Fantasy advice

12 Build, build, build

I’m talking about worldbuilding of course – something most fantasy writers spend a great amount of time getting just right. A fantasy world should ideally feel as real as our own, which can mean deep thought going into that before you write the first word of your book. Consider the fundamentals as well as the big stuff within the story – where and how do people live? What jobs do they have? What do they eat, drink, do for fun? These can be as important as anything else in the tale. This absolutely applies for science-fiction too, but I won’t make the same point twice.

13 Go big

Fantasy is so often seen as the genre of the epic, and while I personally would love to see more fantasy novellas/ anthologies, the field seems to focus on novels – and often very large novels.

While in some genres a book with a wordcount of about 70k or 80k would be just fine, for fantasy that tends to come in just too short for the mainstream market. Aim at 100k – ideally even more – if you want to get it out there with the big presses.

14 Establish your rules

Something that can go alongside worldbuilding, fantasy novels depend a great deal on consistency. If you say in chapter 1 that a mage needs water to cast a spell, but then in chapter 10 they do it without, how can a reader take it seriously? You make the rules, but that doesn’t give you permission to break them. Write down a list if you have to – it can be a great help to ensure you stay on track with them.

15 Big story, big cast

If you’ve ever sat and watched so much as a season of Game of Thrones, you will likely have been dazzled by the sheer number of characters. This is something that often works really well for fantasy, especially if you have a series in mind, a very popular form within the genre. If you have a large story to tell, be sure to set out with – and maybe even introduce later on – plenty of characters to help carry that weight through two, three, four or even more books.

16 Keep it human

Of course fantasy can contain any number of fantastical creatures – some of these are indeed the first associations some people have with the field. But be it elf or goblin or dwarf of dragon or something else entirely – it still needs human or human-like emotion and issues that a reader can relate to. Don’t stray too far from that, just in case you lose your reader along the way.