Writing popular fiction

random fashion, so that their triumphs over each are not, as they should be, small triumphs over the villains as well.
    Furthermore, a sword and sorcery hero must—with rare exception—be all-powerful, thereby negating any possibility of real and lasting injury to him. The suspense is nil. A superman who has no problems with which the reader can identify is largely unsympathetic. The result, frequently, is cardboard characterization.
    There are, then, two ways to avoid this trap. First, you can use a hero who has obvious flaws and physical limitations, so that each fight he engages in is dangerous, each wound he sustains is serious and painful. Though the basic requirements of the sword and sorcery form make such a hero less acceptable than his strongman brothers, it
can
be done by an established sword and sorcery writer or by talented new authors in the field. Second, you can opt for a strongman lead, but surround him with a few intimates of whom he is inordinately fond; these secondary characters will be far more mortal than your hero, appealing to the reader, so that when one of them dies or is hurt, the reader will be emotionally touched by the incident. And, directly, the hero can be made to seem more real and human through his own grief at the friend's fate; if he cannot be physically harmed, himself, he can at least be emotionally damaged. Fritz Leiber, in his Gray Mouser stories and most notably in "111 Met in Lankhmar" in his book
Swords and Deviltry
, makes fine use of this second technique.
    In sword and sorcery fantasy, all of the character motivations in Chapter One are useful. A hero may set out on a quest to recover a kidnapped maiden because he is being paid to do this (Greed) or because he is attached to her and wants her for his own (Love). He may seek out a fabled magician who holds the key to his parentage and fortune (Self-discovery), or go after a magical device (Greed for Power). He may begin a quest because he is beholden to a king, queen, or sorcerer (Duty), or because he has been angered by the acts of another warrior or sorcerer or king (Revenge). Perhaps a curse has been placed upon him, and he must venture into strange lands in search of the magic to relieve him of this spell (Self-preservation). Perhaps, initially, he strayed into a private estate owned by a warlock (Curiosity), had a spell cast upon him, and was ordered on a quest (Self-preservation). The possibilities are endless, the combinations complex. The only warning is: As in the other genres, the hero must be motivated by more than one thing, by more than a single obsession.
    No writer I can think of—aside from Fritz Leiber, occasionally—currently writes sword and sorcery fantasy for anything other than the sheer vitality and color it offers. It can transport the reader away from his cares as well as any other genre can, if he is predisposed to it. And if, once he's finished the final page, the reader has gotten nothing more from the experience than solid entertainment—no grain of philosophy, no new understanding—who is to say that the book did not deliver enough? We are all, more than anything else,
story
tellers, not moralists.

EPIC FANTASY
    Epic fantasy combines dark fantasy with sword and sorcery, then works these diverse elements into a story with the scope, theme, characterization, and plot of a serious modern novel. As in dark fantasy, the element which is being contested between heroes and villains is something of great import, a fundamental clash between good and evil for the future of all mankind. The epic story takes, as its second concern, the plights of its individual characters; unlike the sword and sorcery novel, the epic would never be entirely, or even chiefly, concerned with the rescue of a single maiden, the banishment of a particular curse, the retrieval of one magic totem. The maiden, the curse, and the totem will probably
all
play important roles in the epic, but no one of them will be the entire core of the story.
    Epic fantasy, in short, demands three qualities: an especially rich tapestry of characters, several sub-plots to add depth and breadth of vision to the main storyline, and a background of considerable "alien" detail. Each of these things is, really, one of the original five elements of category fiction; yet each deserves a closer look, according to its function in the epic fantasy novel.
    Characters
. In the epic, you will have one lead protagonist, of course, in order to focus your