horror and fantasy

what's the relationship. can a book be both? does horor have to end unhappily?

how do i make my villains/monsters really scary (i'm a fantasy author)?

how do i start writing Horror?

Oh, I don't think horror has to end unhappily at all. In fact, horror is rather uncomfortably didactic, for my tastes.

As to the differences between horror and fantasy--I think they can be pretty vague and nebulous (to borrow someone's cliche)

You wanna know the villain that really impressed me? Maleficent (sp?), from Disney's Sleeping Beauty. Now there is a tough, scary b*tch...unabashedly summoning "all the powers of Hell" to do her bidding.

Power and focused, malevolent will--all rolled into a single package. That's scary stuff.

what's the relationship. can a book be both? does horor have to end unhappily?

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I asked the same thing not long ago. There is a vague line bet/horror and fantasy. You can have both fantasy and horror, pending on the content of the work. Pitch Black is a sci-fi/horror.

how do i make my villains/monsters really scary (i'm a fantasy author)? how do i start writing Horror?

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My suggestion is to read a few books in the genre. Get a feel for the description they use to scare you. Pay attention to the storylines. This will give you an idea where to start.

You wanna know the villain that really impressed me? Maleficent (sp?), from Disney's Sleeping Beauty. Now there is a tough, scary b*tch...unabashedly summoning "all the powers of Hell" to do her bidding.

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Oh my gosh. Malificient scared the crap outta me when I was younger. Whoever played her voice was just perfect, too.

There's even a genre called "dark fantasy," which I've always taken to mean fantasy with some genuinely scary elements. Stuff that has more in common with LotR's Barrow Wight and Shelob scenes than with Tom Bombadil and Rivendell.

If more of today's fantasy novels were "dark fantasy," I'd probably read more fantasy. Unfortunately, almost all of them are bad ripoffs of Tolkien that give us too much Rivendell and not nearly enough Shelob.

i would consider clive barker's "imajica" to be horror fantasy.

If more of today's fantasy novels were "dark fantasy," I'd probably read more fantasy. Unfortunately, almost all of them are bad ripoffs of Tolkien that give us too much Rivendell and not nearly enough Shelob.

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You rock, refriedwhiskey! That's just what I needed to hear in order to fix what's wrong with my WIP.

Thanks.

Cool!

There's even a genre called "dark fantasy," which I've always taken to mean fantasy with some genuinely scary elements.

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Actually, when the horror boom went bust, horror writers started calling their work "dark fantasy." The label means horror with a supernatural element. Nothing more or less.

If more of today's fantasy novels were "dark fantasy," I'd probably read more fantasy. Unfortunately, almost all of them are bad ripoffs of Tolkien that give us too much Rivendell and not nearly enough Shelob.

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Dude.

There is so much fantasy out there that has nothing to do with Tolkien. All you have to do is walk down the shelves and you'll find it.

There is so much fantasy out there that has nothing to do with Tolkien. All you have to do is walk down the shelves and you'll find it.

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I haven't had much luck. I've tried David Eddings. I've tried Robert Jordan. I've tried Stephen Donaldson. Years and years ago, I tried a few different series by Piers Anthony. Never got past the first book in any of them. Some of them were okay, but not good enough to justify a commitment to three or more books. Tried some Weis and Hickman and some Mercedes Lackey and some Feist and couldn't even finish the first books.

You can see I really want to find some fantasy I like. But so far, the only stuff outside of Tolkien I've really enjoyed has been the Elric novels; Scott Card's Alvin Maker books; LeGuin's Earthsea books; and Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy.

That's a fairly small percentage of the huge amount of fantasy out there, most of which just doesn't appeal to me and seems to be cut from the same old mold. Can you recommend some stuff?

Let me ask a couple questions before I make recs:

What don't you like? Swords and armies? Elves and the other token races? Quests for the magical framistat? Or a small group of friends against a Dark Lord?

The reason I ask is that some people would give you a laundry list of two dozen books/authors to read, but I don't think that's worthwhile. I'd rather give you a short list that covers a wider variety of styles.

What don't you like? Swords and armies? Elves and the other token races? Quests for the magical framistat? Or a small group of friends against a Dark Lord?

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Well, I don't have anything against any of those elements, but I do think it would be tough for one novel to contain all of them and not be a copy of Tolkien (and thus suffer mightily by comparison to the original). I guess if I could find those elements in a novel half as well-written as LotR, I'd could overlook the lack of originality.

But what I keep finding is mediocre writing, unoriginal plots and characters, and generic settings.

I didn't like Piers Anthony or Mercedes Lackey because I think they're bad writers. I didn't like Edding's stuff because it was just so stunningly unoriginal. I didn't like Donaldson's because the hero rapes a woman at the beginning of the first book. Feist just didn't grab me. Jordan was okay, but not good enough to make me want to commit to reading a dozen 800-page novels. Life is way too short for that, and I just can't imagine any story sustaining itself and remaining engaging and entertaining over that many pages.

So there's not really any single thing I can point to and say "this is what I don't like about most of the fantasy I've read." I'm just looking for something well-written, with a little originality and a little style.

Sorry this took so long, but Monday is my busy day.

Here are your recs.

I think the only book I'd seriously add to HConn's list is Gypsy, by Steven Brust and Megan Lindholm (Robin Hobb, under a different pen name) Which is a surreal and dark read--and very smart.

i dunno a long long time ago when i was into d&d fiction and sh*t, i read a lot of margaret weis and tracy hickman stuff and it was ok but they did this great big project called the deathgate cycle with like 7 or 9 books planned for it or whatev. anyway i read like the first 2 or 3 and then mebbe the rest took too long to come out or whatev, but those seemed pretty cool at the time.

Thanks, HConn et al.

i can think of a good amount oif fantasy completely unlike tolkien. i can recommend some. however, i would like to add an opinion.

i have read some really bad tolkien ripoffs. the "shannara" books come to mind. i have also read books that seemed completely different from tolkien, that tolkien fans still decried as a ripoff.

the fact is, Tolkien doesn't own the high fantasy genre, and he didn't create it.

people don't call any story with robots an Asimov ripoff.

Tolkien wrote using a plot that is fairly typical of high fantasy. his characters were for the most part, nothing special. his elves were different from other elves, and his hobbits were simply great, but the men were pretty uninteresting. his wizards were not terribly memorable either.

the fact that he used that plot doesn't mean that anything similar is a ripoff of him. Tolkien has gottent praise and attention far beyond his mertits, IMHO. there are some fascinating ideas in his story, and some of his descriptions are really well-written.

but he isn't even the best high fantasy writer. he did many things we are told to avoid. he seems to have no sense of pacing (i've tried to re-read his books. i give up partway through the 80 pages of the shire.) the book starts slowly and slows to a crawl at random intervals. the world he built, and it's culture and history, are fantastic. he spends too much time on them. i don't care that much about the history oif his places, or the lineage of his characters. that belongs in the Silmarillion. his prose is very long-winded.

etc. finally, he didn't invent many of those concepts. he gave them a new twist, but the evil ring that corrupts it's owner comes Norse mythology (the rinf of the dragon Fafnir)

dwarves, too come from there, though he reinvented them somewhat. wizards are hardly new.

for years the whole fantasy genre has lived under the shadow of tolkien, the way horror is now under the shadow of steven King.

tolkien is not the god of fantasy.

that said, try tamora pierce (anything but the Song of the lioness, which i found boring.)

or my book, when it comes out. or... ( i need time to think. i'll edit my post later with mroe recs.)

p.s. sorry i sound so venemous. this is a rant that's been building up for some time. it's not really directed at you personally. you're probably more reasonable then many tolkien fans.

Jeez, Flawed, if only he had fixed those problems, Tolkien might have written books that have been adored by generations.

But this conversation belongs in another forum.:b
:ssh

I think perhaps Tolkein's major triumph was in seperating fantasy from mythology. He was among the first to attempt it, and in the opinion of most readers, did it better than any of his contemporaries.

seperating fantasy from mythology.

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I'm sorry. I honestly don't know what that means.

Mythological tales of gods/demi-gods dominated fiction literature for centuries. (and a lot of the stuff written as non-fiction, too )

Tolkein (and among others) broke away from "god-dominated" tales and created worlds centered around other conflicts in which magic was no longer the sole province of divine entities or their bastard offspring. Suddenly, Gods/supernatural deities weren't the only jokers throwing lightening bolts and turning folk into talking donkeys.

(I'm probably not explaining this very well, H. It's just my personal take)

writing horror

I don't think you can write anything well unless you first absolutely love reading it. I think reading a massive number of novels in a genre is the only way to write it well. If you love reading horror, it means you've read probably hundreds of horror novels and short stories, and this is really the only way to learn how something is done.

But if you don't love reading in a genre, trying to write in it is one of the toughest goals any writer can possibly face.

Re: writing horror

Liam, I'm going to post a response in the Tolkien thread on the sf/f forum.

Re: writing horror

Why would anyone write a genre they did not enjoy reading?

Re: writing horror

Why would anyone write a genre they did not enjoy reading?

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Some writers (perhaps more than a few) try to cash in on trends in publishing. I know of one published writer (mystery genre) who morphed into a fantasy writer overnight, attempting to jump on the Harry Potter bandwagon. That was a few years back, and the last I heard, his fantasy career hadn't materialized.