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Hay ya buddies, I’m having some serious trouble here. You see, I’ve created a monster! In other words, I’m writing a story and I don’t know what genre it is in. It is pretty important to know what genre it is in, because I plan to publish it. For those of you on my website, I’m talking about Treachery Against The House Of Fairwin.
Right now, I am publishing it on my site as a serial novel, but when I am done with it, I plan to self publish it (down the mighty Amazon in a nutshell and stuff). This should give me some experience with publishing and book releases before I publish my Edwin Brook story. I am also hoping it will help me build my author platform.
This story takes place in an imaginary world with imaginary character and imaginary places. The only thing, is that besides that, everything is very real-worldy. There are no fantasy creatures. No other-world mythology. No special abilities the people possess. No special weapons. In fact, if I had simply used real world names, I could have probably convinced my reader that I was writing historical fiction. Essentially, what I am doing is writing a medieval era story about a city which is being besieged, except I didn’t want to do any research for it, so I invented all the names and everything. I have taken some creative license in designing my world, but it is nothing like TLOTR. So really, my only guess is fantasy, but it just doesn’t feel right.
Is it ok for fantasy to be so real-worldy?
For those of you who have been reading it, I thought I would just ask one more question. Does my style (for this book specifically) remind you at all of any other writers’ styles past or present? It would be helpful to be able to give readers an idea of my style by comparison.
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Actually, one of my favorite authors wrote a fantasy trilogy like that. The Ascendance Trilogy by Jennifer A Nielsen. Just what you described. Very real world-ish, just in a made up land.
Historical fantasy. 🙂
Perfectly great— perfectly fine, perfectly okay. Only fantasy fantasy has to be fantastical. 😛
As for the style question, reading through what you’ve posted so far I’m going to say it reminds me heavily of a lot of classical authors— specifically (guess who) Alexandre Dumas. There are a few minor differences, but it’s very very close.
Hmm, so maybe it is fantasy. Here’s the other thing then. I don’t want to confuse people into thinking that it is a “pure” fantasy (very other-worldish and such). If they expected that, they might be disappointed. So perhaps I should describe it as a fantasy story with a very real-world feel to it? Perhaps that might sound too much like the so and so stuff from both worlds instead of the best from both worlds. Also, do you think this style is enough like another genre that it might appeal to fans of that genre as well?
@kate-flournoy I had never heard of historical fantasy. That sounds pretty comparable. The only thing is that the little description I just looked up made me think more of King Arthur. The real world plus the fantastical. The only thing is, my story is more like a different setting plus the real world. Is that ok?🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢🐢
Hm… you have a point. I didn’t think of King Arthur… well, maybe you could just call it plain ‘medieval fantasy’, though that might have the same difficulty.
One of the things fantasy fans (take it from an expert on the subject) love is the vivid, vivid cultures and the unusual aspects of a wholly different world that define fantasy in its purest form, which you don’t have with that story, as you said.
I think your story may appeal more to a historical fiction fan who stumbled across it than a fantasy fan who heard it advertised as fantasy and looked it up.
I love it because I am both a fantasy fan and a historical fiction fan, but such entities are very rare and cannot be counted on as a sufficient market. 😛All that to say, I don’t really know what one would call that genre if not historical fantasy. Maybe fantastical history? Nah— same problem.
And I can continue to ramble if you want me to, but I don’t think it’ll get us anywhere. 😛
Thanks Kate,
According to the wikipedia definition of medieval fantasy, my story might actually fit in that genre. It says, “Medieval fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy that encompasses medieval era and sometimes simply represents fictitious versions of historic events. It can include various elements of Middle Ages European culture and society, including a monarchical government, feudal social structure, medieval warfare, and mythical entities common in European folklore.”
That actually fits very well.
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