Week 6: Storylab

 

slideshare

Creative Writing

 

10 Classic Fantasy Tropes and How to Enlighten Them 

I love reading about tropes — I think they're a great resource to either get creative ideas from or to avoid perpetuating cliches. This post is specifically related to the fantasy genre. Fantasy is full of tropes — to the point where if you've read one fantasy, you've probably read them all. Nothing wrong with that at all, fantasy is my favorite genre to read. In this list, there are ten tropes discussed:

The Hero

The Mentor

The Quest

The Allies

The New World

The Fantasy Peoples

The Legendary Weapon

The Monsters

The Liege (Princess)

The Dark One

In almost every fantasy book, film, tv show, there will be some mixture of these tropes. There's always a hero, allies, quest, adversary. 

 

 

The 4 Pillars Of Fantasy

Keeping in line with the topic of fantasy, this article by the same author discusses the pillars of fantasy. This includes:

World Building

1. Portal fantasy: There are two worlds—our world and the fantasy world. The hero starts in our world, enters the fantasy world, has adventures there, and returns to our world by story’s end. A classic example is C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia.
2. High Fantasy: The story takes place exclusively in an original world—one where magic and supernatural creatures are real. Think J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth.
3. Low Fantasy: Magic and supernatural creatures crop up in our world where their existence is unknown, or they have such a localized impact people don’t notice or believe in them. The story revolves around these fantastic elements becoming known, and how society is affected as a result. Or–at the very least– the story revolves around these elements becoming known to the protagonist and how they deal with it. A brilliant example is Stephen King’s IT, which features both a supernatural creature and magic in the real world.

 

Magic (Hard and Soft Systems)

1. What means and circumstances are needed to perform magic?
2. What cost must be paid?
3. How does the magic functions and by what mechanisms? What can it do?
4. What are its limitations?
5. What are the potential consequences for using it?

In a Soft Magic system, it’s unclear how the magic functions and there are no known limits to what it can do.

 

Mythical/Supernatural/Creatures/Races

The Hero(ine)

 

 This article is great for beginners to fantasy — whether they're writing it or reading it. I don't think many people who haven't dipped their toes into the genre realizes that there are different sub-genres of the fantasy genre, and each has their own tropes. Many beginner readers may not like High Fantasy to start out with, and would do well with a Low Fantasy genre to kind of begin to understand the tropes and magic system, etc..