Fantasy Has A Creativity Problem (And It's Not The Magic)

Photo by Daniela Denyer Malo

Fantasy is the genre of infinite possibilities.

It's where dragons exist, kingdoms float in the sky, forests whisper secrets, and entire civilizations are built around impossible magic systems. There are, quite literally, no limits to what an author can imagine.

So why do so many fantasy books feel... oddly similar?

After reading well over 400 books - many of which have been fantasy - I've started noticing the same patterns appearing again and again. Some have become beloved tropes for good reason. Others, I think, deserve to be retired for a while.

More importantly, there are so many ideas I wish authors explored more often. So for what I hope will be a fresh take, here are the things I'd love to see become the next generation of fantasy tropes.

1. Give me magical animals that are actually unique

Fantasy has no shortage of magical creatures. Whether we’re talking dragons, phoenixes, direwolves, and even the occasional talking raven. But I want stranger animal companions and accomplices.

Not necessarily animals that literally speak English aloud, but maybe creatures capable of communicating in unexpected ways. One of my favourite examples comes from Lightlark, where communication often occurs through mental images the creatures send their bonded human; or perhaps we could talk about emotion and instinct as their own sort of language instead of ordinary dialogue.

That's far more magical, in a new and fresh way. And while we're at it… can we please move beyond the same symbolic animals?

Why is every jacked MMC capable of turning into a bear? Why does every chosen heroine have some mysterious spiritual connection with a white stag? Go crazy! Go completely off script!

Give me heroines riding panthers through rainforest kingdoms, give me giant tiger companions, give me mythical creatures that nobody has invented yet, ones that we can’t even easily picture because of how new they are.

Fantasy is called fantasy for a reason, so let’s bring that back to the pages.

2. Found family, but make them outcasts

I love a good found family trope. In fact it's probably one of my favourite tropes in fiction. But what I especially love is when that family is made up of people who genuinely don't belong anywhere else. True outcasts who find their place in the world in a small group of people who love them just as much as we expect blood family should.

Not simply a group of attractive, secretly powerful young adults who eventually discover they're all destined for greatness.

No, I want misfits. People who would never have found one another under ordinary circumstances.

A Court of Thorns and Roses actually does this particularly well with its Inner Circle, but I'd happily read far more stories where friendship, and not romance, is ultimately what saves the world.

3. Underground civilizations

Fantasy architecture deserves more imagination. Why does every kingdom begin and end with a castle on top of a mountain?

Where are the vast underground civilizations? The underwater cities? The kingdoms carved into canyon walls? The enormous cave systems illuminated by glowing crystals?

I want fantasy settings that feel inseparable from their geography. Give us cities that couldn't possibly exist anywhere else.

4. Let the parents live!

This may be my most controversial fantasy opinion.

Authors… you don't have to kill the protagonist's parents. Surprise!

I promise, characters can become interesting without being orphaned by chapter three.

In fact, I'd argue that fantasy has become so dependent on parental tragedy that loving families would now feel more original than dead ones.

Imagine a heroine who believes people deserve kindness because her parents taught her kindness. Imagine a prince whose greatest strength isn't overcoming childhood trauma but growing up surrounded by healthy love.

Imagine parents who remain happily married, who stay alive, who actually matter throughout the story. Imagine parents who even help the main character save the world!

Wouldn't that be refreshing?

5. More bioluminescence, please

Bioluminescence. That's it. That's the request.

Glowing rivers, glowing flowers, glowing insects, everything glowing. Entire forests illuminated naturally after sunset.

I don't think this needs further explanation!

6. Kingdoms built around the elements

Fantasy already loves elemental magic. Fire, Water, Earth, Air - always the inspiration for their magical powers. We've all seen it.

But I think there's still enormous potential left unexplored. Instead of simply giving individuals elemental abilities, why not build entire civilizations around those elements? How would politics differ? Architecture? Religion? Culture?

Books like Lightlark and, to some extent, A Court of Thorns and Roses begin exploring this idea, but I'd love to see authors push it much further and not just as a background detail but rather as something that is crucial to the main plot.

7. Can fantasy embrace purple?

This one is oddly specific, but most fantasy aesthetics fall into predictable colour palettes: blue, black, silver, gold and deep red. Always!

Where's the purple? Give me kingdoms inspired by amethyst, lavender forests, violet oceans… Books that feel purple, in the best sense of the word.

I'm truly, deeply convinced that the aesthetic possibilities are endless if we explore more colours as inspiration for each story, and purple should be the first on that list.

8. More realistic protagonists

Fantasy sometimes has an unfortunate habit of producing the same protagonist over and over again.

The impossibly beautiful heroine: tiny, delicate, yet somehow capable of defeating professionally trained soldiers despite surviving almost entirely on berries and determination.

Please. Let the girl eat some protein!

I want physically strong female protagonists who actually look capable of wielding enormous swords. Not necessarily glamorous, not effortlessly beautiful, just convincingly powerful. Especially in this day and age, where unhealthy ‘skinny’ bodies and products like ozempic are the new trend for teenage girls to follow. This isn't incidental either. Beauty standards that prize frailty over strength have always done political work, making women look smaller, weaker, and easier to control at exactly the moments when equality is being contested. A genre built on female strength should know better than to keep dressing that strength up in bodies that couldn't actually carry it.

The same applies to male protagonists. They don't all need to look like they walked straight off the cover of a cologne advertisement.

Fantasy should celebrate interesting faces as much as perfect ones.

And as a bonus, this would make fan casts so much easier, since we wouldn’t always have to cast the same five people for each book because, well, there’s only about five people on earth that actually look like that.

9. Bring back actual enemies to lovers

Not rivals who flirt aggressively, not sarcastic banter disguised as hatred. I mean enemies. Real ones. The kind who genuinely cannot stand one another. The kind where neither the reader nor the characters are entirely convinced romance is even possible.

Then, somewhere around page four hundred… one kiss. And everything changes. That's enemies to lovers.

We've somehow forgotten the ‘enemies’ part.

10. Let fantasy travel the world

Perhaps my biggest wish is also my simplest. Fantasy doesn't have to keep returning to the same places: The Swiss Alps, Scotland, Ireland, occasionally vaguely medieval France and sometimes a Middle Eastern-inspired empire.

Fun fact, our world contains more than two hundred countries! Thousands of cultures and countless beautiful landscapes.

As a Latina, I'd love to see more fantasy inspired by the Andes, the Amazon rainforest, the Caribbean, Patagonia or Mesoamerica, and not simply pirate stories or vaguely tropical islands, but fully developed civilizations rooted in those environments.

The Andes could produce extraordinary mountain kingdoms. The Amazon could become one of fantasy's greatest magical forests. The Caribbean offers mythology, history and geography that remain almost untouched by mainstream fantasy.

I imagine there’s untapped potential everywhere we might look.

There's so much beauty waiting to be imagined. Give us, as readers, the opportunity to see our books and stories wherever we go in the world.

11. Retell something other than Disney

Retellings aren't going anywhere, nor should they. But perhaps we've reached the point where we can collectively admit we've had enough versions of Beauty and the Beast.

There are so many stories still waiting to be reinvented.

Please, retell the lives of saints as fantasy adventures rather than religious miracles. Reimagine Aztec mythology. Turn historical legends into epic fantasy. Take old horror stories and transform them into romances, or vice versa.

There is an entire world's worth of folklore beyond Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.

Let's use it.

The truth is…

Fantasy is at its best when it surprises us. The wonderful thing about this genre is that it has no limits except imagination, it allows us to live every life we could ever imagine.

That's exactly why repeating the same handful of ideas feels like such a missed opportunity. Readers aren't asking for less fantasy, we're asking for more fantasy. More originality, unexpected settings, unusual creatures, cultures, family dynamics, worlds that could only ever exist in fiction – and our normal worlds turned magical too.

Because if any genre has permission to dream bigger than reality… it's this one. But in a market that’s now swamped with more quantity than quality, we want new, bold, different, and special. Not the same stories, paraphrased.

Until the next page!

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Edited by Ainhoa Aron, Literature Editor