I don’t think I can drive the point home long or hard enough to read agent and editor blogs if you’re considering publishing mainstream.  It’s insight into the publishing work that in years past only those privy to the world to begin with would have known.  Thanks to the internet, publishing insiders are sharing what makes it all tick and if you find the right read (not some jaded schmuck that continually posts on the corruption and capitalism in the publishing industry), the information gleaned will be invaluable.

Kristin Nelson posted back in March about a conversation she had with an editor friend of hers about tired fantasy themes that she’s come across.  They’d both know since they’re privy to the wonders of the slush pile, not to mention actual, bonafide submissions that we might never see so who better to talk about inundation than those on the receiving end of the flood?

Now my definition of tired is that these people are seeing the same product wrapped in hardly different packaging over and over and over again, thus giving the general theme itself a pretty sour flavor to taste.  Sucks for those chosen ones and amulets of doom/saving grace but when people think changing the scenery of one of these tales is enough to make it different, I don’t blame the workers for being tired with them.  I’m not a big fan of redundancies either.

Of course, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, nothing is tired if you can jazz it up enough to make it stand out from the crowd.  There are a lot of quest stories and amulet searching stories and chosen one stories out there.  They’re all on a quest to find an amulet that only they can use to save the world.  There’ll be some bumps in the road, maybe some pirates or highway robbers.  There’ll be moments of self doubt for the hero or heroine, perhaps a love interest and throw in a couple dragons and a pixie in there for good measure.  The way I see it, this editor has gotten to a point with these themes where she’s read one story, she’s read them all.

more…