The Riddle of Iron: How to move Sword & Sorcery forward to a new era

I came away from GenCon 2023 with a realization: No one seems to know how to move the Sword & Sorcery genre forward.

To me, this is the new “Riddle of Steel”. A riddle for the #IronAge. A tough nut I want to crack.

I believe Robert E. Howard was already showing us the way forward back in 1933 with The Tower of the Elephant. That (combined with a few offerings in unexpected, but familiar places) may hold the answers we seek.

But let’s start by defining what Sword & Sorcery (S&S) actually is:

• Sometimes S&S is called Heroic Fantasy, though I’d argue we can pull off something in this genre with characters who are non-heroic. In fact, some consider these two similar, but separate, sub-genres that happen to mesh well.
• The main characters are often willing to blur the lines of morality in order to survive, such as temporarily cooperating with a dark lord or using a cursed item.
• S&S typically focusses on one recurring character, though Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser is a clear example that this rule isn’t set in stone for the genre. But generally speaking, if the main character has partners, they are temporary companions who will soon part ways.
• The main character may have a distrust, respect, and/or even fear of magic and unknowns within the world. The characters generally also distrust establishments such as the church, rulers, the government, etc.
• And the “bad guys” are usually the ones who are able to use magic.
• The fate of the world isn’t usually at stake. Each story is often a single, dramatic, self-contained adventure that leaves itself open for future exploits. In other words, it’s limited in scope compared to epic and high fantasy. (The world may be vast, but its vastness is only hinted at, to be further revealed with subsequent offerings.)
• The characters are often hyper-specialized in preparation for challenges that may lie ahead in the dangerous world. For that reason, heists are a good fit for this genre. So are mysteries. Which is why putting the characters outside of their element is a good idea – An example would be having them decide to, for some reason, NOT bring the one perfect item that would save them from disaster (such deciding against bring a rope because it’s too heavy).
• I find this is true for all fiction, but you generally want an active character making active decisions. This is especially true for S&S, where constant forward momentum is expected.
• S&S fans don’t want to see long and drawn-out dialogue: Some fans describe these stories as bad ass, full of “blood and thunder”. But the amount of “Rule of Cool” included depends on the flavor of S&S you’re going for.

So a question springs to mind: How do we take a bite-sized adventure and make it memorable? How do we really make it stick and register for readers on the Richter scale?

Well, I think that’s where Weird Fiction comes in. If you can inject unexpected horror elements into your story, that’s one way to make the experience both visceral and haunting. Roller coaster rides and haunted houses are done for the thrills, after all. So why shouldn’t stand-alone bite-sized adventures shoot for the same?

It can’t hurt to inject some prose in a similar vein to Neil Gaiman or H.P. Lovecraft. But that’s nothing new: Robert E. Howard’s Conan series was printed in Weird Tales, after all, and the aforementioned short story The Tower of the Elephant included some Cosmic Horror elements.

(“Weird Fiction” also gives you a lot of flexibility on monster design, which just happens to be one of my favorite aspects of writing.)

And to further state the obvious, it helps to have a highly original main character and world, such as is the case for Elric of Melniboné.

More to come.