"Weird Fantasy" A Genre Title We Need More Of

Have you ever had that moment when you realized there isn't a term for an idea or a concept that you're working with? Even if the story you're writing, or the world you're creating, seems simple and straightforward in your mind, you realize the language to easily describe it to other people seems to be lacking? Sometimes if you talk around the idea for a while you'll meet someone who knows the proper label to apply to it... but sometimes that label doesn't seem to exist. So you start digging, trying stuff out, and seeing what best fits.

And that is why I now have the term "weird fantasy" rolling around in my lexicon.

And that's where we get into my Sundara: Dawn of a New Age setting

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What is "Weird Fantasy"?

For folks who haven't been following my RPG work, for the past year and some odd change I've been putting out guides and splats for my Sundara: Dawn of a New Age setting for both Pathfinder and Dungeons and Dragons 5E. I recently put together an Ask Me Anything video to field the questions folks have been giving me on it over at the Azukail Games YouTube channel (which you should totally subscribe to if you haven't yet, by the by), and one of the questions I tried to answer was, "What is Sundara?"

That was how I came to use the term "weird fantasy" to describe the world I'm making, and the game that takes place in it.

What is weird fiction, though? Glad you asked!

For folks who didn't watch the video (though you should, if for no other reason than it was a bastard and a half to put together while I was in exile at a hotel), the idea stretches back to the weird fiction that was popular before and during the pulp era. The term was coined to describe stories that took the tropes and ideas from classic ghost stories and gothic horror, but then put them into stories where those things didn't seem to belong, or where they hadn't been before.

And that's more or less what I'm trying to do with Sundara, except with fantasy.

Sundra, as a setting, has all the elements one would expect from a high fantasy RPG. With elves and orcs, sorcerers and clerics, and so on and so forth, it has all the elements one might expect from any Pathfinder or DND setting. However, much like a new menu item from Taco Bell, they're placed in a different order than other offerings... and there are certain things you might expect to be present that I've decided to get rid of.

For example, Sundara has no nations or countries as we think of them. Towns are the most common center of governance, with cities and city states being the largest group that one typically finds. There is no absolute good or absolute evil, which leaves morality up to the players, and it destroys the idea that certain creatures are inherently wicked. There's no such thing as a universal racial language (elven, dwarven, orc, etc.), and communication tends to vary by region and dialect. The gods come in an infinite variety and scope, and it's very possible that churches and congregations actually have very little idea what their gods want from them. Different religious factions may war with one another, as well, not even aware they worship the same god.

The list goes on and on. In short, however, Sundara has enough of the ear marks and elements of a standard high fantasy RPG that players will be able to get stuck in, but there are also enough important differences that it feels new and unique, either eliminating certain staples of the genre, or standing tropes on their heads so that players can't just assume all their preconceptions are valid in this setting.

Is there a better name for Sundara, and what I'm trying to do with it? Possibly. But I thought I'd share this label in the hopes that others were trying to do something similar, and who were likewise struggling for an easy label to slap onto their project so they could make a quick elevator pitch to their audience, could try this one on for size.

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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!

 

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Your Fantasy Novel Probably Sucks, and Professor Awesome's University Explains Why

I love fantasy. However, as any genre fan can attest, there are a lot of shitty fantasy books out there. In fact, sometimes it might seem like for every one great fantasy novel, there's a dozen that should never have seen the light of day. The sort of dross you find in the bargain bin tucked under the card table at your weird neighbor's garage sale. And while we all love our own books, and think our ideas are special little rainbows, it seems like we forget the number one rule of good fantasy stories.

No one cares about the world. We're here for the protagonists.

And so are your villains, coincidentally enough.

Professor Awesome's University touched on this in the post Why Your Fantasy Novel Sucks, and I agree with the postmortem report. Nine times out of ten, the chief reason a fantasy novel sucks is because all of the author's attention went to the world, and little to none of it went to the story being told.

You Are Not Tolkien (And You Shouldn't Try To Be)

Tolkien, for better or worse, is held up as the architect of high fantasy as we know it. The Hobbit, the subsequent tales of The Lord of The Rings, and the overly complex history text The Silmarillion, makes up a huge chunk of the genre's modern foundation. Not only that, but Tolkien's work has been hugely influential on roleplaying games, and it's the reason we have Stephen King's Dark Tower, among other tales.

I'm glad for all the things he's influenced. I didn't hear about Tolkien until I was an adult, though.

J.R.R. who?

My introduction to fantasy came from older, stranger tales. I discovered Conan when I was very young, and once I'd devoured the sagas of Hyborea, I moved onto other classic characters. Kull, Solomon Kane, Tarzan, and the other heavyweights of the Weird Tales era. Because of that introduction, my fantasy stories (and really all the fiction I write) tends to be very character-focused. We settle on our protagonist's shoulder, and while they're hacking, slashing, or spellcasting their way through the plot, we are getting invested in them and their struggles.

Just check out my fantasy novel Crier's Knife, and you'll see what I mean.

Professor Awesome's University points out that, for many people whose introduction to fantasy was Tolkien's epic, world-building and linguistic exercise that grudgingly told a story, that is often not the case. They focus almost entirely on the world, and its history, and the vast gulfs of what came before our tale begins. Which is fine, however, we're not reading a history manual about the centuries past; we're here for you to tell us about what's going on now.

What most people forget (or think is simply trivial) was that Tolkien was a scholar first and foremost. He built a massive setting, with a huge history, and filled his work with languages, songs, and poems, not because that makes for good fantasy, but because that was his field of expertise. He'd spent decades learning, and then teaching, about these subjects. Those were the skills he mastered, and they are what made his complex world work. It was what allowed him to create a whole new breed of fantasy.

Chances are you ain't Tolkien, though.

By all means, build a vast, complex world. Create languages, and races, and thousands of years of conflict. Drop some sick verse into your world, and have a sing-a-long in chapter 33. But before you try to tell anyone about your book, ask yourself these two questions.

- Who is my protagonist?

- What are they doing that will get the reader's attention?

Fantasy worlds are a dime a dozen, and ones with longbow-wielding elves, and dwarves who speak with a brogue are five for a penny. Worlds are the canvas you're painting on. They're the background on your stage. It's the play that people are here to watch, though, so don't spend so much time getting the scenery perfect. You can work on that once you know what the show is.

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing post. If you'd like to stay up to date on all my posts, simply follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter to stay plugged-in. Lastly, if you want to support me and my work so I can keep bringing posts like this right to your door, go to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a patron today! All it takes is $1 a month to buy my everlasting gratitude, as well as some sweet, sweet swag.