Simple things that a lot of Fantasy Writers get wrong in their books....

Right. SYW here we come.

Oooh, this is a fun thread! I'll add my own.

I think my biggest peeve is when an entire world is set up to include various social norms, someone breaks them, and then everyone applauds the character for doing so.

An obvious example is the spunky princess trope. So we're told we're in a repressive, misogynistic society. But princess goes off and does stuff that we're told is not socially acceptable for her to be doing. Rather than get in trouble, everyone's all, "You go girl!!!!"

This kind of thing happens a lot.

I mean, I don't mind that in fantasy worlds, all kingdoms aren't horrible, terrible places that are filled with disease, misogyny, and serfdom. But if we're going to establish that these are the norms, there need to be some consequences for people who insist on breaking them left and right.

Mutive said:

But if we're going to establish that these are the norms, there need to be some consequences for people who insist on breaking them left and right.

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Great point, regardless of whether their world is good, bad, or ugly.

Share Your Work - it's near the bottom of the main forum list. There's a Sci-Fi/Fantasy forum in there.

I was thinking of one a while back. Bales of hay in barns in a world that seems to be medieval or Renaissance era at most in terms of its machinery. Rolled hay bales didn't make an appearance until the later 1800's, and the pick up baler, which makes the small, rectangular bales we're familiar with on farms today, is a 20th century invention. This is not to say that a fantasy world can't have some inventions that are out of phase with how thing happened in our world, but it would actually be hard for people to compress hay into tight, square bales without some fairly sophisticated machinery. Farms had haymows with loose hay (for the milkmaids and farmhands to frolic in), and hay piles, and people sometimes tied hay or straw into sheaves, but they didn't have bales until fairly recently.

So Hodir in Game of Thrones probably wouldn't have had hay bales to be schlepping around with his bulging muscles

Large and crowded yet sparkling clean Emerald City-style capitol cities -- with no sanitation systems.

Roxxsmom said:

I was thinking of one a while back. Bales of hay in barns in a world that seems to be medieval or Renaissance era at most in terms of its machinery. Rolled hay bales didn't make an appearance until the later 1800's, and the pick up baler, which makes the small, rectangular bales we're familiar with on farms today, is a 20th century invention. This is not to say that a fantasy world can't have some inventions that are out of phase with how thing happened in our world, but it would actually be hard for people to compress hay into tight, square bales without some fairly sophisticated machinery. Farms had haymows with loose hay (for the milkmaids and farmhands to frolic in), and hay piles, and people sometimes tied hay or straw into sheaves, but they didn't have bales until fairly recently.

So Hodir in Game of Thrones probably wouldn't have had hay bales to be schlepping around with his bulging muscles

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Thank God you pointed this out. It's one of those things (again) that has escaped my attention 'cause I'm so used to haybales laying around at the stables. Even though even my mom's childhood farm (and that was in the '60s), they didn't compress hay to bales nor rolled them. Everything was done by hand, hay stacked on, well, haystacks.

Fight Scene workshops sounds awesome, btw.

Parchment. I've heard that it's actually terribly expensive and everyone and their uncle carrying parchment to write on and scrolls made of it isn't the most logical thing ever. Unless there are some forests around to justify it. But I'm so guilty of this it's not even funny There's a line between knowing and acting...

Swords. Many swords weren't made to cut off anything. They were actually pretty dense and only made to cause internal injuries and bend metal armors.

Knights in shining armors. They run in full plate armors (that are shiny, cause leather doesn't shine so nicely...). Nope Guys in heavy plates were walking awkwardly or sitting on a horse like a pile of stones and holding a lance. And they were SO hot in there.

But all in all, none of these things bothers me a lot. Or at all. Fantasy is a fantasy, as long as the story is strong, I don't care if

they live in parchment houses (because there's a wandering tribe of Impossibly Wise Men who can one day come to their village at night and want to scribble their wisdom on the outer walls of the houses),

use swords to cut diamonds (because their blacksmith is a chosen one and just THAT GOOD at sharpening metal),

and sleep in full plate armors (because their home town is plagued by awfully dangerous mosquitoes that are only after of body clad in 100ibs of metal or more).

As long as there's a "because", I don't mind.

Calliea said:

Swords. Many swords weren't made to cut off anything. They were actually pretty dense and only made to cause internal injuries and bend metal armors.

Knights in shining armors. They run in full plate armors (that are shiny, cause leather doesn't shine so nicely...). Nope Guys in heavy plates were walking awkwardly or sitting on a horse like a pile of stones and holding a lance. And they were SO hot in there.

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A few points: you actually can run around in full plate armor. The average suit of plate weighed about 60 lbs., and the average modern soldier goes to battle with 90lbs., mostly on his back. Plate armor was distributed around the body, articulated to aid movement. And while a knight may have trouble remounting a horse in full jousting kit (which had a great deal more armor), that wasn't the case with field plate.

You are almost right about the swords, except for the later knightly swords (and tuks, which were armor piercing metal spikes); they were designed to pierce plate armor (they were almost considered sidearms, like a modern soldier's pistol, used in place of spears and lances). Also, many swords, like great swords, were designed to cut through spots on the body that were lightly armored or not armored at all (like the ankles of soldiers that wore mostly chain mail -- not knights in full plate). An excavated battlefield in England showed almost all the injuries were broken and cleaved ankles and shins, because these areas were below the large shields warriors used. Not everyone wore or could afford grieves (shin armor).

Seconding rockhazard on the armour. Footman's plate is hot, yes - you sweat out vast amounts of water wearing it - but if it's a reasonably good fit, you can do almost anything in it that you can outside it, including somersault along the floor and spring to your feet again. I've seen it done. What you can't do is run in it - or rather you can, but you pay for it later in chafing and bruises. This is the occasional weekend crowd, though, not people who wore it and marched in it for weeks at a stretch; someone who wears it every day might even be able to run without later pain.

Jousting armour is different, with a different purpose. War-type horseman's armour I've never seen in operation, so I can't really talk about it, but you'd have to be able to get back on Dobbin if you fell off.

Parchment and vellum, though - that's animal hide, carefully prepared. Calf or pig or sheep, take your pick, and estimates run to figures in the thousands of animals for any one of the huge illuminated texts. No trees anywhere near parchment. Paper is something else altogether; the invention of paper is one of those technological milestones, because with paper writing got much, much cheaper.

And paper wasn't always shredded trees. It originally was mostly cloth, or readily fibered plants, like bamboo. No coincidence it was invented in China.

Concur again on the armour - I'm reading the bio of a PARA commander at the mo, and in Afghanistan they were routinely going on patrol with 45kg of kit (99lbs), mostly on their back, though 14kg or so was body armour. They still move pretty well! (though he notes they tend to have to pull each other up if they've sat down)

OT, but why isn't papyrus (invented 3000BC-ish) considered an early form of paper? in terms of process and chemicals, it's not all that different (basically mush of cellulose and lignin).

Mr Flibble said:

Concur again on the armour - I'm reading the bio of a PARA commander at the mo, and in Afghanistan they were routinely going on patrol with 45kg of kit (99lbs), mostly on their back, though 14kg or so was body armour. They still move pretty well! (though he notes they tend to have to pull each other up if they've sat down)

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Sounds like an interesting book! The weight is distributed pretty well, so it's easier to carry. But still, got to tip my hat, it's tough work.

K. Trian said:

Sounds like an interesting book! The weight is distributed pretty well, so it's easier to carry. But still, got to tip my hat, it's tough work.

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Hell yes, very tough.

These are trained soldiers, but I think if you are writing about a standing soldier wearing chain and/or plate (as opposed to some farmer who's just put it on), it'd be much the same. They'd be used to it. A lot of the guys who worked on LOTR said the chain felt HUGELY heavy to start with, but as they became used to it, it became fairly (for a given value of fairly I assume!) comfortable in the end, and reasonably easy to move in. A mate of mine has a full set of chain. It weighs four stone (!) but he'd pretty used to it. He's pretty scary when he runs towards you wielding a sword, I know that....

Mr Flibble said:

Hell yes, very tough.

These are trained soldiers, but I think if you are writing about a standing soldier wearing chain and/or plate (as opposed to some farmer who's just put it on), it'd be much the same. They'd be used to it. A lot of the guys who worked on LOTR said the chain felt HUGELY heavy to start with, but as they became used to it, it became fairly (for a given value of fairly I assume!) comfortable in the end, and reasonably easy to move in. A mate of mine has a full set of chain. It weighs four stone (!) but he'd pretty used to it. He's pretty scary when he runs towards you wielding a sword, I know that....

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Yup. My standard practice before a weekend's warrioring in the fantasy division is to wear the chain around the house. I've a friend who's a trucker, he wears his armour to work - I can't get away with that, or I would.

You get to where you don't notice the weight until you take it *off*, at which point you grab things so you don't float away...

(As for papyrus, it was considered an early form of paper - just really localised to one part of the world, and highly labour-intensive.)

Gah, I can't find the article in English, but it was published in this Finnish science magazine that I read, and concerned treadmill tests done on fit men, who wore an armor like this . Anyway, a group of scientists from Leeds University claim that the weight of armor may have affected the course of history. They put men on a treadmill, and then monitored their heart rate, breathing, etc. Then they concluded that because even physically fit men became slow, and being oxygen deprived made their legs and arms tired, the heavy armors cost French a battle with the Brits in 1415 (Agincourt), because the peasant Brits could hit the slow, tired Frenchmen more easily with arrows.

Just food for thought.

K. Trian said:

the heavy armors cost French a battle with the Brits in 1415 (Agincourt), because the peasant Brits could hit the slow, tired Frenchmen more easily with arrows.

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May have been a factor in the British victory, but I doubt it's the whole story.

Reziac said:

OT, but why isn't papyrus (invented 3000BC-ish) considered an early form of paper? in terms of process and chemicals, it's not all that different (basically mush of cellulose and lignin).

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Papyrus is in fact generally considered an early form of paper. Even the word paper is derived from the word papyrus

Roxxsmom said:

I was thinking of one a while back. Bales of hay in barns in a world that seems to be medieval or Renaissance era at most in terms of its machinery. Rolled hay bales didn't make an appearance until the later 1800's, and the pick up baler, which makes the small, rectangular bales we're familiar with on farms today, is a 20th century invention. This is not to say that a fantasy world can't have some inventions that are out of phase with how thing happened in our world, but it would actually be hard for people to compress hay into tight, square bales without some fairly sophisticated machinery. Farms had haymows with loose hay (for the milkmaids and farmhands to frolic in), and hay piles, and people sometimes tied hay or straw into sheaves, but they didn't have bales until fairly recently.

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Bale in middle English and Anglo-Norman meant a bundle of sheaves or several rolls of cloth; it's cognate with ball, as in to roll something up in a ball.

There are some statutes attempting to regulate the size of bales for purposes of tax and sales.

My experience in martial arts tells me that just because you are capable in one realm of exercise doesn't mean that you will be efficient in another. For instance, doing a two minute drill on a heavy bag is quite tiring, even if you are used to sparring for a longer period. Grappling can wear you out, even if you are used to the gruling pace of a boxing round. They are different, and the body react differently towards them.

I doubt the men in that experiment had trained in plate for years, and even if they had they wouldn't have fared as well as knights raised from boyhood to do battle in those suits. Remember that technology used to change at a much slower pace, and military tech could stay essentially the same for centuries, so these noblemen had multiple generations to develop tactics and best practices suited to the use of their armor.

Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that arrows would do much to full plate armored knights. In fact, it's been shown that even the longbow had trouble cleanly penetrating chain mail with gambesons at distance. However, you could easily wear down a formation of soldiers in chain mail, because the impact of the arrows would cause severe contusions -- sort of like what happens with handguns versus bullet proof vests. But arrows did little against plate armor. Both plate armor and samurai armor were designed to defeat the arrows of the day, in order to give knights/samurais the time to close with the enemy and run them down. The primary vulnerability would have been the visor, which was likely raised until the knight was committed to active close combat (like a charge). But that's what shields are for (that and bashing enemies). But lets remember that most warriors didn't own plate armor; such expensive kit was normally the province of nobility (as were horses), so of course the lesser armored troops would be worn down by a fusillade of arrows -- and they were the majority of the combat strength. That could turn the battle by itself.

Sarpedon said:

And paper wasn't always shredded trees. It originally was mostly cloth, or readily fibered plants, like bamboo. No coincidence it was invented in China.

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Papyrus came first, invented in Egypt. Incidentally the earliest writing system is also now attributed to Egypt (formerly was attributed to Cuneiform)

As for the addition of fabric, that actually came late in human history. Around 105 CE in China. Before that paper wasn't very durable, so not very practical to use. The earliest paper was not made of bamboo, since that was invented in the Tang dynasty. (~600CE). I would put more money on rice with added fibers as being a good way to make paper.

But you can see papyrus predates it by quite a bit.