Sword and Sorcery Trope discussion

[Doug Dargel]

I'd like to talk about Sword and Sorcery tropes in this forum post. Conan the Barbarian is going to come up a lot.

[C.A. Tedeschi]

Thanks Doug. This interests me because it is my target genre. How close i come to the mark will always be up to the reader.

I think Sword and Sorcery gets a bad rap sometimes, because many new authors try to emulate the classics, but they neglect character development, POV, and an internal struggle. I feel these can only strengthen your story. In a good story the badass moments will always reveal themselves.

And then there's the fact that anything with a sword and some magic gets lumped into the S&S label. I feel like it's more than that. It has strong parallels to the western genre. The odds are against the protagonist, violence is inevitable, often there is a final showdown, followed by a ride off into the sunset, and the big one, sweeping, irreversible change. At least that's the way i see it. My version is perhaps a bit more Americana.

Some say Beowulf was the first recorded S&S. I agree.