McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft

Are Vamps and Werewolves too overdone?

<< < (3/12) > >>

Matrix Refugee (formerly Morraeon):
Depends on how the story is executed. I can be iffy with weres and vamps, but part of it is personal bias: There used to be this crazy girl on the Recursion of The Matrix Online who roleplayed as a vampire, and she was the most anNOYing about it: used to randomly try and turn people into vampires (especially females, since it seemed she was a bisexual who used RP as an outlet for her sexual drives...), whether they wanted to RP a vamp or not, and that included me/my character. She even lead a faction full of vamps and weres until the thing got to be the laughingstock of the server and the phrase "lesbian vampire" became a catch-phrase for someone who badly RPed a vampire/werewolve/preternatural Exilic program of choice.

DragonFire:

--- Quote from: blgarver on September 19, 2007, 07:50:26 PM ---Well, there's a reason they became the world's enemy.  They weren't always that way, but something huge happened that turned the world against them.  I don't want to divulge too much.  I've been developing this story since I was 12...that's 13 years in the making.

--- End quote ---
Umm, well yes, I'm doing.

Race ya to publish!!!!

OF course, my synopsis is nothing like yours, so maybe there is room for both of us!! :)

Kiriath:
Me, I think they're a little overdone. But I just like various mythologies rather than the same monsters.

Who cares what anyone says. If it's got you dragged in, write it. :)

Kate Beckinsale, bodysuit. Gahh.

Cyclone Jack:

--- Quote from: neurovore on September 19, 2007, 03:30:03 PM ---I've never been overly fond of werewolves, but there are a lot of directions one can go with vampires that people aren't focusing on at the moment.  I have very little time for the paranormal romance genre, but books like David Wellington's Thirteen Bullets do nice innovative things with bits of traditional vampire lore that have barely been touched in modern vampire fiction, and Peter Watts' Blindsight, justifiably nominated for lots of major awards this year, has among its various peculiar spaceship crew members a vampire with seriously inhuman psychology, so I think the notion is far from mined out.
--- End quote ---

IMO, 'overdone' isn't the same as 'mined out'. Overdone simply means that too many novels/stories focus on those archetypes. I'd certainly never discourage a writer from tackling them -- in fact, every writer of horror/fantasy should probably do them even if it's just to get it 'out of their system'. If you keep up with magazine (online and paper) sub guidelines, you'll see that many editors are honestly stating that vampire stories are going to be a tough sell because they are deluged with them.

I agree about Blindsight and think he was robbed at the Hugos. As much as I enjoyed Vinge's Rainbow's End, I feel the Watt's novel broke more ground, told a more exciting story, and was basically superior on a literary level.


--- Quote ---Of course, if you're a hideous cannibalistic insectoid thing who wants the nice tasty humans to get close enough to gobble, some way of appearing mysterious, beautiful, tall and graceful is as good a lure as any.
--- End quote ---

True, true. But I was thinking more along the lines of. "Oh, Lord -- it's a bunch of stinkin' elves. Watch out, little one -- they're weak and stupid, but quick. Might lose a finger if you're not careful. Give 'em a wide berth, luv."


--- Quote ---The thing about most contemporary takes on elves that bores me is that most of them are as you describe, on the surface, and have nothing behind that to back them up.  [ With Ford's The Last Hot Time as an honorable counterexample. ] Tolkien's elves have much more to them than that, and it's easy to miss on a quick reading of Lord of the Rings just how much there is to them - they are basically Miltonian angels dressing way down, and the couple of places where that mask slips [ "All shall love me and despair" ] are to my mind moments that stick.

--- End quote ---

Well, literary philosophy-wise I suppose I'm basically a Campbellian. Humancentric to a fault. :P

Mickey Finn:
We need more FAE...Seelie and Unseelie Court. To date, the only place I've seen this come up is Jim's work, Matt Wagner's Mage,Delint's Jack the Giant Killer...and my unpublished stuff.

There's so much more to the mythos than bloody elves.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page