fantasy writer 📚

At Least

Create and get to know your main characters

Know how the book will end

Understand your characters’ relationships

Plot the inciting incident

World build surface level (time period, main character’s surroundings, city names, kingdoms, magic system, etc.)

Have a general idea of the story’s direction

Recommend

Flesh out some minor characters

Plan key scenes

More in depth world building (cultures, important historical events, socioeconomics, social hierarchy, etc.)

Plan sub-plots

Above and Beyond

Have chapter outlines and/or have every scene outlined

Very detailed world-building (trade routes, languages, maps, religion, ancestry, politics, mythology, etc.)

Plan character arcs

Do extra writing sessions for fleshing out characters and their voices

Is your protagonist manipulative? Well that’s awful… until they manipulate the antagonist into making a decision that saves the lives of their friends. 

Is your protagonist a skeptic? Well that’s not good… until someone tries to lie to them. 

Is your protagonist overprotective? That sucks… until someone they love is in danger. 

I’ve seen some posts going around on what not to write in fantasy, many of which amount to:

Don’t write evil kings.

Don’t write people who are evil for the sake of evil.

Don’t write bullies.

Don’t write villains at all actually.

Don’t write mentors.

Don’t let your characters learn how to do hard things on their own though.

Don’t write people on adventures.

Don’t write people fighting evil governments.

Don’t write any fantasy species ever written before.

Don’t write any fantasy trope ever written before.

Don’t write any fantasy plot ever written before. 

Just… don’t fucking write fantasy I guess??

And this is such utter bullshit, my friends.

We do need more originality and diversity in fantasy, but we don’t need to remove everything that fantasy is and has been in the process.

(Especially, especially, when diversity is being included in traditionally cishet white male protagonist fantasy stories.)

Maybe the chosen one with special magic powers and a royal bloodline going on a quest with a group of friends to defeat the evil king has been done before with a white cis man a thousand times over, but how many times has a black trans woman got to go on that adventure? 

Maybe elves and orcs have been written into the dust, but they still make great templates on which to tell stories with original twists, and there’s nothing about them that stops a good, emotional story from hitting you straight in the heart.

Maybe dragons have been done by every writer ever to write fantasy, but you know what? Dragons are fucking awesome, my dudes. Many readers are always gonna love them.

Maybe we have told the same fantasy stories over and over again, but every step you take away from the known template is a step you have to spend more and more exposition on before the reader will understand your original creation.

•A new character comes along

•A new event happens

•A new idea is introduced

•The setting changes

•A new person is speaking

•Time moves forward or backwards a lot

They do bad things because they’re scared.

They’re gullible or misinformed. Example: somebody who has been told the heroes are out to hurt them.

They are desperate for interaction, validation, kindness, or attention, and the dark side gives them those things. 

They want to change their allegiance, but are pressured by people close to them to stay evil.

I got the rough idea for Anguish when I was fourteen years old, sitting outside a target in my mom’s car. I’m 23 years old now and I’m finally writing a first draft of a decent version of that idea. I can look back at the versions I wrote when I was 14 and it’s a mess. I had a lot of life to live and experience to gain before it became a proper story. 

A lot of writers have trouble writing the middle of the novel. Either they don’t know how to structure it properly or they’ve just lost motivation (I’ve written endless posts on motivation, so try searching for them). I think we’ve all read books that have just lost all momentum in the middle, so here are a few ways to stop that from happening to your novel:

Try to lead to something important – The middle is a great time for a really exciting moment or the climax. There can be more than one, so don’t think you’re going to waste any momentum you have.

Throw in a twist – Blow your readers minds! Is there a moment you’ve been waiting to reveal to your audience? Do it in the middle of your novel and then deal with the aftermath.

Divide it into another three acts – Try to break down the middle of your novel into smaller pieces. Think of it as a beginning, middle, and end. Create a structure to follow.

Introduce some new blood – Focus on a new character. Introduce a new character. There should be a reason for them, so don’t go completely wild, but get excited about your new addition. Weave it into the plot.

Do something drastic – Do something unexpected to your hero. Throw a wrench in their plans. There should be ups and downs in your novel, so fit some in here.

Build an intense action sequence – Sometimes an intense scene breaks writers out of their doldrums. If it fits in your story, try it. Pump up the adrenaline.

Plan, plan, plan – For me, planning is the best way to figure out where my novel is going. Take a moment to think about what’s happening in your story and find a way to organize it.

Focus on tension – Build tension and put your readers on the edge of their seat. If there’s something exciting happening in your third act, now’s the time to build it up.

Think about the ending – If you’re unsure about the middle of your novel, take a look at the other parts. How are you going to get to your ending? Focus on that journey.

Make it less complicated – Sometimes middles are hard to write because they’re too complicated. Cut subplots that you can’t follow or just muddle up your story.

Obviously, trying all of these will make an absolute mess of your story, so pick and choose what might work for you.  These are just suggestions and they won’t work for everyone’s story. Think of them as ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

And remember, the most important ideas to pursue are those that help drive the story forward or help reveal information about your characters!

Balancing classes, writing, and (possibly) a job is very difficult. Write when you can, but know that it’s okay if you can’t. Your studies and your health come first.

Or, how my WIP evolved from the nightmare that was draft two to the almost novel-like draft three.

My method for editing first drafts usually takes about two steps. 

Read it over.

Scrap it and rewrite the whole thing. 

Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. I know, I know. It sounds really, really harsh. But with a first draft, you aren’t really editing it, you’re rewriting it. Because first drafts? They suck. Especially if you’re just starting out. 

Finishing a first draft can feel so good. You just wrote a shit-ton of words, and now you’re done! That’s how I felt when I finished my first draft (or, rather, second draft in this case, but that’s only because my first draft was a half-finished pile of trash that I won’t be counting for the purposes of this post). 

I mean, it’s how I wanted to feel. I was proud of the 50,000-odd words that I’d written, but I knew that it was full of structural problems, pacing issues, and even characterization. (Plus my main villain sucked. Like, really sucked.) 

So, without further ado, here are the slightly less simplified steps to rewriting that first draft: 

1. Get out a notebook, read over your manuscript, and take notes. 

Take notes on every scene. Ask yourself, is this scene necessary? Is it well-written?

Take notes on any ideas you have for improving the story. Would it be better if the love interest was also secretly a spy? Great! Now you have an interesting subplot. Write it down. 

Don’t get caught up in the little things. Does it say a character has blue eyes on one page and claim they’re green on the next? Are there a lot of grammar mistakes? Who cares. Is one of your characters consistently acting out-of-character? That’s a problem you should take note of. 

2. Find what’s wrong with it. 

There’s probably something wrong with your first draft. There’s probably a lot of things wrong. Are the characters flat/inconsistent? Is it rushed? Is the plot nonexistent/all over the place? Recognizing the problems is the first step to fixing them. 

3. Re-Outline

Even if you don’t outline, after reading over your first draft, you should probably make one. Even if the plot of your first draft was perfect, you should still write down the progression of events and how they fit together.

This will help during rewriting, and also to work out any issues you have in the plot. 

For me, this included brainstorms, timelines, and character arcs. 

4. Take the salvageable scenes from the first draft and put them in a document labeled “Draft 1 Highlights.” 

You’ll be very tempted to take the scenes you like and copy-paste them directly into the new draft. DO NOT DO THIS. Just don’t. Chances are, by the time you get to them, the story will be shifted. You’ll also limit the freedom of taking the plot in a better direction if you feel obligated to include pre-written scenes. 

Make sure to hold onto the first draft. I’ve used the first draft as reference several times during the re-writing process, especially toward the end, where the first and second drafts overlap a bit more. Even so, even if the scenes are similar, never copy-paste. Open the first draft in a second window and look at it as you rewrite. Your second draft will be better for it. 

5. Start writing. 

You’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t start writing. When it came to my manuscript, I wrote about three or four first chapters before I found one that worked (and ended up using one of the earlier beginnings as a flashback later on.) And if you want, you can go out of order! It’s up to you, and everything depends on the level of revisions your WIP needs. 

i didn’t understand why until i realized that the reason for this was that all the rules, the do’s and don’t’s, etc. were locking up my mind / creativity and instead of focusing on writing, i was focused on making sure not to break any of the countless writing rules i’d read about.