The Devil is in The Details (When It's Okay To Be a Little Vague)

Writers, on the whole, tend to be obsessed with details. We focus on historical minutiae, on character descriptions, on locations, atmosphere, and a thousand other things. However, as with any other spice, it's possible to put too much in, often to the point that it's difficult for your audience to focus on the story and plot because there's just so much extraneous detail in here that it can become overwhelming.

While it can take a little experimentation to figure out where the Goldilocks zone is for your story, I have some advice I'd like to share with folks that might help you find where that line is in your work.

Because it can be tough.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! To be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, make sure you check out my Vocal archive for several hundred other articles about geek ephemera, weird history, writing, and more!

Make, Model, and The Leaves on The Trees

The example that lots of people reach for when looking for a case of over-description in a work of fiction is the age-old chestnut of Tolkien's descriptions of trees, grasses, and nature. While the success of the Lord of The Rings book series shows this isn't a deal breaker for a lot of readers, this is a criticism that many people have lobbed at the books for taking them out of the story.

However, I think there's a more concrete example that fewer of us have read... the Deathlands series by James Axler.

If you haven't read them, hoo boy are they a ball!

For those who aren't familiar with the series, it is good, old-fashioned pulp nonsense. A post-apocalyptic setting full of magic and monsters, time travel, ancient technology, dimension hopping, gritty revenge, megafauna, rad mutants, and more! If you like action-driven fiction full of absolute ridiculousness that takes itself just seriously enough to be entertaining (I'm looking at you, my fellow Warhammer 40K enjoyers), then this is going to be right up your alley!

However... this is a notable detail in the books that I've read that is a perfect example of this week's topic.

Now, given that these stories are set in a kitchen sink post-apocalypse where our heroes are regularly threatened by everything from roving gangs of bandits, to radiation zombies, to mutated animals, they of course make sure they are properly armed. Ammunition conservation is a big theme in a lot of post-apocalyptic survival stories, as is the difficulty of finding proper healthcare and medicine should one be injured in any of these fights for their lives. And what weapons someone uses can say a lot about them, whether it's denoting their fighting style, or their status in the wastelands, or even their particular skillset. After all, a pistolero and a sniper are going to have very different load outs and weapons.

With that said, most people don't care about the make and model of a firearm in a scenario like this. It would work for a military thriller, or for a police procedural, but in this kind of story that description is really jarring.

These kinds of descriptions happen a lot in this series, often to the point where it interrupts action scenes, and it causes a lot of problems for the stories on the whole. First, if the reader isn't a firearms enthusiast, they aren't going to know the difference between one weapon and another based on its manufacturer and model, which can be a problem because further description isn't always given. And when further description is given, we don't need the item's name, rank, and serial number in the first place to form a clear picture of it. Second, due to the nature of the setting, it makes you wonder where all these wasteland-wandering hardcases are getting such specific weapons from, not to mention ammunition that's been manufactured to those specifications. After all, many of these are 21st-century guns, and for them to not just survive, but to still be reliable in such a harsh world raises a lot of questions that never seem to get touched on.

And it can really distract you from the story as a whole.

Does this make the books unreadable or unenjoyable? No more than Tolkien's love of trees gets in the way of his books being beloved by millions. However, it is distracting, and could be fixed in a few different ways.

The first is, as the title of this entry suggests, is to be a little more vague. For example, we don't need to know that a character's handgun is the Kimber model of the 1911. That might not tell the reader anything. But saying something like, "The gun looked just like the man who carried it; blocky, ugly, and dangerous," would get the point across. You could also just refer to a rifle as a repeater, or a bolt-action if you wanted an immediate vision of it in the reader's mind, without getting into the weeds on what specific entry it has in a firearms catalog.

The second course I'd take would be to give these items the same kind of introduction you would a character. If a weapon is important, then give the reader a full sense of that weapon without listing off its specs. For example, if you have a villainous gunman with a signature weapon then it might read like, "The blackened steel of the long-barreled peacemaker gleamed with a sinister light. It rode low in the tied-down holster, like an attack dog ready to bark at its master's command. There was a silver saint on the walnut grip of the weapon, but the icon was tarnished and worn; a testament to how many times the man's hand had taken up that gun, and brought down violence upon his foes."

Give an Impression Rather Than an All Points Bulletin

An all points bulletin, or APB, is when one sender broadcasts information to a lot of recipients. It's typically associated with police putting out descriptions of a subject they're looking for, or when a child has gone missing. These messages include important details, but they're meant to be facts. Writing descriptions in a story like that can suck the life out of your work.

So, again, try to give an impression of something or someone. Be a little vague around the edges, while still getting to the heart of what your audience needs to know.

Can you tell your audience that Clarence Brown is 5'11, 89 years old, and was last seen wearing blue jeans, a white tee shirt, black boots, and carrying a hickory walking stick? Sure, that tells us the bare bones facts. But consider something like this instead, "The old man was just shy of six feet tall, and while he leaned on a twisted, gnarled walking stick, there was still strength in his heavy hands. His smile showed he still had most of his teeth, but the scuffed motorcycle boots on his feet suggested he hadn't lost all of the missing ones to father time."

Should you know all the facts? Sure you should, you're the author! But the important thing here is to spoon feed those details to your audience in a way that engages them, rather than making them feel like they're being given too much to keep track of. Don't oversalt, and make sure that salt is crumbled so small that it doesn't crunch in your readers' teeth, and you'll be fine!

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Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Does Your Story Have Too Many Characters?

People love stories because of the characters in them. However, just as folks will often lambaste Tolkien for going on and on about the leave on his trees, I'd suggest there's a lesson we could learn from another big name in the fantasy genre. Because for all the good things one can say of A Song of Ice and Fire, perhaps one of the biggest issues that Martin puts on display is that when you expand your cast on every other page, you really dilute the interest of your readers.

In short, every story needs character. However, too many characters will make it impossible for your reader to see the forest for all the trees in their way.

Because it's really easy to confuse your audience if you aren't careful.

Before we get into it this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron!

Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

How Big Does Your Cast List Really Need To Be?

Let's return to Martin's less-than-complete opus for a moment. There were a lot of changes made when adapting the books to the screen, but one of the more notable ones was eliminating minor characters from the story entirely, and combining different characters together as a way to boil down the number of names and faces the audience was expected to keep track of. It made for a smoother flow, and it was easier to digest the narrative that way.

If you can prune your character list by dozens of names and events, though, that really should leave you asking why you had so many characters in your book to begin with.

Though if they're going to be dying every other chapter, you may need them.

Generally speaking, characters need to serve a purpose in your story. Sometimes that purpose is a linchpin role (like the main antagonist, your protagonist or protagonists, etc.), and sometimes it's a supporting role (the witness who drops a clue in the detective's lap, the spunky sidekick who helps out, the oracle who provides the prophecy, etc.), but everyone has a role to play.

If a character doesn't really have a role to play, it's best to think of them as an extra.

For those not familiar with how movies are made, extras are all the fill-in folks in the background in film and TV. Those are the people filling up a café where the spy meets with the hacker to discuss stolen information, or all the people walking down the street before our hero comes pelting around the corner being chased by a tank. They're necessary to the scenes in question, but they aren't a part of the cast in a story sense. They are, if anything, like a living part of the set design. While you might find an occasional extra with a speaking line (like the waitstaff who take one's order in a restaurant scene, or nameless reporters firing questions around a murder investigation) they are still more a part of the background than the story.

When we're discussing whether your story has too many characters, these aren't usually the characters we're talking about... except when they are.

We Don't Need The Backstory on Every Tree Branch

When we introduce important members of the cast we usually give the reader a bunch of details about them, along with more information than they get about other characters. We get a full description, a name, maybe see things from their perspective a little, stuff like that. And while academically we know that every person is the main character of their own story, if you treat too many members of the cast like they're main characters in this story you're going to overload your audience.

Wait... why is Gerald Finn, the Gate Captain with the iron hand, important again?

Look over your story with a critical eye, and ask how many characters actually serve a narrative purpose. Great or small, you should be able to tell us what part of the story pocket watch they represent, and what their job is in the narrative. Even if it's something as small as, "Humanize the main character by showing their relationships outside of tracking down serial killers," that's still an important purpose.

But if the character doesn't have an important role, ask what happens if you scale back their involvement in a scene. Does it change anything? For example, do we need to know that Suzy Delgado is working a double at the diner, she's very stressed, but she's trying to keep a brave face? Or is that information just being dumped on us while Sly Goodman and assassin Alicia Carmine have a meeting, only involving Suzy when they want to order black coffee and some scrambled eggs before getting down to the nitty gritty on their current job?

What happens if you eliminate a character from the story entirely? Does that have any effect on the narrative at all? Because if their presence makes no impact on the story, shows us nothing about the rest of the characters, and serves no function, then you may be able to kill that particular darling without worrying about getting too much blood on your typewriter.

As the author, think of yourself as the head of stage lighting, or camera direction. You are the one who tells the audience where to look, what to pay attention to, and what is important. If you try to show the audience everything, though, you're going to end up with them paying attention to the wrong things, or getting bogged down in details that may confuse your story rather than clarifying it.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Everything Old is New Again (Take Your Story Back to Basics)

An obsession among writers is that many of them feel their work has to be new, different, or unique in some way. They are always striving to re-invent, to re-imagine, or to alter the perception of an idea, a genre, or a story. And sometimes that genuinely leads to fresh perspectives and fun concepts that hadn't been explored on the page before... other times, though, it just leads to contorting something to try to make it look different without asking if it's actually more interesting to see it from that perspective.

So I wanted to take this week to suggest a trick I've been using a lot, and which I've had pretty good results with. In short, take whatever genre, tropes, story, world building, etc., you're using, and examine what it was before its latest incarnation. Because sometimes going all the way back to basics can really make you stand out.

You want vampires in your book, you say?

As always, before we get too deep into today's topic, remember to subscribe to my newsletter if you want to get all of my content sent to you every week. And if you want to help keep the blog going, consider becoming a Patreon patron... even a small donation makes a big difference.

Lastly, if you want to be sure you're following all my followables, check out my Linktree!

Elves, Vampires, Magic, and More!

Practically everything we use to tell our stories is built off of things established by earlier creators. Whether you're taking inspiration from the works of Tolkien, Howard, or Burroughs to write fantasy, you're drawing on folklore to populate your stories with monsters, or you're looking at folk heroes and ancient propaganda to form your semi-historical narratives, all of us are getting our ideas (if not our understanding of the raw elements of story) from somewhere.

However, as time has gone on, the ideas present in a lot of these stories have grown and changed, becoming different from what they originally were. And though it seems paradoxical, you can actually make a story feel more unique and different from its contemporaries by using something old in a new way.

Because I took my own advice on this one.

Folks who've read my novel Crier's Knife have said it has a distinct feeling of the bastard child of a pulp fantasy novel combined with a Western, which was very much what I was going for. However, in order to give it that old-time, sword and sorcery feeling I rewound the clock on how magic has often been depicted in fantasy novels. Rather than using Vancian magic (which became extremely common thanks to its prevalence in fantasy RPGs), or more modern "spell point" magic (where wizards, sorcerers, etc. have a certain pool of power they can draw on to achieve whatever effects they need), I used more ritual magic that was far more common to stories in the 1940s and before. Where the method of the magic isn't explained at all, and where the ingredients, actions, and sacrifices demanded are meant to give the audience the feeling of the spell rather than walking them through the internal logic of what it is supposed to do.

Aesthetic magic, if you will.

This is far from the only example of me using this method in my own work. It's also showing up a lot in my Sundara: Dawn of a New Age setting for Pathfinder and DND, and you can clearly see it in the elves and orcs books I've released where I've attempted to take some elements of Tolkien's original creation and show them in a different light. However, you've also seen this strategy at work if you've read Salem's Lot by Stephen King, where the celebrated author eschews the evolution of the sexy, tortured vampire and gets back to basics with a riff that's much closer Bram Stoker's original novel. You see this in more modern werewolf stories that reach back to the idea of a curse where the host has no control over what happens, and you could even see it in romance novels where the Norseman is the love interest because of his grooming and personal care just as much as because of his sword arm or linguistic skills.

There's two reasons this strategy works.

The first is that for older readers, they're seeing something familiar in a new light. It can bring back nostalgic feelings, and give them a new twist on an old recipe. The second is that for some readers, either due to their age or experience (or lack thereof) in the genre, your work will be the first time they've seen things written with those older aesthetics, rules, or sensibilities in place, which will make it feel new and unique to them.

In either situation, you come out ahead.

So if you're wracking your brain trying to re-invent the wheel, consider for a moment if you might actually make more progress (and get more interesting results) using an earlier design rather than attempting to build off of the version everyone already knows today.

Looking For Additional Reading?

If you're looking for additional stuff to check out before you go, might I recommend the following?

- 5 Tips For Creating Fantasy Towns and Cities: I've been up to my elbows in professional fantasy world building for most of this year, and these are the tips I've found most useful for making sure places feel organic, no matter how fantastical they are.

- The Silver Raven Chronicles Part One: Devil's Night: A free fantasy short story, this tale begins in the old quarter of the city of Kintargo. A rumor whispers in the corners of a ghost risen from the past to take Cheliax to task for allowing devils into its heart, and its throne room. Most don't believe it... but one of the city's dottari finds this ghost is all too real when it steps out of the shadows with a message for her to spread to her fellow enforcers. They are no longer welcome in his city.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Authors, Don't Take Yourself So Seriously

If you've ever sat down to talk marketing with a romance author, then you know just how serious professionals in the trade can be when it comes down to the bottom line on book sales. Everything from which sales pitch works best, to cold-reading someone at a convention, to which social media platforms are most effective for moving product, what goes on once the manuscript hits the market is definitely serious business.

But before that? Let's all just take a moment to be honest with each other... we're making up stories. They might be heartfelt stories with moments of great pathos. They may have a lot of meaning to you, and hopefully to your readers. But they're also about wish fulfillment, Vikings riding dinosaurs, impossibly good looking secret agents, vampire princes, and zombie love triangles.

We should be serious about our work, but our work itself is rarely serious... and if we take it too seriously, the work suffers. Badly.

But what is the true meaning of this work? Do you understand?

As always, before I get too deep on this week's topic make sure you sign up for my weekly newsletter to make sure you don't miss anything! Also, if you want to help me keep the wheels turning around here consider becoming a Patreon patron as well.

Lastly, to get all my information in one place, just click on over to my Linktree!

Most Great Work Wasn't Written To Be Such

You've heard of Frankenstein I'm assuming? That book which is one of the great entries in the canon of horror, and which one could argue was the seed that created the entire science fiction genre? A work of important literature, no doubt, as I'm sure most of us acknowledge.

What we sometimes forget, though, is that it was also written by one of the OG teen goths during a long weekend full of sex and drugs with one of the more infamous party animals of the day. A book that was created on a bet during a stormy night as Mary, her husband, and their host were taking a break between threesomes.

Mary knew how to party, is what I'm saying.

Example of this are everywhere in so-called literature. Shakespeare might be considered high-brow these days, but it's just a collection of dick and fart jokes where characters get progressively gayer and more outlandish. Also, it was written as popular entertainment for the masses. The whole basis of The Lord of The Rings is because Tolkien was telling tales to his kids, and one of them was very concerned with canonical consistency. This led to The Hobbit, and demand for more of those tales led to one of the more influential works that created the genre of high fantasy. Jane Austen's work is arguably one, big eyeroll from the author about the tedium of social nicety, wrapped up in flowery language and with a story a lot of readers can identify with.

This list goes on.

The point of all of this is that most of what we think of as "serious" books (and even a lot of films) were not made with the intention of being great, foundational works of art, or redefining the way we look at stories. They were written on a whim, on a bet, or as an example of crass commercialism to get butts in seats, or books in hands. And while the authors arguably took the work seriously (constructing good narratives, creating engaging characters, telling a good tale, etc.) they didn't take themselves and their task seriously. Because while good books will often stand the test of time, it's the story they tell, and the way they engage the audience that matters.

So lighten up already! Just embrace that, at its core, what we do is a silly kind of magic. It can touch people's lives, brighten their dark days, and stab them through the heart, but the more seriously we take ourselves the more it's going to take our focus off of telling a good story.

Looking For Additional Reading?

If you're looking for additional stuff to check out before you go, might I recommend the following?

- 5 Tips For Creating Fantasy Towns and Cities: I've been up to my elbows in professional fantasy world building for most of this year, and these are the tips I've found most useful for making sure places feel organic, no matter how fantastical they are.

- The Silver Raven Chronicles Part One: Devil's Night: A free fantasy short story, this tale begins in the old quarter of the city of Kintargo. A rumor whispers in the corners of a ghost risen from the past to take Cheliax to task for allowing devils into its heart, and its throne room. Most don't believe it... but one of the city's dottari finds this ghost is all too real when it steps out of the shadows with a message for her to spread to her fellow enforcers. They are no longer welcome in his city.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Older is Better: A Trope That's Become A Reflex For Many Writers

Ertrand raised his torch higher, examining the tomb of the ancient king. The name was incomprehensible, but the sheathed sword on the casket glimmered when he wiped at the dust. Taking hold of the hilt, he drew the blade, and examined it. It had the distinct sheen of the old styles of metal smithing, and the dry air of the tomb had kept it mostly intact. He slid it back into the sheathe carefully, and lifted it as if it were made of glass.

"Some collector is going to keep you on his wall," Ertrand said, wrapping his find in soft padding. "For my money, I prefer a sword that isn't so brittle it splinters when you strike a shield with it."

"Of course it's valuable! What? No, I have a high-carbon steel blade for a reason, you idiot!"

This is a scene we almost never seen in fantasy stories, and it's because of a trope that has bothered me more and more the longer I've been swimming around genre fiction; Older is Better. While this trope isn't inherently bad, I do think that too often writers in general (and those of us who work in sci-fi and fantasy in particular) reach for it out of reflex. We don't stop and think about whether it's a trope that makes our story better, or if it adds to the tale we're actually telling... we just put it in there for the same reason elves have pointy ears, and dwarves have beards.

Because that's how so many other writers have done it.

What Does It Say About Your Setting?

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of this trope out there. Conan's Atlantean steel sword that can slash through Cimmerian blades and survive hundreds of years in a dank cave with impunity, for instance. The missing STCs from the dark age of technology in Warhammer 40k that represent the pinnacle of ancient human achievement. Most of the old elven weapons we see in Tolkien's works that are leaps and bounds beyond what even dwarven princes are given to wear at their sides when adventuring.

However, this trope goes beyond weapons and gear; it can extend to everything in your universe.

Especially your magic.

Are the ruins of the old empires huge, sweeping things that were built with techniques that have been lost to the ages? Were their enchantments so potent that nothing today's wizards can conjure can match them for glory? Did the old ones have the skill to weave fabrics that could endure for generations, and fit themselves to each wearer?

All of that stuff is cool, but it poses a central question that you as the author should consider... why?

Humans (as most of the time we have humans as our core races) are really inventive creatures, and when you ask a few generations of us to reverse-engineer something, our results can be rather startling. All you need to do is read the rant on why humans are so central in Star Trek to get the impression that we are both extremely dangerous as a people, but also extremely inventive.

The first version of this question you need to answer is "Why can't that ancient thing be made anymore?"

The route most authors go for keeping ancient achievements from being a part of the modern age is that the technique for doing so was lost to time, which is a historically valid option if you're looking for real-world examples. We have amazing metal working skills today, for example, but we have zero clue how an iron pillar in Delhi has stood for over 1,600 years without a single speck of rust. And sometimes if the technique fell out of favor, or it was rigidly controlled and those capable of making the thing died, the knowledge could be lost.

The second question you need to answer, and arguably the more important one, is "Why hasn't anyone figured out how to do it again?"

This is where things can get sticky, but where you have a lot more options. For example, is the pursuit of independent knowledge considered heresy (as you see in Warhammer's setting), stifling any meaningful efforts to recreate these ancient miracles? Are there not enough examples of the thing to reverse-engineer it (or is doing so a particularly dangerous process)? Or, my personal favorite, is a key ingredient for the old process no longer around, making it impossible to recreate in the modern setting (the bones of a certain extinct animal, a seed from a plant that was harvested into oblivion, etc.)? If something is not just difficult to create, but out and out impossible, then it makes the surviving versions even more impressive. But it could also mean that rituals, rites, and other tools are truly beyond the grasp of your protagonists, unless they re-discover the element needed to make the old methods work once again.

How Has This Loss Been Compensated For?

Magic sword, huh? Cool story, bro.

One of the other issues that comes with the Older is Better trope is that it often creates a photocopied setting; each era is just a smaller, less impressive version of the one that came before it. However, if something that made a previous era of prosperity possible is lost or forgotten (whether due to resources, a dark age, or what have you), then ask what people did to replace its loss. What direction did society go in, and how did it change?

If magic lost some of its potency, or vanished entirely except in rare cases, did that lead to a rise in more reliable forms of alchemy? If the method for creating relic shields that could guard against any arrow was lost, did this lead to a change in protections, or a change in tactics? If shimmer cloaks became so rare as to be effectively non-existent, then what replaced them as a status symbol and/or means of personal protection?

While having relics from the past, lost rituals, or ancient rites are fun additions to a story, too often writers forget that subsequent generations don't stay in a holding pattern waiting for those things to be re-discovered. They're going to be moving, changing, altering, and finding new ways to accomplish old goals. Sometimes this means embracing new technologies, and other times it means changing your entire society... but rarely do things stay exactly the same for huge swaths of time.

Even language changes, and a way of speaking or writing that would be quite plain just a few generations ago can feel strange and foreign. After several hundred years of linguistic drift, well, that might be another reason that lost methods remain lost.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Fantasy Writers, If You're Just Changing Something's Name, Don't Bother

How many times have you been reading a book, and come across what sounds like a really unique fantasy race? They're mysterious, they seem to be powerful, and there are whispers about fallen empires and hidden civilizations that might provide a clue to the current plot. Maybe you start getting excited, wondering when the big reveal for the Gethredgi is going to happen. Then, when our heroes find themselves in the depths of a darkened forest, they're suddenly surrounded by strange, shadowy shapes. Then one of them steps forward... and it's just an elf.

Ears? Check. Strange instruments? Check. Perfect hair? Big check on that.

It doesn't just look like an elf, though... it's an elf through and through. Nature loving, aloof, unusual but alluring, etc., etc. Basically the only thing different is the name, and it turns out that all the smoke and mirrors about lost empires or shadowy rumors was just a trick to keep them off-screen long enough that the reader didn't realize your big lead up was to a copy-paste of the same creatures we've seen since Tolkien put his stamp on the genre.

This is a problem that a lot of fantasy writers run into. They want their world and setting to feel different and unique, but they don't want to stretch too far outside of the tropes established by Tolkien, Dungeons and Dragons, and other fantasy mainstays. Because yes these short, burly, bearded master craftsmen who live in the depths of the earth and tend to be warriors are still a thing... but we're calling them the Sha'an instead of dwarves. And these big brutes who like to fight, are hard to hurt, and have a lovely combination of green skin and tusks totally aren't orcs... they're, uh, the Miskai.

If you've ever found yourself doing this, I want you to slap yourself in the face. Hard. Now stop doing this, because you're not doing yourself or your work any favors.

The Name Isn't What Makes You Unique

Too often writers confuse changing the traditional name of something with actual innovation (note that this also applies to minor cosmetic changes, like giving your elves silvery hair, or making your dwarves gray-skinned). If you haven't actually gotten down under the skin of a story element and altered the way it works and functions, then you haven't actually made something new or unique. You've just stolen a car, spray-painted it a different color, and are now trying to tell us it's a different car.

What's worse is that nine times out of ten you're just going to piss off readers because you're essentially expecting them to treat these minor alterations as if they somehow get you away from the accepted mythology surrounding these creatures.

Make your orcs rum-running, dirtbike-riding anarchists, and NOW you've got our attention.

Interestingly, though, if you leave the names the same but change everything else, you'll find that you both have a whole new monster on your hands, and that your readers will be excited about it.

As an example, take vampires. There have been a lot of different versions of them over the years, and we've seen them re-invented time and time again. We've seen them portrayed as the undead, the strigoi, as shambling, zombie-like creatures, as carriers of a plague, as immortal beauties, and we've seen them as split-faced, whip-tongued monstrosities.

Any time there was a huge change in these creatures, they were still called vampires. Whether it was moving from a mystical to a biological explanation, taking them from monsters to sex symbols, or making them from beautiful creatures into hideous freaks, there were huge shifts in the mythology, weaknesses, strengths, powers, and even appearance of these creatures. But they were always called vampires as a way to deliberately play on audience expectations, which would then be subverted.

By changing superficial things, though, you're doing the opposite of that. You're promising your audience that your creatures, magic system, wizards, what have you, are totally different, but then giving them the same old same that they're used to.

Don't Be Afraid To Stay The Same (Or To Change)

Too often genre writers are overly concerned with uniqueness and originality in terms of the tropes they're using. While you should definitely think about those things, what's more important is the story you're telling, and the characters whose journey we're following. As I said back in Your Fantasy Novel Probably Sucks, and Professor Awesome's University Explains Why, everything about your setting is the backdrop against which your story is actually happening. So while unique cities, bizarre magic systems, or a ground-up re-imagining of fantasy race mainstays will be unique, they won't be the things that keep your readers reading.

They'll read for your story, and your story is (or at least should be) about characters.

So if you get too bogged-down in worrying that your elves are too Tolkien, or your demons are too Moorcock, and your rebellious princess just feels like punk rock Disney, take a moment, and ask the important question; are your characters compelling? And if you feel the answer is yes, ask if leaning on these other tropes weakens your story.

If it doesn't, don't give yourself an ulcer over trying to re-invent the wheel.

Because sure, if your orcs look just like the Uruk-hai, and your elves are master archers, some people are probably going to roll their eyes a bit. But if your characters are good, and your story is solid, people are more than happy to walk down a road that has a few familiar sign posts on it.

And if you really want to give them a different experience, don't just throw on a different coat of paint. Dig deep, and go nuts with it!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing installment. If you have examples where a creator tried to seem new and different by just slapping some new labels onto existing tropes, and it really didn't work, leave them in the comments below! For more of my work, go check out my Vocal archive where I write about gaming, sexuality, geeky things, horror, and a ton of other stuff, too. To stay on top of all my releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Lastly, if you'd like to help support me and my work, consider either Buying Me A Ko-Fi to leave a one-time tip, or consider joining The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page, which is my bread-and-butter for making content just like this. Either way, there's a free book and my gratitude in it for you.