Dude.

Nerd Rage is serious business.

A trope is both things; it can be a word that encompasses several linguistical devices (Including irony, metonymy and metaphor) or simply a recurrent theme in literature. I meant, of course, the latter kind.

A cliché is a trope that has been excessively re-utilised in recent memory, and thus has become trite and uninteresting. Cliché'd-ness is relative; what is too cliché to even consider in a fantasy novel is often okay in a role-playing-game, and different variations on the same trope can be more or less cliché.

Vampires that are identical to Dracula or Nosferatu are a somewhat clichéd trope; vampires that are identical to the ones in Anne Rice's novels are very much clichéd, thanks to White Wolf milking them for all they're worth. But vampires in general are not cliché, just a very old trope with a number of different places where it can fit into a mythos (Vampires have been used to represent sexual lust, self-destructive passion, or simply disease - depending on time period and author, and often more than one at the same time) and a number of possible variations (In Pratchett's Discworld, being a vampire is almost an occupation, rather than a curse of undeath.) which can be used to subert it or give it a fresh coat of paint.

I just wanted to say...



is


And to actually contribute to the thread, S.A.W. I'm in the process of outlining some writing of my own and it can be very difficult to write something that doesn't come off as incredibly cliche. The solution really isn't to avoid cliche to the point where your plot becomes a convoluted mess of otherwise innovative ideas.

If it makes sense, just do it. If it means taking a break from developing the plot and going back to the character stage of development, then maybe you should flesh them out a bit more first.

Why are there always gods?

edit: The things that bug me about song of ice and fire.

1. clear references to Christianity, and Christian like religious archetypes (while trying to pretend it isn't).

2. The role of the sun/fire god. (kudos points for making the sun god evil I guess)

3. The story started off non-epic about just one land in a large world. Now, its about the battle between two god systems, and their control over the "central lands" (this is hinted to at this point, and I'm afraid to read where it goes.)

4. In general I'm really disappointed with the new characters that he decided to focus on.

Why are there always names with apostrophes?

Or languages with apostrophes.

PS: I hate Crowtongue.

WOT is crap.. it spanned what? 11 books and is pointless.. i used to read it back in college!? my goodness, and now im old enough to have two kids.. no matter what happened.. and im sure he did not plan on dying heh, but its not fair making readers wait and most people agree that the a book or four could have been safely done away with in return for some closure.. i used to like ninaeve.. but not shes just another whinny wench to me..

Song of fire and ice is the only semi-believable book ive read. For if you find you favorite character's neck is about to be chopped off.. dont bother hoping someone is gonna save him/her.. he is gonna die.. no mystical, magical horn or resurrection will make him go back again.. (except for one lady that i sure wished stayed dead.. grr.. GGmartin, what were you thinking resurrecting such a shrew of a mother.. augh)

also, the clever dialogues and the use of the reminisces to tell the story of how thing came to be is really very good..

To be fair, WoT also has some Christian-related things (I couldn't remember if you liked WoT or if you just didn't like Song). I haven't read Song yet, though I'm planning on it, but I know that there are several trinities in WoT (Creator-Dragon Reborn-Dark Lord seems like it could be a God-Messiah-Satan sort of thing to me).

I am kind of surprised by the amount of book-hating going on. I didn't know this was such serious business.

Anyway, to add onto the cliches-

Why does so much fantasy draw upon well-known aspects of actual religions?

Several reasons. The main one is probably tradition; a lot of fantasy stories don't need any of their fictional religions, but they're there because they're a world-making convention. Secondly, they are "one more thing"; they help flesh out a world by adding more elements to it and more stuff to play with. They can provide ready-made organisations to serve specific purposes (Like the church of Halea in the Hârn setting, which is basically a brothel) and provide ready-made explanations for particular motivations that authors want to scotch tape to their characters (In the aforementioned example, hedonism). Finally, creation myths really help flesh out a scenario; because of that, gods tend to become necessary.

yes yes... again, this is a thread for questions, not question we don't have the answers to.

I listed it because its a question that the author should have an answer to.




I likED song of ice and fire. First three books were amazing. Then the last one seems to be not so good, and left so many hints of things to come which to me remove the uniqueness of the series. (love the games based on the first three books as well.)

I was just pointing out that the series was not free of these cliches, and stolen content. (I am pretty sure that every aspect of WoT is stolen from some real world thing, and personally I think that was done on purpose. i.e. the wheel of time changes, that fantasy world, is really just another future/past age of our world.)