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Apr. 3rd, 2009
Vampires and Dragons
Apr. 3rd, 2009 08:35 pmDonning my Grand High Inquisitor of Writing Hat for a moment:
If you want to write fantasy, don't start off with vampires or dragons. Seriously. It's hard as hell.
It seems to be a rite of passage that writers of fantasy have to do at least one dragon or vampire story. You aren't =really= a fantasy writer until you've sold one. Why? Because they're freakin' hard to sell, and those of us who =have= sold one can look down our noses at everyone who hasn't.
This is why you probably shouldn't start with either one.
Dragons and vampires, two staples of fantasy, have been done. And done. And done. And DONE. Readers--and editors--aren't looking for a carbon copy of TWILIGHT or yet another set of DRAGONLANCE books. There are many carbons of them out there already, for one thing, and they don't sell half as well as the originals, so editors aren't looking to acquire more.
This means that if you want to tell a story with a dragon or a vampire in it, you have to do something NEW. Since people have been telling dragon and vampire stories for a few thousand years now, you can probably guess how often that happens. Even if you think your take on vampires is fresh and original, chances are someone else already did it and you're writing in blissful ignorance of their work.
Not to say you can't do something that hasn't been done. It's just a freak-load HARDER to sell it. An old take will have to be way better written than a fresh take in order for it to interest an editor. This is extremely difficult for veteran writers to do, and nearly impossible for new ones. The late Marion Bradley, who bought many of my early short stories, lamented that new writers so often sent her competent stories about old subjects like vampires and dragons. "They're good stories. If they were about magic cows or something, I could use them," she told me. "But I can't use good stories about vampires. I can only use fantastic stories about vampires, and I almost never get those from new writers."
I'm not saying that new writers should never try vampires or dragons. Just be aware that you'll have a much easier time exploring something else, something more out-of-the-way. Magic cows, to use Marion's example. The field is wide open.
So, to bring this all the way around to the original topic, fantasy writers often see it as a challenge and a rite of passage to actually sell a dragon or a vampire story (or book), just because it's so difficult to do so.
I've actually sold three dragon stories. The first one was about a dragon that actually collected books instead of gold and had shapeshifted into a human being and disguised her horde as a giant, non-lending library to keep it safe. Marion bought it for SWORD AND SORCERESS IX. I thought no one else had come up with this idea until I saw a painting at an SF convention. It was of a dragon curled protectively around a horde of books, and it was dated a year earlier than my story. So much for originality!
My second dragon story was a rather better one. It was set in a world where everyone, not just witches and wizards, took small animals as familiars. But it turned out that dragons took familiars too. They took humans, which they saw as small animals. In this story, you never actually saw the dragon, though--only the hapless human it had taken as a familiar.
My third dragon story was a prequel to my first one, and it explained how the dragon became a librarian. I stole from myself, but by now I was more comfortable with what I was doing and was on safer ground. The story was later reprinted and used by the state of New Jersey on a standardized English test for eighth graders.
Now I'm actually working on a vampire story. And it has to be funny. Humor is bloody difficult. Ask my agent![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
varkat , whose book about a teenage fashionista vampire just came out. I don't know if the story will sell or not. My take on vampires? You'll have to wait and see . . .
If you want to write fantasy, don't start off with vampires or dragons. Seriously. It's hard as hell.
It seems to be a rite of passage that writers of fantasy have to do at least one dragon or vampire story. You aren't =really= a fantasy writer until you've sold one. Why? Because they're freakin' hard to sell, and those of us who =have= sold one can look down our noses at everyone who hasn't.
This is why you probably shouldn't start with either one.
Dragons and vampires, two staples of fantasy, have been done. And done. And done. And DONE. Readers--and editors--aren't looking for a carbon copy of TWILIGHT or yet another set of DRAGONLANCE books. There are many carbons of them out there already, for one thing, and they don't sell half as well as the originals, so editors aren't looking to acquire more.
This means that if you want to tell a story with a dragon or a vampire in it, you have to do something NEW. Since people have been telling dragon and vampire stories for a few thousand years now, you can probably guess how often that happens. Even if you think your take on vampires is fresh and original, chances are someone else already did it and you're writing in blissful ignorance of their work.
Not to say you can't do something that hasn't been done. It's just a freak-load HARDER to sell it. An old take will have to be way better written than a fresh take in order for it to interest an editor. This is extremely difficult for veteran writers to do, and nearly impossible for new ones. The late Marion Bradley, who bought many of my early short stories, lamented that new writers so often sent her competent stories about old subjects like vampires and dragons. "They're good stories. If they were about magic cows or something, I could use them," she told me. "But I can't use good stories about vampires. I can only use fantastic stories about vampires, and I almost never get those from new writers."
I'm not saying that new writers should never try vampires or dragons. Just be aware that you'll have a much easier time exploring something else, something more out-of-the-way. Magic cows, to use Marion's example. The field is wide open.
So, to bring this all the way around to the original topic, fantasy writers often see it as a challenge and a rite of passage to actually sell a dragon or a vampire story (or book), just because it's so difficult to do so.
I've actually sold three dragon stories. The first one was about a dragon that actually collected books instead of gold and had shapeshifted into a human being and disguised her horde as a giant, non-lending library to keep it safe. Marion bought it for SWORD AND SORCERESS IX. I thought no one else had come up with this idea until I saw a painting at an SF convention. It was of a dragon curled protectively around a horde of books, and it was dated a year earlier than my story. So much for originality!
My second dragon story was a rather better one. It was set in a world where everyone, not just witches and wizards, took small animals as familiars. But it turned out that dragons took familiars too. They took humans, which they saw as small animals. In this story, you never actually saw the dragon, though--only the hapless human it had taken as a familiar.
My third dragon story was a prequel to my first one, and it explained how the dragon became a librarian. I stole from myself, but by now I was more comfortable with what I was doing and was on safer ground. The story was later reprinted and used by the state of New Jersey on a standardized English test for eighth graders.
Now I'm actually working on a vampire story. And it has to be funny. Humor is bloody difficult. Ask my agent
varkat , whose book about a teenage fashionista vampire just came out. I don't know if the story will sell or not. My take on vampires? You'll have to wait and see . . . Someone agrees with me about the Cavalier when I said it was an economical, dependable, high-selling car that Chevrolet yanked from production for stupid reasons:
Chevrolet Cavalier. GM sold millions of Cavaliers in the 1980s—and decided the thrifty car was so successful the company didn't need to update it for more than a decade. To milk the model, GM even added some lipstick and high heels and tried to peddle the upgrade as the Cadillac Cimarron—a legendary flop. Honda and Toyota, meanwhile, were updating their competing models every four or five years, and grabbing market share with each quality improvement. A new Cavalier came out in the mid 1990s—then languished for another decade, while GM put most of its money into big trucks and SUVs. GM has since improved its small cars. "But they have to be miles better than the imports for Americans to forget how bad their small cars used to be," says Jamie Page Deaton of U.S. News's Rankings and Reviews car-ranking site. Even if they are better, many Americans wonder why they should give Detroit a second—or third—chance.
***
I had one of the wonderful mid-90s models that Chevy abandoned in favor of gas-guzzling SUVs. Given a choice, I would have walked straight into a dealership and said, "Give me another Cavalier" when I went cars shopping last week, but noooooo! The idiots stopped making them, and now they're begging for government handouts from corporate jets while their workers starve.
If it weren't for the shit-hole that they dragged Michigan into, I'd be laughing at them.