Fantasy’s Quality Conundrum
When No Rules Apply, How Do You Judge Quality In Fantasy Books?
By Jessica Bennett
I think a lot of people
assume that fantasy is easy to write. After all, the author gets to make
everything up. There are no rules, no boundaries, no limits. I agree to some
extent. Bad fantasy is really easy to write.
Good fantasy, on the
other hand, is extremely challenging to write — at least in my humble opinion.
Fantasy authors don’t get to work within the established confines of a known
world. They have to create a completely unique world where the sky might not be
blue, a young peasant girl can grow up to be a powerful sorceress and the dead
may not stay in the ground to accommodate the worms. One of the most well-known
maxims of the writing world is “write what you know”. Fantasy authors chuck
this bit o knowledge out the window, by writing about all sorts of things they
don’t know like what the talons of a griffin feel like or how to weave a love
spell.
The fact that fantasy is so
difficult to write is — again, just my humble opinion — why great fantasy is so
hard to come by and why you could probably trip over a dozen mediocre fantasy
books in just one short stroll through Amazon.
Here’s the part where you
wonder who exactly I am and where I get off making broad statements about good
and bad fantasy. After all, how in the heck can I or anyone else judge what’s a
good fantasy book when there are virtually no rules or limits to what can
happen within a fantasy story?
Let me start out by
introducing myself. My name is Jessica
Bennett. I’m an indie author and passionate reader. Fantasy is one of my
favorite genres to read, and the one I always go to when I really need to get
away from life for a while.
I am also the co-owner of
a company called Grub Street
Reads, which evaluates and endorses quality indie books. My business
partner, Leslie Ramey, and I created
our company, because we truly believe that the rapidly-growing indie book
market is in need of a quality standard.
Leslie and I spent a lot of
time developing an endorsement standard that could be applied objectively and
consistently to any fiction or creative nonfiction manuscript regardless of
genre or specific plot points, including fantasy.
We’ve gotten questions
from readers about how we can possibly apply a single standard to so many
different kinds of books, especially fantasy.
As it turns out, even though
the rules within a fantasy verse are as flexible as Play-Doh, the components of
good writing are as solid as ever. These components include things like
well-developed characters, a consistent plot, strong pacing and few (if any)
grammatical mistakes.
For instance, a fantasy
book may feature a fearsome troupe of trolls called Gruesome, Bone Cruncher and
Todd. This is all well and good, but if Gruesome, Bone Cruncher and Todd don’t
each have distinct personalities, strong motivations and believable reactions
to plot twists, then readers aren’t going to develop an emotional bond to them.
Good pacing is also critical. If the prince gets lost on his way to rescue the
princess or decides he needs to get a workout in at the gym first, then readers
are going to put down the book faster than a dragon can belch fire.
Grub Street Reads is just
getting off the ground (we officially launched in July), but we’ve already
gotten to add some great fantasy novels to our endorsed book library. If you’ve
been burned by poor quality fantasy books in the past, come on over to the Grub Street Reads Endorsed Library.
Our library includes only those books that have passed our quality standard.
These books are low on cost and high on quality. And don’t forget to check back
— our library grows each week.
What do you think of our idea? Could the indie book market,
fantasy novels included, use a quality standard? Leave a comment and let us
know your thoughts.
ABOUT GRUB STREET READS:
Grub Street Reads’
mission statement is simple: Support the indie book movement. Support good
books. Give readers the excuse they need to try a new indie author.
To do that, Grub
Street Reads has developed a clean and simple endorsement protocol, meant to shine the spotlight on good self-published books and protect readers
from those that are not yet ready for the marketplace.
In short, Grub
Street Reads wants to be the quality standard for the indie book market,
and believes their company can be a very good thing for indie authors and the
readers who want to buy their books…
12:01 AM | 
Posted by
Robert |
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
.jpg)
8 comments:
Sounds like a great idea. I'm off to check it out :)
I had a little chuckle when this popped up in my reader - a few days ago I had a bit of a rant about this very thing! Great idea, I'll definitely be stopping by now and then :-)
The problem here again is some organization or "Group" of people is trying to decide what readers get recomended. The whole idea that we, as readers, cant determine the dreck from the rest is as absurd as it is insulting.
I'm not saying that some indie stuff isn't terrible. What we need is a group like this to filter published fantasy books and tell us what other Great Novel they copy-catted so we can find the original stories and characters that can only come from un-controlled writers easier. Seriously. If I spend a buck on indie and get a lemon, so what. Its just one less sugar loaded soda I'll drink later.
Indie books at Amazon are cheap. .99 - 2.99 mostly. EVERY reader should buy 10 of them a year just to be a good person. I'd bet 7 of the 10 were as good as any of the GOT/Twilight rip-offs coming from the big 6.
Seriously. Start filtering ALL Fantasy Books and quit singling indie out. Indie is #1 in NYT.
I agree with Mr. Mathias here that you can see the whole idea of "deciding for readers what is quality" as maybe not insulting but say condescending, but in a general sense the idea of promoting specific books and in particular looking at the indie market is not bad, especially considering that it is sadly shunned by many online outlets - see the "why I do not review independently published books" silly posts that sometime show up online
After all here at FBC we have promoted and recommended quite a few indie novels from the beginning so even before the current Amazon-led boom...
So maybe with a bit more humility, Grub Street Reads will become a destination for us the readers, though only time and success will tell.
I wasn't really saying that I was insulted here guys. The gist of this idea is fantastic. I was using the expression loosly. I get excited. :-) lol I am not against something like this. I am against something like this that is ditected at indie, thats all.
I think that the idea is to offer a "review market" for indies that is authoritative in the way places like publisher weekly, NY Review of Books etc are perceived to a degree or another to be for mainstream books, as well as compensate for the refusal of so many online review sites to deal with indies
And I agree that the goal itself is commendable but there quite a few pitfalls, so only time and success or lack of such will decide
I don't think any body should be setting standards for everyone. It's oppressive.
Personally, I think quality control is a great idea for the indie book market. To me, the whole indie/e-book movement is very reminiscent of the mp3 movement back in the late 90s/early 2000s where basically anyone could record a song (or in this case, write a book) and call themselves a musician (or an author).
The biggest difference to me is not money, but time, which in my opinion is much more valuable. I can listen to a sample on iTunes, Soundcloud, Youtube, etc., and in just a few minutes know whether or not a song is worth purchasing or listening to again. A book on the other hand can take considerably much more of my time. True, I could read a sample, but what does that really tell me? In a single chapter, or even three, I could probably glean an author’s writing style and prose, but what about characterization, plotting, the world-building and so on? Heck, I’ve read books where it’s taken me 100-200 pages before I really got into it, so a sample wouldn’t help in that case.
Plus, I’m not a very fast reader. In the time it would take me to read a single sample, I could probably listen to a dozen or more different bands/songs on iTunes.
As for quality control for major publishers, there’s really no need. Between the blogosphere and websites like Amazon or B&N, I can just Google a specific book and instantly find out the ‘buzz’ on that particular title and know whether it’s worth my time or not. Indie books on the other hand, do not enjoy that kind of exposure. Sure, there are exceptions, but for the most part the indie book market could definitely use more help and that’s where a website like Grub Street Reads could make a difference…