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adventure, amwriting, author, books, Calling On Fire, fandom, fandoms, fantasy, fantasy adventure, Fire Within, fun, grimdark, Harry Potter, heroic fantasy, lol, Lord of the Rings, lovebooks, magic, magical, meme, noblebright, noblebright fantasy, read, reader, reading, Stephanie Beavers, writer, writing
One of the first thing people ask me when I tell them I’m a writer is, “What do you write?”
I, of course, tell them that I write fantasy, but unfortunately, that doesn’t really narrow it down much. You see, there are many different kinds of fantasy. So after I say, “fantasy,” I get responses like these:
“Oh, like Lord of the Rings/Game of Thrones?”
Well, kind of, because there are races of magical creatures and it’s a medieval setting and whatnot, but I don’t write epic fantasy, with the massive cast of characters (many of whom die) and all that. Also, in my fantasy, I like to have more magic than those.
Or, “Oh, like Harry Potter?”
Well, kind of, because I like to think I have a similar spirit of adventure and create a fun sense of awe for magic, but mine aren’t really intended to be children’s books, and the setting is not in modern times.
Or, “Oh, like [insert some author I’ve never heard of]”
Er…maybe?
And the thing is, I couldn’t think of a term to describe my kind of fantasy. “Heroic fantasy” is close, as is “fantasy-adventure,” but neither quite nailed it.
Then I heard about noblebright fantasy. It’s something of a new concept, and not a widely-known term (yet?), but I like it. A lot.
Noblebright fantasy centers around good characters who try to do good things for good reasons. Not everything is peachy and happy, but in the end, they’re able to make some kind of difference. There’s hope. There’s magic. It doesn’t have to be a children’s book; in fact, sometimes even a noblebright novel can be quite dark.
I feel like we need this label. If I know a story is noblebright, I know I don’t have to worry about reading yet another story where a good character can’t get ahead and just makes things worse until everything is awful and the characters are all so corrupt you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys.
I like it better when fiction inspires us and brings hope. Life needs a little more noblebright.
If you’re curious to know more about noblebright, I set up a page about it here.
So what do you think, readers? Do you like the concept of noblebright? I know some people love the “gritty” and “grimdark” stories that are so popular today. Are you one of them? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Two brothers with magical abilities must defeat the evil mage who seeks to annihilate them and everyone they’ve ever known.
All writers are readers; it just goes with the territory. And I have been reading for as long as I can remember. When I first started learning to read, I devoured everything in site. It didn’t take long before my reading level was far beyond what my age suggested it should be. In fact, I remember reading books with sex scenes (not like erotica, but still) before I really understood what was going on. I just went flip, flip, flip- oh good, we’re back to the story. My voracious reading continued until university, when unfortunately my reading lists took over and I didn’t read much for pleasure anymore. Even so, I expanded my mind in new ways, with different kinds of reading and learning. 