Literary Style in Fantasy

Yesterday I was out grocery shopping and was waiting to pick up my wife at the bus depot (returning from Europe), and killed some time at Barnes & Noble. The Sci-Fi Fantasy section was my playground, and I was there for one reason. I wanted to see how fantasy authors were writing their novels—stylistically. That meant me starting on the left and going right. I read, on average, one paragraph from each book, opened at random. What I discovered is what I had already suspected. All of them are writing in a modern vernacular that, apart from descriptions of swords and ox carts, could just as easily be narratives set in the modern day. Of those on the shelves, none of the authors made a discernible effort, at least to me, to shift their language to a less modern vernacular. Modern colloquialisms abounded. For example, one author used the phrase “despite the fact” in the middle of a medieval battle. The expression comes with a whiff of cliché but, more damningly, reads like the anachronistic narration of a second tier documentary. I like to compare the writing of fantasies to costuming in historical dramas. (One of my favorite Youtubers, Burnadette Banner, annually rates historical dramas in terms of their faithfulness to period clothing.)

The writing of modern fantasy authors, for me, compares to historical dramas that pay zero attention to period clothing. And music has the same disorienting effect. Modern background music in medieval movies is one thing, but when musicians show up, within the world of the movie, and start playing utterly anachronistic music on modern musical instruments, that really makes me—unhappy. Now I admit that we can’t have movies set in the medieval time (let alone novels) written in Middle English or Anglo Saxon (although that would be pretty cool). It would also be pretty cool if time travelers were actually confronted with the languages spoken in a given period. Go back to King Arthur’s court and good luck to you if you don’t speak Anglo Saxon or the Latin of Rome at minimum. And don’t expect to see any suits of armor (à la the movie Excalibur). Suits of armor wouldn’t show up for another several hundred years. But, in my opinion, the two fantasy authors who have written the standards of the genre, JRR Tolkien and Ursula Le Guin, both adopted a more rhetorical (oratorical style) that contributed to their world building (also worth mentioning in this regard is Micheal Moorecock’s Elric of Melniboné, although Moorecock’s stab at linguistic world building can sound more like Dungeon & Dragons than literature.). Just to really show you what I mean, and rather than pick on any particular, contemporary fantasy author, I’m going to take a paragraph from Le Guin and Tolkien, then rewrite them the way our modern fantasy novelists would write them:

Ged spent three days in that village of the West Hand, recovering himself, and making ready a boat built not of spells and sea-wrack, but of sound wood well pegged and caulked, with a stout mast and sail of her own, that he might sail easily and sleep when he needed. Like most boats of the North and the Reaches she was clinker-built, with planks over lapped and clenched one upon the other for strength in the high seas; every part of her was sturdy and well-made. Ged reinforced her wood with deep-inwoven charms, for thought he might go far in that boat. [From the opening of Chapter 9, Iffish, Wizard of Earthsea]

And our modern fantasy novelist:

Ged spent three days recovering in West Hand. He pegged and caulked his boat, getting it ready. It wasn’t like his old boat. His old boat had been held together by spells. It was constructed with good wood. It had a strong mast and a sail that was made from cloth. He would sleep easily when he needed to. Like most in the North and the Reaches, the boat was clinker built. The planks overlapped and were drawn tightly together so they’d be strong. The boat was sturdy and made well. Ged wove charms into the wood because he thought he would use the boat for a long time.

And from Tolkien:

Now the Captains of the West led their host towards the City, and folk saw them advance in line upon line, flashing and glinting in the sunrise and rippling like silver. And so they came before the Gateway and halted a furlong from the walls. As yet no gates had been set up again, but a barrier was laid across the entrance to the City, and there stood men at arms in silver and black with long swords drawn. Before the barrier stood Faramir the Steward, and Húrin Warden of the Keys, and other captains of Gondor, and the Lady Éowyn of Rohan with Elfhelm the Marshal and many knits of the Mark; and upon either side of the Gate was a great press of fair people in raiment of many colours and garlands of flowers. [p. 244 The Return of the King]

And our modern fantasy novelist:

At sunrise, the Captains of the West marched lines of soldiers towards the city. They flashed and rippled like silver. The soldiers stopped at the gates and were several hundred feet from the walls. New gates weren’t up yet, but there was a barrier at the entrance and there were armed men in silver and black with long swords. There was the steward Faramir and Húrin, who was Warden of the Keys. There was Lady Éowyn and Marshal Elfhelm, who were from Rohan. And then there were the Captains of Gondor. They all stood in front of the gate with crowds of happy people on both sides. They were wearing colorful clothes and garlands of flowers.

What I’ve done is to remove nearly all of the hypotactic and syndetic writing, the inversions, the nominal phrasing (the prepositional phrases), and archaic words like “upon” and the obsolete usage of the prepositional “for”. In short, I tried to remove all the rhetorical devices that signaled a more formal, archaic or heightened syntax. The revisions are okay. They get the job done. Most importantly, they tell the story. The revised paragraphs are typical, for example, of what you might find in Brandon Sanderson’s many (and successful) fantasy novels. George RR Martin, who I’d consider the finest writer contemporary author of fantasy, splits the baby. He gives to his characters a slightly more archaic/heightened rhetoric, while narrating in an ostensibly modern vernacular. For example, the narrator:

“picking the way”, “muttered to himself”, the sarcastic “but try and tell”. The phrase “but try and tell” belongs to a modern vernacular and is the least likely to be found in anything by Tolkien or Le Guin (let alone the medieval period). The other phrases probably also don’t belong in any medieval world. I don’t recall that Gollum ever “muttered to himself”, though that would have been a likely description. On the other hand, the destrier (the warhorse) is “great“—an adjective that is a wholly owned subsidiary of the fantasy genre. And many are the “unwary” who sojourn in medieval fantasy worlds. But watch what happens when a character from GOT speaks:

While the character’s language doesn’t make use of the rhetorical heightening typical of Tolkien and Le Guin, he also doesn’t let anything conspicuously modern slip in. “It steals up on you” is a nicely antiquated phrase. “It burns, it does” and “Peaceful, like” is some nice cockney, “old world” signaling. Hollywood has long associated the English accent (and cockney specifically) with the old world and so Martin goes there. All well and fine. Ultimately, Martin settles on a sort of mid-Atlantic formality (for lack of a better description). He assumes a heightened literary style that avoids common colloquialisms (and the modern vernacular in general) but also largely steers clear of archaic syntax and grammar. Largely. He still peppers his modern prose with little Dungeon & Dragony gestures: “[He] slipped his dirk free of its sheath.” If Martin had fully committed to writing like this (like Le Guin or Tolkien) then it might sound less, to my ears, like a Dungeon Master remembering, every now and then, to throw in some old-school prepositional phrases (for atmosphere).

But there was a reason I was browsing through the fantasy section. In my own fantasy novel(s), I’ve gone full Tolkien and Le Guin. And how. And I’ve done it because, mainly, I enjoy it. The fantasy genre gives me the excuse to write in a lovely, heightened, rhetorical style that is a bit like poetry. It’s forgivable in the realm of dragons, so why not? It’s part of the world building. And maybe that’s the reason modern fantasy novels disappoint me so much. At least try. Why, with such a golden opportunity, do today’s fantasy novelists write in such a modern and generic prose? Translate the Iliad or Odyssey into this same prose and most, if not all of the magic and nobility is lost.

On the other hand, they’re published and I’m not. So there’s that.

I’m ready to try my hand at another Dickinson poem.

Pick one out!