I am a fantasy writer. What comes to your mind when the word, or genre, 'Fantasy' is mentioned? LOTR, dragons, etc.
In my novel, especially the first one, the presence of dwarves and dragons are noted (no, there are no Elves). They participate in the plot to a much lesser degree in my two other novels, however. Now, my question to you, my readers, is this; do you think writers (especially beginning ones) should use such species and characters like dragons, wizards, dwarves, elves, etc.?
I may post my opinion on this sometime later. For now, I'll leave that hanging in the air. :)
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Jake
2 comments:
To be completely honest, I think the normal fantasy races have been far overused. But I think that if people would use them in the correct context, as Greek mythology, it could be interesting. Did you know that dwarves, in Greek mythology, were just ugly elves? =D
Personally, I like to make up my own races.
Hmmm... this one is tough.
To a degree I agree with Beorn, but I have other thoughts as well.
I love to make up my own species and races, but I also have fun messing with old ones. You see, with the older races (elves, dwarves, orcs... whatever) you can go into books and find different cultural outlooks on them. Then you can mix up these outlooks to give them a completely new face.
At the same time, they have been used a lot, especially with the fantasy genre suddenly becomeing so popular. Personally, I've replaced some of what I would have called elves with Fae, an old celtic term for basically the same thing. However, it gives the story a different feeling.
In one of my books I've used elves and dwarves and what-not. Some of these names I might keep... particularly with the dwarves... but I've been considering a name-switch for the race currently titled "elves". (this, for reasons that I won't go into at the moment as it is a subject too vast to be discussed on a comment board. :D) We will see how it all turns out.
As for made up races, they are a lot of fun to write for and to create. However, they can be confusing at first. For instance, in Donita K. Paul's books (which I absolutely LOVE!) there are many different types of races and the only one that is familiar to anyone but the author (at first) are the dragons. When I first started reading her books, I was a little disoriented, to tell the absolute truth, but as I went on and learned more about the races, I began to anticipate meeting certain characters of different races along the way.
I think a good fantasy world consists of both the new and the old. Orcs, for instance, in LOTR. And Hobbits. Tolkien made those races up, but that was alright with the readers because we still had something we knew to play off of; men, elves, dwarves... etc... The use of creatures and races already known to our world helps ancor the reader in the story, while the new races add color and depth.
At least that's how I see it. :D
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