Many of us stood in line on a brisk November night, waiting to get our hands on the game that would enslave us to our PC’s and consoles for days to come. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim went on to be named the 2011 Game of the Year, and countless players lost themselves within this fantasy world.
While most players were swept away by the gameplay, the fantasy writer in me was constantly analyzing every aspect of Skyrim, from the storyline to the world and the creatures within it. Such is the nature of the fantasy enthusiast.
I also had very high expectations for this game, after being wowed by Oblivion for years. This is my view on what I saw, and what I would have liked to have seen, in the world of Skyrim.
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This article is by Dr John Yeoman.
Every plot is a cliché, isn’t it?
According to Christopher Booker, there have been only seven basic plots since the dawn of story telling, although Georges Polti expanded the total to 36. No good plot is original because successful stories evoke one or more of the Seven Deadly Sins. (It seems humans are not clever enough to think of any fresh ones.)
Every one of the 3000+ tales I’ve judged at the Writers’ Village story contest have been grounded in a plot cliché. Yet some stories were spectacularly fresh. How come? Their writers had added a clever new twist, dropped in sensibility or played creatively with the cliché. Here’s how to do it:
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Even when the characters’ adventures are fantastic, a good story should have an emotional core which is personal, drawing from common human experience to help readers connect with our characters. A story written in this way needs little imagination to prop it up. Which is why, in my efforts to write fantasy, I’ve been asked:
If a story is universal, why do you need the magic?
Magic comes with the price of a built-in distance between your events and your reader which can keep you from achieving the potential of your story. Guarding the passageway to an important official, I can hint at the terror of a pair of trolls, or I can connect readers directly to the fear of two condescending and semi-sadistic guards. I can wound my character with the blast of a fireball from a distant wizard, or I can bring my readers the terror of being knifed by a killer.
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As writers, we ask ourselves this question at one time or another: How can I tell if my work is good?
This is the wrong question. The right question is, “How can I tell if my work is good enough to accomplish my goal?” And that, of course, depends on what your goal is.
If your goal is to sell a novel to a Big Six publisher, you’re going to have a very different standard than if your goal is simply to entertain a small audience on the Internet, or even if your goal is simply to finish NaNoWriMo.
If you’re writing a novel with the goal of finding an established publisher, then the novel only has to be able to impress at least one editor enough that she is willing to give you a contract.
So how can you tell if it’s good enough for that to happen?
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Tired of waiting months, weeks, or even days to hear back about your manuscript? Is that 500,000 word door-stopper just desperate to get immediate feedback? Do you like fast food, Twitter, and teleportation?
For those of you that want feedback from an editor yesterday, this is your guide to immediate success. Until recently, I’d never been published, but it wasn’t because of lack of talent. It was because I didn’t use these steps to woo the editors over. Now that I’ve done so, I finally got my short story collection, “Stories that Start in Inns,” published. Go buy it! Now!
You too can pursue your publishing dreams. Just follow these five easy steps and wait for the money to roll in!
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This article is by S.G. Rogers.
I’m a fantasy author who enjoys building worlds. Perhaps my interest in world-building stems from the wonderment I feel in the presence of beauty. Magic exists in the waterfalls of Brevard County, North Carolina, the stunning views at Big Sur, and the Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico. Magic radiates from the paintings of Michelangelo, the castles of Europe, and the sculptures of Bruno Torfs in Australia. When I experience this magic, I feel compelled to communicate my sense of awe in the stories that I write.
I’ve sold eight fantasy manuscripts so far on the strength of my world-building, with two sequels in the works. Although each project has its own unique challenges, my approach to world building involves a few common principals.
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Bigger Isn't Always Better
This article is by Leif G.S. Notae.
What if I told you that I could condense The Lord of the Rings or A Game of Thrones into less than 25,000 words? You’d think that I was crazy.
I assure you, this is not my intention. However, it is possible.
Flash fiction, which is a style of writing that emphasizes extreme brevity, is becoming increasingly popular. While it has been around for years, it has recently been garnering respect in literary circles. Even conventional novelists find it useful to experiment with flash fiction, as it challenges them to approach writing in new and creative ways.
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Leo Tolstoy
One of the fundamental challenges confronting every writer is “finding their voice”, their unique expression in the field or medium in which they’ve chosen to express themselves. When Alasdair Stuart - editor of The Hub e-zine and host of the horror podcast Pseudopod – was asked to identify the quality that defines the stories he’s drawn to, he sited, “a strong confident authorial voice. That feeling of, for want of a better word, swagger. If you can hit that point where you are in absolute control of your story… but it’s still you, then that really makes me sit up and take notice.”
We all strive for that effortless grace and utter conviction that transports our readers to the worlds we’ve crafted. It can’t be faked, applied, or forced. It just is, and the way to achieve such prose is NOT necessarily to write more.
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Whether you are planning to self-publish or go the traditional route, there are two important pieces of writing that you need to pay particular attention to.
The first is what is sometimes referred to as the back of the book marketing copy (which I may cover in a future post), but today I want to talk about your book’s opening.
Whether it’s an agent reviewing submissions or a potential reader browsing through new releases, if you aren’t compelling right from the start they’ll quickly move on—an opportunity lost.
So what makes a good opening?
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When sitting down to plan a story, I focus my attention on developing memorable heroes and horrendous villains, constructing epic settings filled with ancient magic, and crafting plots with satisfying endings. But what’s lacking is anything connected to the piece of advice that I’ve heard repeatedly:
Write what you know.
These words, which I’ve been told again and again, have vanished from my arsenal of aphorisms. I write fantasy, which means that I write from my imagination. I write about lives and experiences that have never existed in history. My characters are impossible to know before I meet them on the page.
That’s the downside. In fantasy, we don’t intuitively know our characters the way authors of another genre might.
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