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The Typical Fantasy Trilogy Formula
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Cover art by John Jude Palencar
So, I kind of noticed something that really stuck out in my mind... A massive portion of the fantasy novels follows the same pathetically cliched formula. Said formula almost makes the books intensely unreadable, because the familiarity gets sickening. While there are great fantasy books in the world that stand out, they are outweighed by the cliched drivels known as the formulaic trilogy.
It's almost a given that fantasy novel enthusiasts have come across a few trilogies in their lives. Unfortunately, many fantasy novel readers tend to steer clear of trilogies because of this formula that makes them boring:
Book One: The squeaky clean teenage boy leaves his tiny village to see the world for no reason.
For some reason, many fantasy novel writers who create trilogies start their stories out this way. To be honest, it's a nightmare; it's always about a teenage boy leaving his village for no reason. Seriously, there needs to be a new type of story to change things up. With this plot point, the reader is almost ready to but the book back on the shelf and never look at it again.
This kind of thing has been done a thousand times before; it's gotten to a point where almost every trilogy is exactly the same as one another. At least make it a girl for once; that'll at least show some individual creativity.
Book Two: After traveling for a while, the teenage boy gets told some random jargon about crystal dragons, an evil lord, and some ancient prophecy that conveniently comes true just in the nick of time.
The boy travels on and on, through forest after cliched forest, and reaches another village. He's told that his tiny meaningless village was destroyed in a fiery blaze or something. His dialogue then becomes overly dramatic, and his character personality begins to decrease a couple of dimensions. The attempts at realistic sadness fall flat.
Then, some old man with a long beard, a wizard cap, and a robe babbles on in a senile stupor about some prophecy and a bunch of random dragons with weird names. The boy, completely believing this old man, sets on another adventure. A bunch of random elves and Dwarven people fight by the boy's side after knowing him for about fifteen minutes.
After more traveling is done, along with some massive walls of textual descriptions, another village is destroyed and the teenage boy runs into an evil lord; the villain, with no actual reason as to why he's destroying the world, simply laughs and moves on his merry way. The massive cast of heroes who have dialogue that sounds all the same decide to band together and fight the evil lord. For good measure, the author throws in a girl who has no connection to the hero who is destined to be with him because of the magical prophecy the crazy old man spoke about.
Which brings us to....
Book Three: The ridiculously epically random war that is just filler content and isn't an actual valid plot device.
Okay, so this biblical requirement for fantasy trilogies should be expected by now. This clueless teenage boy somehow gets the whole world to join his very vague cause. Apparently, the boy sends the evil lord a text message like, "Meet at magical plains for war this weekend?" because the villain pops up conveniently at the right place and time for an all-out war of epic proportions.
The confusion then leads the reader to believe that something awesome is happening. What's hilarious is that the teenage boy is fighting in the battlefield while the villain just stands back at a safe distance and sics his waves of minions at the heroes. When the author gets bored of the war, they throw in something insane, like the prophecy the old man was talking about, and a bunch of explosions and dragons pop out of nowhere. The villain's army is consumed in a vicious blaze and the heroes win.
After the villain's army is wiped out, he just laughs maniacally and then the boy simply stabs him to death with a sword "his dying father gave him", or "Was a magical weapon that was given to him from the 'oracles' or something" (insert drama here). Everyone cheers and then they move on with their lives like it never even happened.
Epilogue: And they lived happily ever after.
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