Creating new creatures vs using the old classics

Depends on the story. Alot of my ideas (newbie writer) have unicorns or dragons. They have been tweaked a little. But, in a few of mine I have creatures I've made up. It's so much fun!

My WIP deals with humans who have been sequestered in a giant space station for a millenium and their subsequent rediscovery of Earth. No unicorns. No dragons. And the wizards turn out to be rather misguided twits.

I usually use characters that are established classics such as dragons and unicorns, but I tend to give them mannerisms and personalities that are unusual to their particular kind. It adds a bit of creativity, without having to reinvent the wheel with my characters.

I have tried my hand at creating new and bizarre creatures, but it's a very difficult task for me at best. I generally, because of my love for dragons, will end up incorporating dragon-like features into creatures I'm trying to build from scratch. Sometimes also, I'll combine dragon with human or something to that effect, but I almost always personally end up using a creature that is already known to people and then change it around so as to be slightly different from the norm.

i try to avoid using stock creatures as much as possible. talking dragons, elves with pointy ears, who are all slender and live in beautiful forest settings, dwarves who live in the mines, out of control orcs/goblins running around spreading disease and wielding crude weapons... in a movie those are fine, but stretched out over a bunch of books, it's just kinda blah anymore. i simply got burnt out on that type of thing. nothing wrong with 'em, just not where my tastes are now.

my one fantasy that i did in earnest, 'preyers,' the bad guys are called the Aru. the premise of the book is that the world had previously died to the last man, time passed, and now the dead have arisen to fight the final battle of good and evil on earth. pretty simple, eh? the good guys came back pretty much as they were in life, but the bad guys came back rather singed and gaunt and smaller, rather burnt looking, with tough skin and shallow features. i thought about how some readers might view this as a racial slur, but since it's not intended that way one iota, i decided to take my chances. i used a classic version of the one angel who's got a cameo, and a few giant troll-type creatures. there's a gladiator form of entertainment, and the creatures there are bizarre without any real basis. there's a succubi in generic form. in fact, the only reason i put strange creatures in there at all is because i feel that satisfied a lot of people's desire for that kind of thing, trying to tell the story i wanted to tell yet trying to give people what i think they want at the same time, too.

not that i'm an authority on the subject by any means, but i've delved into the arthur legend quite a bit. looking at a lot of the arthur-inspired paintings illustrates how fantasy stories evolved over time to where there were so many fairies and elvish creatures abounding that it was nearly impossible to travel through the woods with them swarming around your head. i seem to recall one painting where two knights trying to pass through a woods are somewhat ducking from all the tinkerbell-like fairies. (arthur's death is another heavily done theme.)

those stories i've done where there are classic creatures, i try to poke fun of them more than anything for my own amusement as i certainly can't add anything new to them by now. what could i tell you about a dragon that you don't already know? from that standpoint, there has to be one helluva reason for a dragon to exist in one of my stories. if i did one today, it would be a mindless beast rather like a dinosaur, which i think makes good basises for fantastic creatures. actually, were the lands populated with an abundance of various types of wild critters, that might be kinda cool. as it is, dragon sighting is rather an event to most fantasy characters. might be interesting for dragons not to want to eat or help humans for a change: maybe people might trek up a mountain in a group to 'dragon watch' like they go whale watching, eh?

unicorns and flying horses, three-headed dogs and talking serpents... nah, not my thing. sitting here right at this exact moment, the one idea i've got for a talking dragon story involves the dragon's ghost in a mystery-type of deal. whoo... awful. different, but just not good, lol. (i should mention that as far as fantasies go, i can no longer read another 'great war' drawn-out over a trilogy where it's pretty bloodless, one or two of the ragtag band dies in the end, etc. etc. etc.. i'm at a point where individual struggle doesn't have to be on an epic scale. that said, today i'd not be interested in writing 'preyers.' i'm much more a 'slice of life' person now.)

No offense to the rest of you, but as a reader, I agree with preyer. I've read enough classical fantasy that elves and dwarves and unicorns and dragons just leave me cold. I've seen them too much already. When I pick up a book, I want to read about a *new* and *interesting* world, not another interpretation of pointy-eared elves. It's got so I'll read the back cover blurb, and if I see the word "elf" or "dragon" I'll just put the book back on the shelf without reading farther.

I know other people that think the same way -- but then, there are also people that are fascinated with elves or dragons or whatever. Nothing wrong with that; just not my current cup o' tea.

When I started my current WIP, I had a race of sort-of-Gnomish tribesmen that played the heavies in the first third of the book. Squat, ugly, rode ponies, used iron swords, had a bad attitude. Stuff like that. Then I got to thinking... wouldn't it be more interesting if this race had some redeeming qualities? So I made a few of them traders, and now there were good sort-of-Gnomes and bad sort-of-Gnomes. And I made them less ugly, because ugly = bad is so cliche. And I gave them a more complex social structure (only hinted at) because there now needed to be room for different professions of sort-of-Gnomes.

And I realized something.

My sort-of-Gnomes had turned into humans.

So the moral of the story is that I'm lousy at using any type of creatures in my stories.

The End.

One of the things that many writers leave out is that even warrior races need an economic base. You can't have a city of warriors without traders, farmers, builders, and such. I think this is the problem that many writers ignore when they use orcs and other creatures in their stories. Still, they can be fun, but I think that an imaginative writer could feature a more complete society of orcs and such other creatures. And no, I haven't seen Shrek, so if that has such a background, then it only illustrates that I'm right about this.

When it comes to creatures, though, I like creating new beasts more. One of the best ways to do that is to take some creature that's generally harmless, meaning it's not a predator in the traditional sense, and then give it a tweak so that it becomes one. One of my favorites is the sabre tooth rabbit I created for one story. Of course, I pitted it only against similar sized creatures.

that's a good point about ugly equating to bad. that's why i delved into the aru way of life, to show that they're not necessarily as evil or 'worse' as supposed.

the idea of giving them an economic base is good, too. what is the basic orc soldier's motivation for fighting? difficult to say it's for pride given the way they present themselves. they're always this beserker horde without much organization, too (hell, even the 'barbarian' mongol hordes were organized). i think it's as much a mistake now to assume evil has this unquenchable bloodlust that can only be sated with impressive deathtolls. sure, some evil is like that, but it's like every single baddie is like that sometimes. at least tell me orcs consider humans to be game, heh heh, and their invasion is like a safari for them. gimme a reason to believe, will ya? is that asking too much for one or two paragraphs out of 120,000 words? ransacking a slain orcs body for information could yield tons of subtext, eh? evil also tends to be absolutely filthy or ultra-clean.

i really go in for realism more than funk. i think it was a dragonlance series i read a couple years back that was pretty good because the characters had motivations i could buy into despite my opinion that lizard men are the new orcs, which was distracting. but, hey, at least they weren't orcs. but that lizard dude kirk fought (gorn?) was cool as ****.

i find that my least favourite type of sci-fi creature are ones made out of light, string 'em together and you're set for x-mas. (in an alternate universe, would that be 'z-mas'?) when 'creating' creatures, i tend to think along the lines of beastmen than a horse's body with serpent legs and a cat's head (can you guess i hate anime? lol).

I agree with ya'll. After years of reading fantasy, I can't get into a story with talking animals, or filled to running over with dragons and elves and such. But sometimes, the mood *does* strike me...

Anyway, I decided to go the "tweak" route with my WIP. Most of the strange creatures are somewhat confined to an enormous valley, and are mostly just regular animals that have become twisted in some way (along the lines of mutation). They aren't encountered much outside that valley, either. I did throw dwarven miners into the fray, but they play a minor part in the story (so far only mentioned in passing - we haven't even seen one yet) and have nothing at all to do with the general action. I suppose I felt like I couldn't write a fantasy without throwing a *few* cliches into the mix.

All this rambling is leading to the same point - I have a few classic animals/creatures, but for the most part create my own by "tweaking" known anmials.

WVWG

Andrew Jameson said:

I've read enough classical fantasy that elves and dwarves and unicorns and dragons just leave me cold. I've seen them too much already. When I pick up a book, I want to read about a *new* and *interesting* world, not another interpretation of pointy-eared elves. It's got so I'll read the back cover blurb, and if I see the word "elf" or "dragon" I'll just put the book back on the shelf without reading farther.

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I used to feel the same way, until I read Dragon Weather It turns out that I don't care much if the creatures are cliche, as long as the story is strong enough.

However, elf rock stars make a book jump out of my hands and back onto the shelf.

I think part of the problem the writer faces when including a "rock star" as a character is the tendency most have of trying to also present appropriate lyrics for the character to mouth in some scenes as if those were actually from a popular song.

In some books I recently wrote, I included some minstrels in order to show more of the culture present in the main character's society. However, the only lyrics I used was a single line mouthed by a drunk who another character remarked got the lyrics wrong. I think it worked well because it gave another face to the culture and it brought two characters into a mutual trust and understanding because one character didn't know that he was also mentioned in the song and had wanted recognition. He learned of his inclusion just moments after hearing that one line and his whole attitude and behavior then had a solid basis for change.

The other reason that such made-up songs should be avoided is because there's no way for the author to indicate what the melody sounds like. Likewise, most readers don't know how to compose, so their efforts are likely to fall very short. Giving a hint in a footnote or in parenthesis as to some actual song melody to substitute might solve that, but then it risks losing the reader's belief in the world the author has constructed.

I have my Forest Folk, who are born wolf and learn to take human form as they grow older. Their society has been fun to play with. Their intelligence and personalities remain the same regardless of form, they age a little differently and I'm very, VERY fond of them.

I like the classics, but I do really like finding created creatures in books too.

I guess since everyone else is giving an example of what they made, I can too.

A few of the ones I've made up, were based off of wolves, foxes, and birds that I decided an element for and changed their appearance to match the element. ie: Light blue colored crow with pointed crest and long talons.
Or I placed different parts of animals together and colored them different. Like a dog/fox with green stripes.
Though... I have thrown out a bunch because they just look weird.

i'll be honest, i hate reading books that have cat people as main side characters. or lion-headed people. if i pick up a book whose cover depicts a truly bizarre litany of characters, i'll put it down without even looking further.

I usually pick up a book, and I am quite the opposite, I look to see if there are unicorns, dragons, dwarves, goblins, trolls and elves, and if there are, I usually buy the book. I am using classic mythology creatures in my five part fantasy series, 'The Lords', some are well known, others not, though there are a little made up beasts in as well.

My first book's title began as 'Lord Harfendale and the Manhunt', then I changed it to 'Lords of Harfendale and the Manhunt', 'The Lords of Harfendale: Manhunt', and now I have settled on a title, 'The Lords: The Manhunt'

So far, over five stories, I've had one unicorn horn (and that's 200 years old), one dragon and selkies (seal people). I try to imply that magic is rare in my world, so that it's more impressive when you come across it - 'oh, wow, it's a real selkie!' rather than 'oh, it's just the selkies again'.

I tend to mix and match. While I use "classics", I create new creatures or variations of existing.

I write Urban Fantasy and I try to avoid the two biggest cliches out there, which are Vampires and Werewolves.

I do however try to put in creatures from which the stories came about them. I ended up with Shapeshifters (a working name until I find a less stereotypical name). Each Shapeshifter is linked to a single animal and can choose to fully or partially change into that animal.

Vampires stories come not only from bat Shapeshifters, but also snakes and other vicious animals. The old Egyptian gods also are the same type of Shapeshifters.

I've got something that's almost a cross between a bear and a lion. Fast attack bear, if you will.

It hasn't made it into a story, but it would only be as exotic fauna - not a sentient main character or anything.

Michael Dracon said:

I write Urban Fantasy and I try to avoid the two biggest cliches out there, which are Vampires and Werewolves.

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Ditto. I've managed to avoid the to biggest "old classics" in current UF trends...until now. My muse has smacked me across the head with an idea that involves....*whimpers*....vampires. *hides*

I smacked her right back and put the idea in a box until I finish the WIP. I'm getting so much better at that.

Of course, in current UF novels, I'd love to see something starring the old Universal classic monsters. Mummies or black lagoon creatures or the invisible man....

I've tried to make up new races for my fantasies. So far my hands down favoret have been this race I called the Souless. They look like green glowing dots, live under ground untill dawn, and when they come up they float around till they find a nose. Then they go up the nose and suck out your brains!