McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Are Vamps and Werewolves too overdone?
Cyclone Jack:
I'm conciously attempting to avoid all mytho-folklore tropes in the fantasy work I'm doing now. This is beastly, bitchily hard considering that the very structure of storytelling is bound up with those tropes.
It can be done, though. LeGuin's mid 70's and early 80's short work, Jeff Ford's entire career. Jeff VanderMeer, Hal Duncan and Steph Swainston also labor in this particular garden.
My...hmm, direction may be the best term...at the moment is a sort of focused use of the unexplained as both a reflection of and map through various human conditions, which are then distilled through the individual characteristics of normalized characters. The responses of everyday folk faced with 'reality unmasked; naked and with no excuse' to quote a work-in-progress (Meeting The Last Man On Earth, For Coffee: A Raincheck) functions as a form of hyperactive allegory. The metaphor rests not in the description, but in the interpretation of events and facts that fit no previous dataset.
All an experiment of course. Hell, I once wrote an entire story just to see if I could make a ridiculously convoluted plot make sense with no explanation whatsoever. I'd seen other writers do it and wondered if I could. Not to be snobbish, but the great joy of not writing to sell is that I get to pay attention to no voice but those that babble in my own head. :)
ETA: Oddly enough, the decision to use a framework of a completely unreliable universe teeming with unexplainable events has produced my most realistic stories ever. Might be a lesson in that. :P
The Corvidian:
--- Quote from: Kiriath on September 21, 2007, 09:58:18 PM ---There's more Fae than that! :)
How about Holly Black's Tithe and its sequels.
Laurell Hamilton's Merry Gentry...
Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely, which had a lot of advertising on Locus's website for a while.
EDIT: Or do you mean fae that's not young adult? That's more rare to find...
--- End quote ---
I would also recommend Yasmine Galenorn's Daughters of the Moon series. I like her version of the Otherwold, and that there is more then one race of Fairy.
RMatthewWare:
Nothing is new. It's the way you present that can be new. Anything BAD is overdone. But you could write something about elves and if it's good, no one will complain.
For Fae stories, Holly Black is good: Tithe, etc.
meg_evonne:
RMatt--any interest on the publishing end? Wishing you the best!
Could not believe another series that uses the term, "Otherworld". I thought I was being clever. Yeah about as clever as fried hamburgers. Put the thinking cap on Meg....
RMatthewWare:
--- Quote from: meg_evonne on September 23, 2007, 11:28:56 PM ---RMatt--any interest on the publishing end? Wishing you the best!
--- End quote ---
Still working on it. An agent is still (after two months) reviewing my manuscript. No faeries in this one, though. I'd like to work on a fae novel sometime.
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