Now with 50% more dinosaur

2/6/2013

There are certain things which, added to the blurb on the back of a book, instantly make that book seem twice as awesome to its intended audience.

For a small boy, it's dinosaurs. Or maybe pirates. (I was particularly amused by an ad in the back of one of Baby Smith's books for Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs, a title that reads as if someone grabbed everything boys like off the Shelf of Ideas and mixed it up in a big bowl.*)

For a romance reader, it appears to be a man with a dark past. (Slightly off-white pasts don't cut it in the romance world; you wouldn't get far as a romantic hero if the worst secret you're concealing in the agonised depths of your soul is that you once nearly ran over a squirrel.)

For a sports fan, it's … *tries and fails to dig up any knowledge of sport whatsoever* … er, something to do with balls?

And for fantasy lovers, it has to be dragons.

Which is why you may find it a little odd that one of my works-in-progress used to have dragons in it, and I decided to take them out. If every fantasy tale is that much better with an added pinch of dragon, why deliberately make my novel less awesome? I mean, next thing you know I'll be taking out all the swordfights and making people duel with wooden spoons instead (for health and safety reasons, obviously).

The truth is, you're right. I could have kept my dragons, and they would indeed have been awesome. But I was swayed by that most dreaded of all forces when it comes to writing: Other People's Opinions. I'd read too many blogs and articles and critical reviews that said people were fed up with dragons. Dragons are such a cliché. If I see one more dragon in a fantasy novel I'll scream. Do something more original. And so my beloved dragons got the chop.**

Which was my mistake.

Because the fact is, People With Opinions are sometimes out of step with the opinion of the people. After all, if you went by everything that's written online, you'd deduce that the whole world hated Twilight – when actually, it's a small but vociferous minority. What critics and full-time reviewers and other writers feel about any given aspect of a book isn't necessarily what most readers feel. So, straight-up battle between good and evil? Still popular (Harry Potter, anyone?). Vast epic in which the end of the book is by no means the end of the story? Still popular (A Song of Ice and Fire isn't exactly failing). And dragons? Yep, still popular.

Trying to chase critical opinion is a futile exercise. You'll always be behind the cutting edge (no doubt soon the opinion-makers will be moaning about the prevalence of gritty violence in fantasy, just when everyone's decided that's the only possible way to get noticed), and you won't necessarily be giving your audience what they want anyway. The most important thing is to do what works for your own book, whether it's considered a cliché or not. If the story is good enough then nothing else matters.

So, maybe I'll reinstate my dragons and maybe I won't. But if I don't, it won't be because fantasy is so over dragons. Because if there's one thing I realise now, it's that – no matter what a few people would have us believe – fantasy will never be over dragons, any more than small boys will ever stop loving dinosaurs and pirates.

Hmm. Pirate dragons. Now there's an idea.

* I bet the sequel is Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs: Mission to Outer Space. Or possibly Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs: Football Robot Mayhem.

** Obviously not literally. If I were in a film about dragonslayers, I'd be the one who got sent ahead as an edible decoy.

6 Comments

M T McGuire link

2/6/2013 02:50:13 pm

Ah, so true. You know what they say, you can please all of the people some of the time but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

So, I've probably had enough of medieval fantasy with elves and dragons and other things in that people know more about than me. But that's probably because I fear the geeks, you know, you write a book with dwarves in and within days of publication you're inundated with e-mails from people who think they know more about dwarves than you do telling you you've got it WRONG!

I like fantasy, and James Bond and the cheesy 1960s stuff that they used to show on BBC 2 at 6 o'clock - no-one will understand that because the internet's American but I persevere.

In short what I'm saying in a slightly verbose and alcohol-fuelled kind of way is that you have to write what you want to write, because if you want it someone else will... er... in theory. And anyway, writing what you want to read, yourself is the only way to tell a story with any conviction.

In other words, I hope you've put the dragons back. ;-)

Cheers

MTM

Sam D link

2/6/2013 03:07:52 pm

I think a fine balance needs to be struck between repeating the same old over and over, and presenting an overused idea in a refreshing way. Too often stories tip in favour of the former and it can be very boring to read about your typical 'knight slaying dragon' (this goes for other fantasy tropes too). It helps to know the tropes well, as it can guide you towards following it accurately or deconstructing it to highlight the point. So long as you can give a new twist on an old theme, I don't see the problem

Sophie E Tallis link

5/6/2013 06:42:29 pm

Ah, well as a die hard dragon lover, I'll never be 'over' dragons. No, of course they're not a pre-requisite for a fantasy book, nor should they be. I'm a firm believer that there should never be any hard and fast rules concerning genre writing. Anything goes. If the author can image it, then have it. Do what you want and what feels right.

As far the originality thing goes, well, every romance novel out there has a hero figure, usually dark haired and tall, often a love triangle, obstacles to overcome, and a female who is strong and independent but eventually gives love a chance blah blah blah. The thing with using clichés in your work, really is all about HOW you use them. Yes loads of books have dragons, including mine, but the difference is how you use them.

I think on the whole, the fantasy genre gets a terrible battering from critics calling it all formulaic without really realising that every genre by its nature is formulaic to some degree. I've yet to read a crime novel without a crime (often grisly), a villain (the more twisted the better), a hero (usually a maverick cop, angst ridden, anti-hero with marital and/or drink probs). Sci-fi tends to have gadgets, often set in the future, alternate universe or in space with ships etc. The crucial difference is how the writer deals with the subject matter. Subvert the cliché if you can, make it fresh, make it your own.

On the whole dragon issue though, one thing I have conceded. Is that although wyverns are a species of dragon, people, well...SOME people get very passionate about specifics. Now being a complete nerd myself, I do understand this. However I learnt my lesson pretty quickly, that although the author should be allowed to invent all they want, don't mess with species. Despite being fictional creatures, which I wrongly assumed allowed me to have 'artistic licence', people got very annoyed when I used the term wyvern and dragon as an interchangeable phrase and pointed out, which I knew being a fan of heraldry, that wyverns only had two legs not four as with dragons. So, I must admit, I did take heed and uniformly changed all my wyverns back into dragons or into my own fÿrrens, which I knew I could invent and have free rein over. Lesson learnt.

My own advice, for what it's worth, is put the dragons back! :D

6/6/2013 04:19:43 am

There you go. THREE endorsements of putting the dragons back!

Cheers

MTM

A.F.E. Smith link

6/6/2013 03:52:39 pm

Looks like a unanimous vote for the dragons, then. And that's not even counting the dragons themselves, who are being quite vociferous about being reinstated. If there's one thing I know, it's that you should never mess with a vociferous dragon.

Some interesting stuff here about what makes a book original. I sometimes think that so many books have been written by now that pretty much everything is a cliché. In which case, it all depends on the execution. 'It's not what you do, it's the way that you do it.' Readers will forgive a book almost anything if it has style ... by which I mean that certain indefinable something that pulls you in and doesn't let go.

6/6/2013 03:57:37 pm

Very true. I think there's an element of blag to it. If you can write your book with conviction, then, no matter how far fetched it is, the chances are it'll stick. That's my theory, anyway.

Cheers

MTM

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