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Planet of Hats/Quotes: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|Nonhuman fantasy races tend to have their differences from humans defined not just physically (pointy ears and what have you) but psychologically. You might think this would entail making them really alien but that's difficult and often winds up making them hard for the average reader or gamer to relate to. What it more often means in practice is that members of the imaginary race wind up all sharing certain personality traits in common. ALL elves are tree huggers, ALL dwarves are dour, stubborn, and acquisitive, etc.
And that makes it tough for the writer to have the critters seem like there are significant personality differences among them. I know, I was constantly trying to solve this problem while writing my drow novel.
That, I think, is, from the author's point of view, part of the appeal of what I call Chinese menu fantasy, where the Tolkienesque band of protagonists has [[Five Races|one archetypal elf, one archetypal dwarf, etc.]] It's much easier to make the characterization work. And I'm not denigrating this approach. I wouldn't dare, now that I've done the diverse band of heroes myself in my dragon thingie.
Of course, there's at least one other advantage to this approach, also. Frequently, much of the point of a fantasy is to give the reader the chance to explore an exotic imaginary world, and by giving him extended commerce with characters who represent many of its races and cultures, the writer facilitates this process.|'''Richard Lee Byers''', the author of [[Forgotten Realms]] trilogy ''The Year of Rogue Dragons'' <ref>in which two of the protagonists left their tribes to see the wider world and two others had crippling problems due to who they are</ref> and ''Dissolution'' <ref>the first book of ''War of the Spider Queen'', introducing a bunch of Drow characters, rather lively and individual yet recognizably Drow</ref>, [http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID{{=}}6440&whichpage=8#128467 on Candlekeep forums].}}
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