As an all-in fantasy writer, let me say: you’re spot on, Thaddeus! We have to be better. Better than ourselves, better than the past, better than the rest.
I’ve often tried to telegraph that (jokes on Notes aside), I am serious about craft. And while I’m not going to tell anyone else what they “ought” to do with their art, I’ve been on record saying that if we want others to take our genre seriously, we ourselves have to take it seriously.
Others can do what they want, but “rule of cool” doesn’t pass muster in a Falden story.
Term borrowed from D&D/Tabletop gaming, where if it’s “against the rules” but fun, you can invoke the rule of cool to make the story enjoyable. I’ve seen fantasy writers invoke it to justify the outlandish. Don’t get me wrong, fantasy can and should have *fantasy*, but I hope my point above stands. I can, and have, written about this a lot. I have so many more thoughts on this I need to write out haha
I love the idea Thaddeus. But there is something that nags at me, and I’d love to get your thoughts.
This is a genuine question, but how does this help the masses? If a few authors transcend trad here, how does that help everyone? Bringing the reach here so folks have more of a chance? You will always have whales, you will always have taste makers. Authors move to new platforms and we see audiences shift with them. As it stands, baring any shifts in business from Substack, authors come here for just a different revenue stream and direct engagement. But I admit, I could be wrong.
Someone like me, who is rather new to Substack from a consistency perspective, how does this help me? Some writers will be better than trad here in your scenario, so you will need better editors than they have as well, and if writers groups exist I’m sure I have to apply, network, and prove my worth and I’ll be competing with those people here instead of the current channels. I’m sure those editors that edit for higher profile writers here will cost more here, and perhaps I’m forced to pay it to bump my chances.
The hustle doesn’t change. You might have publication houses here to streamline logistics who will pick writers they like. Who will pick writers recommended by the people they trust. That’s just life, no? So to say it’s just about the art, when people are involved it’s impossible for it to not have a tinge of politics.
Again, I’m not saying I think it’s a bad idea. I love the idea, hell I want to be apart of it, but I have a hard time getting past precedents being set, and those at the top benefiting the most. I just don’t see how it’s different.
I sort of tilted at the same windmill in my reply. In a community like this, someone has to decide who gets the attention and who goes back to the drawing board. It ends up shining a light on some and sweeping others under the rug.
I never replied to the first question. You're asking from a perspective of breaking out of Substack. I answer that a focus on quality and freedom from the constraints of trad philosophy must come from the masses. We might have some superstars, but we also gain a reputation among readers that Substack is the place to be. A few people getting a contract is far less interesting than fiction Substack becoming a can't-miss reading destination. We don't wait to become important to the overlords. The revolution is us being serious about quality and creative freedom.
I've read this piece a few times now, along with the comments, and I've spent the last few days mulling over some thoughts. As much as I am in favour of fostering community and challenging one another as writers, I also see the issues on the horizon that are not unlike those presented by traditional publishing.
In this big group hug community where we start making waves in the world of literature, lifting one another up and challenging ourselves to become the best we can be, who decides what goes up and what goes down? Who decides what's great writing and what's subpar? Who is the judge that brings the gavel down to declare that you could do better? For there to be quality there had to be quality control, and for something that is as subjective as literature that proposes a problem. Writers who are churning out works that appeal to the current trends are inevitably going to garner more attention and become the focal point, become the standard, and the fringe communities are going to fall by the wayside as they beg for attention for their stories to be read. Bitterness ensues and you're suddenly in the same boat as the trad publishers where stories that don't sell as well are going to be buried under the tide of the whales. And so the subsect breaks off and becomes a counterculture all over again.
This already happens on Substack, even without some sort of governing authority. For example, take the overall fantasy community on here. There are a few larger accounts present on this platform that continually pump one another up (see Warrior Wednesday or Sword & Saturday posts), amounting to a clique of a dozen or so names that I see over and over again tagged together and tossing around their ideas. They're bonded together in a likeminded way, with a singular idea of what fantasy should be, and their presence, overlap, and reach can eclipse others who aren't in *the club*. Now, there's nothing wrong with this. Substack is a social media as well as a writing platform, but this has already formed a culture vs. counterculture dynamic; you have the staunch traditionalists vs. the "write cool shit" crowd. In the parameters of what you're proposing, is there room for both these camps? Will they garner equal support from the community at large? Would whatever resources become available in the community utopia for Substack publishing be available to the writers who only get 10 views on their posts vs 1000 views? I don't see how they could be.
This sort of dynamic begins to takes on a flavour of gatekeeping as the smaller fish begin to beg for the attention, admiration, and support of the bigger fish in order to claim a market share of readers. Gatekeeping is a huge problem in traditional publishing, one that you see railed against in countless posts from those writing outside the current market trends. People are inevitably going to feel scorned by this en masse community that was supposed to support them and the divide widens on culture vs. counterculture.
Another problem I see is the readers themselves. While there are readers here on Substack, primarily we are a gaggle of writers that are utilizing this wonderful platform to grow our brand. We are writers reading other writers, which is fantastic in terms of growing our skills and forming connections, but for success at large we need to break through that confine. We need readers beyond our own peers and I don't know that Substack is the right tool to put our stories in their hands. Novels are kind of the last frontier standing against the tidal wave of quickly consumed, readily available content. Movies and premium television have long been replaced by streaming platforms that pump our drek at alarming rates, so moving readers away from novels and onto a digital subscription based service like Substack seems like a hard sell to me. I for one would rather spend $15 on a crisp paperback as opposed to spending it on 10 months of a Substack subscription at $1.50 per month. Why? A couple reasons. First, I get an actual physical item that I can keep. It doesn't just vanish behind a paywall when my subscription ends. Second, it gets me away from a screen (and I think we could all do with a little less screen time these days).
I'll state again that I love the idea of community. I've been working hard to foster my own micro-community by establishing my commitment to raising up indie authors. Your line here: "If we’re doing our own thing, we can go places and accomplish miracles the traditional published author never dreamed of." ... This really speaks to me and if this remained the goal of such a community I would be gung ho and jump in feet first. But once the business side if brought into something like this, it's a fine line to walk between collaboration and corporation.
Just my two cents. Maybe I missed the mark somewhere here or went wildly off topic, but I can't help looking ahead to the potential of what things could becomes.
“Who decides what's great writing and what's subpar?” Good point. I don’t read a ton of fiction on here but there are certainly some bigger writers whom I would not pick to be at the top. Perhaps the “let’s help each other out” mentality, while fine in theory, isn’t the best in reality. I like being nice to people on Substack, especially the fiction writers, because I know what it’s like to have no audience and to finally get a glowing comment. So if I read someone’s work and genuinely like it, I try to make sure I leave a comment.
But there are plenty of writers on here that I don’t read because I quickly labeled their writing as dislike-able. But if I start reading something and quit, I don’t leave a comment saying so because it’s kinda awkward to say that when I know they’ll read it. For reviewing purposes, I don’t like knowing that the author is essentially right next to me. A few people have asked if I’ll review their book and I did it once, but unless I have a very strong reason to expect that I’ll like it, I’m not accepting Substack author’s books to review anymore.
And that might be part of the problem: Substack authors want a community of readers, but when that community is full of people you can actually have a conversation with, that doesn’t breed honesty. I don’t think it matters so much that the readers are also mostly writers; it’s “knowing” the person who wrote the comment that’s the issue. If there was a way to leave an anonymous review, that would help sideline the lesser writers. Though how the better writers then break out into the wide world and find themselves in real bookstores…yeah, I have no idea. I’m not convinced most readers even know what Substack is.
The fiction I share isn’t my focus, and the views/likes bear that out. It’s more of a hobby within a hobby. I don’t think I’ll really try to pursue it on here, but when I get comments on my fiction, they’ve all been great. Are they telling the truth? No idea! I think I’m good and, frankly, better than some popular writers on here, but my stories are lost in the shuffle of other fiction writers, so it’s not looking too good for my fiction career.
Like you, I’d much rather have the physical book than another subscription.
Regardless of where fiction is headed on this platform, I don’t think it’ll ever really be built for it and it's more than likely that Substack—maybe society as a whole, who knows?—won’t last long enough to become the hoped for writer/reader paradise.
Came for the anti-Tolkien ragebait, stayed for the inspirational call to action. When I started on Substack 10.5 months ago I expected it to be a stepping stone, a way to build an audience and impress literary agents. While part of me still clings to that dream, I'm starting to realize new possibilities and get really, really excited about the potential for innovation here—genre bending, trope breaking, industry shattering, collaboration.
This was the right piece for me at the right time. I’ve been guilty of romanticizing literary history (if only I could hit up a cafe in Paris 100 years ago), but like you’re saying, that’s probably holding on to an old way of thinking and approaching the craft. Instead of the next 20s Paris, I’m curious what the first Substack is going to look like.
From my experience, it’s shaping up to be an interesting place, but I do think it hasn’t reached its peak yet. Which on the one hand is exciting because we can build the kind of community we want to work in and with, but on the other hand is going to require a lot of hard work. But I don’t think anything worth doing is going to be easy
I’ve also fantasized about being in 1920s Paris, but you’re absolutely right. Idealizing that past neglects the opportunity to create it for ourselves in the present!
I'm really excited by Substack's potential to combine a platform for writing with a community of readers and writers. The siloing of mainstream fiction as been a big problem, and we can challenge that, but as you say it depends entirely on the amount of sweat and novelty we're willing to pour into our work here. Going forward I want to be as much a part of that as I can!
This is the reason I’ve pulled back from the “busy” work of having a publication - to focus on reading more, writing more, rewriting more. I’m used to a churn of stories every couple of days. For better fiction, I need to transform from a process of gathering and writing consumables every day into crafting art. Both require skill, but different skills. I will always use a mostly minimalist, active voice style but the change to fiction has required me to expose more of myself than journalism ever did. That surprised me. So yeah, I’ve come to realize I have a lot of work to do.
Finding community was key to starting this change.
I am pretty sure I did that very thing by accident already over my time here. We are going to make something special happen. (And for those of us who still like paperbacks, maybe we can still sell some paperbacks, right? 🤣)
1) Writing in community feels like the actual way the internet should have changed the writing process!
2) I think I watched that video (or at least some of it) recently and thought about how creative arts have industrialized (writing, artwork, film, etc) in different eras. I'm glad we are having conversations on improving the climate and not just the craft of writing.
I think Substack can help, indeed I'm loving everything the community here brings. I believe it would be a mistake though to treat it as 'the answer'.
While people are free to write whatever stories they want here, there are still formulaic constraints. What is working best on Substack is short form / serialised fiction. The ones I've been most drawn to are those that are written for those conditions.
To be what I think all fiction writers would love Substack to be, it needs to be a bridge to other formats as well as somewhere people come to read.
Substack can and will absolutely be better than formulaic works that copy other popular works. That seems to be 90% of the traditionally published romantasy these days. The problem is that the big publishing houses are risk adverse and keep signing derivatives of currently popular work. It's inherent in their process by forcing authors to provide recent comps (comparables) just to pitch their work. The most unique a current author can be is by mixing multiple elements of other works together and giving it their own voice.
Thaddeus. My intro. to the fabulous LORD OF THE RINGS was in college. It was my first day and during a break I ran to the men's room. Over the urinal someone had written "Gandalf Lives." I had no idea what it mean, but the same day, in a book store on 8th Street (New York) I found the ace paper back editions of L of the R. and bought all three. When I started to read, the top of the my head exploded off. The writing.,..the writing...the imagination...and it was the first time I'd encountered fantasy for adults.
What an experience! I first tried to read Fellowship when I was very young, and I was upset they were introducing a different Hobbit. Years later, when the movies were being made, I read the books so I'd experience them before seeing the movies.
"We aren’t creating the inverse of an old formula but seeking to create stories based on the needs and demands of that story."
You're so right! This is at the core of where breakthrough stories come from. To expand on your points, the notion of doing the anti-formula leads to conformist nonconformity or ironic nonconformity. What a writer thinks are "anti-formula breakout tropes" is just the birth of a new formula. A formula is a formula is a formula. It creates a genre subculture where its writer-followers aggressively embrace the new formula in unimaginative ways, and quickly oversaturate the market. Many incorrectly believe the structure of the story is what makes it formulaic. What makes it formulaic is copying tropes that someone else has uniquely applied to their stories and using them in surfacey, unoriginal ways; or relying heavily on forced, overused tropes that have shifted into cliché territory.
It might seem to be a crude analogy, but the same thing happened to baseball. We used to have pitchers with funky deliveries who threw knuckleballs, screwballs, and blooper pitches. Now, if you can’t throw a 100 MPH fastball, you can’t make the majors or stay there if you do get there. Yes, curveballs are still an essential pitch in a pitcher’s arsenal, but only to set up a 100 MPH fastball. They killed nuance. Pitchers today all look the same; it’s flattened the game. Games are decided on strikeouts, walks, and a pitcher’s participation is decided on pitch counts, and soon they’ll eliminate the umpire. Everything is market-driven. Time has sped up, and the pastoral peace of baseball is gone.
I agree. We are working with almost a new medium here. And the art and medium should enhance each other. There are somethings different that can be done with substack that other mediums can't.
An example, just an idea, a mystery story where each post is a clue.
As an all-in fantasy writer, let me say: you’re spot on, Thaddeus! We have to be better. Better than ourselves, better than the past, better than the rest.
I’ve often tried to telegraph that (jokes on Notes aside), I am serious about craft. And while I’m not going to tell anyone else what they “ought” to do with their art, I’ve been on record saying that if we want others to take our genre seriously, we ourselves have to take it seriously.
Others can do what they want, but “rule of cool” doesn’t pass muster in a Falden story.
What is the "rule of cool"?
Term borrowed from D&D/Tabletop gaming, where if it’s “against the rules” but fun, you can invoke the rule of cool to make the story enjoyable. I’ve seen fantasy writers invoke it to justify the outlandish. Don’t get me wrong, fantasy can and should have *fantasy*, but I hope my point above stands. I can, and have, written about this a lot. I have so many more thoughts on this I need to write out haha
I love the idea Thaddeus. But there is something that nags at me, and I’d love to get your thoughts.
This is a genuine question, but how does this help the masses? If a few authors transcend trad here, how does that help everyone? Bringing the reach here so folks have more of a chance? You will always have whales, you will always have taste makers. Authors move to new platforms and we see audiences shift with them. As it stands, baring any shifts in business from Substack, authors come here for just a different revenue stream and direct engagement. But I admit, I could be wrong.
Someone like me, who is rather new to Substack from a consistency perspective, how does this help me? Some writers will be better than trad here in your scenario, so you will need better editors than they have as well, and if writers groups exist I’m sure I have to apply, network, and prove my worth and I’ll be competing with those people here instead of the current channels. I’m sure those editors that edit for higher profile writers here will cost more here, and perhaps I’m forced to pay it to bump my chances.
The hustle doesn’t change. You might have publication houses here to streamline logistics who will pick writers they like. Who will pick writers recommended by the people they trust. That’s just life, no? So to say it’s just about the art, when people are involved it’s impossible for it to not have a tinge of politics.
Again, I’m not saying I think it’s a bad idea. I love the idea, hell I want to be apart of it, but I have a hard time getting past precedents being set, and those at the top benefiting the most. I just don’t see how it’s different.
I sort of tilted at the same windmill in my reply. In a community like this, someone has to decide who gets the attention and who goes back to the drawing board. It ends up shining a light on some and sweeping others under the rug.
I never replied to the first question. You're asking from a perspective of breaking out of Substack. I answer that a focus on quality and freedom from the constraints of trad philosophy must come from the masses. We might have some superstars, but we also gain a reputation among readers that Substack is the place to be. A few people getting a contract is far less interesting than fiction Substack becoming a can't-miss reading destination. We don't wait to become important to the overlords. The revolution is us being serious about quality and creative freedom.
I've read this piece a few times now, along with the comments, and I've spent the last few days mulling over some thoughts. As much as I am in favour of fostering community and challenging one another as writers, I also see the issues on the horizon that are not unlike those presented by traditional publishing.
In this big group hug community where we start making waves in the world of literature, lifting one another up and challenging ourselves to become the best we can be, who decides what goes up and what goes down? Who decides what's great writing and what's subpar? Who is the judge that brings the gavel down to declare that you could do better? For there to be quality there had to be quality control, and for something that is as subjective as literature that proposes a problem. Writers who are churning out works that appeal to the current trends are inevitably going to garner more attention and become the focal point, become the standard, and the fringe communities are going to fall by the wayside as they beg for attention for their stories to be read. Bitterness ensues and you're suddenly in the same boat as the trad publishers where stories that don't sell as well are going to be buried under the tide of the whales. And so the subsect breaks off and becomes a counterculture all over again.
This already happens on Substack, even without some sort of governing authority. For example, take the overall fantasy community on here. There are a few larger accounts present on this platform that continually pump one another up (see Warrior Wednesday or Sword & Saturday posts), amounting to a clique of a dozen or so names that I see over and over again tagged together and tossing around their ideas. They're bonded together in a likeminded way, with a singular idea of what fantasy should be, and their presence, overlap, and reach can eclipse others who aren't in *the club*. Now, there's nothing wrong with this. Substack is a social media as well as a writing platform, but this has already formed a culture vs. counterculture dynamic; you have the staunch traditionalists vs. the "write cool shit" crowd. In the parameters of what you're proposing, is there room for both these camps? Will they garner equal support from the community at large? Would whatever resources become available in the community utopia for Substack publishing be available to the writers who only get 10 views on their posts vs 1000 views? I don't see how they could be.
This sort of dynamic begins to takes on a flavour of gatekeeping as the smaller fish begin to beg for the attention, admiration, and support of the bigger fish in order to claim a market share of readers. Gatekeeping is a huge problem in traditional publishing, one that you see railed against in countless posts from those writing outside the current market trends. People are inevitably going to feel scorned by this en masse community that was supposed to support them and the divide widens on culture vs. counterculture.
Another problem I see is the readers themselves. While there are readers here on Substack, primarily we are a gaggle of writers that are utilizing this wonderful platform to grow our brand. We are writers reading other writers, which is fantastic in terms of growing our skills and forming connections, but for success at large we need to break through that confine. We need readers beyond our own peers and I don't know that Substack is the right tool to put our stories in their hands. Novels are kind of the last frontier standing against the tidal wave of quickly consumed, readily available content. Movies and premium television have long been replaced by streaming platforms that pump our drek at alarming rates, so moving readers away from novels and onto a digital subscription based service like Substack seems like a hard sell to me. I for one would rather spend $15 on a crisp paperback as opposed to spending it on 10 months of a Substack subscription at $1.50 per month. Why? A couple reasons. First, I get an actual physical item that I can keep. It doesn't just vanish behind a paywall when my subscription ends. Second, it gets me away from a screen (and I think we could all do with a little less screen time these days).
I'll state again that I love the idea of community. I've been working hard to foster my own micro-community by establishing my commitment to raising up indie authors. Your line here: "If we’re doing our own thing, we can go places and accomplish miracles the traditional published author never dreamed of." ... This really speaks to me and if this remained the goal of such a community I would be gung ho and jump in feet first. But once the business side if brought into something like this, it's a fine line to walk between collaboration and corporation.
Just my two cents. Maybe I missed the mark somewhere here or went wildly off topic, but I can't help looking ahead to the potential of what things could becomes.
“Who decides what's great writing and what's subpar?” Good point. I don’t read a ton of fiction on here but there are certainly some bigger writers whom I would not pick to be at the top. Perhaps the “let’s help each other out” mentality, while fine in theory, isn’t the best in reality. I like being nice to people on Substack, especially the fiction writers, because I know what it’s like to have no audience and to finally get a glowing comment. So if I read someone’s work and genuinely like it, I try to make sure I leave a comment.
But there are plenty of writers on here that I don’t read because I quickly labeled their writing as dislike-able. But if I start reading something and quit, I don’t leave a comment saying so because it’s kinda awkward to say that when I know they’ll read it. For reviewing purposes, I don’t like knowing that the author is essentially right next to me. A few people have asked if I’ll review their book and I did it once, but unless I have a very strong reason to expect that I’ll like it, I’m not accepting Substack author’s books to review anymore.
And that might be part of the problem: Substack authors want a community of readers, but when that community is full of people you can actually have a conversation with, that doesn’t breed honesty. I don’t think it matters so much that the readers are also mostly writers; it’s “knowing” the person who wrote the comment that’s the issue. If there was a way to leave an anonymous review, that would help sideline the lesser writers. Though how the better writers then break out into the wide world and find themselves in real bookstores…yeah, I have no idea. I’m not convinced most readers even know what Substack is.
The fiction I share isn’t my focus, and the views/likes bear that out. It’s more of a hobby within a hobby. I don’t think I’ll really try to pursue it on here, but when I get comments on my fiction, they’ve all been great. Are they telling the truth? No idea! I think I’m good and, frankly, better than some popular writers on here, but my stories are lost in the shuffle of other fiction writers, so it’s not looking too good for my fiction career.
Like you, I’d much rather have the physical book than another subscription.
Regardless of where fiction is headed on this platform, I don’t think it’ll ever really be built for it and it's more than likely that Substack—maybe society as a whole, who knows?—won’t last long enough to become the hoped for writer/reader paradise.
Came for the anti-Tolkien ragebait, stayed for the inspirational call to action. When I started on Substack 10.5 months ago I expected it to be a stepping stone, a way to build an audience and impress literary agents. While part of me still clings to that dream, I'm starting to realize new possibilities and get really, really excited about the potential for innovation here—genre bending, trope breaking, industry shattering, collaboration.
I think great things can be done here.
This was the right piece for me at the right time. I’ve been guilty of romanticizing literary history (if only I could hit up a cafe in Paris 100 years ago), but like you’re saying, that’s probably holding on to an old way of thinking and approaching the craft. Instead of the next 20s Paris, I’m curious what the first Substack is going to look like.
From my experience, it’s shaping up to be an interesting place, but I do think it hasn’t reached its peak yet. Which on the one hand is exciting because we can build the kind of community we want to work in and with, but on the other hand is going to require a lot of hard work. But I don’t think anything worth doing is going to be easy
I absolutely agree. And I wonder what dirt expatriates flung at Paris in their frustration.
I’ve also fantasized about being in 1920s Paris, but you’re absolutely right. Idealizing that past neglects the opportunity to create it for ourselves in the present!
I'm really excited by Substack's potential to combine a platform for writing with a community of readers and writers. The siloing of mainstream fiction as been a big problem, and we can challenge that, but as you say it depends entirely on the amount of sweat and novelty we're willing to pour into our work here. Going forward I want to be as much a part of that as I can!
Excellent! Good to meet you.
This is the reason I’ve pulled back from the “busy” work of having a publication - to focus on reading more, writing more, rewriting more. I’m used to a churn of stories every couple of days. For better fiction, I need to transform from a process of gathering and writing consumables every day into crafting art. Both require skill, but different skills. I will always use a mostly minimalist, active voice style but the change to fiction has required me to expose more of myself than journalism ever did. That surprised me. So yeah, I’ve come to realize I have a lot of work to do.
Finding community was key to starting this change.
I love where you're going with this. It beats the hell out of spray-and-praying query letters, that's for sure.
Where once we privately improved and hoped for the best, now we can publicly improve and put it to the test.
I am pretty sure I did that very thing by accident already over my time here. We are going to make something special happen. (And for those of us who still like paperbacks, maybe we can still sell some paperbacks, right? 🤣)
When Tolkien released the paperback he didn't burn the hard covers. 😄
1) Writing in community feels like the actual way the internet should have changed the writing process!
2) I think I watched that video (or at least some of it) recently and thought about how creative arts have industrialized (writing, artwork, film, etc) in different eras. I'm glad we are having conversations on improving the climate and not just the craft of writing.
Absolutely. I'm glad you made the effort to find the essay. Thank you!
I think Substack can help, indeed I'm loving everything the community here brings. I believe it would be a mistake though to treat it as 'the answer'.
While people are free to write whatever stories they want here, there are still formulaic constraints. What is working best on Substack is short form / serialised fiction. The ones I've been most drawn to are those that are written for those conditions.
To be what I think all fiction writers would love Substack to be, it needs to be a bridge to other formats as well as somewhere people come to read.
Substack can and will absolutely be better than formulaic works that copy other popular works. That seems to be 90% of the traditionally published romantasy these days. The problem is that the big publishing houses are risk adverse and keep signing derivatives of currently popular work. It's inherent in their process by forcing authors to provide recent comps (comparables) just to pitch their work. The most unique a current author can be is by mixing multiple elements of other works together and giving it their own voice.
You can see that as an extention of the Del Ray model, I think.
Thaddeus. My intro. to the fabulous LORD OF THE RINGS was in college. It was my first day and during a break I ran to the men's room. Over the urinal someone had written "Gandalf Lives." I had no idea what it mean, but the same day, in a book store on 8th Street (New York) I found the ace paper back editions of L of the R. and bought all three. When I started to read, the top of the my head exploded off. The writing.,..the writing...the imagination...and it was the first time I'd encountered fantasy for adults.
What an experience! I first tried to read Fellowship when I was very young, and I was upset they were introducing a different Hobbit. Years later, when the movies were being made, I read the books so I'd experience them before seeing the movies.
Absolutely spot on! As a Fantasy writer this is precisely my goal! The objective is to write old fashioned Tolkienian and Howardian fiction!
We really must do all we can to improve our Craft and write better than before!
"We aren’t creating the inverse of an old formula but seeking to create stories based on the needs and demands of that story."
You're so right! This is at the core of where breakthrough stories come from. To expand on your points, the notion of doing the anti-formula leads to conformist nonconformity or ironic nonconformity. What a writer thinks are "anti-formula breakout tropes" is just the birth of a new formula. A formula is a formula is a formula. It creates a genre subculture where its writer-followers aggressively embrace the new formula in unimaginative ways, and quickly oversaturate the market. Many incorrectly believe the structure of the story is what makes it formulaic. What makes it formulaic is copying tropes that someone else has uniquely applied to their stories and using them in surfacey, unoriginal ways; or relying heavily on forced, overused tropes that have shifted into cliché territory.
Except Jason Stratham. That man can trope all day long. So long as he blows shit up.
Oh, funny. We all have our darlings. Mine is Benicio del Toro.
It might seem to be a crude analogy, but the same thing happened to baseball. We used to have pitchers with funky deliveries who threw knuckleballs, screwballs, and blooper pitches. Now, if you can’t throw a 100 MPH fastball, you can’t make the majors or stay there if you do get there. Yes, curveballs are still an essential pitch in a pitcher’s arsenal, but only to set up a 100 MPH fastball. They killed nuance. Pitchers today all look the same; it’s flattened the game. Games are decided on strikeouts, walks, and a pitcher’s participation is decided on pitch counts, and soon they’ll eliminate the umpire. Everything is market-driven. Time has sped up, and the pastoral peace of baseball is gone.
I agree. We are working with almost a new medium here. And the art and medium should enhance each other. There are somethings different that can be done with substack that other mediums can't.
An example, just an idea, a mystery story where each post is a clue.