48 replies to this topic

[Pellaeon]

IMO the amount of storylines could be a problem, there are at least 10 storylines in AFfC and ADwD with a great amount of characters, the viewer will be frustrated by following all this storyline and get confused by so many character, so they will stop watching the show> they lose viewers>HBO lose subscriber>HBO lose money>HBO cancel GoT

[The Duke of J-Town]

Jon Mark Selmy, on 11 July 2012 - 03:45 PM, said:

As protar said, this was precisely my point. Read again what I've said. Emphasis on TRAUMATIZED.




It's a fantastic element that completely cheapens death within the fantasy world if not used VERY carefully. Not that GRRM uses it badly, but it's something I'd rather not have seen, unless it turns out to be a major plot point and would've been impossible to tell the story otherwise. On my reading/writing I make a point of balancing the fantastical elements against their necessity to the story. If there are too many of them, the fantastical world stops making internal sense and the suspension of desbilief gets affected to the point where catarsys gets affected and then it's Jump The Shark time, since most people stop caring about the story (because it's world no longer makes any sense).

Fantasy don't have to be realistic, but it should have internal coherence, or it all goes down. Look at the well-known anime Dragon Ball Z and other poorly writen shonen for cases of suspension of desbilief totally going to the crapper because of internal inconsistency on powers and structure. If you want a another example, try 'Heroes' or the very end of 'Lost'. (Or most holywood movies packed with special effects and no real plot, really.)




Quite the opposite, actually. It is pretty easy to write a story where everything goes by 'rule of cool' and thus nothing makes internal sense (Why do that mountain flyes? MAGIC! How Jon came back from the dead? MAGIC, etc... Yes, we know there's magic, but magic must have some kind of internal logic and work within some kind of agreement with the way the fantasy world is represented. Otherwise it's just deus ex machina for when the author writes himself on a corner.), the real hard thing is to present a magical world that makes sense, for the plot needs much more work and that's where lies the real creativity.

In fact, this is actually why GRRM is great. Unlike most fantasy authors, he actually puts the effor in world buinding and internal logic.

Well I don't really agree with you at all.  If you have a fantasy story, and you make it clear that people can be resurrected from the dead within the universe of the story, then it's just part of the story.  Just because YOU don't like characters coming back from the dead because you feel it "cheapens death," (again, something I don't agree with and honestly a point of view I don't understand) don't assume EVERYONE or even most people agree with you, or that they're somehow wrong because they don't share your opinion.

As far as the use of magic goes - in a fantasy story, if characters use magic then again - big deal?  If using magic a lot is part of their character then fine.  Obi-Wan Kenobi used magic almost every time he appeared in Star Wars; that wasn't lazy storytelling, that was just part of the character.  There's no "correct balance" of magical and non-magical elements beyond someone's personal preference.

I do agree with you that stories should be logical.  However unlike normal fiction and science fiction, fantasy can follow whatever logic is invented for the universe itself and is bound only by the author's imagination.   Real creatures can't biologically breathe fire, but if someone's writing a fantasy story in which dragons breathe fire, then that's OK.  Real people can't come back from the dead (after their brain dies if you want to get technical), but if an author says there's a metaphysical power that can resurrect the dead, then that's OK too.  It works fine on an episode of Game of Thrones, but would be inappropriate on an episode of Law & Order: SVU.

Also I think you're using the term "deus ex machina" incorrectly.  A character in a fantasy story using magic to save himself isn't deus ex machina, it's just the character using his magical abilities.  Also, deus ex machina isn't always bad or "lazy writing." Modern examples would be Gandalf saving the day at the end of Two Towers, or when Tywin shows up with Renly's army to save King's Landing from Stannis (which I think was actually Martin playing with the concept, when you consider "Renly's Ghost").  Neither of those were "lazy."  I also don't really know what you mean by an author "writing himself into a corner."  If you have complete control over the material and you don't like the way a certain storyline is developing, just go back and change it.

[The Blood Eyed Crow]

I think there's a big difference between "Jumping the Shark" and "Putting People Off" because this show has already done everything it can to cause massive waves of clutched pearls with all the incest and decapitation and dead children. So far the show has managed scenes that could be very tacky or clumsy or campy with a great deal of reservation, which is good. I'm actually happy the scene where Jaquen's face is changed was so simple. Their makeup and special effects department is quite good so I think UnCat will be as good as Mellisandre's shadow child. How well they manage Berric Dondarrion who is quite deformed and Shireen with the greyscale will be good indicators of how they'll manage UnCat.

But Jumping the Shark....
If Tyrion ends up riding a dragon as some people predict I get the sense it could look a lot like Valcor and The Neverending Story with him screaming "YEAAAH" and chasing down childhood bullies.

Perhaps some of the scenes of Dany saving the slaves and them screaming "Mother" and her running to greet them might end up being a bit corny if they're not careful.  And her with that pirate lover Dhaario (sp?) with his naked lady swords. That could be awful. I never understood his attraction in the books. He screams venereal disease to me, but hey I don’t have the discerning high brow taste of a Queen, no a Khaleesi like Daenerys Stormborn.
All in all though I think the show is being handled very well. I don’t think there will be any shark jumping for some time.

[SecretNegative]

There could be some danger when Jon get's elected LC, which was quite implausible in the book.

[The Duke of J-Town]

The Blood Eyed Crow, on 14 July 2012 - 11:06 AM, said:

But Jumping the Shark....If Tyrion ends up riding a dragon as some people predict I get the sense it could look a lot like Valcor and The Neverending Story with him screaming "YEAAAH" and chasing down childhood bullies.

Haha, that's hilarious.  I think Renly's "Rainbow Guard" would have been a jump the shark moment, but they deftly avoided that thank God.

[Tyrionthebest]

SecretNegative, on 14 July 2012 - 11:37 AM, said:

There could be some danger when Jon get's elected LC, which was quite implausible in the book.

Yes, it will sure be different in the show considering we don't have Mormont's raven and he played a big part in getting Jon become LC in the book . Btw if they had Mormont's raven talk it would have been cheesy as hell so maybe this is considered another jumping the shark moment .

Edited by Tyrionthebest, 14 July 2012 - 01:30 PM.

[Gloer]

Basically all magic introduced is very bad for the storyline. It really undermines the realism and plot. It is aweakness. The magic should be minimally important as developing the story. Good fantasy never uses magic in vain and best has it mainly as a matter of general make up of the world like a law of physics. Really bad story telling has sudden new magical stuff appearing to make the story go forward to another direction. I am pretty convinced UnCat and Strong Robert are bad mistakes in GRRM books already. Omitting them would improve the story greatly!

[The Duke of J-Town]

Gloer, on 14 July 2012 - 01:31 PM, said:

Basically all magic introduced is very bad for the storyline. It really undermines the realism and plot. It is aweakness. The magic should be minimally important as developing the story. Good fantasy never uses magic in vain and best has it mainly as a matter of general make up of the world like a law of physics. Really bad story telling has sudden new magical stuff appearing to make the story go forward to another direction. I am pretty convinced UnCat and Strong Robert are bad mistakes in GRRM books already. Omitting them would improve the story greatly!

I rarely every tell anyone that they are unilaterally wrong, but in this case - you're wrong.  It's FANTASY.  It's not supposed to be "realistic."  Magic is part of the story.  The truth is that you don't like it, not that it's bad or wrong for the story being told.  I like all the magic stuff, so I hope Martin keeps it coming.  Maybe you would prefer to read true crime or historical fiction.

Edited by The Duke of J-Town, 14 July 2012 - 02:50 PM.

[Gloer]

The Duke of J-Town, on 14 July 2012 - 02:49 PM, said:

I rarely every tell anyone that they are unilaterally wrong, but in this case - you're wrong.  It's FANTASY.  It's not supposed to be "realistic."  Magic is part of the story.  The truth is that you don't like it, not that it's bad or wrong for the story being told.  I like all the magic stuff, so I hope Martin keeps it coming.  Maybe you would prefer to read true crime or historical fiction.

It is supposed to be believable if you like that word better than realistic.

Decent fantasy world has all magical elements voven into the make up of the world. They are never usedas a deus ex machina to save the story from a dead end as someoe put it brfore.

GRRM has a really great weakness in his story because the amount of agic is not constant but increasing in Westeros. There is way too much new magic happening that wasn't supposed to be possible according to the general westerosi population and POVs. Reader is cheated.

[master]

Quote

t is supposed to be believable if you like that word better than realistic.

Decent fantasy world has all magical elements voven into the make up of the world. They are never usedas a deus ex machina to save the story from a dead end as someoe put it brfore.

GRRM has a really great weakness in his story because the amount of agic is not constant but increasing in Westeros. There is way too much new magic happening that wasn't supposed to be possible according to the general westerosi population and POVs. Reader is cheated

magic returning is part of the plot of the story. without magic the dragons died out [or the other way around], when magic returns the dragons return [or the other way around].

Quote

Basically all magic introduced is very bad for the storyline. It really undermines the realism and plot. It is aweakness. The magic should be minimally important as developing the story. Good fantasy never uses magic in vain and best has it mainly as a matter of general make up of the world like a law of physics. Really bad story telling has sudden new magical stuff appearing to make the story go forward to another direction. I am pretty convinced UnCat and Strong Robert are bad mistakes in GRRM books already. Omitting them would improve the story greatly!

from what I understand martin wants to make magic mystical. not rare. in a case like this, as long as the author knows the limits and keeps them reasonable it's ussually fine. With regards to resurection, as long as he stays consistant with the idea that resurected characters aren't completely alive I'm okay with it.

[jlk7e]

I don't really get all the whining about magic and resurrection and such.  If magic or resurrection is used to get out of tight plot points and to just make everything too easy for the characters, that can be a problem. But Martin hasn't done that at all.

With resurrection in particular, it's really clear that this is not a cheap "out".  When I got to Lady Stoneheart, I didn't think, "oh, man, Martin was just using magic as a way to avoid killing Catelyn. What a cop out!"  I would say that anyone who does think this is kind of crazy.  Because to me, it seems clear that resurrecting Catelyn is actually worse than just killing her would have been.  Stoneheart is a brutal and horrifying creature bent only on revenge.  Her existence is a cruel trick, and a reminder that when we become consumed with revenge we become, quite literally, monsters.  This is reinforced by her treatment of Brienne, someone Catelyn knew and cared about in life, but whom Stoneheart can't even be bothered to listen to.  I don't see how there's anything cheap about Catelyn's resurrection.

[Gloer]

They should have kept Catwlyn alive then, alive and turning into a real life monster revenge ridden Catelyn Stoneheart.

Having her undead just gives the reader a cheap way of thinking that her actions are sonehow inhumane now.

[Bride of Winter]

gogorath, on 12 July 2012 - 09:00 AM, said:

I would have had a much harder suspension of disbelief with Cat not dying than Cat being resurrected.

Martin set it up well, both in doing it with a minor character that people did not yet truly care much about (Beric) so it dd not seem like a cheap out done solely for a major character AND by making it so that there was an established cost to the resurrection (losing yourself).  

Martin made that last point clear in the books both with Beric and with unCat by the dialogue there.  UnCat is not Catelyn; she is a shadow of that woman.  Beric was never that far dead (hours gone) until his light finally extinguished.

Boundaries and costs were set, and that makes resurrection more bearable.  They also limited the ability to one man at that time (though now that we see there are more red priests) in Thoros.  

The concern I have to for the show is not that they will do it like the book, but rather they will shorten those details around it like they did the shadow baby.

The book handles the shadow baby by showing it first, then giving the source much later.  It's not foreshadowing but it does much the same as establishing it with Beric -- it's hard to call it a Deus Ex Machina when you aren't sure of the source (and therefore can't label it that way).  Martin is also quick to imply how it is made and make a point that it dissipates and is difficult yo do (and later mentions that it takes a certain kind of man and even that person can only do so many).

In other words, it sets boundaries.  The show displayed it, for the immediate benefit of one character.  It failed to show the cost or the boundaries (dissipation, etc.) immediately.

The result was that a lot of non-readers were like WTF? Why doesn't Stannis just send a shadow baby to Joffrey?  Is that shadow baby going to kill all of Renly's army?  And the calls of Deus Ex Machina come out.

If D&D cut Beric, or the commentary about him losing himself, or the commentary by the BwB about Beric dying bringing her back, or how she was too far gone to really bring Catelyn back, they risk it again.  If Catelyn is resurrected with no real explanations or limits, people will be annoyed.

What has people annoyed in the books is the sheer number of people not actually dying in cliffhangers plus the resurrections.

Agreed. Martin did a good job laying out the groundwork for everything so nothing really seemed like a deus ex machina. When UnCat came we were already familiar with Beric, so it didn't feel contrived. And on a side note, I remember an old thread talking about the direwolves (like how realistic they are and whether them saving the Starks sometimes is contrived), and this sort of reminded me of that because it's the same deal. these fantasy elements are multifaceted, with dark sides and realistic costs that people have to pay. resurrection isn't a happy little solution to the inconvenience that death brings, and that was really well laid out by introducing Beric beforehand. I've had a sort of mixed experience with non-book readers, but I think as long as they ease into it with Beric (and make sure they include his talking about how he's losing his humanity) the same way GRRM did with us, Lady Stoneheart won't come across as jumping the shark. But as soon as they start cutting crucial parts of the buildup (which unfortunately D&D proved to have a nasty habit of) that's when it becomes iffy.

Edited by Bride of Winter, 17 July 2012 - 01:34 PM.

[Hamilton]

Perhaps it will be when they have to juggle stories from the North, Iron Islands, Vale, Dorne, Kingslanding, the Wall, Essos, Reverlands, etc.  Not to mention all the character story lines.

[Jon Mark Selmy]

The Duke of J-Town, on 13 July 2012 - 11:57 AM, said:

Well I don't really agree with you at all.  If you have a fantasy story, and you make it clear that people can be resurrected from the dead within the universe of the story, then it's just part of the story.  Just because YOU don't like characters coming back from the dead because you feel it "cheapens death," (again, something I don't agree with and honestly a point of view I don't understand) don't assume EVERYONE or even most people agree with you, or that they're somehow wrong because they don't share your opinion.

I don't believe most people would agree with me on this. I'd state that most people with a generaly good understanding of fantastical literature in general would, though. Die-hard fans of fiction, writers, comic book geeks, directors, roleplayers, that kind of people. I don't expect the average movie-goer to get it.

As for those who have one or other opinion being wrong, it's obvious that I believe that my opinion is correct, otherwise I would share your opinion, it goes without saying. Therefore, saying "don't assume other people are wrong because they don't share your opinion" is a mute point, unless we were talking about purely aesthetic topics.

(I. e. one can't argue concretely argue about green being a better color than red in abstract, but one can argue that red is a better color to sinalize a place that must be seen from a distance at night; one can't argue that 'stories with ressurection are worst than stories without ressurection in abstract, but one can argue the same within the criteria of verisimillitude, assuming this criteria is important by one and most literature geeks agree it is, etc...)

The Duke of J-Town, on 13 July 2012 - 11:57 AM, said:

As far as the use of magic goes - in a fantasy story, if characters use magic then again - big deal?  If using magic a lot is part of their character then fine.  Obi-Wan Kenobi used magic almost every time he appeared in Star Wars; that wasn't lazy storytelling, that was just part of the character.  There's no "correct balance" of magical and non-magical elements beyond someone's personal preference.

Yes, there is. And this is measured by the internal logic of the story in question. In the Star Wars Universe, for instance, Obi-Wan Kenobi has at least three very strong limitations for his 'magic':

A- He shouldn't use the Force to harm people (because only the dark side does this).

B- He shouldn't use the Force for trivial tasks that he could accomplish otherwise (because the Force shouldn't be banalized).

C- His own understanding and control over the force is limited, otherwise he would be a god.

A is only hinted at in episodes 4, 5 and B is only hinted at the prequels. Either way, they are pretty much confirmed by Word of God (George Lucas) well before the end of the old trilogy ever being released.

But the really important limitation is 'C'. If the characters within a fictional world could use their magic to accomplish whatever the plot needs them to, you end up eventualy screwing up the internal consistency (and that passes through the suspension of disbelief) either with questions such as "if character X can do that, why doesn't he do that in Y situation?" or, worst, with questions such as "where does this power even come from? it's so unlike anything the character has done so far?" Either way, you've just transformed your novel/series/whatever in a giant clusterfuck of lack of consistency.

Admitedly, C is not a very hard limit, but it's still there, or at least the viewers must believe it is. If they doubt it at some point (or if the limit strech to far), you end up with plot holes...

The Duke of J-Town, on 13 July 2012 - 11:57 AM, said:

I do agree with you that stories should be logical.  However unlike normal fiction and science fiction, fantasy can follow whatever logic is invented for the universe itself and is bound only by the author's imagination.

Yes and no. "Whatever logic is invented for the universe itself" must still be internaly consistent, just like with sci-fi. As GRRM once said "fantasy and sci-fi are really just to sides of the same coin." Or as Arthur C. Clark said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." In other words, fantasy is not exempt from verosimillitude or at least internal consistency. Neither is Sci-fi necessarily (or even more-so than fantasy) bound by reallity. It's actually a matter of "high fantasy" (or soft sci-fi) versus "low fantasy" (or hard sci-fi).

Gladly for me, ASOIAF is low-fantasy (even if GRRM said specifically that he would start with very low fantasy and then tend more and more towards the high fantasy ending of the scale; it still, so far, very much low-fantasy compared with most other books within the genre). Now admitedly I much prefer low-fantasy to the more high end of the spectrum. Why is that is anothe topic. But to sumn it up, it's because since there are less fantastical elements, the characters are psycologicaly closer to the reader, bound for more of the same limitations and thus catharsis is more possible (or possible with less reserves in some cases or possible with less focus on hand-waving, whatever the case might be). Tis is specially important to more dramatic stories, the ones within the more cynic end of the spectrum, etc.  This is not to say that there aren't great high-fantasy stories with deep and dramatic characters, of course.

The Duke of J-Town, on 13 July 2012 - 11:57 AM, said:

Also I think you're using the term "deus ex machina" incorrectly.  A character in a fantasy story using magic to save himself isn't deus ex machina, it's just the character using his magical abilities.

It can be a case of deus ex machina if said magical powers were not well stablished or at least hinted at before. Or even worse, if they are developed on the fly without very good (convincing) explanation. This has much to do with correctly stablishing your characters, of course.

The Duke of J-Town, on 13 July 2012 - 11:57 AM, said:

Also, deus ex machina isn't always bad or "lazy writing." Modern examples would be Gandalf saving the day at the end of Two Towers, or when Tywin shows up with Renly's army to save King's Landing from Stannis (which I think was actually Martin playing with the concept, when you consider "Renly's Ghost").  Neither of those were "lazy."

It's not always bad or always lazy writing, I agree with you there. However, it can be when overused. Gandalf is not exactly a 'modern' example, since it is the trope codifier for most medieval fantasy and the trope maker for much other stuff. If today the same was done, the Gandalf parallel would easily be acessed by the reader and thus the writing could be considered inimaginative if not played with. It's a bit of a discredited trope in fantasy, specially if executed in a similar way (that's probably why GRRM plays with it with the whole Renly's ghost plot).

Note that if "Renly's ghost" were to appear again, it could very well work in the same fashion in another battle, against different enemies and yet it would be lazy/bad writing (within the same work) unless it ended up properly twisted.

The Duke of J-Town, on 13 July 2012 - 11:57 AM, said:

I also don't really know what you mean by an author "writing himself into a corner."  If you have complete control over the material and you don't like the way a certain storyline is developing, just go back and change it.

It's actually pretty clear. Yes, he can (in fact, probably must) re-write up to the point where an event lead him to the dead-end, in order to complete his work, but this can be sometimes difficult (thus tempting the author to just solve the problem now, with what he already have written not having to be thown out) and, this is troublesome when whatever happened before also leads to other stuff, needs to happen duo to future stuff, or QUITE SPECIALLY if the author believes what he have so far to be some of his most inspired and/or imaginative pieces up to that point (or at least quite decent). Thus, the now very common-place expression "to write oneself into a corner".

[The Duke of J-Town]

So I just "don't get it" because I am just one of the unwashed cogs that make up your monolithic "general audience?"  Sorry to break it to you dude but I am a comic book sci-fi fantasy geek and quite familiar with that kind of stuff.  Also, I have written screenplays and in fact just directed a short western film which I will hopefully be turning into a feature in the near future.  So yeah - I know what I'm talking about.

And we are talking about aesthetic topics - the amount of magic within fantasy and whether or not that inherently makes it bad.  You believe a lot of magic in fantasy makes it bad, but the reality is that you just don't like it.  You can't unilaterally say it's bad.

I agree that fantasy should follow its own internal logic - in fact I believe that's what I said.  And Martin has done a pretty good job of creating internal logic for his fantasy.

About Star Wars - I agree with you on point A.  Point B and C must be from the EU, because there's nothing in any of the movies that states either of those things.  And the EU doesn't count for this argument, because I was talking about the original Star Wars film from 1977.

All of that stuff about "low fantasy" being more "psychologically close to the reader" and more likely to lead to catharsis sounds like pop psychology nonsense.  Give me some concrete examples that prove this is the case, because that sounds entirely subjective.  Not every reader is the same.

[Jon Mark Selmy]

The Duke of J-Town, on 21 July 2012 - 12:59 AM, said:

So I just "don't get it" because I am just one of the unwashed cogs that make up your monolithic "general audience?"  Sorry to break it to you dude but I am a comic book sci-fi fantasy geek and quite familiar with that kind of stuff.  Also, I have written screenplays and in fact just directed a short western film which I will hopefully be turning into a feature in the near future.  So yeah - I know what I'm talking about.

This is just besides the point. I still think you don't get it duo to the overall simplicity of your argument. And you can say you're secretly Tarantino, I'm sticking to my guns unless you elaborate a better point.

The Duke of J-Town, on 21 July 2012 - 12:59 AM, said:

And we are talking about aesthetic topics - the amount of magic within fantasy and whether or not that inherently makes it bad.  You believe a lot of magic in fantasy makes it bad, but the reality is that you just don't like it.  You can't unilaterally say it's bad.

If that's what you got from what I said, you should probably read it again. I never said it inherently makes it bad. I'm really not going to just quote myself, so I advise you just re-read the original post on this one.

The Duke of J-Town, on 21 July 2012 - 12:59 AM, said:

Point B and C must be from the EU, because there's nothing in any of the movies that states either of those things.  And the EU doesn't count for this argument, because I was talking about the original Star Wars film from 1977.

Point B is from the prequels. As in those two very bad movies plus one passable movie that are called Episodes 1, 2 and 3 (2, in fact). But there's also plenty of 'word of god' on the topic (of course many people don't accept word of god... and being from Lucas, somewhat understandably so). And if I were to talk about the EU I'd be making points until at least "F", instead of A, B, C.

And C is just very basic common sense. You think there's no limit to one's understanding of the force? So how does different Jedi display different levels of power? Also, if the Force is this awesome magic that binds everything together, how come one that controls it is not virtually god (since one is not limited by it's own understanding and control of the Force)?

The Duke of J-Town, on 21 July 2012 - 12:59 AM, said:

All of that stuff about "low fantasy" being more "psychologically close to the reader" and more likely to lead to catharsis sounds like pop psychology nonsense.  Give me some concrete examples that prove this is the case, because that sounds entirely subjective.  Not every reader is the same.

Not every reader is the same, but we can assume 'most' readers don't cast fireballs, have never been to mars and don't know much people who came back from the dead. Therefore, if you use one of those elements, you must make pretty sure that:

A- By the end of the story, the reader understands how it works (this is why I said GRRM 'owes' us further explanation on some of these elements), at least superficially. It can't be "oh, it's just magic, dude".

B- These elements have internal consistency as do any other element on the setting, fantastic or not. Otherwise you are just handwaving or enganging in "because the plot says so".

C- These elements have to either be rare or deeply impact the setting, being taken to the last logical consequences (i.e., if some people can learn how to fly why is it they build castle walls on the first place?).

D- These elements must impact the characters in a way that don't make them totally alien and thus impossible to emphatize and preferably on a way that interacts positively with their motivations from a literary standpoint (ex: a positive example is the way warging impacts the personality of the Stark children; a negative example is the way that everyone, even adults, seem to be totally unimpressed by a colorful clawn appearing out of nowhere, flying and giving moral lessons while making incredibly lame puns in Captain Planet, in a world that seems to be otherwise exactly like our own).

As a rule of thumb, the more 'fantastic' the element, the greater the strech on the willingly suspension of disbilief, and thus greater the need for the presence of the elements above mentioned (A, B, C, D).

If your setting is low fantasy (and thus have less of such elements and more importantly, less of the ones that would REALLY make a huge impact on the reality of most people in the setting), then the characters will be impacted by experiences more similar to the ones their real life counterparts would be (this is also why most fantasy is at least losely based on some real or predicted timespan of 'real' earth... it's pretty hard to emphatize with talking dolphins that fight with telepathic powers in a planet 75% made of gelly instead of water in their fight against elephant-wolf hybrids that want to eat all the gelly and substitute it with tea).

As for an example, since you asked for one: Imagine, for the sake of argument that I start with a world that is very close to the feudal Europe. Then I add the power to cast lightningbolts to some characters. This power could be:

A- Learned only with years and years of study of the atmosphere OR be as simple and natural as just breathing.

B- Available only to people born in a certain family line OR to everyone that put in the effort.

C- Be strong enough to stun or even kill a man OR be strong enough to destroy an entire continent.

Ok. Now, what we learn from this simple exercise is that the more common, accessible and powerfull the lightning is, the more different the world will be from our own (if in some minutes everyone can learn it, swords and shields are rendered useless and thus this technology might not even have developed, if some families master this power, it might be that the became rulers or feared and persecuted, if it is strong enough to destroy a continent, does the world still exist? then how?). If the world is drastically different from our own (or what it was, at least), the more the characters living in said world will differ from those that live in ours.

World building in fantasy is all about measuring these differences. They must be enough to spice up the setting you're building. But they shouldn't be enough that your readers are uncapable of having at least a passing understanding of the relashionships happening there and thus emphasize. Imagine if in our own world, all women could only have one son duo to some biological process. Now imagine ASOIAF if by the begning GRRM had to spend pages and pages explaining what a "sister" is and why incest would be considered wrong... and then why the Targaryens would be ok with it...

By using concepts that the reader already understands (family) and things from real history (dinasties marrying brother to sister in order to keep the hereditary properties within the close family), as well as using a world that closely ressembles real medieval Europe in many ways GRRM doesn't have to spell everything out and thus can focus on elaborating the interesting 'spicy' differences of his setting for us in time to both detail them very well and also to do the most important thing: tell the story.

I hope this is examplification enough. So again: to do good world building you need inovative magical/sci-fi elements to spice things up, but you also need not to overuse them (because this would cause confusion, need to explain to much stuff from the get go, difficulty for readers to emphatize with the characters or blatant inconsistencies on the way the setting/world works). Of course what exactly is 'not overusing them' is very dependant on the taste of your readers, but also on things like the lenght of the story told (larger stories have more time to present new elements), the intended complexity of the characters (some stories need simpler characters and thus the way some magic stuff affect them can be left unexplained) and so on.

Edited by Jon Mark Selmy, 21 July 2012 - 06:28 AM.

[CrypticWeirwood]

Jon Mark Selmy, on 21 July 2012 - 12:26 AM, said:

Gladly for me, ASOIAF is low-fantasy (even if GRRM said specifically that he would start with very low fantasy and then tend more and more towards the high fantasy ending of the scale; it still, so far, very much low-fantasy compared with most other books within the genre). Now admitedly I much prefer low-fantasy to the more high end of the spectrum.

Low fantasy is fantastic elements intruding into our own world.  Per Wikipedia:

Low fantasy is a term used to describe a variety of works within the sub-genres of fantasy fiction. Low fantasy has been defined as "nonrational happenings that are without casuality or rationality because they occur in the rational world where such things are not supposed to occur." Low fantasy stories are set in the real world. Low fantasy is contrasted with high fantasy, which takes place in a completely fictional fantasy world setting (partly or entirely, as high fantasy may start from or connect to the real world in places).

High fantasy is about a wholly new subcreated world, different from our own.  Again per Wikipedia:

High fantasy or epic fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy that is set in invented or parallel worlds. High fantasy was brought to fruition through the work of authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.

Are you instead talking about the low vs. high mimetic modes from Herman Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism? That’s where he breaks up literature according to the protagonist.  You seem to be using low and high fantasy the way Frye uses low and high mimetism.  The low mimetic mode has  people like ourselves as protagonists, just regular people. Everything from Sherlock Holmes to most science fiction is in this mode.  

In contrast, the high mimetic mode has protagonists who are heroes, people who may  not be themselves inherently greater than regular folks, but who are definitely doing greater things than regular people ever do.  These are stories about kings and queens, the great and the mighty.

There are other modes, including the mythic mode, whose protagonists are the gods themselves, and the ironic mode, whose protagonists are rascals and scoundrels.  Sometimes the high mimetic is split up into the romantic mode, whose heroes are greater than real people can ever be (like the Greek heroes of the Iliad, or Aragorn and Legolas and such), and the high mimetic proper, who are not beyond real people’s abilities.

I recommend to you High Fantasy & the Oratorical Style: The Use of Style in the Creation of the Secondary World, in which the writer discusses at length how the high mimetic mode of high fantasy uses the devices of lyric poetry, whereas the typically low mimetic mode of low fantasy  does not. It is a very interesting paper, and I strongly encourage everyone who enjoys fantasy to read it in full.

I know of exactly one place in A Game of Thrones where Martin consciously and fluently waxes into the higher register of sweeping lyricism, the sort of thing our greatest fantasy writers from Spencer to Tolkien have used, and it is beautiful to behold.  He does this at the very end; indeed, with the book’s very last sentence:

She was naked, covered with soot, her clothes turned to ash, her beautiful hair all crisped away . . . yet she was unhurt. The cream-and-gold dragon was suckling at her left breast, the green-and-bronze at the right. Her arms cradled them close. The black-and-scarlet beast was draped across her shoulders, its long sinuous neck coiled under her chin. When it saw Jorah, it raised its head and looked at him with eyes as red as coals. Wordless, the knight fell to his knees. The men of her khal came up behind him. Jhogo was the first to lay his arakh at her feet. “Blood of my blood,” he murmured, pushing his face to the smoking earth. “Blood of my blood,” she heard Aggo echo. “Blood of my blood,” Rakharo shouted. And after them came her handmaids, and then the others, all the Dothraki, men and women and children, and Dany had only to look at their eyes to know that they were hers now, today and tomorrow and forever, hers as they had never been Drogo’s. As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.

“The night came alive with the music of dragons,” Martin writes, but nights are not literally alive, and dragons have no literal music.  You don’t need to know the fancy names for these things, but do you see what I mean?  It is no longer pedestrian prose or plodding dialogue. He turns, perhaps unconsciously, to the devices of lyric poetry, and so it is is written a higher register, one that uplifts you like nothing he’s written before it does.

Edited by CrypticWeirwood, 21 July 2012 - 07:13 PM.

[The Duke of J-Town]

Well Jon, I read about halfway through your extremely long post, but got bored because you were numbering out all these rules you have for what makes good fiction.  Sorry man, but that's all subjective.  Where do you get some of that stuff?  The idea that everything has to be explained - that's ridiculous.  Are you one of those people who can't handle it when things are left up to your imagination?  Because it sure seems like it.

And I "get it" fine, I just don't agree with you that everything in fantasy must follow all of your rules.   And the fact that my argument is simple is just fine - I'm not going to rely on over-complicating it and stating a bunch of pop psychology in order to try to make it sound superior.

As for your arguments about the Force - your argument is based on the prequels and interviews with George Lucas.  I'm talking about the original Star Wars film - the prequels weren't made until over 20 years later, and I am surprised that you, with your statements about rules in art, would suggest that apocryphal interviews have any basis on the analysis of a work of art.  The art must speak for itself.

[Jon Mark Selmy]

Criptic Weirwood: the definition of Low Fantasy from wikipedia is wrong, sorry. Or at the very least to narrow. Go for tvtropes.com (for the definition I'm using... or writing theory books if you have the time... I might post a bibliografy later if you want). And I have absolutely no idea of who this Herman Northrop person is, but no, I'm not talking about only the heroes (though they are a related topic). I'm talking about the setting itself. However this theory might well be worth reading, though it's not at all directly related to anything I said.

The Duke of J-Town, on 21 July 2012 - 07:51 PM, said:

Well Jon, I read about halfway through your extremely long post, but got bored because you were numbering out all these rules you have for what makes good fiction.  Sorry man, but that's all subjective.  Where do you get some of that stuff?  The idea that everything has to be explained - that's ridiculous.  Are you one of those people who can't handle it when things are left up to your imagination?  Because it sure seems like it.

And I "get it" fine, I just don't agree with you that everything in fantasy must follow all of your rules.   And the fact that my argument is simple is just fine - I'm not going to rely on over-complicating it and stating a bunch of pop psychology in order to try to make it sound superior.

No, you clearly don't, dude. And saying 'it's subjective' won't really cut it for excusing your lack of knowledge on the subject. You do not need to agree with my definitions or anything, but your refusal to discuss it on a more theoretical level is pretty frustrating. You might as well say 'oh, man, I'm not discussing history with you because the authors do not agree, so it's highly subjective'. And so it goes for any social science, really.

The Duke of J-Town, on 21 July 2012 - 07:51 PM, said:

As for your arguments about the Force - your argument is based on the prequels and interviews with George Lucas.  I'm talking about the original Star Wars film - the prequels weren't made until over 20 years later, and I am surprised that you, with your statements about rules in art, would suggest that apocryphal interviews have any basis on the analysis of a work of art.  The art must speak for itself.

If you think a two hour movie can 'speak for itself' on the matter of world building, then... welll... ufff. You might re-watch Star Wars Episode IV a thousand times, you won't be abble to analyze it outside of context because it just raises so many questions and the answers are just not there. You either go for the author, further material, makes A LOT of assumptions or just be content with an unfinished arch. It looks like you have done the latter.

"Art must speak for itself" is an empty statement and a bad excuse. It's like me refusing to study philosophy because "the actions of man must speak for themselves." At heart it comes off as anti-intellectualism. You know, like the bible-belt republicans who are against college or the silly early arcadism (art movement) with their "fugere urbem".

Edited by Jon Mark Selmy, 21 July 2012 - 08:56 PM.