Are You Writing Serious Fantasy?

[Saxony Tarn]

in a daring attempt to tackle the originality line AND the Canadian tangent, here's advice on "copying" from one of my major writing influences -- a musician, but it's easily applicable to any artform.

The best way to develop an orginal style, he said, was not to copy one artist, but to copy twenty... then he adds with a grin, "I copied a hundred!" (N. Peart, RUSH) People today can look at my artwork and tell me what type of comics i read/watched when young, they can see the echoes of each different influence and also the results of the synthesis of all of them. In that way the whole is greater than the sum of all the parts.

Heck, coming up in my plot is a pivotal line drawn straight from a Conan Meets Elric book i read some 25 years ago and have never seen again. Why pay homage to that concept with my own twist on it? 'cause i like it, and it fits!

This is a really good forum, so let me put a twist on littlemanpoet's topic:

"are you writing fantasy seriously"

in the case that most if not all of us are putting no small amount of time and effort into our tales, i'd have to say that we are!

s.t.