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Periodically there are online discussions (and arguments) about what constitutes epic fantasy, who can and can’t write epic fantasy, which books are or are not epic fantasy, why someone should (or should not) write or try to write epic fantasy, what settings work or don’t work for epic fantasy, etc. Given my writing schedule, I usually hear about these weeks to months after they appear and far too late to add my two (hundred and thirty seven) cents to the discussion. But a recent one (October of this year) in another venue, that I happened across by following links on Twitter about something else (you know how Twitter links jump topics, right? It’s how I ended up following a bunch of shepherds in the UK) drove me to comment even though I was very late to the party. It was a sensible, thoughtful, interesting discussion, and I thought I had something to add to it.
It also led me to think more analytically about my own thoughts on epic fantasy. And here they are.
Epic fantasy differs from other fantasy in several important ways. Most readers of it agree that it has more scope: the story-space is larger, and the stakes are higher. It’s not about small stories, in either the spatial or the stakes sense. So the family quarrel, or the adultery, or the dispute with the IRS that can center a perfectly good story…is not enough for an epic (fantasy or otherwise.) Opinions differ on whether a kingdom/nation wide problem can spawn an epic or whether it takes multi-kingdom/nation effects to make epic possible. I’m of the “bigger than one state/nation/kingdom” contingent. High stakes mean something more important than a character’s own success/life is at stake–it’s the entire region, if not world, that’s at stake and everyone will be affected by the outcome, good or bad.
Another way epic fantasy differs from other fantasy is that “indifferent” isn’t an option. The outcome is not going to leave things the same as they were before whatever set off the trouble appeared. The stakes are too high, the effects too widespread, so there will be change and it will be big. (The criticisms of epic fantasy based on the notion that it’s about static, unchanging worlds is wrong.)
Note that it’s possible to write a story with a big story-area and have it fail as an epic because the stakes are not that high. A gradual cultural change from, say, primitive farming to organized agriculture, with shift of population from small rural villages to cities…is not an epic in my terms. It can be very important history, but it’s not an epic. (The abuse of the term “epic” to mean anything big or important is, um, a problem here.)
And it’s possible to write a story with high stakes (life or death) and have it too small to be epic.
Even stories with a huge story-area and high stakes (something will destroy the whole world–Death Star or aliens or a natural disaster) doesn’t always make the epic designation, because it fails for lack of the final leg of the tripod that I consider a requirement for epic. (And fantasy trilogies require a fourth leg, which makes the whole thing more prone to wobble…they also need the fantasy element.)
What is the third leg? The character(s). An epic must have the right characters to make the emotional connection between “too big, too hard”–the scope and stakes requirements–and one or more characters’ capacity to struggle and prevail or fail in averting the big-stakes disaster. The main character or characters in an epic must have agency–they make decisions and act in ways that affect the course of the story. They are not just along for the ride and they are not pawns being moved around a plot chessboard. Because they are plot movers, they must have depth so the reader can see the motivations that drive their decisions and thus their actions.
A common failure in “big picture/ big stakes” stories–failure in the epic sense–is characters who can’t do this….who are either passive, without agency, or who lack the depth of character needed for epics, so even when active they float along in the stream, battling monsters or slave armies or whatever, but with no solid connection to the reader’s core sense of what people are and can do. Actions must have consequences, and consequences with teeth.
Am I saying an epic needs a moral/ethical aspect? Yes. A character may start out with an ordinary, almost automatic motivation (Paks wanting to leave home so she wouldn’t have to marry the pig-farmer’s son: lots of kids run away to avoid something at home they don’t like) but an epic character must have more depth and complexity, going right down to the root of good and evil, however those are measured.
I’ve mentioned before that Aristotle’s Poetics has formed a lot of my thought on story (Dorothy L. Sayers’ writing on writing is also a big influence, but she was familiar with classical sources herself. “Familiar” understates her scholarship.) Aristotle’s comments on tragedy make sense in terms of effective storytelling of any kind, barring the “unity of place and time,” necessitated as it was by the limitations of Greek theater and the attention span of an audience sitting out in the open. We can replace that with writing techniques that keep the reader oriented across a span of time and another of locations…but keeping the reader oriented always matters.
What makes Aristotle’s comments on writing more useful than Plato’s is that Aristotle wrote from observation: what worked for audiences. Plato had an idea of what literature should be based on his theories of human nature and what a perfect government should be. Both knew that literature intended certain effects on people, and thus considered how best to write to have those effects, but Plato wanted to limit literature to the effects he thought good (very much like censors in any age) and Aristotle wanted to discuss what made the writing work.
So, back to epics. Looking at the history of what are called epics, and the literature that grew out of them (as the Homeric legends and others in Greece gave rise to countless tragedies), what effects does an epic produce, when the attempt at one is successful?
On the surface, an epic holds attention with action in response to a threat: a threat to reputation, to a valued element of society, to a group of people larger, to a way of life. Thus epics often include a lot of “action”–including fighting and war. But war stories and fight stories alone do not make an epic or hold long interest. Aristotle said that the end of a good story, whether a desired or undesired outcome, had to feel just to the reader/viewer. To arouse the pity and awe Aristotle thought were the aims of tragedy, justice must be served. So in the course of an epic, as the surface action whirls all around, the motives of the characters are exposed more and more, and the consequences of their thoughts, as well as their behavior, play out….and the readers can see ever more clearly how these fallible and limited people are affecting the fate of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions….and the motives behind their actions. The next fascination below the action itself is this motivation, and the reader’s response to the motivations–shallow or deep, selfish or unselfish, etc. Will this character have to endure punitive change–hurt his/her deepest sense of good–to attempt something to stave off disaster…and will the quality of the motivation affect the outcome?
Because epics (fantasy or otherwise) tend to be long, expansive, complex, they can then arouse the same pity and awe as a tragedy, but also, along the way, many other strong emotions placed in close proximity. Fantasy epics, which have the additional supporting leg of the fantasy element itself, are always a little imperiled by that. What if the fantasy doesn’t quite come off? But if it does, the fantasy can add another set of dimensions (those associated with fantasy, and–in terms of non-fantasy tragedy or epic–most closely related to awe.) Wonder, and what the Welsh call hierath, which to my understanding is related to longing for the other, what’s beyond. A form of terror that’s different from ordinary straightforward everyday terror…that magic can be inimical and is outside the usual understanding of just/unjust. Fantasy plays with reality…well, we all know that, but in the context of epic, which already has the huge scale and the high stakes, fantasy plays with the whole range of reality that the huge scale has set out. What parts are going to come unglued, as it were?
The early epics contained much that we now think of as fantasy…but that may not have been experienced as fantasy when they were first sung or acted. Reality itself was more expansive then, in the minds of those hearing epics sung by bards like Homer. The golden fleece needed no explanation of gold flecks in streams trapped in soggy sheepskins…the gluttons turned into pigs were not a metaphor…clashing rocks were just clashing rocks. But as we have nailed and stitched and glued down firmly what we think of as reality, we are more aware of crossing into unreality…and then treating it, in a story, as reality–a temporary reality, to which the reader agrees for the effect desired. An epic fantasy now is consciously constructed as a fantasy…and an epic.
Pause for comments now. Let’s hear from the reader side of things!
Comment by Annabel — December 16, 2013 @ 1:08 pm
I do find that “epic” in the blurb of a fantasy can actually be rather off-putting – it all too often means there are no everyday details of the kind I so enjoy in your (and Robin McKinley’s) works – the food, for instance, or the characters’ grumbling about having to do mundane chores.
I’m not expressing myself well – I should be cleaning the bathroom or at the very least doing work I’m paid to do – but I do like my fantasy characters to be grounded in reality, and sometimes in what’s described as “epic” fantasy, they are not. This is more to do with the publishers’ blurb than anything else….
Comment by Maggie — December 16, 2013 @ 2:31 pm
I agree with Annabel, the “epic” blurb is off-putting. I usually equate it with boring with all the ‘ching-ching’ epic battles and epic government and epic storyline. I read books for the characters and the small decisions that make some people heroes and others…not. For instance (and don’t hate me), I am just now starting the epic ‘Game of Thrones’ and to tell you the truth, I find it rather, um, bad. It is a hard slog, because I simply don’t CARE about most of the characters. There is waaay too much gratuitous sex and nudity and I want to follow a smaller cast of characters. Oh well. To each his/her own. Thanks for Paks, BTW, she is the ideal.
Comment by Bernardette — December 16, 2013 @ 8:26 pm
I really like your points on this and I think that it takes a really special kind of genius (!you!) to be able to pull off the complex world building and character building that make epic fantasy WORK. There are very few writers that I think do epic fantasy well, of course you’re at the top of the list 🙂 but I really enjoy the saga that SM Stirling has going with his Emberverse series. In addition to a fantastic and very real feeling political, moral, religious, and ethical developments, he has gradually transitioned into a magical world. PLUS he writes really strong female characters that are completely integrated into the action and storyline.
I can’t WAIT for your next book to come out so I can add to my epic fantasy collection – between you and SM Stirling, I think you take up two or three whole shelves on one of my bookcases!
Comment by elizabeth — December 16, 2013 @ 8:47 pm
Annabel: Agreed–you caught exactly what bothers me about some of the things labeled “epic” by publishers or even reviewers. Someone years ago was writing stories where all the characters were so powerful that you wondered why they didn’t just knock over the big bad menace and walk off. I couldn’t connect with them; they didn’t have personalities, but personas. Leading characters in epics can be heroes–should be heroes–but they have to be established as real people with vulnerability first.
Bernardette: Thank you.
Comment by LarryP — December 16, 2013 @ 9:38 pm
Or if you forgive me what makes Superman work after 70 years or so is that He is Clark Kent Superman is what he does Kent his who he is. Other words a real person not just a superhero, the same is true for ePic fantasy you have to care for the people and why they are doing what they do Conan the Barbarian is cardboard and Paks is a real person, Conan can never be Epic and Paks will always be epic. Sorry if i lost yall.
Comment by Nadine Barter Bowlus — December 16, 2013 @ 9:56 pm
Neat (as in “very interesting”) topic. Thank you.
Regarding the incorrect use of “epic”, I hear echoes of the line in Princess Bride, “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”
Comment by elizabeth — December 16, 2013 @ 11:19 pm
LarryP: Yes…the real human helps a lot. Though I admit to reading Doc Savage books with great glee during finals time at college, precisely because the characters weren’t real people. (Finals fever takes many forms. Mine were Doc Savage and Russian opera.)
Nadine: So many words misused make me think of that line…Someone once said in my hearing “Oh, their desserts are EPIC!” And despite the one that was a huge bowl (almost punchbowl size) full of icecream and toppings, I didn’t agree that it was epic. Monstrous, maybe. (Four of us–or maybe five–once achieved victory over that monster, but we were all young and skinny and had just hiked miles.)
Comment by GinnyW — December 17, 2013 @ 8:43 am
I like your tripod, all three elements are important enough so that the fantasy is not epic unless they are all present.
The characters, as you point out, provide the main connection between the big picture/big stakes and the reader. It is not only the moral ethical dimension that must be there, but the relationships to the big picture and the big stakes. The characters must be involved, so that they see the big picture, and they gain or lose by what is at stake.
Fantasy does not usually start out being “epic”. Tolkien was an exception, but he was already steeped in ancient epic, before he began writing fantasy. The Deed of Paksenarrion only really assumes “epic” dimensions in Paladin’s Legacy. It is in the later series that Paks’ different encounters come together so that we see the consequences of these individual actions for the world. In Deed, each encounter forced Paks to grow, and led to her becoming a paladin. In Legacy, we see how freeing the elfane taig, encountering the iynisin and mage-lords in Kolobia, facing down the priests of Liart in Verella effected the elves of Lyonya, the nobility of Tsaia, the Fellowship of Gird. In many ways it is the same story, but it has acquired the “big picture” dimension that makes it “epic.”
The point is that “epic” as a designation is often applied to a book cover too soon. Very few can start with the “big picture” and then create all the little stories that make it believable. Even Tolkien began with Bilbo Baggins, and his story is engaging, but not-yet epic.
Comment by elizabeth — December 17, 2013 @ 12:40 pm
GinnyW: This is a “yes, and…” not a “yes, but…” response. The advantage of a multi-volume epic is that the writer can take the time to make the state of things before the revelation of the big problem clear. Tolkein did this with The Hobbit…the alert reader can see that something bigger is going on, and has been going on, but doesn’t yet have a clear picture of it, being focused on the immediate problem and those characters. In hindsight, there are clues in The Hobbit that I certainly missed until I’d read more…and in hindsight, it’s possible to see Paks’s decisions nudging others more than would be expected from an ordinary runaway-becomes-merc-adventurer. Each of those incidents also highlights–but very briefly–elements of the larger story to come. (And no, I didn’t plan it all that way. I wasn’t smart enough.) By the end of Oath of Gold, the reader’s seen this happen in Aarenis, in Tsaia, in Fintha, and finally–with her revealing Kieri as the legitimate heir–in Lyonya. All the threads are now leading into the loom; all the major characters have been unmasked, as it were: Kieri, Dorrin, Arcolin, the Marshal-General, gnomes, iynisin, the Lady, Mikeli, the existence of the western elven king, Alured the Black, Aliam and Estil Halveric, etc. etc. Lots of etc. Dragon did not appear except as a drawing I did while writing the first books.
It took me twenty years more of writing other stories (and maturing as a person, and continuing to read widely) to begin to understand what I was holding and how to use it. I didn’t know what the new story would lead to–had it entirely wrong in my mind, in fact, with the thought that I’d just be telling Kieri’s story. But once I started writing…it become clearer and clearer. Still perhaps not clear enough. It’s still rumbling inside my head and heart.
Comment by LarryP — December 17, 2013 @ 2:42 pm
WEll let it our dear writer let it flow…happy Christmas all
Comment by Wickersham's Conscience — December 17, 2013 @ 5:46 pm
Wonderful topic and quite good sourcing.
I actually had a class at the University of Oregon in 1970 called “Epic Literature,” taught by the great Marliss Strange. In “Western” literature, Strange agreed that Beowulf, the Iliad and the Odyssey were epic literature. If you went outside the oral tradition, she’d give a nod to Mallory’s Arthur. After that, she got stubborn. Back then, Tolkien’s Silmarillion hadn’t been published, and the Appendices were a little thin. Were she alive today, she might regard Tolkien’s works as epic literature.
Strange believed that epic literature had many authors. Homer may or may not have been real, but was neither the first nor the last poet to write part of what we know as the Iliad and the Odyssey.
We sampled Asian epic fantasy; Mahabharata and Ramayana from India, a couple of Chinese pieces (Barry Hughart does a nice job with some Chinese epic literature) and one Japanese. 1,001 Arabian Nights (the steamy Burton translation).
(Zelazny stole big chunks of Indian epic fantasy for “Lord of Light,” and in places captured part of what makes fantasy.)
But we’ve lost the oral tradition. Read Albert Lord’s “Singer of Tales” to see what I mean. So if there is modern epic literature the oral tradition has to be excluded as an element.
Which pretty much leaves your definition. Except that I divide simply hugely long series (cough*Robert Jordan*cough) from authors like Tolkien and, ahem, Moon, by the skill of the writer. In modern epic fantasy, outside of the oral tradition, when you no longer have the literal voice of the poet chanting the poem, you must make do with the voice of the writer. Some authors are superior to others.
A few quibbles: rather than good v. evil, fantasy can hinge on correcting great wrongs. I’d argue LeGuin’s Earthsea series is epic fantasy, without much true evil. Being wide in scope, whether geography or time, means little without that element of voice.
And there’s an ad hoc definition I like, from a review of Jack Vance’s Lyonesse Trilogy: “The test for epic fantasy is that when it ends, the world you return is just a bit duller, a bit drabber, a bit less real than the world you just read.” I’ve never been able to track down the source, and yes, it’s useless, except that I know it when I see it.
Comment by Ken Baker — December 20, 2013 @ 9:08 pm
Wickershams Consience — A very interesting viewpoint. OU had many great teachers. While I would agree with both your viewpoint and Elizabeth’s. The other thing I would add is transformation of some kind. What makes me enthralled with both LOTR and Deed of Paksenarrion is the transformation of the central character. It reflects the humanity in us and how we live our lives. We crave the challenges and successes of our characters. Epic stands far and above simple fantasy.
Comment by Catmadknitter — December 21, 2013 @ 9:46 am
“who are either passive, without agency, or who lack the depth of character needed for epics, so even when active they float along in the stream, battling monsters or slave armies or whatever, but with no solid connection to the reader’s core sense of what people are and can do.”
Thank you for articulating why I dislike Wheel of Time (I stopped at book 2 chapter 2 in annoyance). Even Belgarion from the Belgariad had more fiber than that.
Comment by Richard — December 22, 2013 @ 4:33 am
I was reminded of the protagonist in H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: active, and a real person (so far as I remember – it was a long time ago that I read the book) but one whose actions made no difference to the larger outcome.
Comment by David dell — January 2, 2014 @ 8:49 pm
A lovely discussion I have studied and translated epics. The points made all ring very true. Let me add a few thoughts : 1 we like epics to continue with symphonic foreshadowing and reprise until we feel fully replete 2 we can revisit the parts with deeper understanding even before the epic is complete. 3 the characters have character; they can grow and become more but their essence is consistent and that let’s their actions and learning be meaningful to us. 4. We experience aesthetic joy in both the story and its artistry.
By these criteria, too, paksworld is epic and Elizabeth is crafting an epic in both intent and deed.
Comment by elizabeth — January 4, 2014 @ 9:03 am
David dell: Thanks for your comments on epics. May I ask where you studied epics? I’m particularly struck by your comments 1 and 2, which I hadn’t thought of in that way before–but yes. And your use of “symphonic” as the descriptor for the foreshadowing and reprise may explain why I need the kind of music to which I write. A lot to think about.