One of the most common trends in SO many fantasy books (both Christian and secular) is for the "fate of the world" to hang in the balance, or at least the fate of the MC's homeland (or those wonderful stories where the fight for the homeland becomes a fight for the whole world ). Most often it's because the main character has a destiny to save the world and only he/she can fulfill it. But even in books that don't go quite so far into the cliche realm, this same element is there. This seems to have become one of the unspoken tenants of Fantasy fiction, that if you're going to write Fantasy then the fate of the world has to be at stake. And in my humble opinion, this need not be so. What bothers me the most about it, is that embedded in the acceptance of this "tenant" is the unspoken implication that your story isn't worth telling if the world isn't at stake and that the your characters' struggles aren't important unless the world depends on their overcoming them. If you look at most "classics" (Moby Dick, Frankenstein, The Scarlet Letter, Of Mice and Men), almost none of them involve the fate of the world or even a nation being at stake. Truly character driven fiction does not require the world to be at risk in order for the plot to matter. If it matters to the character then it is significant enough to be told. This is not an attack against world endangerment as such, but rather against its unnecessary dominance in Fantasy. I think that peasant farmer A's life matters even if it never turns out that he's the long-lost fulfillment of prophecy who's destined to save the world. I'd like to see the kind of struggles with self-worth and identity that are common in fantasy that matter simply because the characters are struggling with them, not just because they are what keep the characters from saving the world. Make sense? I was going to make this a longer post, but I think that I've said what needs to be said.
In Christ,
Jordan

Not all stories need to be save-the-world types.

Not all need to be character driven.

Sometimes you can do both!

Example: Star Wars episodes IV-VI. Highly character driven. If those characters were anything but what they are, Star Wars would not be what it is today. Even when Luke is fighting for the galaxy, he's still in a personal battle. It's not about him versus the Empire. It's about him versus his father. (I also wonder if this is why I-III aren't so popular - the conflicts are not near so personal, with random evil bad guys coming in and just fighting the main characters for the reason that they are good guys. ;D but I haven't seen 'em)

Example: Narnia: LWW. Highly character-driven. It's not really about saving Narnia. It's about saving the individuals, it's about saving Edmund. Along the way we happen to save the world. Ditto for most of the other chronicles.

Example: Lord of the Rings. This isn't so much about saving the world as it is the character development. No one starts out the story saying "we're going to save the world". No one even brings up the subject until halfway through bk1! Even then, we keep encountering personal conflict after personal conflict. The story of the characters isn't how they save the world. It's about how they grow as people, and therefore are able to do things which work together to save the free people of Middle-earth.
(unfortunately, you can really only have one LotR, every other book I've read/heard of that tries this only seems very fake...)

The fantasy genre is typified by saving ::something::, I think.

I agree that we could make a fantasy story about saving a peasant farmer. But then you have to come up with the logic of 'what does he need saved from and why are we spending 400 pages talking about him'?

So the stories I like best are the character driven ones, like Narnia, and Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings.

I don't think fantasy has to necessarily be about saving someone from something, but that's just my opinion. And we would spend 400 pages talking about a farmer for the same reason that Dicken spent hundreds of pages talking about a starving orphan (Oliver Twist), or Charlotte Bronte about Jane Eyre (which bored me to tears, by the way, but it's still a classic), or Hawthorne about a woman accused of adultery (Scarlet Letter). Sometimes the Fantasy motif of normal-guy-turned-savior of the world seems to me to be saying that the only way a normal person matters if they save the world, and that's not true. Try the Outsiders, the characters become very important to the reader without once trying to save the world. That was my point all along. I never attacked world endangerment as a technique, I fully acknowledge its usefulness. I do, however, strongly oppose world endangerment as a semi-universal norm for fantasy fiction. I think fantasy can be just as magical and intriguing without the world balancing on the brink of peril every time we turn around.

Interesting thought. I frantically thought right after I read this though, "But what do I write about?"

Seriously though, I do think you have a point, and I've already been working on making my rewrite of Zaciré about twice as more character based. There's a lot of past that the different characters dig up, and there's also a lot of relationships that are formed between the characters (But all this is hypothetical...I haven't actually done the rewrite yet)

My first attempt at a book was a blatant LOtR ripoff...Zaciré needs to recover the "Brick of Power" that Fertag has stolen. It's practically all taken from the LOtR books. So I'm looking for ways in the rewrite to make it less of that type of fiction (Zaciré has to recover an ancient dagger, but that's just the quest...it's only there to help him dig up Numaryá's past and to draw him closer to the Lord). I'd say the biggest part of the book isn't finding the dagger, but Zaciré and Numaryá drawing closer to Him and through that playing a part in bringing down Zrolla (not final name) and his evil empire, which has taken over the world.

I guess that got kind of rambly and I gave away most of my plot...my characters aren't the only ones who do that!

eruheran

I COMPLETELY agree. It drives me crazy to have the whole normal-person-is-chosen-for-great-destiny-becomes-warrior-embraces-his-inner-power-he-didn't-know-he-had-saves-the-world-marries-gorgeous-girl plot.

LOL! It seems like that IS what a lot of fantasy is, and I think that if you write that cliche well, you can turn it into almost brand new and make people enjoy your book. After all, cliches have become so because they were so well liked that everybody started using them.

I really don't have very much time to carry on this type of discussion (I have far too many theories on storywriting and not enough stories written to back them up... ;D) but real quick here:

I don't want to slam either type of book.

I believe both stories are needed.

The cool thing about story is that every type of character has a place - Frodo, Sam Gamgee, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Anakin, Merry & Pippin, Edmund, Lucy, and so on and so forth.

The important thing is that you do what is right for YOUR story.

Don't let other people determine what your story is. Take input: but don't depend upon it. Ultimately, it's what will work best for your themes, your world, your story.

Melody Kondrael has it right. More right than I have heard many top notch editors and published authors be. Just wanted to pop in and say that. If I said more, I would be repeating her. Haha.

That was the underlying motive I have when posting these kind of discussions: to question the "norms" of fantasy in hopes that it will encourage others to find what works best for their stories.

Most of my stories don't involve saving the world because the world is too globally epic for me to encompass. My first fantasy novel, and my everlasting favorite, centers around the fate of a prince, but his world is never at stake. Sure, he's the crown prince but he has a very capable heir if something does happen to him. So even though, later, his country is used a pawn in his enemy's private revenge, the world is never really in danger. Only the prince.

That is a good point to keep in mind while writing fantasy. Though epic plots are fun.

Excellent point, Seer. In my current WIP, I'm kind of halfway there. The hero will probably end up saving his homeland, but certainly not the world. And he doesn't do it for the sake of abstract ideals or concepts like "country." He does it for the sake of very concrete, human connections: his sovereign, his family, his people. Now his sovereign happens to be the ruler of a great Empire, and so other peoples that are not his get saved too, but he doesn't do it for them. It's about him and his people.

Or in my new project when saving the world is a key to saving the girl, but it turns out neither she nor the world can be saved.

In my fantasy shorts, it's not about saving the world.

That doesn't sound like a nice ending, Varon.

I definitely agree with you, Jordan, that the whole saving-the-universe motif is overused in fantasy. However, this situation begs the question, "Why?" So many classics of fantasy involve saving an entire nation or world from the forces of evil (Narnia, LotR, HP, Eragon, etc.). Is there something, then, in fantasy that inherently lends itself to epic proportions?

It's a very unique fantasy world that isn't a world in the same sense ours is.

Why are so many about the world being at stake? I'll have to think on it once exams are over.

The thing is --and I really should have said this from the start-- that world endangerment does not necessarily make a story epic. Look at the epic poems from which the term "epic" is derived. While they do entail journeys, heroic deeds, and adventurous battles and struggles; the "epicness" of it all does not hinge on the whole world being at stake. The Odyssey was about the life of one man and his crew. The Aeneid was about the survivors of Troy. Beowulf was about a single heroic king who defends two different kingdoms from horrible monsters. In none of these, was the fate of the entire world at stake, and yet these are actual epics. So maybe there are a lot of stories involving saving the world because it seems like an epic tale, but saving the world isn't what makes a story truly epic.

Good thoughts; especially when one will be attempting to write an epic after this mold.

All this to say that world endangerment has been used effectively for a reason. And, like any other cliché, it can be altered.

I actually chose to spin off of the World Endangerment feel, without actually having an endangered world. My trilogy is about a fight to restore order and freedom. The people could continue to suffer under their yoke of oppression, but in order to live without fear and in freedom they (the people or "world") choose to throw off that oppression.

So you can also carry this feel into a story, without technically including world endangerment.

The one thing in common between most of those (I'm not sure about the Odyssey), and Lord of the Rings, is that they were (supposed) accounts of the origins, or similarly ancient history, of the nation (Greece for the Homeric epics, the Roman Empire under only its second emperor for the Aeneid, England for LotR, ...)
Also, we shouldn't just look at the few truly ancient examples and then skip to modern fantasy; the "epic" was (based on my somewhat vague understanding ...) a poetic form that developed from those ancient examples (to which we could add similar poems from cultures beyond ancient Greece, Rome, and England) through the centuries, and eventually centered on how the topic of the poem was treated, so that a trivial subject could become a "mock epic". And while the founders of the modern genre drew on the ancient sagas, their less literate successors imitated them (without understanding them) but drew more on the more recent developments. Further, as they (modern fantasy authors in the generations after the genre's founding) were competing for readers, increasing the stakes (from the fate of one small kingdom to that of the world, for example) could (in theory, all other things being equal, which they never are ...) improve a story's response (i.e. sales for the book or magazine).

Here's a thought: If the farmer just outside the village doesn't need to save the world just to prove a point, where to we draw a line as to what can hang in the balance? If his town hangs in the balance and he saves it wouldn't that be paramount to needing to physically defeat something in order to understand his worth? I know we all love a good sword fight but if our MC just battles armies for sport then how much are we going to like him? Some necessary perils is clearly required. But how would you best go about it?

Just some beef jerky for thought.