What makes something a genre convention rather than just plain old cliche?

Some modern genre conventions/cliches of fantasy:
dragons-as-pets/steeds
mindreading/mindspeaking
lost prince discovers he is supposed to be king
wizards
and all those times people blatantly borrow scenes/setups from LotR. :P

I have seen things well-done in either direction.

I was just thinking about this after reading DragonSpell, which tends to pull on the cliches to make them work again...but it really felt like some of the aspects (particularly the wizard Fenworth) really just existed for the sole purpose of genre convention.

As far as I've learned, genre conventions are things that make a story be part of a genre.

For example, a genre convention of sci-fi is 'aliens'. Not all sci-fi stories have aliens, but all alien stories are sci-fi.

Also, the cliche-ness has to do with how well it's written, not the content itself.

So genre conventions are a good thing.

The thing that I'm always worrying about is 'cliche'. Which is not a good thing unless I'm going for funny. Which I'm usually not. [I'm not a funny person. (except in the dry, sarcastic, wishing-I-was-witty kind of way... )]

I'm just thinking about fantasy, because in the past 10 years it's been a written...and even more written... and over-written... genre.

This also happened back in the late 70's - early 90's (as far as I can tell, I wasn't born yet. I just happen to run across a lot of old books) and most of the fantasy written then has since gone out of print, never to be remembered. (ditto on sci-fi, which saw a rise in interest in the 80's & 90's - post-Star Wars and in the age of Star Trek - but now you don't see very much anymore...)

The enduring fantasy pieces are the really good ones, the ones which make all others cliche instead of cool.

DISCLAIMER: my best friend tells me I need to lay off the worry about cliche. So I may be over-analyzing this in my desperate effort to escape the cliche.

Cliche is not always a bad thing, but usually it is. Genre conventions such as the ones you've listed (except the prince one, that's just a cliche) are general enough that if you have even a tiny bit of originality in your execution then you will most likely be fine. You just have to take the conventions and do them your way, not the same way as someone (or everyone) else. A good example of this is the Sword of Shannara Trilogy. The first book is pretty much completely cliche, but the second and third books take the genre conventions in a semi-unique direction, thus avoiding cliche-ness.

I can name a book that did the prince thing successfully - the Horse and His Boy.

I should separate cliche from blatant copying such as 'orcs/goblins as bad guys', 'undead characters terrorizing people', etc....

I was mostly joking about the prince thing but I forgot to put a smilie to indicate that :P What do you mean "separate cliche from blatant copying"?

Welllllllllll, sometimes certain passages in books draw very strongly from certain classic fantasy and science fiction works.

For example, in LB Graham's Beyond the Summerland, a group of characters is kidnapped by the bad guys...in a very The Two Towers-like way. If you've read it, it's fairly obvious how it's a blatant reference to TTT.

So, that would fall under copying, not genre convention or cliche... gotcha, good point.

Gobins and orcs is a convention, it's easier to avoid being called a warmonger that way.

They aren't exactly cliche because they were borrowed from legends and mythology.

I've seen it both ways.

Goblins are usually considered okay to borrow - orcs are not. Orcs are a specific type of goblin-like creature, with their own history. Some books borrow that history almost word for word. (Orcs are commonly held to be a twisted form of elves)

I personally need to do some research on the origins of goblins and orcs in fantasy works. Just haven't had time/reason. I'm a little tired of every fantasy story having their own orc-like evil creatures anyhow.

As a side note, off-topic, I haz no problem with humans fighting humans in stories. It's reality. Fantasy is not a way to escape reality - it's a way to dive deeper into it.

Orc is a specific type of goblin from European legends and mythology, it literally means slayer.

Not according to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc





And also it mentions the Gaelic & Norse forms of 'orc' which have to do with seals, not goblins.

I was curious and looked it up.

You worry too much about cliches.

You had better not have got that from RP.

But yeah, sometimes I do. My little obsession... oh, that and story theory. Always cramming something into my head - always theorizing about why things work the way they do. Unfortunately, not always writing. Need to work on translating the information in my head to stories.

It appears that my source was incorrect.

I thought that Tolkien took the word orc from the Elvish yrch?

eruheran

They were goblins in the Hobbit (which I read first). Then they changed to Orcs in the Lord of the Rings and I thought it was the stupidest thing...

I never really liked Orcs, but I've tried to stay away from them and elves mainly because they 'reek' of Tolkien...if you know what I mean.

Also, in Ranger's Apprentice, whatever the bad creatures are called, they are SUCH a rip-off of Orcs! Argh! I liked the plot of Ranger's Apprentice but so much other stuff was taken from LoTR!

eruheran

The Kalkan? (or whatever, something like that...) But there were only three of them, and I didn't notice any similar traits unless being evil counts as one...

(If Melody is obsessed with cliches, you're obsessed with LotR rip-offs... )

No, it started with an M. The kalkans were different, but there was something that the exiled bad guy controlled with his mind or something.

(Yes, I am)

eruheran

Are you thinking of Wargals? They are actually passively mentioned in Fellowship.

Wargals. That's it. They're actually mentioned? Then it's not a rip off of orcs, he's simply building upon an idea Tolkien never did anything with. I do that all the time. There's one tiny detail an author briefly glances over that my mind will fasten hold of and begin to spin a tale...

That is the one really odd thing about Ranger's Apprentice. The mindwork. In a series otherwise devoid of anything magical or remotely fantastical, we have a villain who has mind control??? That's... intense. But it's never developed, only briefly mentioned! Weird....

I THINK I read that somewhere, but I'm not certain. It's either at the part right before they enter Moria and the wolves attack, or it's right after they leave Moria when they are being chased by the Orcs. I'm not certain, so don't quote me on that.

You're probably thinking the word 'warg' which is some kind of huge wolf-thing. Tolkien didn't do very much with them in the specifics - they seemed like a sort of animal rather than an evil being like an orc or a balrog.

In-universe, 'orc' comes from 'yrch' & other forms of the word, but out-of-universe, the word had real linguistic roots.

An expert to the rescue!!!

Now that you mention it, warg sound familiar.

In Tolkien's books, wargs are very large wolves with a particularly vicious temperament. They don't appear much if at all in the LotR, but they appear in the Hobbit as mounts for the Goblins that trap Gandalf, Bilbo and the Dwarves in a grove of pine trees. In the film versions of the LotR, there are wargs that look more like hyenas, also as mounts for goblins/orcs. They are just a beast, but a vicious one.

The Wargs were wolf-like creatures in the Hobbit. Gandalf threw fireworks pine-cones down on them. They were also in the Battle of the Five Armies. Anyways, Wargals are pretty much clones of Orcs...no originality at all.

eruheran

Ah, yes. Wargs. That's it. Well, they are very similar. I think that Wargals were based off of Wargs.

Wargals were more wolfish, they reminded my of the vyes in "The Tapestry" series, but not shape-shifting.