What do guys want?

Zellie said:

What do you men out there like to see in your fantasy stories?

Anything you distinctly don't like or see as too feminine? (I'm a girl but I will not read anything with fairies in it unless it's horror....and I'm very wary of anything with princesses ^_~ ...nor will I read anything that has gladiators or scruffy wilderness guys warring with nature)

Of course, everything is subjective but I'm just curious if there's any kind of consensus.

And more specificly, I'm working on a scene in a surreal maybe victorian area like downtown Savannah and there's a bustle of street performers and vendors and such.... I wrote some characters meeting at a maypole and then was like...'wtf...there is no one in hell my boyfriend is going to read past this. He'll throw the book out the window right there...' ^_~ So I'm trying to think of an active, public activity people would meet at in that kind of setting. The dancing and music comes later (two of the people meeting are performers who perform to distract people from the doom about to be rained upon them ;p).

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You might want to look at how Jack Vance did his fantasy atmospheres.
Pretty effective and more-or-less masculine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Vance

Real men

I mean, men with at least some testosterone, and not Gay Warriors Who Cry.

For example, should the hero use his nascent magical powers in order to waste a dozen soldiers intent on cutting him into very small pieces and abusing his female companion, please don't have him angst about it, beyond perhaps a visceral reaction to the act of killing.

In fact, go read Grossman's "On Killing".

Apart from that, have the conflict externalised rather than internalised.

EDIT: Oh, and, have any male love interest pursue sex for its own sake as his default setting. Whatever you do, don't have him a disempowered slave etc who the female protagonist "rescues".

I've got a pretty short attention span when it comes to authors describing jester costumes, fife music, maypoles and the like and even then it'd better be imaginative or at least turn some nifty literary phrases. I'd give you a short paragraph to set it up and sprinkle in details during the dialogue if they're truly interesting. If it's just one character commenting on the cleanliness of another's wrist ruffles, yeah, the book is flying across the room. There'd better be some intrigue or fighting or conflict or character development to make the rest palatable. But then again I could probably star in a Geico commercial.

Be very careful generalizing about what men want. For perspective, there's a bunch of guys in the romance forum loudly saying that men both read and write romance. Men, like women, defy stereotypes with demographically significant regularity.

Me personally? I don't like romance in the foreground. I like politics, world building and rational outcomes to actions. I'll read some Conan-esque "macho" fiction, but it's not a favorite mode. I prefer internal conflict over external conflict, but a balance of both is better still. I like big set piece action scenes where everyone involved is being creative and thinking tactically, and fighting with a motive that isn't generic but is very specific to their nature and background. I'd rather see romance dissected, analyzed and deconstructed than glorified.

Angst is fine if it isn't overwritten and suits the mood.

I'd like to see heroes of all genders in any combination get to have sex outside the context of the iconic fulfillment of romance, without authorial moralizing. Men in general, I think, react more positively to heroes of any gender getting laid for fun. (Of course, this goes out the window in a realistic medieval world without contraception.) Hot casual sex may be the same "wish fulfillment niche" for (stereotypical) guys that flowery, delicate romance is for women. Double bonus points for men who are both genuinely sensitive to women's feelings and horndogs interested in sex, because you never see that in fiction, and it's fairly common IRL.

I'd like to see competant, adult heroes rather than awkward adolesence and coming-of-age stories.

I'm very suspicious about claims to what makes an "authentic" character of either gender from a like-gender writer. It tends to strike me as identity politics. If you want sensitive, emotive men, go for it -- either as a stylistic choice, or by defining a society that allows/encourages men to be such. It wouldn't turn me away as a reader, and I suspect it will win more sales with women than it will lose with men, assuming a modicum of verisimilitude and emotional realism.

I hate cutesy fantasy where magic and magical creatures and harmless. Many men do not. Men both read and write cutesy fantasy. Large numbers of women hate it, too.

I'm perfectly willing and enthusiastic about reading a female author writing primarily for female readers, if the content interests me. If I'm going to look for pandering to me gender, I'm more likely to look for a male author. Why shouldn't women pander to their own gender, after all? From an economic standpoint, there are more women readers.

I can't speak for all men, but I can speak for myself.

The one thing that irritates me most about all fiction is the total reversal of the values of violence and sex.

In the real world--objectively speaking, taboo aside--violence is bad and sex is good. In a lot of fantasy, sex is bad and violence is good. I hate that with a passion. It's an ugly reflection of our own hideous society. I don't think it's prevalent because people are consciously trying to write social commentary. I think writers are simply poisoned by our culture and are unable to see things any other way.

Phew. It's difficult to write about that without getting angry. Which is, I suppose, ironic.

In fact, go read Grossman's "On Killing".

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Say, where can I find this?

*Mentally clapping in glee and thinking, 'look, they write whole guides to it!'*

I know what boys like, I know what guys want.

I count pages till the girl and the guy kiss.

Or have sex.

Or both.

And when the girl kisses a different guy, or the guy kisses a different girl, I curse myself for choosing wrongly. But normally, I'm right! Like the one time where I was SO sure that guy A would sleep with girl A.

Guess what! He didn't. He slept with Girl B, C, D, G and Z.

There are a few role reversals in my current work- reversed against stereotype, that is, not against reality. But, the men aren't emasculated, they're just especially well-groomed. The heroine doesn't save the men, but she conquers the foe with the help of her friends, who are men. She couldn't have done it without them. The man-scaping gags are for fun, but the story isn't about gender issues.
In fact, the heroine is the only one who "almost" cries. She blames it on the dry heat of the hospital room, God Bless Her.

But, what I want to know is, are III's frilly cuffs bleached? Is that safe for Spanish lace? They are just so darn white that I'm jealous.

zornhau said:

I mean, men with at least some testosterone, and not Gay Warriors Who Cry.

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Oh. Like the Sacred Band of Thebes?

Speaking as a man, a real man, with a Y chromosome and everything, I'd say give me a good story, and screw anything else. That's all you have to worry about, Zellie. Good story, interesting characters.

It's not easy, but it is simple.

zornhau said:

In fact, go read Grossman's "On Killing".

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Yes.

MumblingSage said:

Say, where can I find this?

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Internet is thataway >>>

I like strong female lead characters with intelligent male support. (I'd like the reverse too, but I've never actually seen it.) I like villains who make so much sense that I'm almost cheering for them. I like systems of magic and dimension that tie directly into the story in unpredictable ways.

I want medieval fantasy to portray "people" be it elves or what not more realistically. I want the good guys to be just as bad as the bad guys in many ways. I want that sort of muddled aspect of "good and evil" as opposed to a clearly defined good or bad.

To me a story loses a lot of it's appeal when it's obvious that some people are good and some are bad, because in real life I don't really see that. Things aren't usually so clear cut in life, and I can relate more to characters who understand this, as opposed to annoying idealists who can do no wrong.

I also want authors to be more willing to write stories without tainting them with modern morality. I mean look at how diverse our world is in what people consider to be "morally correct" behavior or standards, yet for some reason I see a lot of fantasy as "modern western world morality packaged in the middle ages". I want to see fantasy where slavery is considered perfectly acceptable, or where human sacrifice might be a part of religious ceremony in the daily lives of the main characters(and something that they actively support).

I guess I'm just bored of so many of the fantasy conventions, that I'd like to see the genre move towards being more "adult", in the sense that it takes a more mature view of the world. Think along the lines of what Dune did, in that it incorporated science fiction, but at heart was a story about politics and intrigue, or what Neal Stephenson has done with his works. I want to see fantasy in that vein I guess.

I'm a sparing reader when it comes to fantasy, but I have a strong appreciation for political intrigue. If you have a society directed by certain physical/magical rules as well as systems of governance that belong to the medieval style, you've created an environment that isn't just about the individual actions of heroes and villains, but how they act collectively.

What are they free to do, and what are they not free to do? How do your nations (or races, if they are politically segregated) define themselves with respect to one another? How do your characters come into, or drop out of positions of power? Do they have agreed-upon processes to make decisions, and when will they risk defying those processes? What is the source of social status? I apply these questions to medieval-esque settings in particular, because a great deal of the medieval flavour comes out of medieval governance.

(Yeah, I like George R.R. Martin. And I don't like Robert Jordan, but the political wrangling in his series was his strongest suit.)

Oh, and this is a matter of personal taste, but please keep the apostrophes in names to a minimum.

MumblingSage said:

Say, where can I find this?

*Mentally clapping in glee and thinking, 'look, they write whole guides to it!'*

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Amazon is your friend.

However, here's the alibris link.

This is the classic work on the subject:
It covers the 15% in great detail...

Funnily enough, men like strong female characters too. Not all men are turned on/impressed by wilting delicate flowers.

Just sayin'

zornhau said:

For example, should the hero use his nascent magical powers in order to waste a dozen soldiers intent on cutting him into very small pieces and abusing his female companion, please don't have him angst about it, beyond perhaps a visceral reaction to the act of killing.

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That bothered me in Eragon when he was upset about killing those beasts (that were trying to kill him). I was like, hold on, is he really have a moral crisis about this? I remember this was a more youth orient book, but I didn't buy it. The scene came off as forced too me.

Nakhlasmoke said:

Funnily enough, men like strong female characters too. Not all men are turned on/impressed by wilting delicate flowers.

Just sayin'

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I agree with this. I noticed in my early works years ago in high school all my female love interests were weak and delicate. For the past 3 or 4 works though, having grown up over the years and having my tastes evolve, all my females generally are much tougher. Not all of them are swinging swords, but they are much more confidence and self assured, able to stand up to the MC and trade words. But that is not to say they don't still have their weaknesses.

I agree with both bartholemew and zornhau. The women should be strong, but the men should also be strong. If the woman is only strong in comparison to weakling men, than she isn't really strong at all.

I really wonder if the idea of angst isn't completely foreign to the medieval mindset. I mean, you have to consider how fatalistic people seemed to be in the middle ages. Maybe someone with more history knowledge would have some insight into that.

Not all fantasies are medieval though.

Thank dog

'On Killing' can only focus on stats of initial long-range gun-firing exchanges, then progesses to hand to hand. Are we less/more likely to kill when the enemy is up close with a knife/sword? I don't think the book is valid for anything over the past--70 or so years.

In fantasy, if based on Alexander, Bonny Prince Charlie, Blackbeard etc, the fighting had be for either slowing or stopping the opponent or else you die. It's easier to kill than to disarm or wound sufficiently to stop any further attacks.

Zorro may have always disarmed his opponents who were trying to kill him--but his superior swordsmanship covered that, though the repetitive Z & leaving the bad guys to fight another day was cliche and unrealistic.

I'm not sure if writing for "the market" can lead to your best work. Writing is a deep expression of...well, you, and wrangling that to fit a percieved demographic would weaken the personal touch that makes writing special.

As for what I like, it's strong characters of both genders. I hate hate hate weakness.

the only turn off that i find in fantasys are when in a pheminen story, all of the men are evil, horny bastards.

that isn't the case, men are not evil or only thinking about sex (Always any way)

have some good chivalrious men

ZeroFlowne said:

As for what I like, it's strong characters of both genders. I hate hate hate weakness.

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I'm not a fan of wimpy and whinny characters either, but I would add that even heroes need a weakness. Everyone has a chink in their armor somewhere. Helps to thicken the plot.