Sword & Sorcery

Another Robert Jordan hater, reporting for duty.

I've actually found most classic S&S do be rather boring, which makes me feel like a vaguely dirty, bad fantasy fan who needs to be punished.

I'm not doing S&S- more urban fantasy. But I'm curious to know your plans for yours.....

~Wil

~~Alien Penguin~~

S&S seems like an ideal genre for NaNo. It was born out of deadlines and wordcounts. It's got a strong tradition of novellas, it relies largely on raw energy over polish and while there's established formulas to use (less thinking, more writing), it's open to improvisation.

That said, I'm not sure my thing is going to be entirely S&S. It's pretty much an evaluation of Fantasy as I've read it so far, but then I think S&S beats High Fantasy hands down, so there's probably going to be decidedly more of an S&S flair to it.

I'm not really sure how to classify my novel. I've got your basic "heroine setting out to save the Kingdom from the ultimate evil" plotline. However, I am straying from the traditional, because tradition is boring. :D

First of all, my 'heroine' is only out to save her own butt. Basically, not going off on her quest will result in her either being fired or beheaded (or burned at the stake, depends on what type of mood the king is in that day, he's kind of an ass).

Secondly, the 'ultimate evil' in question is the heroine's not-so-evil twin sister. So, yeah, not sure that whole 'kill the bad guy' thing is gonna work for her.

Not to mention, while the heroine is a rather powerful sorceress, she is also rather incompetent. Kind of hard to write a serious High Fantasy with an MC that can barely manage the equivelent of boiling water without blowing something up. My main goal is to take traditional fantasy and turn it on its head, maybe get a few laughs along the way. Of course, two of my favorite authors are Robert Asprin and Terry Pratchett. :)

Whether I'm writing High Fantasy or Sword and Sorcery, bah, we'll see when its written.

Two of Wands
The not-so-epic tale of two sisters on opposite sides of a war.

Have you read Glen Cook's Black Company series? The series gets a bit bumpy after the first three books but a very good example of Swords and Sorcery in a longer format.

And yes, my planned plot would best fit in that sub-genre. With wuxia overtones.

Mine's got more than a bit of wuxia to it as well, although it's more Japanese crossed with Mongol cavalry. And yes, sorcery too, although it's not called such.

I like to think that there's a difference between Swords and Sorcery as a formula -- here we've got the Man who is a Fighter and here we've got the Elf who is a sorta-fighter only kinda a lightweight and here we've got the Token Woman who is a Mage and here we've got the Halfling Rogue -- and the idea of conflict happening on multiple levels. When your characters are divided into sword-swingers and wand-wielders, then yeah, it can start to seem pretty formulaic. OTOH, when the higher levels of sword start requiring at least a nodding acquaintance with sorcery, and vice versa, I think it works a bit differently.

I actually like Robert Jordan although the series could definitely have been shorter (and then he'd have finished it before he died too!).
I have no idea what my NaNo would be classed at. No hero killing the bad guy and saving the world type of thing going on. I'm not planning on humans having magical powers. There will be no epic battles or anything like that. Just an angel who was captured by the devil and is trying to get back to heaven (don't ask, the plot bunny bit me while I was innocently listening to music and it won't let go).

Sarah

"The first draft of anything is shit." - Hemingway.

Hmm. I'd say mine is...slightly sword & sorcery-ish.

Namely, in the fact that so far, I've had very little "magic" of any sort- oh, there are goblins (of sorts), and dragons for the protagonist to slay (if accidentally)- I'm still keeping things 'low key' so to speak- no wizards flinging about spells, no elf maidens, etc. That, and I'm using Howard's "Solomon Kane" stories as a bit of inspiration, amongst other sources. (For the record, if you're a S&S fan, and you haven't read any Solomon Kane, you owe it to yourself to fix this. Right now).

...Though really, mine's a little more swashbuckly than sword & sorcery-y, but I still find it more fun to write than hackneyed "High Fantasy," as it were. :)

*raises hand... bum off the seat... waveing hand franticly... screamming "pick me! pick me!"*

yep, S&S here, that's wwhy I've been changeing genres on my author info every few days... first I feel like S&S should be fantasy right?

But than I think fantasy is more medival stuff and dragons and such, and I'm not doing that, so than I'll switch to adventure, you know, sword fights, loin cloth wearing warriors, action, should be adventure right? Than I get reading the adventure forum to see what others are doing, and think... huh? pirates? ninjas? knights? am I the only one here doing a Conan style book? So than I switched it back to fanasty....

next day though I got to thinking... I'm basing my story in ancient Mayan cutlture right? I studying the Aztec and Mayans and Incas and Olmec to build my fictional world by, I'm useing Mesoamerican religions and shamanism to base my socercy stuff on... it's leaning an awful lot towards historical fiction, so I change my genre to historical fiction.

Than I start reading the historical fiction forum and I realise these guys think that if you make Napoleon sneeze on the wrong day, than your story isn't historical any more, and while I'm basing a lot on real history, I've also got these demonic-fearie-like villains that came shamelessly out of a Brian Froud book and my whole civilization never existed in the real world at all, they were just based on the real tribes of MesoAmerica, and aren't realy those tribes themselves...

so, now my story is listed as fantasy again, but Sword and Sorcery is where is should be and NaNowriMo just doesn't have that genre, and I don't want to put the "other" genre on my author page. oh well.

I have never written S&S before, this'll be my first time.

I've never read a S&S novel, I'm sorry to say, but I love the Conan the Barbarian movies and comic books, Xena is one of my fave shows of all time, and as a kid I used to watch HeMan and SheRa, plus I'm a huge fan of Carl Barks stories (not S&S; jungle quest/lost treasure stories... Indiana Jones was based on one of Cark Barks' stories). So that's the type of story I'm planning to write. Starts out as a jungle quest for a lost treasure that leads the hero to lost civilization, lead by evil villain and than moves on to being a S&S type story from that point on.

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