So you write Epic Fantasy, do you?

Most fantasy stories, genre or non-genre, are epic in nature; that is, they're broad in scope with layered plots, high stakes and heroic themes. But the sub-genre of epic fantasy adopted the term for its label, at least for now, and most of the criticism is indeed levelled at epic fantasy, with ripples spreading to all genre fantasy. After all, epic fantasy is the one with the most obvious dragons, elves and other creatures from children's fairy tales. And it is this that I think most produces the non-genre criticism. Fantasy has been a long established and accepted genre of children's fiction and many fantasy children's titles are regarded as high literature. But there is outrage that adults would continue to indulge in fantasy -- in children's stories -- rather than give them up and develop more "serious" tastes. It's the same sort of contempt that is often levelled at comics and to a lesser extent in this day and age, toward science fiction. The critical resentment inside the genre I think stems from that flood of new fans in the nineties who mainly sought out epic fantasy, putting other sub-genres into eclipse. There's a lot of resentment about that and a desire to develop other types of fantasy and have them get their due, which is great, but which unfortunately has sometimes meant people feel the need to tear epic fantasy to shreds to accomplish it.

I think mainstream non-genre critics do often miss that fantasy characters are in the majority not black and white. But I don't think there is suddenly a new turn to gray characters in epic fantasy. Gray characters have been a staple of epic fantasy since the beginning. In fact, most epic fantasy stories center on the choice between going dark (corruption, abandonment, doubt and despair,) versus going light (determination, sacrifice, faith.) Quite a few stories look at how a main character may need to go dark to achieve the goals of the light. I read R.A. Salvatore's first novel "The Crystal Shard" for example, written quite some time ago, and all the main characters are faced with difficult choices, with Drizzit, the dark elf, being the epitome of a gray character.

For me, the appeal of writing fantasy or epic fantasy lies in taking reality and twisting it to an altered form, something that is familiar perhaps but also strange and different. And this usually places the characters in extreme high risk situations which are interesting to develop, just as in a thriller or other adventure story. Epic fantasy stories allow you to do a story on a sweeping canvas if you want, to explore history, politics, societies without necessarily being bound to factual limits. So you can have George R.R. Martin doing the War of the Roses, only doing it in an imaginary realm with years-long seasons and dragons and zombies for allegorical interest and for just plain making interesting high stakes action or emotional drama. He can pick and chose what bits will achieve what he wants to do in the story and assemble them as he likes, and that gives epic fantasy and fantasy fiction -- and also, in a slightly different manner, science fiction -- a facet that other forms of story usually don't have. That's my best guess, anyway, that or I am indeed an arrested child playing grown-up.
 
I can always count on you for an informed, intelligent post. I am glad you jumped in here.

Do you happen to have any idea how a book like Gulliver's Travels was received by the critics and public when it was first written? Of course, it is not Epic Fantasy, but I wonder if the public understood it then.

It is precisely the high risk situations that engender the emotional, moral and physical conflicts. And fantasy can be brilliant and thought provoking by virtue of these situations. How often in contemporary novels are these 'big' issues dealt with? The smaller, more personal ones like teen suicide, depression etc. are better handled in a more modest story.

By the way, aren't we all arrested children playing grownup? Does anyone ever feel old in their own mind? My grandmother died last year at the age of 99, and one of the final conversations we had was about exactly that. She still felt young, and she could not believe how the time had flown by. I dedicated The Shards to her. She died about a month after I finished it.
 
you happen to have any idea how a book like Gulliver's Travels was received by the critics and public when it was first written? Of course, it is not Epic Fantasy, but I wonder if the public understood it then.
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I read somewhere not long ago that someone thought it was a real traveller's tale. But many took it for the brilliant satire it is.

What fantasy gives me is a sense of the marvellous within the real. I do think that one has to have a very strong sense of reality to write fantastic literature of any kind.

Depending on the day, I feel either 12 or 70. I prefer 12.
 
I saw the movie Finding Neverland this past weekend. It was quite well done. What I found interesting is the way the screenwriter described how Barrie wrote. He saw the scenes being played out before him, as if he was participating. That is exactly how I write. I close my eyes and enter the world of my characters, enter their minds, and then write. I literally take deep breaths and relax myself so that I can totally slip into that world. When the feeling of danger or fear takes over, I find myself shuddering as I type. When the situation is sad, or a character is dying or has been killed, the tear well up in my eyes.

Writing for me is so much more than the result. The process is what I live for. When the result is good, that's satisfying as well, but I get so lost in my writing that I need to adjust to the real world when I have to close my laptop. I can't slip back in all that easily. I don't want to.

And I ask myself, what am i searching for? I am quite happy in this world, the everyday world. But to be able to live and breathe in the world of my books, to be able to fly and to interact with nature the way some of my characters can, to have these decisions to make, these world shattering decisions and to have to work through them and the consequences; those things are so much bigger than anyone's life. They thrill me.
 
Gary Wassner said:
I can always count on you for an informed, intelligent post. I am glad you jumped in here.

Do you happen to have any idea how a book like Gulliver's Travels was received by the critics and public when it was first written? Of course, it is not Epic Fantasy, but I wonder if the public understood it then.
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My knowledge of Gulliver is limited. I know that the book was written, like "Alice in Wonderland" as a satire, digging at various aspects of British government and society. However, by couching it in fantasy, the author also managed to appeal to audiences as a children's tale and as simply a tale of literature. I don't know what the critical reaction to it was when it first appeared. I imagine it sold pretty well, which usually means that critical reaction is negative. :)
 
Swift was writing in very different times, in the 17th century, the heyday of Grubb Street. He was a political pamphleteer, a poet and a satirist. When Gulliver's Travels was first written, it was most definitely for adults - it drew on the then recognisable genre of traveller's tales, which was then (and still is) popular, and also on influences like Pliny, whose Naturalis Historiae was a kind of encyclopaedia which described everything then known in the Ancient World. There was also a strong tradition of fantastic stories that existed even in medieaval times (Cockalarum was I think the name of a popular book) which perhaps fed into it. Swift was a coruscating satirist, and his work is a pretty damning vision of human folly. Swift's work was controversial, and his anti-government stance meant that once he had to go into hiding.

It was only later that people began to think of it as tale for children, and even then only in abridged versions (most people only know about Lilliput, for instance). The idea that fantastic literature is just for children is actually a fairly recent one; quite probably it began in Victorian times, when people like the Brothers Grimm and Perrault collected folk tales and rewrote them as fairy stories for children, but I'm not sure about that.

In Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll wasn't writing satire, although there are satirical elements, but brilliant nonsense, and specifically for children, or a child, anyway. He uses the structure of a dream to explain Alice's surreal experiences, and there's no attempt, as in Gulliver, to give it the sheen of actual reality. Nor is there any overt political stance, although you could argue the complete breakdown of authority and order in the books is political.
 
When do you think Fantasy developed the connotations it has today for the general public? Was there one author who you can think of who cornered us all? Was it Tolkein, do you suppose? When did it become common to say about fantasy, "Oh, I don't read that kind of stuff"? When did it become, 'that kind of stuff'? It never was for me. From the first time I read Lewis (CS that is) I found it amazing. I was bright and well read, and I always read things that were supposedly above my age group. Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Mann, Beckett, Eliot and Lewis and Tolkein! I may have read each for slightly different reasons or to fulfill slightly different needs, but it never once occurred to me that fantasy was any less valid than any of the other authors whose books I loved.
 
Hi Gary - it sounds like we have a similar reading history! As a child I was voracious, there were never enough books in the house, and I read everything I could get my hands on, including lots of stuff I didn't begin to understand until years later. But I must say that my principle reason for reading has always been pleasure, and I've never cared much for dividing things up into "types" ("that kind of stuff") for that reason, though I'm interested in looking at work and seeing connections and traditions. (Sometimes I'm not sure how useful it is, but it is a bit of a personal vice). And - let's face it - a lot of this "snob value" reading misses the point of their heroes: like, people who miss how funny Beckett is.

I really don't know the answer to your question; I'm sure it goes back further than Tolkien, though. His excursions into the world of Faerie were considered embarrassingly childish in certain academic circles (I'm sure I've read a letter of his talking about that). Maybe it's to do with the birth of the age of rationalism, and particularly the scientific rationalism of the Victorians? "Irrational" or fantastic imaginings were placed about then into the realm of the childish, and this whole myth about the innocence of childhood was created around then, maybe a bit earlier? - before then children were, after a certain age, just treated as small adults. Think of poor Dickens working and paying rent when he was 11 years old...

I do think, though, that Tolkien basically invented modern fantasy as we know and love it, however it's moved on since then. And I guess those earlier ideas about the childish just ended up focusing on fantasy in a negative way. It's quite interesting to think about, actually - I'm sure the real answer is very complicated.
 
i should pose this question to Larry Nolan at Amazon's other fantasy forum. He loves to research these types of issues, and he does so thoroughly and completely.

I suppose that it is simply because the mind set is that anything is frivolous if it has any element of romanticism in it, and fantasy, in that it takes place in a mythical world, therefor depicts a romanticized version of (non) reality.
 
I've got a bigger question for you...

Do you think Young Adult Fantasy is taken more seriously because it's written for a younger audience than Epic Fantasy because it's viewed as children's stories for adults?
 
You bring up an interesting point, and I do think there is some truth to that. It's a terrible and unfair misconception, regardless. But it's also one that will probably never go away. Make believe characters in make believe worlds just can't say anything valuable about our lives. We may be writing metaphorically in many instances, and we may have broader and more compelling issues to talk about in our books than most of what reaches the best seller lists, but the characters are not real. Readers can't make that leap.
 
Similar things can be said about regular fiction (the characters and situations are made up), but people always take straight fiction seriously and fantasy as, well, fantasy. I have always felt that even Sci-Fi gets more credit than fantasy writing because much of what they write about is based in fact and potential futures. Many non-writers can name several sci-fi writers, but not many can name more than one or two fantasy writers. This is a sad situation.

I agree that a writer, no matter the genre, has something to say. Be it about the world we live in, the human condition, exploration of the past, exploration of the future, whatever, writers don't usually write just because there was nothing better to do and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

How do you get the masses to believe that?

People start out reading with what? Fairy Tales. Disney. This is what many people think fantasy is about. Only a select few make that leap from Fairy Tales to YA Fantasy. Even fewer still take that leap of faith from YA to Epic Fantasy. Most slip into the mainstream Fiction. Why? Why do so many people 'evolve' away from Fantasy? Why does the public still have trouble taking Fantasy seriously? Is it the genre name of Fantasy? Should it be re-grenre-ized?

What is the way for an Epic Fantasy author to break out of the mold?

This seems a burning question you've been getting at methinks.
 
I just posted this on Scott's forum. We are having a similar discussion there.

Listen, my tastes are very eclectic. I am not making any value judgments here. I am just confused. I think many people are just totally misinformed about fantasy. They don't read it because they never read it. And they never read it because they assume it is not for them. You need a good imagination to read fantasy. Most people don't have very good imaginations. Reading is supposed to be a relaxing endeavor. So if the subject matter is hard to assimilate, then it is no longer relaxing. I suppose under those circumstances it would be like picking up Proust for the average person, or trying to read Hegel. The difference is that the reader assumes fantasy is childish and incomprehensible, while Proust and Hegel may be incomprehensible, but because they are too esoteric, not because they are childish. It's funny, but Nietzsche never received credit while he was alive because he was so untraditional during a very exacting time. Aphorisms instead of didactic treatises? Many tried to trivialize his thinking as well, and for years he was relegated to the back shelf of philosophy and not taken seriously.

I also suggested earlier in jest that we stop calling it fantasy and call it speculative fiction instead. But something else just occurred to me. How can the public take what we write seriously when most of the publishers present them with covers that make them seem so silly? Who is marketing these things?
 
Oh I disagree. Many of the covers are good, unfortunately they're aimed at the 16-20 age group. Sex and violence is what used to sell a good book. Unfortunately the 16-20 age group is more into X-box, playstation, and movies. Epic Fantasy can still be called fantasy, but it needs a re-image.

The covers from your books are a prime example of what the industry needs. If the cover can appeal to and intrigue the older reader, the catch is there. But that's the difficulty I see, and KatG has pointed this out elsewhere: The publishing world is a slow moving giant. How do you convince the publishing execs of the world that it's in their best interest to change the image of fantasy? First you've got to have a novel that will 'change the face of fantasy' then you need to make it a success. Then and only then will you have that power.

It saddens me that J.K Rowlins was as successful as she was. Now that her books are movies, she's moved into the 'too powerful' bracket and is taken as an exception to the rule. If she had retained modest success, we might have had a speaker for our cause. :)
 
She writes YA fantasy though, so adults were able to justify their reading of it because of precisely that. They were not pretending to really enjoy it as adult literature, but because their kids loved it so much. They could get their vicarious pleasure without sacrificing any of their implicit integrity.

What did you disagree with, BTW, in what I said. I think that covers can be intelligent and artistic, but the buxom sorceresses and the romantic-novel-looking warriors trivialize the content even further. I spent so much time working with the artist for my covers. I wanted something different.

All they need to do for a Stephen King release is put his name on the cover in very bold letters. We certainly need more, but do we need to make it seem juvenile when it isn't?
 
I disagree that covers don't sell books and are silly. :) It's just that they're targeting an audience that grew up with covers from their youth in the hopes nostalgia will bring them back. The covers, much like comic books, need to 'grow up' too yet still appeal to the youth. That's a tough billet to fill. I doubt it'll happen.

As for Stephen King's book, he justified his writing of that book as 'for my daughter' which is why it was looked down upon. Here's the horror god writing a children's novel. And it has since been shunned from polite society.

As for Rowlings, yes she writes YA fantasy, but I'm amazed at the number of adults who've read that one fantasy series (even those without children) who still resist Epic Fantasy. The allure is there. The temptation is there. Yet it's still treated like a forbiden fruit. People who I associate with are compeled to read fiction instead because it makes them look more 'adult'. Pfft. Dan Brown writes a good book, but it's still very much fantasy, just set in modern society.

My hope is that she'll finish with Potter and write an Epic Fantasy, but with how long it takes her to actually write a book. *sheesh* Her last novel was just over 200,000 words and it took two and a half years to come out. Tad Williams took two and a half years for 'To Green Angel Tower' but that was darn near 1,000,000 words. Quite a difference.

I still ask, what can a Fantasy author do to convert the masses? I'm sure you're still asking the same thing. :)
 
We are not disagreeing on the the cover issue. I think they very much do sell books. But I also think that they tend to categorize the books and sometimes pigeonhole them as well. Just as some people are embarassed to read a romantic novel in public which is steamy and overtly sexual, or a gay/lesbian themed book that might depict a same sex couple on the cover, so they also find comic book style covers on their novels to be beneath them. It's just part of the mind set that plagues fantasy today, and my point was that many of the publishers don't realize that or don't care about it. They too think their target audience wants only swords and sorcery.

What can we do as authors to counter that mind set and the mind set in general that denigrates fantasy? I wish I knew. Get on Oprah? Be interviewed by Larry King? Have New York Magazine review you? Do we really crave mainstream recongnition? I don't. I just wish people understood that many of us write serious, compelling, intelligent literature. It may not be your choice or your taste, but it is no less valid therefor.
 
On covers, my feeling is just what you did. Authors need to get involved. Too many big imprints take the manuscript from the author and the author's part is now over. They end up with a cover that doesn't depict the story or establishes it as something far less than it is. We can site examples all day I'm sure.

So let me ask you this direct question: Do you seek fame or fortune?

With your last statement, I'd wager neither. Rather you seek understanding. Would that be understanding of you or your work? or both? Is that the driving force behind your writing? Gosh we could get really philosophical about this couldn't we.

Where do you want to see Fantasy writing in general go? Gaining readership or gaining a token belief that it's worthwhile?
 
Do I seek fame or fortune? Honestly? Fortune, no. I don't want this to sound wrong, but my business provides me with more than I need, and certainly more than most authors earn, with a few obvious and notable exceptions. Fame? If it means that I couldn't live my life as I do now, no to that as well. I don't want ever to be recognized when I go out to dinner in NY. I see celebrities all the time in restaurants, fashion shows, theaters etc. and it is not fun for them. But recognition as an author? Absolutely. Do I ever want to be a household name? No way.
 
I find it interesting that you 'fight the good fight' yet seek no benifit from it. I'm impressed. Not at all what I had expected from an author. I can understand most of what you're saying and appreciate it.
 
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