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| SFReader Forums > SFReader > Ask The Expert > Breaking new ground in S&S | Forum Quick Jump
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James Enge
Maker
      
Date Joined Jan 2006
Total Posts : 208
| Posted 4/2/2008 3:33 PM (GMT -4) |   | | | |
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RHFay
Sage
Date Joined Nov 2007
Total Posts : 1722
| Posted 4/2/2008 4:16 PM (GMT -4) | |
Super sexy vamps didn't start (well get big) until Anne Rice came along several years later.  I guess I do tend to mix up media a lot in my discussions. Sexy vampires were certainly around in movies well before Anne Rice came along. Think Frank Langella as Dracula. Even Lugosi was supposed to be sexy in his day.
I do agree - female vampires seem to have had that "sexy" factor almost from the start.
My point was that the much older vampire "trope" is for monstrous vampires. Publishing a work with monstrous, disgusting vampires may be seen as a new twist in today's market, but it's not really a new idea.
To be fair, I'm not saying a "new twist" is a bad thing, I'm just saying that "old tropes" might not be a bad thing under the right circumstances.
"I'm going to do what the warriors of old did. I'm going to recite poetry!"
Richard H. Fay - Azure Lion Productions
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RHFay
Sage
Date Joined Nov 2007
Total Posts : 1722
| Posted 4/2/2008 4:23 PM (GMT -4) | |
Jordan Lapp said...And hell, when was the last time you saw a vampire movie where the (usually female) vampire actually drank blood????
The Insatiable, a recent SciFi original. As with most SciFi originals, it was a rather stupid movie, but the female vampire most definitely drank blood. She drank blood from a homeless man, from a rabbit, from a meter reader, and from her captor/boyfriend's workplace rival. The whole idea that she needed to drink blood every night was rather central to the plot. It might have been only in brief shots, but they did actually show her drinking the blood from her victims.
As bad a movie as it was, they did do a good job of combining the monstrous with the sexy. She was sexy, but she was also a monster.
(Yeah, I really lead a very unexciting life. My family enjoys "dumb movie night" on the SciFi channel.)
"I'm going to do what the warriors of old did. I'm going to recite poetry!"
Richard H. Fay - Azure Lion Productions
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RHFay
Sage
Date Joined Nov 2007
Total Posts : 1722
| Posted 4/2/2008 4:31 PM (GMT -4) | |
Jordan Lapp said...I see your point, Richard, and agree with it, though I think it only applies in extreme cases like vampires. Elves, for instance, are being overdone to death, and they've been overdone in the exact same way since Tolkien.
I definitely agree that the "Tolkien clones" get a bit boring after a while. I read one Dennis McKiernan work that had a scene that was a complete rip-off of the Moria gate scene in The Fellowship of the Ring. That certainly does annoy me, especially since I think Tolkien did it better anyway.
However, I don't think the presence of elves (or dragons, or goblins) necessarily makes something an "old genre trope". I think elves can be done in a different way than they were done in Tolkien.
However, how much this difference really makes it a "new twist on an old trope", or falls short from that objective, may be in the eye of the beholder.
"I'm going to do what the warriors of old did. I'm going to recite poetry!"
Richard H. Fay - Azure Lion Productions
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Jordan Lapp
ppaL nadroJ
Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 2585
| Posted 4/2/2008 4:46 PM (GMT -4) | |
RHFay said...
However, I don't think the presence of elves (or dragons, or goblins) necessarily makes something an "old genre trope". I think elves can be done in a different way than they were done in Tolkien.
However, how much this difference really makes it a "new twist on an old trope", or falls short from that objective, may be in the eye of the beholder.
It feels like you're arguing two sides of the same argument. Could you please clarify? Earlier you were saying that "new twists on an old trope" was a bad idea, but here you're suggesting that elves could be done with a "new twist".
I think I'm missing something fundamental in your argument.
Jordan Lapp Managing Editor
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RHFay
Sage
Date Joined Nov 2007
Total Posts : 1722
| Posted 4/2/2008 5:04 PM (GMT -4) | | Maybe I'm just not seeing it as "black & white", and I can see both sides of the issue. I don't think I necessarily said that a new twist is a bad idea, just that the whole concept gets a bit old after a while, like the dislike of things with elves and dragons (I happen to like stories with elves and dragons). I don't think the presence of an "old trope" is necessarily a bad thing either. As some people have already pointed out, stray too far from the "standard genre tropes", and the piece becomes something else.
However, I will also admit that a fresh angle of an old trope might work better than a simple rehash of old tropes. But, as was pointed out with Mike's werewolf story (which I did like, by the way), you can always find someone that thinks a new twist isn't really that new. I know I've read or seen similar stories, but that doesn't mean Mike's story is bad.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that new twists aren't always as new as they seem. And a return to the "old tropes" may, in some instances, be a "new twist". But is it really new?
Am I making any sense? I'm not sure. Perhaps it's hard to explain my viewpoint because I'm really not trying to simply take one side or another. I don't think it's that cut-and-dry.
Perhaps it's not so much something "new" as something "different". Maybe that makes more sense.
"I'm going to do what the warriors of old did. I'm going to recite poetry!"
Richard H. Fay - Azure Lion Productions
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MichaelEhart
Sage
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 2324
| Posted 4/2/2008 5:43 PM (GMT -4) | | It is an axiom among stage magicians that a "New Trick" is any one that your audience hasn't seen before. New tricks can be something as simple as an unusual protagonist, POV or setting, or a different tone to a common type of tale, or deeper or less realism to the world than the genre norm (Does your world have flies, cow poop and flatulence? Ask me how!) or any number of things that can give it a new look.
It is also said among magicians that every non-mechanical principle of magic is demonstrated in a good cups and balls routine---misdirection, momentary concealment, one-ahead, false count, forced perspective, et al. There are paintings on the inside of 4000 year old Egyptian tombs of court magicians doing essentially the same cups and balls routines that are practiced today.
So the point? If a good magician can delight an audience with the same tricks, and perhaps even the same patter as the Amazing Imohotshak used at Ramses the Great's 8th birthday party, so can a good writer take whatever tropes and boundaries a genre has laying around, and delight the reader.
With my Servant sories I have taken the Torah, the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Tale of the Deluge, mixed them with Zane Grey, Roger Zelazny and Raymond Chandler and poured the results into a S&S blender. I'm not able to claim originality in plot-lines, but I can say there is no one writing the same stuff I am, for better or worse, and that I have a unique voice---whether or not this is a good thing is for the readers to decide.
Click here to buy my book!
The Servant of the Manthycore from DEP
Illustrated by Rachel Marks, with an introduction by Michael Moorcock
Read me in 2008!
"Without Napier" Every Day Fiction, TBA
"Night of Shadows, Night of Knives" Magic and Mechanica, Ricasso Press, Spring 2008
"To Destroy All Flesh" Return of the Sword, Flashing Swords Press, Spring 2008
"Only His Name" Every Day Fiction, March 30
"An Exorcism Straight, Hold the Elvis" They Are Not What They Seem, Janrae Frank, ed., TBA
"The First Trial of Jermaish the King" Flashing Swords #10, May 2008
Still in print!
"The Stars by Law Forbidden" Unparalleled Journeys II, Journey Books, 2007
"Six Zombies Doing That Mick Jagger Strut" Damned in Dixie, Tenoka Press, 2007
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John M. Whalen
flashg
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 399
| Posted 4/2/2008 5:49 PM (GMT -4) | | There is nothing new under the sun. Yet every sunrise is new.
Don't ask me what it means! | | Back to Top | | |
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Bruce Durham
Crom's Administrator & Drinking Buddy
Date Joined Jan 2005
Total Posts : 613
| Posted 4/2/2008 11:43 PM (GMT -4) | | nathan said...Bruce Durham said...
An adventure story has a kidnapped nuclear scientist with a stunning daughter/an evil crime lord/a missing microfiche, a tired spy/ex-Delta Force/a secretly trained gov't specialist, fun gadgets, and at least once in the story has the snot beat out him before wiping out the equivalent of a small African nation while saving the day.
Ah, Bruce you've been reading my books
Not that one. When's it coming out? 
I'm sure writers in all of these other genres are bemoaning the same problems we are, though I really wonder why S&S is held up to such a microscope.
nathan said...
My 'beef' (or whatever) is more with reviewers.
Amen to that. A certain bias has been prevalent against S&S since the first issue of Flashing Swords appeared. Things are better, but there's still a ways to go.
Every 20 years or so the Western rises from the ashes and makes a splash at the box office and suddenly what's old is new. The same can be said for certain elements of the genre.
Come visit the Community Forums of CPI's Official Site of Conan author Robert E. Howard
Recently published: Valley of Bones in Return of the Sword, Night of the Meld in Flashing Swords #9, Marathon in Issue #10 of Paradox, Kalini Steel in Freehold: Southern Storm, Fool's Treasure in Freehold: The Protector and Old Havana in When the World Runs Thin
Upcoming: Abuse of Power in Flashing Swords #10 and Deluge in the Special Summer Issue of Flashing Swords
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4503
| Posted 4/3/2008 4:05 AM (GMT -4) | | Bruce Durham said...I'm sure writers in all of these other genres are bemoaning the same problems we are, though I really wonder why S&S is held up to such a microscope. nathan said...
My 'beef' (or whatever) is more with reviewers. Amen to that. A certain bias has been prevalent against S&S since the first issue of Flashing Swords appeared. Things are better, but there's still a ways to go. Every 20 years or so the Western rises from the ashes and makes a splash at the box office and suddenly what's old is new. The same can be said for certain elements of the genre.
Its the cover paintings. They are offensive to women, overweight geeks, underweight geeks, feminised men in general and pacifists. Frazzeta, Boris, Les Edwards, Luis Royo, Clyde Cauldwell, doesn't matter. S&S gets these cool covers with nekkid women and muscular men (or occasionally nekkid men and muscular women) engaging in violent displays. Worse, the action inside often actually resembles the scene on the cover!
I love reviewers. A little salt, some lemon, nicely roasted . . .
seriously, the hardest thing about getting S&S promoted is reaching are target audience (and convincing it to put down the game controller and actually pick up the book). While many people from many walks of like will appriciate and enjoy our fiction, it is young, imaginitive and frustrated adolescents (of either gender, these days) who should really be able to dig in to what we have to offer. And they aren't going to be reading many review sites. If I could put one add out for F-S, I'd put it in GamePro.
The problem we have with criticism from people outside our tiny sphere is that we listen. Our fiction is fun, or should be. We should remember to have fun with it. If we are having fun writing, publishing and reading S&S, others will pick up on that, no matter what. If we could consistently put out really enjoyable works that you wouldn't want you thirteen year old son or daughter to read, we'd start something big. (please, please, Mr. Ernest Parent, don't throw my book on that bonfire!)
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises:
www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/BASH.php
"Stains" in Tales of the Talisman 3-1 www.zianet.com/hadrosaur/index.html
"Morning Coffee" in Every Day Fiction
www.everydayfiction.com/morning-coffee-by-michael-d-turner/
"The Jewel Below" in Flashing Swords
flashingswords.sfreader.com/issues/issue8/vol2-iss8-05.htm
"Happy Landings" in Every Day Fiction
www.everydayfiction.com/happy-landings-by-michael-d-turner/
"Teller of Tales" in Every day Fiction
www.everydayfiction.com/teller-of-tales-by-michael-d-turner/
Read "Silver Shells" In Every Day Fiction
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Steven the Git
Neophyte
Date Joined Nov 2007
Total Posts : 195
| Posted 4/3/2008 10:12 AM (GMT -4) | | I do think the execution of it counts for a hell of a lot. I like elves and dragons and stuff, so if it seems the same old thing, but is written well and has characters I take an interest in, will read and enjoy. Maybe won't respect it that much, but can still find it in myself to like it. If something is original or different, great, but not if written badly.
I remember when I read Lords and Ladies by Pratchett. Elves but very different, but the main thing was it was very well written. Remains one of my favourites of his.
I only read Conan last year. I bought the book of everything Howard did concerning the character. By now it can be see as very stereotypical - women to be rescued, serpent men, sorcerers with evil intent. But then I knew Howard is part of the reason why it is this way. So when I thought, hmm, I could remind myself that hey, he did this before I was born!
But that wasn't why I read it or enjoyed it. Howard had great dynamic writing and Conan was a vibrant figure in his stories. So even though his work has become almost too well known by now, it is still a fantastic read and would recommend to anyone.
Ok, will have to admit I am a sucker for that type of story too. I mean I'm annoyed as just missed Krull on tv! But to go right back to the first post - barbarian fights monster. Give me a barbarian I want to read about and a monster that daunts me, and i'm in.
“Hello, I am William Burton, Head of Recruitment and Integration for the Agency for Peaceful Regulation and Definitive Cooperation of Extraordinary Existence.”
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Steven the Git
Neophyte
Date Joined Nov 2007
Total Posts : 195
| Posted 4/3/2008 12:14 PM (GMT -4) | | As a brit bloke I have to say I love westerns, and I know I'm not alone in that. My brother once had to tape the Searchers for his boss when it was on during the christmas holiday as the man loved it (although been on plenty of times)
The classic theme in westerns is facing your enemy. Personally, I can't see that ever being lost. I've seen it work in fantasy, samurai, gangster and martial arts movies. Even horror, there is often that point where the victim decides to confront the monster/killer.
Oh, and I do remember that my local library, in a small town, had sections - fantasy, scifi, horror, and westerns. They had their own shelves.
“Hello, I am William Burton, Head of Recruitment and Integration for the Agency for Peaceful Regulation and Definitive Cooperation of Extraordinary Existence.”
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2113
| Posted 4 |
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