• Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!

The Fantasy genre is intimidating!

I'd like to say that compared to the amount of work you will end up putting into your writing, 30,000 words isn't that much. I say this to be encouraging, not discouraging. Don't be afraid of writing stuff that's not great, don't be afraid of writing stuff that's utterly terrible. People will only ever read your very best work in published form. Even if you hate every word you write and your inner editor is chomping at the bit to strip it like a pirhana, write it anyway and don't worry about it. Your words won't be branded on your forehead for the world to see.

No one starts out a good writer. Everyone's first several hundred thousand words are probably terrible. Right now, you have no business worrying about whether your writing is any good or not. Just get the words out. The only real way to become a better writer is to write, and write a lot, and write fearlessly. If I could give one piece of advice about writing, it would be to write a lot, write everything, write all the time, and never stop. Every word you write makes you a better writer. Nothing is wasted. If you're writing, you aren't wasting time.

Some people wait until they think of something good to write before they write anything down. But people who are serious don't wait. They just sit down and write. Successful writers aren't successful because they're lucky enough to write only good stuff, they're successful because they write no matter if it's bad or good. I've sat at the computer writing random sentences, or writing "I don't have anything to write", and a lot of what I write is useless, but a lot of it is good and could become something. 90% of what you write will end up being unusable anyway, and you have to write the 90% to get to the good 10%. You can't write good stuff without writing a whole lot of bad stuff.

Anything you write right now, you will have forever to rewrite and polish and revise. Getting it right the first time doesn't really work. I've tried it but you can't get it even close to what it's supposed to become on the first try, no matter how hard you try. You have to let the first draft be terrible. You can and will fix the terribleness of the first draft. I promise it won't be so terrible it's unfixable, you CAN fix it later.

I wrote my first book when I was 12. You can imagine how awful it was. I suppose it was pretty good for a 12 year old, but it was still terrible. There were too many characters, the plot was a twisted mess, and I used just about every fantasy cliche. That project, though I wouldn't call it the same, set the foundation what I'm working on now, which is much better and no longer infested with cliches I hate. (In fact, it's rather weird and unique and I'm worried it will be hard to publish because of that. Earlier I tried to avoid cliches too much; I was probably hurting myself.) The point is, even something awful can eventually turn into something good. (Not that I've even gotten in there yet...but it definitely is better than what 12-year-old me was writing!) I learned a TON writing that first book. Nothing will teach you about writing a book better than doing it.

Basically, instead of learning as much as you can about writing, or waiting until all your ideas or perfect, or waiting until you feel ready or you think you're a good enough writer, you'll learn more by just jumping in and doing it. You'll make a whole slough of mistakes but if you push hard enough you'll get to THE END. And then, you will have the wonderful gift of hindsight. You'll be able to see what you did right and what you did wrong. The second time around you'll know what you're doing a little more than you did last time.
 
But...if you're really stressed about it, it's okay to take a break. Shoving through anxiety doesn't help. Anxiety puts your brain in fight-or-flight mode, where its main objective is to get away from the threat (the thing that's stressing you out.) Survival mode overrides everything else in your brain, including creativity. The creative and productive centers of your brain are basically shut down. So, trying to keep working through it won't get you anywhere. It will just draw the walls tighter and tighter around you until you feel trapped. I've had it happen and it's terrifying. Sometimes the best thing is to walk away and write something else. I did this recently with my WIP. It'll probably be a few months before I come back. Meanwhile I've joined lots of challenges in the Challenges forum...which...were....also stressful and panic-inducing, but...they were something different.
 
This cannot be repeated enough. I feel like 90pc of the discussion I see on fantasy writing sites are about ideas and 10pc about writing. Those proportions are the wrong way around for without effective writing, no one will ever care about our ideas in the first place.

This is why it is a huge pet peeve of mine to see endless threads asking "Is this a good idea?". It's impossible to say. Two writers could take the same idea and one could succeed and one could fail miserably at turning it into a story. Why it failed or succeeded is only discovered AFTER the story has been written. Or at least when there is some actual writing to critique.

If you have a great, original idea but have not developed your skillset as a writer then it really doesn't matter. Get good at writing and you can do a lot with ideas ranging from mundane to completely bizarre.

The reason I love reading HP Lovecraft is mainly due to how he writes, not necessarily because the ideas being used in all his stories are absolutely brilliant.

I think he is a great example to use because there have been tons of Cthulhu mythos spin-off stories that have been complete garbage yet used the exact same ideas. The ideas weren't the issue, it was the writer's lack of ability to execute them in a compelling manner.
 
This is why it is a huge pet peeve of mine to see endless threads asking "Is this a good idea?". It's impossible to say. Two writers could take the same idea and one could succeed and one could fail miserably at turning it into a story. Why it failed or succeeded is only discovered AFTER the story has been written. Or at least when there is some actual writing to critique.

And there's a slight paradox here, or at least a conundrum.

"Execution" is often mentioned in passing, and it's the holy grail, whereas ideas and general concepts can inspire long threads. This is probably because specific execution is dependent on various factors relating to a specific story and specific author voice/goals. An idea can take a multitude of forms depending on execution, so each idea can be addressed pre-writing, on Mythic Scribes, from a multitude of perspectives. But execution? We need to see a particular execution already complete before we can say whether it works "in this case."

I sometimes regret that we don't often address the bare basics of writing engaging prose, of structuring the flow of scenes and chapters. We do sometimes discuss things in abstract like prologues or narrative strategies (1st person, 3rd omniscient or limited) or showing and telling or dialogue tags, but the ultimate answer is usually yes, no, maybe; i.e., "It depends." In chapter one, should I choose this POV character or that POV character? Should I begin with the main villain POV in chapter one or save that for chapter two and begin with my hero? Or should I begin with a secondary character who happens to run into one of those other two characters? Yes, no, maybe; it depends. You can do any of these.

Execution is a little more difficult to address than various ideas.

Devor's mention of the importance of ideas and ideation seems peculiarly pertinent for this thread, from my perspective, because the absolute openness of the fantasy genre presents its own kind of problems. When absolutely anything can be imagined, this presents the problem of choosing from that multitude of possibilities while simultaneously introducing the specter of intentional or unintentional copying because, to some degree (more or less?) there's a subliminal expectation of newness, or at least freshness, of ideas for every new book or short story. It's speculative fiction, so the act of speculation can steal some of the spotlight.
 

Peat

Sage
While I agree that one needs to see the work before it can be said whether it works or not, there's execution strategies we can talk about and I think in terms of the greater internet community, don't so much. Yes, the answer is usually "It depends", but we can at least talk about what it depends on. What tool for what moment, what tools to mix; or at the very least, making sure everyone knows which tools exist.

And the answer to people's ideas queries tends to be "It depends" too.

Still, it is possible to overdo this argument, not least because people's enthusiasm for the whole thing rests on their ideas.
 
If an idea depends on execution, what does execution depend upon? Ideas? :D But execution is a broad category.

It isn't that I'd dismiss talking more about execution. I think it'd be great if we focused more on execution. My point was that maybe discussing execution is a little more difficult than discussing various types of standard or non-standard elves or the 100,000 potential magic systems.
 
If an idea depends on execution, what does execution depend upon? Ideas? :D But execution is a broad category.

It isn't that I'd dismiss talking more about execution. I think it'd be great if we focused more on execution. My point was that maybe discussing execution is a little more difficult than discussing various types of standard or non-standard elves or the 100,000 potential magic systems.

Execution is very, very, very broad. It encompasses plotting, characters, writing style, and everything those encompass. In short, it encompasses everything that ISN'T the main idea(s). That's why it's so important.
 
Execution is very, very, very broad. It encompasses plotting, characters, writing style, and everything those encompass. In short, it encompasses everything that ISN'T the main idea(s). That's why it's so important.

Of course execution is important. But so are ideas—and not just the main idea(s) but also a great many tiny ideas that populate the individual paragraphs and sentences.

I'm reminded of something Penpilot said in that thread on flow. The execution can sometimes flow easily when we have a clear idea about where we are in the story, where we want to go, and how we want to go there. But having only a blank page as a beginning, a story can go just about anywhere. I mean, any given paragraph or sentence can go in 10[SUP]9999[/SUP] directions. We have to know the ideas involved, even the tiny ideas. What is the architecture in this city? The clothing? The million odd details of the culture—and which of those ideas are important for establishing not only the scene but also the tone of this particular part of the tale, and of the tale as a whole?

I don't know, but I think (?) this was something Devor was signaling with this:

Yeah . . . . I personally feel that the discussion about ideas and execution is completely misleading. You've got ideas on every page of a book. In fact every sentence expresses an idea. I think the notion that creativity pales behind execution misses the fact that creativity is part of your execution. It's one of the skills you should be developing as a writer.

I mean, sure, we tend to focus on the story concept, and not the little micro-uses of creativity that you need to employ as you write. That is, in some ways it's worse - we talk about "ideas" too much, but we don't even learn much about ideation or how to employ good ideas consistently throughout your story.

And this:

The skill, of course, is in identifying the right triggers, finding the best way to change them, and then drawing more from them. And, y'know, doing it quickly in your head as you write so you don't feel like an obsessive planning person.

I think developing better habits of ideation can help in the planning stage, the initial conception of the main ideas for a story. But here, "In fact every sentence expresses an idea" and "doing it quickly in your head" caused me to pause. I think this is very true. So you begin with a blank page, you've decided your hero will be the POV character in the first chapter, and you know the hero needs to go from point A to point B in the chapter; but, what's in the first paragraph? The second and third paragraph? How do you flesh out the tale, the world and the tone?
 
Last edited:

Peat

Sage
If an idea depends on execution, what does execution depend upon? Ideas? :D But execution is a broad category.

It isn't that I'd dismiss talking more about execution. I think it'd be great if we focused more on execution. My point was that maybe discussing execution is a little more difficult than discussing various types of standard or non-standard elves or the 100,000 potential magic systems.

A big sharp axe ;)

You're right that it is more difficult. But I think it is more important.

And, to tie this back to the thread if Jess is still with us, its not that we don't want to hear about your ideas - share them all! But if you want to do justice to them, don't neglect asking and reading about the craft of writing itself.

Also, if you are worried about your ideas being cliche, why not tell us about them?
 

Jess

Dreamer
A big sharp axe ;)

You're right that it is more difficult. But I think it is more important.

And, to tie this back to the thread if Jess is still with us, its not that we don't want to hear about your ideas - share them all! But if you want to do justice to them, don't neglect asking and reading about the craft of writing itself.

Also, if you are worried about your ideas being cliche, why not tell us about them?

Lol, Yes I am still here. Just taking in all the great advice.

I am more than willing to learn more about the craft of writing. I have done tons of research on sci-fi and fantasy writing in particular. My greatest concern is that someone will read through my book and think that my characters relate too much to something else they have read. The anxiety actually helps me to really dive in deep and take a look at how my characters differ from the traditional (or the cliches). The overall synopsis of my story seems like so many other novels out there. A magical vessel is needed to save 3 kingdoms from falling into darkness. The fact that a "neverending" winter is taking over makes me worry that people are going to think I am copying George R. R. Martin. Although my winter is caused by magic. And I started this story when I was 17. (Although back then it was a short story that was meant to be turned into a children's story and now has become worthy of up to 3 books worth of material if I really set my mind to it)
 
Lol, Yes I am still here. Just taking in all the great advice.

I am more than willing to learn more about the craft of writing. I have done tons of research on sci-fi and fantasy writing in particular. My greatest concern is that someone will read through my book and think that my characters relate too much to something else they have read. The anxiety actually helps me to really dive in deep and take a look at how my characters differ from the traditional (or the cliches). The overall synopsis of my story seems like so many other novels out there. A magical vessel is needed to save 3 kingdoms from falling into darkness. The fact that a "neverending" winter is taking over makes me worry that people are going to think I am copying George R. R. Martin. Although my winter is caused by magic. And I started this story when I was 17. (Although back then it was a short story that was meant to be turned into a children's story and now has become worthy of up to 3 books worth of material if I really set my mind to it)

I can think of multiple books with the neverending winter idea, not just GRRM's. People have called those books unoriginal. And they've called GRRM's book unoriginal as well, in fact...There's no way to avoid being called unoriginal. Most fantasy books are actually extremely similar to one another and people still like them.
 

Jess

Dreamer
I can think of multiple books with the neverending winter idea, not just GRRM's. People have called those books unoriginal. And they've called GRRM's book unoriginal as well, in fact...There's no way to avoid being called unoriginal. Most fantasy books are actually extremely similar to one another and people still like them.

That's a good point. People will either like it or not like it. I really have no control over that. I just really hope someone likes it. I want to give someone that fantastical world to escape to through my writing. My wish is that someone can feel the magic in my words and find some kind of joy in my story.
 
That's a good point. People will either like it or not like it. I really have no control over that. I just really hope someone likes it. I want to give someone that fantastical world to escape to through my writing. My wish is that someone can feel the magic in my words and find some kind of joy in my story.

I relate to this SO MUCH.

Whenever I read a great book I'm like "I have to do this for someone!" I want my readers to feel the same happiness I feel when I read a great book. I want them to laugh at my dialogue, cry at the sad parts, feel sadness and anger and joy and peace. I want to know how they picture my characters...I want a fandom, I want fanfics and fanart...I want to know that I've made someone happy in the way that books make me happy. It's what I live for.
 

Jess

Dreamer
I needed to reread this today. Again thank you so much for this advice.
 

Jess

Dreamer
I relate to this SO MUCH.

Whenever I read a great book I'm like "I have to do this for someone!" I want my readers to feel the same happiness I feel when I read a great book. I want them to laugh at my dialogue, cry at the sad parts, feel sadness and anger and joy and peace. I want to know how they picture my characters...I want a fandom, I want fanfics and fanart...I want to know that I've made someone happy in the way that books make me happy. It's what I live for.

I needed to reread your awesome advice. I went through some major writer's block and just picked up on writing my novel. It's your words that reminded me I can do this. Thank you so much.
 

Simpson17866

Minstrel
Good for you :)

If you're still worried about not having enough original ideas, the trick that's worked best for me has been to stop trying to come up with a good idea and start trying to come up with the opposite of a bad idea: I find an idea that is popular - either in fiction or in the real world - and I write scenarios that show why the idea does not work the way everybody thinks it does.

If you're still worried about not being as good as other writers: You're not supposed to be :D There is not a person on the planet who only has one favorite story, and even a list of just 3 favorites would mean that 67% are lower on the person's list than the absolute favorite. Being somebody's 5th favorite writer instead of their 1st favorite is a sign of success, not a sign of failure.
 
Top