guest editor this week, I have no questions to answer or feedback to respond to, but please rest assured that if you comment, it will be read. Newsletter editors love to hear their readers' thoughts  .
Wishing you a week filled with inspiration,
The Fantasy Newsletter Team.
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