Fantasy tropes, authors, and inspiration! Resources:
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-the-fantasy-genre-history-of-fantasy-and-subgenres-and-types-of-fantasy-in-literature#SVK1sFTDxMbPRpsJRQlCN
https://rtbookreviews.com/science-fantasy-book-genre-explained/
https://blog.reedsy.com/fantasy-tropes/
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=brandon+sanderson+creative+writing+classÂ
It is me. Instead of tea today, I have ginger, lemon, and honey concoction in here, or sashay. So cheers to that, cheers to that. I'll have to get some if the scarf gets worse, but yeah, I'll try not to cough on you, okay? But we'll sneeze on you, Radha. Don't sneeze on me, yeah. All right, I'll try to get this party started. We do, we do. Let me take a sip and let's do this. Hello everybody and welcome to Tea and Tails podcast. I'm now. And I'm Sarah. We want to send a shout out to all the people who have been sending us kind notes, putting wonderful comments and bumping our podcast up. We thank you so much for your support and your love, especially to Claire Dreykot. You are always our best fan and to Jessica Lathrop all the way over in Spain. We appreciate you. I have been waiting for this episode for the post three episodes. It has been a long time, okay? And I'm so excited because today I'm gonna be almost want to say interviewing Sarah. So as some of you might know, hopefully all of you know, otherwise you haven't read and listened to our previous episode. I'm a romance writer and Sarah is a fantasy writer. And as much as I know about fantasy, I knew nothing about fantasy. So we thought it would be fun to talk a little bit about what the fantasy genre is. If you are a fantasy writer or a fantasy reader or a fantasy fanatic, this episode is for you. We would love to have your comments on this because maybe you know something else. I don't know about fantasy or Sarah doesn't know about fantasy. I want to start out by asking you because I know, I just always say fantasy because I'm like, I'm gonna read some fantasy. And then you told me, no, I write epic fantasy and I'm like, chillax, Sarah actually go over, don't try to be so classy about this. Like, it's fantasy, my friend. And you're like, no, no, there's a difference. So what is the difference between fantasy and epic fantasy? Well, there's a lot of differences in the fantasy genre altogether. Epics can be anything that's wide scale. It has a worldwide, a universe wide stakes to it. The two main separations are high fantasy, also called second world fantasy and low fantasy. High fantasy slash second world fantasy and low fantasy take place in very different environments. Your low fantasy takes place on earth with earth things that we know. For example, you'll have your setting be New York or your setting will be old England, where high fantasy on the other hand takes place on a completely different world. It can have completely different rules. You have to learn new places. Everything is different. And how high of a fantasy it is depends on how much you break away from things we know on earth. Okay. So that's where the episode where we talk about I'm a writer and you tell me about your fantasy writer, we call for you, do all these research about plants and all those things. That's where they come in handy because you kind of do need those things to be able to be like, is this earth worthy or should this be outer space worthy? Yes. I don't know if it is the same, but for romance, you have the romance genre, but then you have sub-genres of romance, you have contemporary romance, you have historic romance, you have paranormal romance, etc. Is it the same with fantasy or is it just fantasy? It's absolutely the same. You can have fantasy that's more paranormal versus your typical high fantasy that has dragons and knights and shining armor or things like that. You also have dark fantasy that include a lot of horror elements. It's meant to shock you. It's meant to give you that fearful feeling. It's a huge genre with many different sub-sub-genres in it. There's even sub-genres to the sub-genres so it can get very complicated. That makes your research into agents more complicated. It makes trying to pinpoint exactly what your comps are more complicated because if I'm writing a fantasy that's more Harry Potter with your wizards and your typical dragons in a contemporary earth and low fantasy environment, or am I comping something more like Brandon Sanderson where I've recreated an entire world and not even the species on it look like your normal elves and things. Sounds like a lot of work and thank goodness I didn't write fantasy. I was reading a post and then someone's like yeah I'm writing a space opera and I would like some beta readers for this and this and this and I'm like space opera. I was like is this like a musical of space but sung in opera? So is it? No no no no no. The most popular space opera is Star Wars. A space opera is closer to the sci-fi than it is too fantasy. Space opera is more in the sci-fi arena because you're going to be in outer space dealing with politics from different worlds. You might have some science that mixes with space treasure. An opera has to have is it has to be on the galactic scale, emphasize a space warfare, uses melodramatics, risk-taking, space adventures. So you're talking things that bring up a lot of emotion. Okay well that is good to know. I'm sad that there's no singing at though. Can we can we can we talk to someone about this because well I mean what's it say? Okay so here's the thing though you say when you write a specific fantasy genre that it makes it hard to find agents because of the specificity of it. Do you find it though harder to find agents for epic fantasy rather than just general fantasy? I would personally say yes but also with the caveat I still have a list of a hundred agents. Oh okay. A lot of agents out there but I have to be careful with those hundred agents because I have a list of maybe ten who specifically say love your epics, love anything high fantasy. It really is a niche to be in the high fantasies. You'll find agents who will specifically say I will not take a second world fantasy which cuts me completely out. They don't want to re learn how the world interacts with their characters. They want to be in a world they understand. The other trick is you'll find people who'll say I love epics I do not like certain tropes. That's where a lot of people end up self-publishing in epic fantasy rather than traditional publishing because the trends that the agents and the publishers are looking for is away from your European based. They want to see elements from other cultures so if you bring in something like genies from Egypt there's actually a book that does this is a really good book by the way it's called The Master of Gin by Jelly. The Jelly Clark I'm probably butchering their name where it's all about it's Egypt and Egypt fantasy. So if you write from a culture that is not European not United States and you write in your fairy tales and your mythology that's hot right now. That's what people are looking for. If you're low fantasy you have to get into those new cultures and if you're high fantasy like me you have to be creating cultures that are not based off of the Europe. So basically what you are telling me is you are moving to South Africa to come and live with me so that you can write a fantasy novel or what I'm also hearing if now I have to start writing fantasy because clearly I mean I know everything about South Africa we have such culture I mean we have 11 official languages to start with. Well speaking of tropes though oh I dimly have my favorite tropes and my least favorite tropes in romance. What about you do you have like least favorite tropes or like your most favorite tropes that you tend to use? I have free that I avoid like the plague. Oh wow just immediately three. You're just like you know what every day when I wake up those other ones I think about immediately. I'm like we're thankful about them. Yeah those are the ones that I break every time anything that I write. The first one is your typical taverns medieval times pseudo European like I just talked about. I think it's very cliche there are people who enjoy reading it. I understand that but I feel like there's so much more that can be done outside of that environment. I do bring in some medieval technologies if they are outside the norm enough then I'll bring it in because it's like hey there's another side to this. The second one that I avoid like the plague is the idea of an evil overlord or the black and white morality. Do you like either like you're good or you're bad? Yes I like having the spectrum I evil people I want you to like them. Love my bad guy is is my idea. I want you to sympathize with them in some way. You will understand them as a person and see that they have more depth than just doing things that are mean for people for the sake of doing mean things. They have reasons for it. I love that you say that because once Maester I took an acting in full-month television class and the professor showed us a film called The Lasking of Scotland and it is about the president of Uganda and she was like okay as you're watching the movie I have to kind of analyze the characters and see what they're doing and what how they are and naturally this president is the antagonist in the story but she was like okay from an actor's perspective you can't just hate the character you have to love the character for other people to hate the character and for other people to understand the character so you need to understand that even though the person is an antagonist the way he thinks he doesn't think he's a bad person and that just like blew up a whole new world for me because I was like that was so well said and it was so good in a sense because I was like I could use that on actual people in my daily lives I was like I don't know what you're doing right now but I understand yes exactly and I love it for the redemption arc because if you have an evil person quote unquote who has reasons for what they do and you're able to dismantle that through the story and give them a redemption arc it gives so much more depth to this idea of good versus evil then black and white idea this person's always good this person's always evil but you can also play with your people who stay evil where they miss that moment of redemption and that adds depth to your story I 100 agree with that even though as a reader sometimes I'm like why did you make me like this person calling even with you the third one that I dislike is the idea of a never progressing world this is where you have a world that's just stuck in an era and even if it goes 50 years 100 years 200 years 300 years they never progress I mean even in real life literally if you look at if you look at 1990 versus now there's a ton of difference so yes I absolutely agree that you know your world does need to progress even if it's in the slightest way because you want to show that this is a strong community and they have certain rituals and they have certain ways of doing things in some certain cultures but whether it is in small ways like one day you ate with your hands and now you eat with a spoon or it can be made with like mommy how do I okay okay and then of course your favorite tropes hit me with them I love the reluctant hero and the chosen one but the chosen one has to have a twist it can't be your typical chosen one trope it has to do something interesting I was like I always feel that's always the character I gave when I read it so I'm kind of over it but I'm glad you love it good on you I love it if it's new you got to give me something different with the chosen one they can't just be magically be able to do everything suddenly there has to be depth to them and reason and some twist like she has a self-African accent not just enough interesting character build saying for example my chosen one she's really good at doing what she does without realizing it but she still needs that mentor to guide her along and she can't do everything she comes to a point where she realizes I don't have to force myself to do something because I'm the chosen one I can let somebody else do that and stick to what I love and build this community around me I like that she's delegating she's like you do that because you are better than I am so you do that and I'll be here eating a cupcake the other favorite ones I love we talked about this already agonist turned ally at that redemption arc give me a beautiful redemption arc any day I adore it I feel you know we all start loving a certain type of book or type of genre and naturally when we become writers we do write in specific genres do you have any favorite fantasy authors I want to talk about three today not just because I enjoy their writing but because of the inspiration that they've given to me the first one is Brandon Sanderson I've talked about him before the biggest reason is if you go to his website he has here's my formula for creating a magic system here's my formula for doing this and it's moldable so it walked me through when I was creating my first series how to build my magic system so they made sense to people I love that I love when writers share things with other writers because I think that is what being an artist and a writer is all about it's like finding inspiration from other people and then just doing your own thing Brandon Sanderson is he also he's a professor he teaches creative writing he has allowed the audio visual students to come in and record his teaching session so you actually can listen to his full course or almost his full course he will cut some of them out if there's a guest speaker who doesn't want to be recorded and you can take basically take the classes on youtube just because he's a fantasy writer doesn't mean people who write in on other genres can't benefit from those videos and those lectures the other person is nk jemisin I think you would love reading her she's a high fantasy but she's spicy but the reason I enjoy her is because she has a class on masterclass she gives you homework she gives you worksheets she gives you all kinds of things on her particular masterclass and she takes a very different perspective I was able to get a good round view of world building character building story building she rolls in a lot of self experience and history into her identity so you can see a lot of parallels into the real world in her plot lines and you said there was a third one so there's a third one her name is Andrea Stewart and the reason why I like Andrea Stewart she does twists on tropes well I enjoy listening to her when I'm world building or editing because she gives me inspiration on what I'm doing oh I like that I like that and I think just because you want to be different doesn't mean you have to be like the extreme opposite of what everybody else wants like you can take a normal trope and just a little twist on it can make it completely different and completely new to someone else so that I think maybe I should read some of her novel I feel and I have learned so much it's insane and I hope and feel that our listeners have learned just as much if you have any more fun facts you want to teach me about fantasy you are more than welcome to leave all your comments all over the world but especially on apple podcast and give up us five stars because then we can go up to the top and you can keep listening to our podcast this might be one of our longer episodes but we want to get too motivated to put your pens back to the paper put your fingers back on that keyboard and keep writing yes and if you want to join our lovely community that we have here please go and follow us on instagram at tintailspodcast on facebook at tintailspodcast and on twitter slash x at podcast details and we want to thank you again so much for everybody who has supported us so far and we would love all of your comments and all of your shares to be contributed to the real world not the fantasy one please have a great day you
