5 Tips for Writing Fantasy Stories
This week, one of my email readers, Maite, messaged me with this great question:
“I would like to ask if you please could send me something (tips, articles) about writing fantasy short stories and fairytales.”
It’s a massively rich question, one that is given a lot of advice and suggestions online and in books; I’m not sure if I can even do it justice. I don’t like to keep my readers waiting though, so here’s my initial five tips with resources, which will be followed with a much larger article in the near future (with even more resources). I hope this helps you, Maite!
1 Write Because it is Fun
When I started writing, I did it to avoid homework. I keep writing because it is fun to me. I think that’s really important. If you’re having fun and you like your characters, you’ll want to keep writing — you’ll want to know what happens next. For fiction authors, this is super important. Word count goals mean nothing if you’re not loving what you’re doing; I feel that word count goals should only be used to track your production levels throughout the year to look back and make tweaks.
2 If Writing a Short Story, Know your Blurb
I’ll be honest here.
The shortest short story I’ve ever written that I decided was OK, was just over 14,000 words (pre-editor). That was one of the BCRI Manhunts, a sub-series of my main fantasy series, The Common Kingdoms. For short stories under 3,000 words, I can’t advise because when I did try that in my teen years, I always felt that something was missing in the stories.
When I approached writing Kateti, a short story set in my Sizael imprint, I was doing it to answer some questions I had about in-world stuff for Afien’s Howl. Pretty soon into writing it, I realised that I could publish it alongside The Royal Gift and decided to keep it as a short story and work with my editor on it. Kateti was a 16,000 word story. What helped me keep it on track was knowing the blurb (sometimes called the book’s back content) before I finished writing it, and having a rough idea of what I wanted to happen in the story.
I’d also suggest making it a quest that the main character has to go on and knowing the reason behind it. For quest ideas, look for inspiration from RPGs or create a small mission your character might have to do. Here’s a few examples for within a fantasy city backdrop environment:
- Slay a dragon that has been terrorising a city.
- Find the merchant who was supposed to arrive in the morning with a large portion of the city’s imported vegetables or meat.
- Locate the character’s missing friend or enemy.
- When incorrectly identified as a thief, escape the jail cells.
- (For the local hero.) Get through one day without any incidents requiring your help.
Resources
- Seventh Sanctum — a free generator with lots of helpful ones for writers.
- 10 Winning Ways to Open Your Novel — handy for starting blurbs too.
- 5 Steps to Write a Short Story
3 Know How you Like to Build Worlds
When I’m creating a new world or a kingdom, I’ll write in it first for fun, which means I also end up creating a few core characters. Whatever I’m writing doesn’t even have to be finished off. It’s just a personal resource to help build the world. Whilst writing, you’ll wonder what the characters are wearing, what is around them, what resources they have at their fingertips (sword or guns for example).
From running online RPGs whose worlds’ I created, I can also tell you that there are three core pieces your fantasy readers may want to get a glimpse at:
Technology
In The Common Kingdoms Series, I know that there are high importation tax costs for taking certain items over kingdom borders or importing from other countries across the sea. This means that the citizens of the Giften Kingdom struggle to get anything that runs on electricity across the border from the Southern Kingdom or Sophist Kingdom, their clothes are more like what you would expect in the real world, such as jeans because clothes are far easier to import. Things like cars and mobile phones are pretty much impossible to get in Giften until 2009 when King Cray of the Giften Kingdom and King Philander II of the Southern Kingdom come to an understanding for the cost of electrical and large goods crossing the Giften-Southern Border.
On the other hand, the Giftens have a few pieces of technology that run on magic, such as prison tags which can’t be removed from the neck by anyone but a representative of the law, and there’s also the grebunar, which is small floating sphere that once given a vial of blood, can follow the source of the blood for a few months or be recalled by mission headquarters in the royal palace.
Religion
Not all readers are interested in this, but I feel that if you can develop a story about your main kingdom’s or country’s gods and how they came to be, it can add flavour to your world and the lives of your characters.
For example, in my Amuket Collection books, there is no known religion during the time of Charopa, but a few hundred years later when Charopa has been broken up between various kingdoms and become Lutea Kingdom, the people mistakenly believe there are three gods — Dawn, Noon and Dusk. The real story behind their religion is that three djinn escaped the control of Tamers and their linked humans and terrorised the capital of Charopa at dawn, noon and dusk. Over the years, because it wasn’t written down due to the interference of the Tamers, the story became twisted and the djinn became gods.
Whilst over in my Sizael imprint, the religious story I have for them is about what happened when their two original gods were spawned by the earth, how they married humans and ended up creating the New Religion due to having children. Their religion works in two parts — the Old and the New, but combine to make one overall religion. In Sizael, the religion is especially important because the gods are used when swearing and name-calling, along with odd little phrases added in due to medieval swearing involving animals (and in some countries these days, it is still considered quite offensive to be called certain animals).
Character Races (& Resulting Culture)
Knowing which races your character will encounter is important. Going back to my Sizael imprint for examples, there are three races: humans, anubians and jateri. Races can affect cultural views of your characters’ and their home kingdoms; in Kateti, the character Isla is considered disgusting, by many of each race, because they have visible anubian and jateri heritage. She is often spat on, and if she hadn’t been with the Unreputable Rouche Assassins, she would have been abandoned or murdered. The knights wouldn’t investigate her murder either.
Resources
- Religion Creation Sheet (email subscribers only)
- 3 Tips to Make Your Female Protagonist More Realistic (being updated in 2016 into a larger article)
- Sinking into the World
- Fighting Scenes Prep Sheet
4 Read Fantasy Stories & Play Fantasy RPGs that Capture Your Interest
I often say that Garth Nix’s Sabriel is The Royal Gift’s unofficial shelf buddy. It was one of my favourite fantasy books when I was a teen — this is probably why the two books could be shelf buddies. I also liked the Bartimaeus Sequence by Jonathan Stroud back then too (I’m also afraid to re-read them in case I don’t love them as much the next time round). There was a lot of world packed into those pages, and I learned a lot without realising it from Jonathan Stroud.
(Mr. Stroud, if you ever read this, please contact me — I’d love to have you on my podcast for authors and writers!)
Writers who like to call themselves experts or who teach in academic writing positions like to state there are rules for fantasy or writing.
I don’t agree with that. I’ve purposefully never read Stephen King’s On Writing and I’m very selective about what books I will read about writing because I don’t want others to tell me what to write. If you read a fantasy book that steps away from those pre-determined rules, you’ll probably enjoy it more, maybe without even realising why.
This goes back to tip #1 — write because it is fun. As long as you understand your world better than any of your future readers, you can make anything work.
If you’re strapped for cash and don’t have a local library, or it’s always closed when you can go (like mine), try out Bookbub and Bookscream and download the free Kindle or Kobo app to read ebooks.
Resources
- Bookbub
- Bookscream
- Free Kindle App: Apple Store & Android/Play Store
- Free Kobo App
Recommended Fantasy Books
Recommended Fantasy Games
5 Don’t Worry about Editing
I talk with a lot of writers and observe more online that are getting stuck in “editing mode”. Instead of continuing to write their story to the end, they get stuck tweaking the words they’ve already written.
When you’re writing the story for the first time, don’t worry about what you’ve already written. At some point, if you’re thinking of being a published author, you’ll bring a professional editor onto your team. If you’re worried about plot, your world and characters, have them do a structural edit. If you’re worried about your sentence structure, choice of words, spelling, grammar and tenses, they can do line-edits for you.
Resources