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Originality in Fantasy - Taking The Road Less Travelled
By  A.R. George
Think of all the fantasy authors you really like. The usual number is between 5 and 10 (though there's no accounting for 'usual', is there? ;). Now think of all the fantasy authors you've read and not liked, or felt neutral about. Big number, isn't it? Okay - now think of all the authors on all the bookshelves of your local bookstore.
That's right. Hundreds and hundreds. And those are just the authors who've 'broken through' to publishing. Self-evidently it takes something really, really special to make your favourite books stick in your mind, doesn't it? There are probably plenty of fantasy stories you've read which you liked at the time, but now can't really remember - because they were pretty much like all the others. They weren't original.
Originality is a challenge in fantasy writing - making familiar themes fresh and unique in their own way. Total, complete originality does not really exist in writing, and any claim to it is somewhat suspect; Tolkien himself (you know the guy, don't you?) drew heavily on Norse and Celtic mythology, just two examples, when he created his Middle-Earth. But the measure of a good fantasy author's skill is their talent for drawing on old ideas and breathing new life into them, letting the reader see them in a new shape. You can't invent dragons, but you can decide what they look like, how they act - whatever you want.
(The author of this article should note here that she makes no claim to being a good fantasy author; just a person with a large share of 2-cent pieces to give out. ;)
So, without further preamble: 5 (Non-Exhaustive) Points of Originality!
1 - Original Characters
Characters will make or break your story - no ifs or buts about it. If no-one cares about them, no-one will read about them. They are also the most commonly overlooked way to make your story original.
Appearance is superficial, and not a guarantee of originality. Giving your character spectacularly coloured hair or eyes is generally gimmicky rather than original, particularly if you have no reason for the physical difference besides 'it looks cool' or '(s)he was just born that way'. The same goes for birthmarks and unusual weapons. Try giving your character a pointy nose instead, or a toast-rack chest - just a minor point of difference to distinguish them from the masses without being a gimmick.
All that said, an original personality will do ten times as much good for your character as rainbow-coloured eyes. Avoid the tortured hero, the wicked advisor and the gruff dwarf like the proverbial plague. Do not instantly kill off all the hero's immediate family. And do not, repeat, NOT give an elf a harp unless it is completely unavoidable. ;) Your greatest chance of making a character truly memorable is - you've heard it before! - giving them flaws. This does not mean 'a tendency to push people away'; the rugged loner has been done to death in fantasy. Unless you can reinvent him - give him a sense of humour, or something - don't expect that he'll stick in a reader's mind, because the hordes of other rugged loners certainly haven't!
Some of the best flaws include irresponsibility, apathy, cowardice, stubbornness and a temper. Try a few and see what happens!
Lastly, don't overlook one of your most powerful sources of originality: the villain. Villains who are evil 'just because' will not give your hero anything serious to interact with. Villains who cackle maniacally belong in comic books. And villains with castles tend not to be taken so seriously these days (higher rent and power bills aside). Try giving them good points, loyalties, ambiguities - the reader will feel much more involved in your story if they can vaguely understand the enemy's point of view.
2 - Original Plots
A beautiful princess is captured by a dragon. She's imprisoned in a tower. A young knight is sent to the tower to rescue her. What comes next?
That's right - the princess falls in love with the dragon and tells the knight to shove off.
Silly, maybe, but you weren't expecting it, were you? The curse of fantasy is that there are precedents for many plotlines, and many plotlines have become predictable from the beginning. An orphaned boy will always seek revenge. An amnesiac will always be royalty. An unusual alignment of the planets will always bring a chance for the end of the world. An army or fortress facing impossible odds will always triumph. You can either deviate from these completely - try writing a story about a family of heroes one day: Mum, Dad and the kids! - or use them to trick your readers by twisting the formula; who'd ever expect the boy with the special birthmark to die, or a prophecy to be wrong, or the usurper of a throne to be a good man? In the same way, don't feel compelled to have a completely happy ending. Fantasy is intrinsically about good versus evil, but that doesn't mean it has to be an unmixed or total victory ...
Consider writing a story that doesn't have implications for the entire world; a kingdom, a town, or even a modest group of individuals is usually enough. Consider having no royalty involved in your story (fun though royalty are). And always think about the road less travelled - you're bound to strike on an interesting, original plot eventually if you sit and think to yourself, 'What if? What if? ...'
3 - Original Races and Creatures
Humans, elves, dwarves and dragons are the darlings of 'high fantasy'. They're such well-trodden ground that it now takes a lot of skill and effort to make them more than a cliche - the archetypes have set very solidly around them. In writing original fantasy, you really have two choices: give the 'famous four' the boot, or roll up your sleeves and make some serious changes.
If you do choose to banish them from your story, make sure you banish them altogether - don't just make a 'new race' of long-lived, forest-loving creatures called Ix'idrans. ;) When you make a new race, don't feel compelled to make them humanoid; lizard-men and cat-men aren't uncommon fare these days. Try some strange spirit-beings, or weird liquid-creatures. Make a nation of non-hostile, non-mindless undead.
If you DON'T want to lose elves, dwarves and dragons, you don't have to, of course. But you need to do a lot of extra work to make sure that they're not the 'pulp races'. Give the dwarves homes and professions that have nothing to do with mines. Give the dragons society and classes. Make the elves hopeless at magic, and for the love of Something Loveable, get them out of those forests unless they're doing something interesting!
4 - Not Reinventing the Wheel
Originality is a wonderful thing. Don't feel, however, that your story must bear no resemblance whatsoever to anything else ever written. If you go renaming all your professions - 'Mara the Ks'cali played her harp-like ks gently' ... 'Jon the Steel-Bearer smiled at Dor the Iron-Maker' - you have to be very careful that it doesn't get too confusing. No-one is going to scream 'plagiarism!' at you for using the word 'guardsman' or 'smith'. Rather a lot of us do. ;) On the other hand, if you're not throwing too many random, unexplained names into the pot, and if it adds to the exotic feel of your culture, go for it!
Beware, too, of getting too creative with month/day names and demarkations. 'Mara waited two moonturns' isn't TOO bad, since the reader can guess readily enough what that means (though 'month' is probably still better!), but saying 'Mara waited five Castledays' is completely non-descriptive, and guaranteed to force your reader to flip back through the book OR ignore all references to time. Not good if you're trying to make a point that something's happening quickly/slowly.
The basic rule of thumb is that you should always have a clearly defined reason for making something different. Day names, month names, even season names ... these are all superficial changes, like a character's appearance, and don't really contribute to originality in any substantial way on their own.
5 - Original Extras
Romance - Don't feel compelled to pair off all your characters. Maybe some never find 'the one', or permanently nurse a doomed love. Maybe some just aren't romantically inclined!
Death - Don't necessarily give a character time to gasp out their noble last words. Don't kill them off at random, either. The faithful servant doesn't ALWAYS have to die, and the noble prince doesn't ALWAYS have to live.
Gender - Ever considered a female weaponsmith, or a male captive of a dragon?
Age - Ever considered a hero over forty?
World History - 'In the beginning, the gods created ...' is fine, but why not try making a world that was created by accident?
Languages - If you have no envisioned grammatical reason for having apostrophes in your fantasy language, DON'T PUT THEM THERE. ;)
In closing, the author of the article would just like to assure all readers that she has committed most of these so-called 'mistakes' herself at some point in the past, and does not mean to belittle anyone's writing style or stories. This is a personal opinion of originality's golden rule, and that rule is simple: Think outside the square.
If you must give a harp to an elf, make him bad at it. ;)
FARP Article Guestbook
| Date | Name | Comment | | | 24 Jun 2008 |  Twilla |  Loading... Hey, I just reread this(for like the suptillionth time because it’s that good) and I just wanted to say I agree with what lots of people have said about fantasy races. Might as well keep the classic races. I mean, the average fantasy geek loves elves and orcs and dragons, and no one’s making you stick exactly to what those are defined as in Tolkien’s books... or whatever big fantasy author you admire. There are little things one can change about races. Like, haven’t you noticed how elves tend to differ from book to book to game? In Word of Warcraft, there are Night Elves and High Elves. Yeah, in D&D there were ’drow’ subterranean elves and ’faint’ upper elves. It’s still cool. Um... Anyway... I’m not making much sense here, but what I’m basically saying is I think you should keep the standard fantasy races, give or take a few. Um.... Yeah.
Great article! ’Tis pretty insightful. ^_^ | |
| 30 Jun 2008 | Scott | Loading... Actually, I like to think of the square as a curvature-challenged cirlce, and I hang out inside sometimes just to make him feel better. | |
| 30 Jun 2008 | Scott | Loading... If people didn’t like elves and dragons and surly dwarves anymore then those stories wouldn’t keep getting published, BUT!... isn’t it fun to grab that book that has something new?
I think so. | |
| 1 Jul 2008 | Aspiring Author | Loading... Yes, originality is important. I think that if you struggle with it as much as I did, then you pick your favorite book, then start with that and change whatever you need to change or whatever you wish to change. Just be sure it ends up original. It doesn’t have to start that way. Good article. | |
| 8 Aug 2008 | Ari | Loading... This article made me laugh and feel relieved at the same time. Thankfully, from what your article says, my story seems to be relatively original. (Geez, I hope so, I’ve been planning it for four months....). No elves for me, just some original species and stuff. Thanks.  | |
| 11 Oct 2008 | Ryan | Loading... Great article, and I think this can be applied to Sci-fi writting to. As for the cliches, I suggest a book called In the Company of Ogres by A. Lee Martinez. Or any of the discworld books by Terry Pratchett. These books takes fanasty cliches and turn them around. Good work, and I plan appling this to my own writting. | |
| 26 Oct 2008 | Zenny | Loading... @_@ I don’t think I can digest another book with elves, to be honest. I mean, come ON, what’s the point of writing another dragon x elves x dwarves x peaceful forest story? We’re writers, darnit, we’re supposed to create things, not put Tolkien on a pedestal and re-write his books!
(At least if they haaave to use elves, people could make them the tiny creatures that can, I donno, walk through solid objects and spin time or something similar that the before-Tolkien elves did.)
And you! You there, reponsible for me messing all my cupidly happy characters up! D: Writing down their flaws was really interesting, they just popped up themselves. I mean, with all the history I have of the characters in my blasted story, they as well should, but still. Now the girl who’s outwardly temperamental and kicks people’s butts yay is secretly actually convinced that she’s worthless and is scared out of her wits about people leaving her, and on the other side her makeshift older brother leaves all his decisions to her because she’s the only thing in his life worth living for and he doesn’t care about anything else anyways, so where they go or what they do doesn’t really matter to him.
Whoa. I’ll have to re-read that a couple of times to get it, I think. Makes sense in my twisted up world, though.
And AHAHAHA. I totally feel pity for the villain who’s gone from greedy give-me-ur-gold-plz bastard to a shell of a man who just wanted some love in his life. *snickers and snorts and giggles and cackles*
*thumbs up* Thank you so much. This really made me think a bit about my guys and ladies, even if, luckily, I’m obssessed with originality otherwise (just haven’t developed my characters enough yet, it seems v_v). | |
| 25 Apr 2009 |  William J Burch | Loading... This is awesome. I was having trouble on how to make my stories stand out, and this came along and helped so much. Thanks writer!! =D | |
| 21 May 2009 |  Melissa marie canaway | Loading... thank you!^_^ Seriously, I started reading this, was called away for two minutes or so, and already had an idea to kill off an especially dear main character in a story I’ve been writing. (Don’t worry; it’s a good thing. It’ll be painful, but lots of fun  ) Now, of course, I have finished enjoying this article and wanted to give you a refund on those two cents of yours... Again, thank you for writing this  "May your way be bright with the glittering of gold." | |
| 19 Jun 2009 | Naria | Loading... I hope my characters not cleche or whatever, I tried my best to make him the oposite of Eragon (I never read the book)
the hero in my story is the loyal servant who cantsantly finds new people to serve through out his journey and refuses to be his own master. In his village this would be great behavior since his race had formaly served the king but they consider him a bastard because it is unclear who his father is. his mother is extremily beatiful at any standers and having a son like him only makes her a better person. his mother’s first husband was a great worrior of the village, the greatest and one of the oldest (died before his son was born). his stepfather (mother’s second husband) is the strongest man in the village, is young, and a skilled worrior, with a large temper. The main character’s name is Dahl because it sounds like doll and he is gentel and quiet. Dahl is the elven word for hope (his parents didn’t know that). and Dahl becomes a better warrior emotionally and physically than both his fathers.
( SO MY IDEA, AND HOPE YOU LIKE IT) | |
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