Small scale fantasy

Terry Pratchett.

Yes, some discworld novels do involve saving the "city" (Ankh-Morpork or Lancre, for example) but some are on a more b basic level. The city watch books, for example. Guards Guards, yes, is about saving the city from a Dragon. But Men at Arms and Feet of Clay are about solving crimes and saving one specific person. Sam Vimes does branch out in later books to matters of international importance, but in those books before he becomes the Duke of Ankh, it's small scale stuff with a decidedly fantasy culture yet very little large-scale magic. In fact, the biggest magic in a Watch book is probabaly confined to either the Dragon or a couple of broomsticks in Thud.

Also, the two Moist von Lipwig books, Going Postal and Making Money, are about an ex-conman who is trying to reform Ankh Morpork's Post office and Banking system, respectively. It's mostly just him trying to get it done while keeping alive. No Disc-shattering crisis.

And Pterry's books are insanely popular.

wordcount widgets

Going Postal is actually precisely the book I had in mind when I was thinking of all this, precisely because its plot is just so... un-fantasy. Haven't got Making Money yet, no spoilers please! I really do want it, though. Going Postal is still probably larger in scale than what I'm writing... but then again, there is a subplot involving the economic resurrection of the city-sector the story takes place in...

Though I am kinda curious as to if there's any non-Pratchett work of that small scale style out there too.

In my case, there's sure as hell a lot of magic floating around, it's just that since it's so routine now it'd be like us gawking at electricity all the time rather than just switching the lights on. Not so much limited magic as common as dirt and just as dull magic! Though the stuff my MC can do is pretty neat.

NaNo 2007 - Moths

2006 - The Eye of Rakaros
2005 - Approximate Destruction
2004 - JSBCBS
2003 - From Here To There

In the past, I've written a lot of high fantasy, but this specific thing is either turning out to be more of an urban fantasy or a fantasy romance. I'm...not quite sure. Maybe a bit of both. I'm just letting it take it's course, but it's a bit bizarre to be writing something like this. Instead of it being all OMGMAGIC, MEDIEVAL, SHINY WEAPONS AND ARMOR it's much more character-driven. I've had a couple bigger mysterious fantasy-ish events, but it's nowhere near the size of what I've written before.

In a way, it's kind of liberating to be doing something different, but at the same time it's taking a bit of getting used to. I'm not even sure if I like it all that much yet, but I think the characters are growing on me.

"Thunder rolled...

...It rolled a six."

- Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

I really loved Doris Egan's Fantasy/ Sci Fi Gate of Ivory. It's about a woman who's stranded on an alien planet where magic works, but the story is all about her getting a job and solving a mystery for her employer. I recently read a Lawrence Watt-Evans book about an apprentice magician who has to reverse a disastrous spell her master did that incapacitated him. I'm a big fan of small-scale fantasy. The characters just have to do more work since there's no convenient DARK LORD (oooooh. . .) to keep the plot spicy. But the genre is up to here ^ with dark lords: I say write what you want and give the dark lords and epic quests a well-deserved vacation.

(And I'm saving Making Money as a reward for getting significantly ahead in my word count . . .)

RS

"Many a little, makes a mickle."
-- Poor Richard's Almanac (and my wordcount)

I generally enjoy writing on a "low-key" fantasy level. Almost all of my short stories are fantasy, but on a very low level (like little tree-girls living acacias) - they're all up on my DA site (which I listed as my personal website - oops?

Anyway, all three of my NaNo novels have been low-key fantasy. Okay, I'm lying, just the last two. The first year I had a manor completely full of fantasy madness. Last year though, it was only fantasy because it was set in another world, but there was no magic whatsoever except for a little bit of pseudo-telepathy. And this year I don't even know what to call it. It's near-future semi-sci-fi/fantasy, but the only fantasy elements take place in dreams.

But I love it, don't you?

*~::...nymph...::~*

I guess mine would fall under that definition. My NaNovel is set in a small town and focuses on the relationship that defelops between my MCs as they deal with the fact that one of them is hated for having sexsomnia and the other is an incubus in hiding. No villain, no saving the world. There is a flood, but all it destroys is their house XP

The nearly unrelated series that I'm writing revolves around a slave who works in a magic shop and how he deals with customers and gets to know his new master and stuff. In the first book, he doesn't do anything greater than safe a forest from a salalmander (salamanders being magic fire in my books). There's magic everywhere, but no Dark Lords or quests. The newspsper is full of prophecies, but there's not a Chosen One in sight.

Breach: When a sexsomniac meets an incubus, sparks fly, but can they stop hating themselves long enough to fall in love with each other? Find out at http://katicalocke.livejournal.com/.

This is definitely an apt description for my novel. :) My story is a school story -- probably not the best claim to make, but there you are -- and it all takes place in the school, I believe. The only thing at stake is my protagonist's sense of acceptance and friendship. So, literally, the goal of the story is simply for her to make a friend. In this case, a really good, stable friend, in the midst of her (or their, as it happens to be) unstable reputations.

There can certainly be a great deal of drama coming from this, however -- halfway through the book I've got a huge fight scheduled, equivalent to a food fight with angry eight-year-olds. Except they use books. Yeah, my librarian is not going to be happy about that. (A part of me cries in sheer agony at the thought, actually.)

There's magic, and it's generally accepted but not exceedingly common or understood. No elves, magical beasts, elixirs of healing or any such things. Just magic. It doesn't have a major place in the plot, but it should in sequels.

Ironically, last year's novel was on the side of high fantasy. You know, revenge, big fires, falling down waterfalls, and talking animals... but it might be shorter than just the beginning of this novel.

Firstly I just want to say that the small-scale fantasy stories y'all are writing sound great! I love how magic is a big part of basically all your worlds, but the magic isn't big and showy and what the story is all about. That's a nice change.

I also love this thread because it gives a name to my fantasy story this year; it's definitely small-scale fantasy. Now I know what to call it, yay! The whole story takes place within the city limits of this one city. It starts in an orchard on the outskirts of town, two character visit a tavern a few times, but the vast majority of the time is spent within the castle/fortress itself. Admittedly the castle is under construction but otherwise it's a pretty confining setting. I keep talking about how the castle is old and the layout of the hallways makes no sense, but I'm working on other ways to make it interesting. So thank you very much for this thread, because it reminds me that I need to keep working on that.

There's a girl on Livejournal (I think she's moved to Insane Journal now? Not sure) called Limyaael who has a series of rants on the subject of fantasy novels. She tackles cliches, world building, character creation, and SO, SO MUCH MORE. Seriously, she had to make an index of her rants because they're so popular and there are so many of them. I highly, HIGHLY recommend her stuff. It's a fascinating read as well as funny and inspiring. Plus you get lots of recommendations for fantasy books that defy the norms, which is always cool.

Here's her rant on Domestic Fantasy, which I think small-scale fantasy would fit under nicely: http://limyaael.livejournal.com/535859.html

Here's the index of her rants (most of them): http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=limyaael&keyword=Limy...

Again, this is HIGHLY recommended reading for a fantasy fan or writer. Really fun too.

Yeah, I didn't want to confuse myself with low magic fantasy. Magic is everywhere in this story, and I probably have more of it sloshing around than most high fantasies do (people complain they have too much magic, but I find there's often hardly any except at critical points when it's whipped out to kill monsters, otherwise it's all "let's trudge through this boring landscape!" ..oh high fantasy, I'd like you more if you did what you said on the tin...). I like domestic fantasy as a subgenre name. My protagonist loves his hometown sector, even if it is a bit run down and shabby and about to be partially submerged. If someone did show up one day and ask him to go on a quest, he'd decline. He loves the place too much and he's needed there, and there's bound to be others.

Small-scale fantasy is just a random term I came up with, though I like it as it doesn't really automatically imply that there's no magic, especially as my MC has some powerful stuff at his disposal.

Liimyaal is on IJ now, but she's got an LJ feed of her journal there, which I find very handy as flailing around a bunch of journal sites gets annoying:

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/limyaael_ij/

NaNo 2007 - Moths

2006 - The Eye of Rakaros
2005 - Approximate Destruction
2004 - JSBCBS
2003 - From Here To There

Mine doesn't have an epic villain or a threat to the whole kingdom, really, and the magic is also very small scale (almost but not quite nonexistant). There is a bit of travel on sea and around the kingdom, but even though it involves the crown prince the quest is minor (finding a new tutor).

Prince Preevan needs to find a new tutor and goes to sea...with the captain who his mother parades around as a pretend paramour in a weird, dangerous game the King and Queen like to play.

I suppose my main story, when I do manage to drift back to it is pretty small scale. It isn't about saving the world or anything. Instead it is just two brothers going through their daily lives while trying to pay off the debt their mother left.

Official Deadpan Snarker since 1988.

My story started out with the image of a winged man making passionate love to my FMC, and their child being born with wings. Most of the action, and humour, stem from her community's reaction to a winged baby in their midst. Also his family's reaction to a non-winged sister-in-law. (The poor thing! How does she manage to get around?)
So far, MMC hasn't talked FMC into going to bed with him, but she's weakening.
Not the stuff of high epic fantasy.

My entire plot takes place within a town that is beginning to go through the change into a big city. They've got new trade alliances coming in, so all sorts of new kinds of people are coming into the town, which creates all sorts of conflicts, as the natives are very isolated and bigoted. The main driving plot is a relationship between a Daisaini (black skinned people) and a Billowstowner (white skinned people), so the entire plot is very character driven and focuses much more on the same sort of problems that I see on the streets every day than on some epic dark overlord (aren't those plots totally boring?). There is an institution that has very strong over-reaching governmental powers that is threatening some of the characters, but the institution is not out to get them as long as they don't break the rules and actually did a lot of good for two of the more major characters.

Depending on where I am with word count, there may be one journey, where the two MCs will go from Billowstowne to the main Daisaini city and experience the same sort of problems there that they've experienced in Billowstowne. The focus will be on the cities, though, not the journey itself. I find that the plot is moving much more slowly than I had anticipated (at 15,000 words, the main two MCs have just met), so I'm not sure if the journey will have been reached by 50,000 words. There's always next year. :)

I highly recommend Limyaael's rants as well. :) I've read the domestic fantasy one, and I just read the second point, because my novel is almost only about group dynamics.

Then I got a plot bunny.

*Goes to write it down for future use and hope it stays away until then*

My story is set in one city, though I do have battles. They're caused by the tensions between the different cultures in the city rather than some ultimate evil sweeping in. The city would survive whoever won. I'm not a fan of the simple approach where one nation has one race of people all following the same religion and having the same culture. Focusing on a city or town lets you explore the fact that most large settlements have people of many cultures. They might not all get along and they'll have to come to terms with it somehow.

* Polenth *