El. knyga: Tropes of Fantasy Fiction

Lissauer, a writer, illustrates how the use of tropes can make a fantasy story succeed or fail based on how the author applies them and the interplay of text vs. the reader's expectations. She discusses the nature of these expectations as meta-text and the concept of genre using the examples of Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and Mercedes Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms series; how they deal with the idea of metafiction within the actual story setting; and how characters use the ideas of stories to influence and change their personal stories within the books. She examines the Twilight saga and the disconnects between text and meta-text in the romance genre; whether magic is necessary for fantasy fiction, looking at Naomi Novik's Temeraire series and Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series; and ways to distinguish a fantasy story when the typical archetypes and story structure are subverted, as in George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series and Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series. The second part of the book considers the building blocks of the fantasy story and what makes some successful and others not, including heroes and villains, side characters and their role in the plot and creation of the world, fairies and other stock fantasy races, the secondary world vs. the urban fantasy, and settings and the importance of world consistency and continuity. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)