Whereas a species, fantasy is not all the same. There are several types of fantasy stories, innumerable of which share common characteristics. Listed below are some of the more common types of fantasy works.
1 ) High Fantasy or Epic Fantasy: Seeing the second flag says, this species of fantasy is epic and world spanning in scope. The lead characters trek far and wide across a often magical and at least rather stranger world. Good and Vile are opposed forces that have their own armies and champions, and they battle for the kismet of all. The chance of the world is normally at stake. There are scarcely small loses or successes. Some literary examples append The Chronicles of Narnia, The Elenium and The Tamuli. Some High Fantasy movies enter the movie adaptations of splinter of the most books, Krull, both the older and more existing Clash of the Titans and Willow.
2 ) Low Fantasy: Low Fantasy is normally distinguished from high fantasy by incorporating fewer high fantasy tropes. Low Fantasy is typically set in a more logical world much like our own, and is often characterized as a rational world full of irrational events. Low fantasy may involve purely local events or events of a world wide scope. Eyes of the Dragon, The Green Mile, and The Indian in the Cupboard and all examples of Low Fantasy.
3 ) Sword and Sorcery: Sword and Sorcery is in some key ways the opposite of High Fantasy. Where High Fantasy usually revolves around grand plots and schemes that affect the entire world, Sword and Sorcery stories tend to be more centered on the main characters and their personal goals and desires. While High Fantasy features truly good heroes and evil villains, Sword and Sorcery has more dubious morality. The villains still tend to be truly evil, but the protagonists are often more self interested and sometimes an antagonist is merely working toward different goals, and is as nice a guy as the protagonists. Magic is a known force but tends to be more a plot device than a tool for the characters. Conan, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and Elric are all fine examples.
4 ) Dark Fantasy: Dark Fantasy is an a genre that blends horror and fantasy together. It can be differentiated from horror fiction in that the lead characters are more talented and powerful than their everyday peers and so have greater possibility of preventing the evils from winning than in a typical horror story. One subset of Dark Fantasy sets the monsters as main characters and generally shows that monsters can be people too. Dark Fantasy doesn ' t differentiate so much between good and evil and often focuses on similarities between the heroes and villains. The Vampire Chronicles, The World of Aden and The Dracula Files are all fine examples of Dark Fantasy.
5 ) Bangsian Fantasy: A very specific genre, Bangsian Fantasy focuses on the adventures of real world figures in a fictional afterlife. While there can be non - real people as supporting or even main characters, there is always a focus on real historical figures. Many works of John Kendrick Bangs ( where the name of the genre comes from ) are of this type, as are the Riverworld novels of Philip Jose Farmer and Inferno and its sequel Escape From Hell by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
Naturally, able to constrain the fantasy genre, and stories may fall into two or more types. Write your stories the way you want, and read what you enjoy. Just remember that these are ways publishers and reviewers may categorize fantasy stories.
