Thank you! I can see what you mean about fantasy stories needing to be about "characters who have enough agency to make a difference on a wide scale" - at least, for long continuing stories, as opposed to the one-small-action type story, like the little Dutch boy. Even when it is a story about one-small-action, the point I guess, is often about its impact on the big person with agency. (Thinking now partly about my own story, 'Resistance', which has four years of working-class action, all to have impact on the big person with agency.) I'm not sure what to do about it.
"archetype-driven storytelling that assigns rank to characters in relation to their innate worthiness" Yes! I react majorly against this. Though of course wicked kings and queens go back a long way, too; still the end of the story is usually their deposition in favour of the worthy ex-woodcutter. And though you've very reasonably only talked about fantasy here, the same thimble-trick turns up in all sorts of literature. (PWimsey makes me grit my teeth at his constant smug privilege, and his writer just couldn't stop herself from magically making him, prospectively, the Duke and Harriet the Duchess, after all.)
Ouch for readers not wanting to bother! Writing is hard work, so I can understand lazy writers, but it's grim to think one can slog away at a plot and then find that the readers (i.e. those who actually do read it - those who don't pick up a story can hardly be blamed for how they deal with it!) can't be bothered to follow it. Nonetheless... :) I'll gird my loins and pledge to write a hard-plotted working-class fantasy sometime or other in the next year!
Thank you very much for these thoughts, which I'll continue to mull over. :)
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Date: 2014-12-08 03:28 am (UTC)I can see what you mean about fantasy stories needing to be about "characters who have enough agency to make a difference on a wide scale" - at least, for long continuing stories, as opposed to the one-small-action type story, like the little Dutch boy. Even when it is a story about one-small-action, the point I guess, is often about its impact on the big person with agency. (Thinking now partly about my own story, 'Resistance', which has four years of working-class action, all to have impact on the big person with agency.) I'm not sure what to do about it.
"archetype-driven storytelling that assigns rank to characters in relation to their innate worthiness" Yes! I react majorly against this. Though of course wicked kings and queens go back a long way, too; still the end of the story is usually their deposition in favour of the worthy ex-woodcutter. And though you've very reasonably only talked about fantasy here, the same thimble-trick turns up in all sorts of literature. (PWimsey makes me grit my teeth at his constant smug privilege, and his writer just couldn't stop herself from magically making him, prospectively, the Duke and Harriet the Duchess, after all.)
Ouch for readers not wanting to bother! Writing is hard work, so I can understand lazy writers, but it's grim to think one can slog away at a plot and then find that the readers (i.e. those who actually do read it - those who don't pick up a story can hardly be blamed for how they deal with it!) can't be bothered to follow it. Nonetheless... :) I'll gird my loins and pledge to write a hard-plotted working-class fantasy sometime or other in the next year!
Thank you very much for these thoughts, which I'll continue to mull over. :)