Support for Aspiring Fantasy Authors Forum intro

Hi.  My name is Weaver, and I'm a fantasy author.  Well, technically I'm a science fantasy author, but since most of my stories contain elves, dragons, telepaths and other people that I've been told "don't belong in anything realistic" (okay, I admit it - I've never met a dragon in real life), I guess that makes it all fantasy by the most rigid definition.  *shrug*  I hope no one here minds contemporary or even futuristic settings for fantasy fiction.  (Keep in mind that if the setting isn't our world, a medieval-ish society and tech level does not mean the story is actually set in the Europe's Middle Ages.  And for that matter, since when does fantasy have to be either medieval sword-and-sorcery or contemporary supernatural romance?  Bah!  I know for a fact that if you give an elf a rail gun... Well, never mind.  Just take my word for it - fantasy is not the narrow little genre that the mundanes want to make it.)   Yeah, I guess this intro is also your one early warning that I like to talk a lot about writing.  I want to talk about writing with other people who write fantasy.  So let's get some discussions going.

Hello! My name is Inkmoon (call me Ink if you wish). I have been stuck with one thought for a long time which has caused a tiny writers block.... Is a fantasy book/Novel based on mystical creatures or is it just like a story in which a lot of unlikley things happen? ( please ignore grammar)

Hi, Ink.   A story based on mythical/mystical creatures can be a fantasy story, if the explanation for the creatures' existence isn't something scientific such as someone creating werewolves with a retrovirus or whatever.  Generally, the definition of fantasy (as oposed to any other genre of fiction) is a story that contains magic as an essential part of the setting and plot - a story that couldn't be told if the magic was removed.  Even that definition doesn't cover everything, though.   It's easy to recognize but hard to define.  This link is to a page that probably explains it better than I can:   I hope this helps.  If you still have questions, ask me.  And never let any definition of a genre get in the way of you writing your story - some of the best fiction out there blurs the boundary between genres, or is just plain unclassifiable (think typical Dean Koontz novel as an example - is it sci-fi, fantasy, horror, thriller, or what?  Even the author isn't sure).  

Oh, that makes it a lot easier! So basically a fantasy story is based on magic? But there are different undertitles under magic so fantasy is more liked a mixed genre. I get it now!!! thank you very very much!!!  

Maybe I ought to say a bit more about myself, in particular what fantasy novels I have read and liked.   The Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny (Yeah, you're all surprised that I mentioned those, aren't you?) The Symphony of Ages - Elizabeth Haydon (That's Haydon with an o, not an e...) The Gryphon King - Tom Deitz (If you've seen one Daione Sidhe, you've seen 'em all, but those university students are fascinating creatures!) just about anything by Barbara Hambly, especially The Windrose Chronicles and The Darwath Trilogy ("Unemployed wizards can always find work...") The Coldfire Trilogy - C. S. Friedman (Technically science fantasy, but nevertheless...) War for the Oaks - Emma Bull (Written before urban fantasy was trendy - if you like that subgenre at all, you MUST read this novel!)   This list if far from complete, but this is what I am thinking of at the moment without looking at my bookshelf.  I've just noticed a tendancy toward stories that have the fantasy elements impinging on the real world (and sometimes the Read World impinging on ours?  *weird grin #5*).  I like to play with such juxtapositions in my own writing, too.   So... Anyone else?        

Lol we're all fantasy authors. I don't do science fiction too often, but I do like it for the most part. I just thought that there wasn't enough people on this site respecting fantasy/science fiction books. Everything is about poetry.

Everything everywhere is all about poetry.  That's because humans are lazy and poetry is easy.  Unless you want to risk the author's wrath and use excessively big words like "meter" while talking about the structure of the poem, all you can do in a poetry review is express how you FEEL about it.  No mention of word choice or grammar or whether the meter has gone awry in pursuit of that trite little A-B-A-B rhyme scheme... Also, poems are easier to write.  A GOOD poem is hard, but no one cares about how good it is; they just care about "i know how u feel, i feel that 2."   I want to write prose that makes the reader feel what I feel.  I want my characters to become real to the reader, so they care about what happens in the story.

Hi, I'm Cora, I'm decently new, and I have no idea if this is how one is supposed to join a group, so forgive me if this is basically the internet equivalent of crashing a party. But I have been searching for other fantasy authors on this site, and this is the first time I've discovered them all in a convienient cluster like this. I like Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and Eoin Colfer. Nothing thrills me more than breaking traditional fantasy paradigms, and I often have trouble writing seriously. (It always comes out at least a little bit comedic...) Anyhow, hi!

Hi, Cora.  Welcome to our little corner of the Cafe.  :)   You're not crashing the party.  Writers are often shy creatures, so sometimes you have to approach us and start the conversation yourself.  Offer us tea and cookies, ask us about what we're working on, that sort of thing.   If comedic fantasy is your thing, go for it.  Real life isn't always serious, so why should fiction be?

I've got a question- do you find it suitable for a novel to ever switch POV from a first person narrator to a third person limited view(of a different character)? Though the novel currently occupying my interests is clearly quite distant from serious fiction, I still would like it if it approached structural decency since it will go nowhere with emotional literary value. I am hoping, you see, that if I write enough of The Dark Lord's Butler I will eventually become sick of it and embrace my old, much more serious novel with warm open arms. The Dark Lord's Butler and The Kidnapping of Renyard the Light are both basically me mucking about with enjoying myself. The serious novel I abandoned, while deep and meaningful, was driving me slowly to insanity and neatly vacuuming all the fun of writing from my life. So I decided to write something meaningless about a gay butler helping an evil teen find love... Anyhow. Aside from the musings (I should really leave those for my diary) what do you guys think of the original question?

You can switch POV if it is handled the right way.  Don't switch within a scene; you can switch from one chapter to another if you want.  I've seen change of POV done well in novels by Charles de Lint - he uses first-person present tense in "dream sequences" and the like, and third-person past tense the rest of the time.   What do you mean by "serious fiction," and what's wrong with writing something that you enjoy?  Why write if you don't enjoy it? 

Hey Guys I haven't written in a long time and I think I've gotten a little rusty.. anyhow I'm trying to use two (or more) main characters and using the "Me"-perspective for each. The problem is I'm not sure if readers can differentiate the two even if I don't change the font :S. One is serious and mysterious whilst the other is innocent and bubbly. Any tips? Thanks a lot :) Ink