“Fantasy: Elves and dragons – still fun or time for something new?
by brandonsanderson on Jun.08, 2009, under Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson here, author of various epic fantasy novels. I’m happy to be here–thanks to Borders for giving me this chance.
The first topic for our discussion is one close to my heart. Long ago, when I was an undergraduate, I wrote an essay entitled “Kill the Elves” for the on-campus sf/f magazine. I’ve long been a proponent for fantasy going in other directions, growing beyond the traditional Tolkienesque archetypes that have become so common in the genre. I’m bored with elves, bored with dwarves, bored with quests for magical objects.
But is this just my cynicism speaking? Is this like trying to get sf to stop using space ships? Are elves, dwarves, and the other fantasy stand-by races such a vital part of the genre that, in pulling them out, we’d remove what makes fantasy fun in the first place?
What of the quest archetype? An irreplaceable piece of the genre, tied to the hero’s journey and coming of age? Or is it a crutch that has been rehashed so many times that using it changes a fantasy novel from original and fresh into reading like a video-game on paper? And if we cut out these parts, where does that leave us? Where is fantasy going, and what might it become in the next decade?
Speak out. I’ve got more than a few thoughts on this myself, and I’m curious to see where the discussion goes.
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The Onion gives Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker A- review « Tor/Forge’s Blog
June 11th, 2009 on 2:52 pm[...] *** Brandon is also featured guest blogger this week and next on the new Borders blog Babel Clash – The geekiest debates in the galaxy. Check out the heated debate on whether elves should be banned from fantasy—and dragons, too—here. [...]
June 8th, 2009 on 3:08 pm
I agree. That is why i like your books.
see you at byu on tues.
cheers
s
June 8th, 2009 on 3:14 pm
“kill the elves” - I love it! care to share a few choice quotes from your essay?
I do find elves a bit cliche, but funnily enough, I “feel” like I haven’t seen them in awhile because they haven’t really overrun the big screen (other than LOTR) as they have in books.
so I wonder if that should set the timeline now (since Hollywood is always behind anyway)– the time for elves now is in movies/ TV, and fantasy books should deal with other beings (and movies/ TV will eventually catch up and get around to those later)..
June 8th, 2009 on 3:19 pm
I’m definitely tired of the Tolkien-esque elves. But the elves in Peter Hamilton’s sci-fi novels? Amazing. How great would it be if aliens turned out to be “elves” who talk in gibberish and may have a much larger role in the universe than we know of?
Better than the arrow-shooting, top-of-snow-walking ones we’re used to seeing…
June 8th, 2009 on 3:21 pm
What has happened to my beloved sci-fi section? It’s been taken over by sappy blood suckers and wand wavers. I’m ready to have all of the dwarves, elves, vampires and fiction related to them moved out of the science fiction section.
I can see why many are now starting to call their work “speculative fiction” to get away from such things. I believe that I saw Anathem in the standard Fiction section at the Notre Dame book store. I’m happier with it there to keep it from being contaminated by the damn elves.
June 8th, 2009 on 3:23 pm
I think the fantasy genre could need some new fresh way to be told.
Something like The Wheel of Time…Love it.
It is a bit different from all the other fantasy stuff , and much deeper in a way.
Is that not what fantasy is all about? Freedom and a way to let out a whole new world of creatures and places as you want?
Well anyway, good luck with WoT and all the other projects. can`t wait to read more of WoT.
From a Wheel of time fan in Norway.
June 8th, 2009 on 3:25 pm
It’s not necessarily the Tolkien elves, dwarves, etc as much as it’s the same plot lines and characters over and over again, IMHO. I’m no author so take it for what its worth, but “epic fantasy” seems to be in a rut.
June 8th, 2009 on 3:29 pm
I find that the key to good fantasy is epic world-creation, mythology, and character development, not so much the denizens an author uses to populate that world. This is why WoT and Mistborn (for example) work so well without elves and dwarves; they have new races, new character types and even new ‘magic’ but all of it works within a larger world and mythos that gives texture to what is new.
Seems like you could do that with elves and dwarves…break the stereotypes, I mean. It would have to be an anti-fantasy (like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven is an anti-western)…
June 8th, 2009 on 3:35 pm
Generally speaking, I agree with your idea to “kill the elves”. To qualify this, I need to say that how I think is similar to Mr. Loverin above; however, I would expand upon that to say that should an epicly created world and mythology call for it, elves and dwarves, whether they break the stereotypes or not, should by all means be included. I feel that excluding these simply because they are so often used is simply being pretentious. However, if a story is simply including elves and dwarves because they are “fantasy”, then that is equally (or perhaps more so) a negative thing.
June 8th, 2009 on 3:46 pm
I don’t know. So much of writing is about communication. The problem with using elves, dwarves, and such is that these names carry extra information. When you hear it is an elf, you immediately think of pointy ears, pale skin, etc. Tolkien may have made them tall while Santa’s helpers are short, but still there is a lot of information communicated just in the name “elf.” So, if you want to communicate that thing to your audience, sure, use elves in your story.
On the other hand, such a bundle of information can be a burden. To include any elf in a story requires that you spend time explaining which qualities of traditional elves your characters have and which are different from preconceived notions. There will always be some readers with different preconceived ideas about elves and you’ll have to deal with that. Overall, unless you pick a rather vanilla form of elf, it’s a pain to do well.
That probably explains why elves (and dwarves, etc.) are usually just the off-the-shelf variety. It doesn’t mean an author can’t use them, just that there’s a lot of baggage that comes with the names.
June 8th, 2009 on 4:16 pm
I think that when authors use already established archetypes and elements in their books it just overshadows any creativity the author might have had. Its like if you decide to try out a new restaurant that just opened up down the street and when you check out their menu for the first time all you see is ‘Big Mac’, ‘Whopper’, ‘5 Dollar foot longs’ yet you see past their incredible signature dish. (sorry for the lame references, I just needed to name something everyone would be able to recognize :P)
June 8th, 2009 on 4:23 pm
It has been said that there are only two types of stories: Hero on a Quest, and Boy Meets Girl. I’m not sure how you cut it out of fiction much less genre fiction.
June 8th, 2009 on 4:35 pm
I’ll agree it’s always good to read books that stretch the boundaries rather than relying too heavily on work that’s gone before. That said, it seems like getting too wrapped up in originality is one of those mental exercises that will just mess with one’s head. A really good story should be a balance between world building and story telling. Sometimes it’s necessary to use familiar things - shortcuts as it were - in order to skip over some of the world building and get to the story. I read somewhere about the “just call a horse a horse” rule of fantasy writing - to paraphrase, it’s not always necessary to invent a new species called a Gimblax that acts exactly like a horse.
The old plots keep coming around for a reason - they resonate with people. If you boil down the fetch the magical item plot you get the hero’s quest story. If you boil that down you get the introduction -> conflict -> climax -> resolution formula. I’m not sure how possible it is to get away from that, or if it’s even a desirable goal. If the focus in one’s book is to see if they can get away from the formula and be totally original, then it seems to me that one is focusing on the wrong thing and you end up with a book that might be interesting to study in a classroom, but isn’t necessarily any fun to read.
June 8th, 2009 on 4:39 pm
Personally, I love elves and dragons, so I don’t agree with killing them off. I do think sometimes they need to be reimagined and that where there be elves doesn’t necessarily mean there be dwarves also.
For example, I thoroughly enjoyed Jenna Rhodes Four Forges. It’s very creative, and it definitely has elves.
June 8th, 2009 on 4:44 pm
@Raphael: Maybe you’re using the term archetype in a way that I’m not familiar with (or I’m totally missing your point), but as far as I can tell, it’s almost impossible to get away from archetypes without looking really obvious about it. To elaborate on your restaurant metaphor, trying to get away from established archetypes would be like going to a sit down restaurant that didn’t split their menu into breakfast, lunch, dinner or desert, or (since we’re talking genre here), going to a Italian restaurant that didn’t serve salads, pasta, soup, cheese or wine.
June 8th, 2009 on 4:57 pm
Well, it depends on the author. If the best s/he can do is stuff in some elves, dwarves and dragons, and the plot of Star Wars, then s/he needs to try harder. But a really good author can make anything his/her own.
June 8th, 2009 on 5:05 pm
Oh, I’m not so worried about it. I think tons of good books exist and will exist. Some will have elves, some won’t. Elves (or any one other element) do not make or break a book for me. Sometimes elves are good comfort food; other times I want to try something new.
June 8th, 2009 on 5:08 pm
One of my favorite parts about reading a Brandon Sanderson novel is that I know it will be original. Sure, there may be some overlap in the themes, or development of the heroes, but the world, magic, religion and laws are all new. Discovering something that you have never seen or experienced before is the fun of reading fantasy.
As a disclaimer, I will still read anything with elves or dwarfs, and I will call some good.
June 8th, 2009 on 5:28 pm
@Meg
The dinner, breakfast and lunch thing is more on how a restaurant is set up. Kind of how a book has introduction , rising action etc. but what I meant had to deal more with content. I go to a new place or I read a new book to get something I haven’t experienced yet not something that available else where (that’s what I meant by seeing a Big Mac at a new restaurant). If I wanted a good elf and dragon book I’d read one that is known because of it. I don’t want to be reading a new book and an elf pops up halfway through the book just because the author felt like it wouldn’t be fantasy without it.
June 8th, 2009 on 5:35 pm
You don’t have elves in The Wheel of Thime series. You don’t have to use elves or dragons to create an extraordinary fantasy world. Sure you can use elves, and you can put a great mighty sword in the hands of the good guy, and create a groundbreaking story (try Lord of the Tings). But it is has been done. And it has been don in a way that you probably won’t surpass. So to speak elves are fun, but if I want to write a story, I’ll probably exclude the poiny-ears friends. And you can always try to rethink the idea behind the elves. But there is a chance to make them look like a terminator-elves, which is not a good idea. Sadly elves and dwarves, and dradons, and mighty swords are nothing more than a cliche.
June 8th, 2009 on 6:33 pm
There is nothing wrong with elves and dwarves per se, however when using alien races that the readers are familiar with, one runs the risk of reading more like a fanfic than an original piece of work. ‘Lending’ character types is never good unless you are sure you can make them your own. The same goes with plotlines and magic and whatnot.
June 8th, 2009 on 6:41 pm
I’m fine with elves. They certainly have their place in fiction. And they’ve been done differently by different authors. But to me, that’s really just the window dressing. They are the means to make cool things happen that don’t happen in real life–whether it’s Tolkien’s elves, Terry Brooks’ Elf Stones, or Rowlings’ suppressed but kick-butt house elves.
But I love BS’s totally different twists on magic. I would love to see at least one of his books filmed–if they would do it justice.
June 8th, 2009 on 6:42 pm
Elves in LotR represented beings from the otherworld, which in mythology could be elves or could be angels or any other being that lives in a world parallel to our own. I think the way Tolkien used them was brilliant, but any other uses I come across tend to feel a bit lacking (Terry Brooks, for example). I think this is because most authors who use elves are just taking the trappings of the character and not the deeper implications of them.
That said, I have to say that most contemporary fantasy books do not use elves, dwarfs, dragons, etc. The last few fantasy books I have read are your Mistborn series, Robin Hobb’s Farseer, Liveship, and Tawny Man trilogies, GRRM’s Song of Ice and Fire, Guy Gavriel Kay’s everthing from Tigana forward, Patrick Rothfuss’ Name of the Wind, Susanna Clark’s Johnathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I could go on and on. Not one of these books contains an elf.
Harry Potter of course does contain elves and dragons, but uses them in a humorous way that makes them seem fresh. Dobbie the house elf has very little in common with Galadriel.
June 8th, 2009 on 7:03 pm
this is one of the most hilarious conversation on elves I’ve ever read. First of all, never thought one could compare elves to Big Macs and Whopper (so to speak).
Also, I had almost completely forgotten about Dobbie, the saddest elf there ever was.
Other people touched upon it here, but I’ll second it: a great character is a great character; a great story is a great story. Even if it’s a pointy-eared forest-inhabiting elf character — fully imagined with rich and specific back stories, that character can still be one of the greatest fantasy characters ever written.
It’s only when, as some people above said, writers depend on previously established tropes and description to carry their character- and world-building that the characters come off as tired and empty.
June 8th, 2009 on 7:05 pm
I can hardly claim to have read everything in the flood of fantasy novels we’ve had in the last couple of decades, but my general sense is that elves and dwarves have been less prominent as the number of unabashed Tolkien ripoffs have declined.
The unusual degree of originality in your own books is much to your credit. I’m sure if you were to tell a story that required elves you’d find a way to make them fresh and your own. WARBREAKER is a great combination of traditional elements (e.g., a princess promised in marriage) and new ones (BioChromatic magic). No one’s carrying off that trick better than you at the moment.
June 8th, 2009 on 7:29 pm
Let’s get away from everything that’s been done before. get rid of the grunt race(usually orcs), get rid of the standard races and move on. Where we should go, I have no idea but the same story with slightly different characters is old, dead and would be better off buried.
June 8th, 2009 on 7:34 pm
I think that rather than just telling people to stop using fantasy archetypes, there should be an encouragement for people to use them in interesting ways.
A big backlash seems to be occurring in fantasy, wherein a lot of authors and readers seem to be trying to distance themselves from Tolkien’s far reaching influence. This, I feel, is a shame. It seems more the social stigma that fantasy archetypes carry that is what is trying to be kept at a distance, instead of looking to make some of these concepts fresh and exploring.
Not that I would deny that, for awhile, there has been an over proliferation of cliches in the fantasy genre; as such, antipathy or even antagonism towards such concepts is understandable. Neither am I advocating the use of any of these elements just for the sake of looking a fantasy book or pretending to be Tolkien.
Thing is, I feel fantasy has moved away from such things. As many above me have pointed out, elfs are rare in modern fantasy. At the moment the struggle, in my mind, seems to be more with the image of fantasy rather than the writing within the genre-discussing this any further may, possibly, be without the confines of the debate, however.
I guess what I am saying is that the key issue is how an idea is executed. No ideas, be they magic swords or dragons or dwarfs or heroes of prophecy, are inherently bad-merely well written or badly written.
June 8th, 2009 on 8:06 pm
Kill the Germans! “World War II novels are so cliche with all those Nazis, after all, so many people have done them!”
J/K
In all seriousness, though, I think it’s what you do with them that makes it interesting. It is a far worse sin, IMO, to name elves, or dwarves, or trollocs, oops! I mean trolls, something else, and then largely let them serve the exact same purpose in a story.
June 8th, 2009 on 8:12 pm
Here’s a for-instance:
One of the most creative fantasy worlds I’ve ever read was written in the late 90s and had elves, dwarves, dragons, the whole nine yards… The Death Gate Cycle. An antihero mage with his conscience projected into a dog… awesome! And the concept of the novel was highly original.
Even with elves and dwarves… er, dwarfs, oh never mind!
June 8th, 2009 on 8:25 pm
Tolkien did not invent elves. They’ve been around folktales and fantasies for centuries. He used an existing character type and reinvented it for the sake of his story. The problem is that there has been so much fiction that is derivative of his works that now all his races have a ton of excess baggage — to the point that if an author includes elves, dwarves, and orcs in a story, the baggage will probably overshadow the story. So it’s good that Brandon did not use them in his books — otherwise his writing would not seem as fresh. I don’t doubt that he could do them justice, but the excess writing it would take to “undo the cliche” may be a waste of his time, when using a newly named race would be quicker and at least as satisfying. (Imagine if Brandon had called the Koloss “Orcs.” He’d have to have written another chapter or two just to undo the image that name brings to mind.)
However, just changing the name is not enough. If I read a book with Capples, Milvies, and Zeets that happen to look and act just like Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs, that just makes me think the author is cheeting, and I want to put it down and never pick it up again.
If you want to invoke the cliche, however, and use it in a comical way, please do. I do like a good humorous tale. (e.g. the Alcatraz books invoke the cliche of a hero being endowed with special powers to great effect. I highly recommend them!)
June 8th, 2009 on 10:12 pm
I do not see these races getting old. I see Dwarves, Elves, and Orcs as being portrayed in a specific light in every single book they are put into. There is so much fantasy fodder on the market now that it is hard to find good stories. Authors are beginning to throw out books too fast and not putting enough heart into their story, which makes it hard for a reader to connect to the storyline. Then again if an industry is commercialized today it most likely will not make it.
Now back to fantasy, the whole genre basically HAS to have a journey in it or there is almost no point in making a story. You cant jump in a car or spaceship and be right there, you most usually do not have enough to make a storyline from just the place your main character is based from.
June 8th, 2009 on 10:20 pm
I don’t think elves and dragons are an integral part of any fantasy. Fantasy can be attempted in many ways that don’t necessarily include the stereotypes and cliches. I love Mistborn by the way. It is so unique and I believe that’s why it is so successful.
June 9th, 2009 on 2:44 am
A lot of you make good points–ones I’ve thought of before. Some of you make mention of elves and company being a big part of world mythology. Do we toss out that rich heritage simply because the standard take on some of those mythological elements has become…well, standard?
I teach creative writing, on occasion, at the local university. Generally, I theme my course as a writing science fiction and fantasy course. But one thing I like to make clear to my students (and I think every teacher in the arts should do this) is that there is no one right way to do this. It seems that any time I hear an author, editor, or scholar say “Well, THIS is obviously over-used, and will never sell again” someone immediately signs a huge book deal for a novel dealing with that very concept.
Twilight is an example of this, Harry Potter was another. I actually heard someone saying “Vampires are dead” (pun intended, I think) at a convention, with their tone being that vampire novels don’t sell. Twilight came out about a year later. Whatever you think about its quality, you have to agree that the “Vampires don’t sell” concept proved to be very wrong.
Still, I as a fantasy reader (long before I became a published author of the genre) was growing very tired of the same old clichés redone and repackaged as “new” fantasy stories. Now that I’ve tried my hand at the process, I realize that being original is far more difficult than I naively assumed. But still, I am left wondering why fantasy–which should be the most imaginative genre out there–tends to also be one of those that has some of the most recycling going on.
New writers in my class often will try to impress me with “Their” take on a fantasy cliché. I applaud their attempts to take something and make it theirs, but usually they just don’t do enough. Making orcs have a different color skin isn’t that much of a change. I’ve learned to cringe when someone says “Well, MY elves are like this….” Why do you have to have elves? I can all but guarantee they’re not going to be THAT different from what’s come before. And if they are, why call them elves in the first place? Why not cast aside the word so that you can act without reader preconception?
And yet, I have to come back to the point that I began this post upon–the idea that there IS a lot of room to still explore the old mythologies. And just because I’m tired of what many people have done before doesn’t mean that I won’t be impressed and amazed by what someone else might try in the future.
I’ll post another topic like this tomorrow, taking the discussion along a slightly different path. Until then, feel free to chime in further on this concept. It will help me decide where to go in the next two weeks as we have this discussion. (And please forgive me typos as this all progresses–I’m under a number of deadlines, and while I’m excited to interact, I don’t know how much editing I’ll have time to do on my posts.)
June 9th, 2009 on 8:48 am
Science Fiction and Fantasy books are something I have read a lot of whilst growing up, I am now only 18, but I could not think of a world today in which I didn’t think that elves and dwarfs are somehow real, hiding in the deep mountains and forests of the world.
If elves and dragons are no longer fun, are the imagination of us the ‘fantasy nerds’ boring too. We buy these stories for a reason, we buy them for a bit of escapism, a bit of wonder and magic in a world that is lacking all of that at times.
Lets stick to what we know, tweak it and make it fresh yes, but lets not kill off characters that whilst growing up inspired us to think a little differently from our peers.
June 9th, 2009 on 10:40 am
Mr. Sanderson said that one can try to change the “elves” to make them one of a kind. But where is the point? If you stick with the word “elves” the reader will have a preconception. We all know what elves are. I personally don’t want to see a Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot (see http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NinjaPirateZombieRobot?from=Main.NinjaPirateRobotZombie for example) in serious fantasy books. Let me explain myself further. If one put a sword in their story, he or she is putting a magic, arcane or just an ordinary sword, s/he is not putting a stove in the hands of the hero. I don’t want to see elves with short ears. If one is using elves s/he should stick with the preconception. Elves are neither robots nor flying nannies. And as Mr. Sanderson said changing the colour of the skin is just not enough.
June 9th, 2009 on 11:51 am
When I read a fantasy story (or listen to an audiobook) I am not reading it because it has elves or dwarfs or whatever. I am reading it for the story line. I read it because I want to travel to a far land without having to pay the high cost of an airline ticket. I can identify with at least one of the characters in some way, but yet there is enough stuff that’s different, such as elves or a city where people are outcast, in pain, and still find hope. In Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance trilogy, one of my favorite characters is an elf, but if he were a king or prophet of some sort and did the same stuff he did as an elf, I’d still like him.
MAS
June 9th, 2009 on 1:38 pm
Elves are cool. But they’ve been done in so many fantasy books it would be difficult to come up with a fresh portrayal of them. Dragons will always be cool. I love when dragons are in stories. Harry Potter, Magic Kingdom of Landover, The Hobbit, George Martin, etc. It’s great how in Wheel of Time alot of the story elements are familiar and obviously from Tolkein but it’s not a ripoff. Like Trollocs, Fades, Ogier.
June 9th, 2009 on 2:56 pm
I have to say that I agree that Elves and dwarves have been overdone. I’m also tired of orcs. I like Brandon’s stories (and other authors) because they move away from those archetypes. That’s probably the reason I’ve stayed with these books. One thing I would like to see is the end of the grunt race. Elantris didn’t have this but Mistborn and Warbreaker did. I think they are a little too convenient, even if they are different from other grunt races.
June 9th, 2009 on 3:14 pm
I thought that this was already a pretty settled issue in fantastic lit.
If you’re a fantasy writer and you want to emulate Tolkien and certain other mid-20th-century fantasy authors, then elves and dwarves and dragons and musty meadhalls and magic rings are all there for you. Feel free to run with them if you want to, and if you manage to stumble upon something that hasn’t been done with them 100 times before, then hey, good on you. If not, there’s still something to be said for preserving traditions over time.
On the other side of the coin, if you’re a fantasy author with a taste for blazing new trails and kicking the elves’n'dwarves’n'dragons’n’stuff to the curb, there’s tons of other mythological and fantastic traditions to draw from, and more still to be invented out of whole cloth. Goodness knows L. Frank Baum, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Philip Jose Farmer, Clive Barker, Stephen King, Brian Jacques, China Mieville, and Neil Gaiman didn’t miss having them around. Of course, it should be noted that almost all of these writers did play around with what we would call “traditional” fantasy tropes at some point or another.
Speculative fiction is a big house, and there’s lots of room for different and novel takes on the idea of fantasy. I say we keep right on building until spec-fic becomes the new default fiction. Onward!
June 9th, 2009 on 4:07 pm
@Hal: I’m glad you mentioned the grunt races. While I can think of a few examples of interesting dwarves, elves, dragons and witches, I can’t actually think of an example of a grunt race done well. Reading some of the “Wheel of Time doesn’t have elves!” comments above, I kept thinking “well, there are those boring Orc knock-offs.”
Maybe I’ll have to make my next novel be a fantasy from the perspective of a grunt race. That could be highly entertaining.
June 9th, 2009 on 4:26 pm
@Meg: Well my favorite are actually Brandon’s. The Lifeless are good to me because they don’t actually play a pivotal role except as a bargaining tool for the characters. There is no dialogue between lifeless and others (with one exception). They aren’t good or bad. It basically goes the same way with Koloss in Mistborn. They aren’t good or evil. They just are. This is a step in the right direction, but I still think they are a crutch. I’d like to see more fantasy without grunt races at all.
And PS: More types of government please!!
June 10th, 2009 on 12:54 am
I’m with you on that one. The oddest part of my being a fan of your books is that I don’t really enjoy fantasy. At least, I don’t enjoy the mythical races with a hero going on a quest for some forgotten treasure or whatnot. I enjoyed the LotR movies and thought the Hobbit was a nice change of pace, but Harry Potter’s did very little for me and other fantasy books I’ve tried to pick up can’t hold my attention for long. I’m not saying that having different races or classes or whatever of characters is necessarily bad, just that if one is going to include the races, they should try to make up something new. Also, I’d like it to be something that at least would have a chance of evolving. It’s super improbable that even one species of intelligent life would exist on a planet; having dozens that have so many maladaptive traits just irks me. I realize it’s an odd thing to worry about considering, ya know, MAGIC, but… it’s just a pet peeve. Like the newest Star Trek movie: what the crap was that giant red beast doing on a snowy planet??? It would never had evolved! I’ve gone off on a tangent, though…
In sum, I think you should consider what you’ve been doing: avoiding elves, dragons, and whatnot. It’s so old-hat and was never really anything innovative: people thousands of years ago thought these beings up!
June 10th, 2009 on 1:18 pm
Personally I love elves. But a story should only include them if they’re required. Throwing in elves and dwarves and everything else because that’s what fantasy needs is ridiculous. If the story is written well, whether it has elves or not is merely a side point. I’ve read some amazing fantasy novels over the years - some had elves and some did not. I don’t veto books for this reason. I veto them because the plot is unoriginal or the writing is simply too awful.
And at my store at least (World’s Biggest in Toronto) Epic Fantasy is a very good seller at the moment.
June 11th, 2009 on 4:41 pm
@Hal: I mentioned the grunt race question to a friend of mine, and he suggested that the Jem’Hadar from Deep Space Nine could be considered a grunt race who are actually fairly well developed, have an interesting twist and are used as more than just throw-away soldiers. I wrote off DS9 a while ago, but I think my friend had a good point there.
June 11th, 2009 on 7:05 pm
Though I personally would like to create fantasy avoiding the normal archetypes I have no problem with using the tried and true. It all comes down to execution for me.
June 11th, 2009 on 7:20 pm
I think if you’re going to discuss killing the elves, you have to discuss killing the humans, the horses, the dogs, the cats.
Clearly, you don’t NEED elves for good fantasy. But I don’t think they get in the way. The fact that they are established in fiction allows you to use them, and use the differences in them to further your story. If they’re different for the sake of being different, why are they there at all?
In Mistborn, one might say that you have elf-like and dwarf-like characters. After all, a THUG has most of the characteristics of the dwarf stereotype: strong constitution, incredible strength and endurance.
I don’t think it matters what you call your characters. What matters is that they ARE characters, with personalities, histories, and challenges. This is something that you’ve done well in Mistborn - the different races are explained, and all include variation.
p.s. someone mentioned no elves in WoT. The Aelfinn and Eelfinn would beg to differ. (Even if they’re described as snakelike and foxlike, they are clearly elven — it’s even right in their names, just like the Trollocs.)
June 16th, 2009 on 1:45 pm
Dwarf in a tutu.
That is all.
June 18th, 2009 on 9:06 pm
I think he should at least wear a dance-belt with it!