It’s only been a couple of years that I’ve been back to reading books from this genre. Those couple of years have been a bumpy ride, to say the least. This past weekend several things crystallised for me; vague impressions and ideas have finally been through enough roadtesting to have a shape I can talk about.
I don’t write Fantasy stories; it’s not what I’m good at. But I know now how to best describe what I like and don’t like about the genre. And I realise that I’m unusual–many people who read Fantasy are the exact opposites of me and like what I dislike and actively seek out what I try to avoid. So these suggestions are more for the folks who want to write what I consider Modern Wave or Crossover fantasy–stuff like George RR Martin, Daniel Abraham, David Anthony Durham.
1. Start basic
Readers need something relatable to pique their interests. I’m sure that to some folks starting out with a duel between Prionaster Wizards using Magefyre seems really cool. And if you’ve invented this world those terms mean something to you already. So it doesn’t seem as utterly foreign and repellant. But your average reader is a first-time tourist to the world you’ve built. Walk them into it. Show them around, give them a good taste of the familiar. Once they’re anchored to your world they’re more likely to follow your world for the thousands of pages these sagas usually take.
2. Tease the reader
People who are reading fantasy DO want something unique. It helps to throw out tiny tidbits of your worldbuilding at first. Casually at first so they don’t start rolling their eyes. Don’t know what I mean? Go back and read the first Chapter (“Bran”) of Game Of Thrones. It’s mostly guys on horses. But Bran does ponder Old Nan’s tales of creatures Beyond The Wall. And the reader starts to think “hey! I bet something cool will happen!” But if these books had started with Mance Rayder and skinchangers I doubt I’d have stuck around.
3. Be Better At Describing Things
Frankly, most fantasy writers could use some help here. The most glaring examples are Daniel Abraham’s otherwise-excellent _The Dragon’s Path_ and Brandon Sanderson’s profoundly terrible _The Way Of Kings_. In _Dragon’s Path_ Abraham invented a world that has 12 different races. Unfortunately many of them are never described in detail. We know they have “doglike ears” or the dreaded carapace. (Seriously…I wish fantasy writers had never heard the word “carapace”. It gets so overused and tossed off, when “insect-like outer shell” is actually a creepier, more intriguing description.) The thing about which readers were most curious–those races and their differences–was a gaping hole.
In _The Way Of Kings_ Sanderson bothers to invent a world where elements and emotions have corresponding fairy-like entities called “—spren”. (lightspren, fearspren, etc.) He’s put together this universe in which he would like readers to be immersed and then describes Fearspren as “gobs of purple goo.” That’s something I’d see from a junior high creative writing workshop–not anything I’d look for in a professional fantasy novel. How about “shifting orbs of indigo, flowing together and reforming like mercury”?
4. Go easy on the religion until folks know you better.
A lot of fantasy writers seem to enjoy writing elaborate religious systems that are either completely unlike anything on our Earth or obviously satirical versions of the better known Earthly faiths. I admit that I’m really intrigued by this if it’s handled well (Martin’s use of The Seven as his world’s Catholicism and The Old Ways as Westeros’ Druidist belief system). But it can be handled so badly and too early in that it makes the book untenable.
Again, these are just things I’ve noticed as an avid reader. Feel free to ignore them, but just know that if you do I’ll most likely return your book to Amazon pretty quickly.
Wait, what? You can return books to Amazon?!
If you buy them for Kindle you have 7 days from Date of Purchase to request (and receive) a refund.
I have made use of this policy several times. Most recently yesterday.
I don’t know what the policy is on print/bound books, though.
Oh you would NOT like Piers Anthony, the author that got me into the fantasy genre when I was younger.
Heh. You’re right. I don’t. He’s one of the reasons I left.
Pardon the brevity and the typos. This was sent from my iPhone.
I’m curious if you ever read David and Leigh Eddings and if so what you thought. That’s who I ended up moving onto after a couple of Piers Anthony’s and Eddings isn’t nearly as guilty of the stuff you mention in this post as Anthony was. Whereas Anthony seemed to primarily be focused on the fantasical world of Xanth, Eddings seemed alot more character focused which is why I think I enjoyed him more. After I read The Belgariad, Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress (the latter two being prequels to the former series, but each as told by the title character), I actually felt a kind of sense of loss that those characters wouldn’t be part of my life anymore, where as I don’t even remember the names of the characters from Xanth, though I remember the world. Granted it’s been high school since I’ve read any fantasy at all.
5. Think about how your world works. Seriously, think about how the parts of it interact. Geography influences culture. So does politics. So does religion. Language, too. And each of those things influences all the others, too. If you want your readers to believe in your world, it has to work right. Track down all the little intersections of things. (In particular, if you think it’s intriguing/ironic/startling to use bits of different actual human cultures as parts of the same fantasy culture, remember that those cultures developed differently/separately for actual reasons. Is there a reason for them to have developed together converged in your world?) Make maps, or graphs, or charts, or whatever works for you, until it all comes together in one piece in your mind. Then write out of that deep knowledge of the place.
5a. But don’t try to tell your readers everything. Unless you’re Ursula K. Le Guin, and are presenting your book in the form of an anthropological survey. (Which would be a kind of cool new approach to fantasy, in fact.) But even then, maybe hold back some stuff. No one wants to know all that, and presenting it would make for suuuuuuch ungainly exposition and infodrops, anyway. Just know it, and use that knowledge for the basis of what goes on in your book. Then your book will hold together, and make sense to the reader because everything in it comes out of a realized world. And your characters will be acting naturally in the world they know, which will help make them more believable, too.
Honestly, I don’t read most epic-style fantasy because most of it feels like a slapdash throwing together of plot elements that happen for no reason that I, as a reader, can tell. Bleeeeeech. However, I’m mostly an SF fan, so the world-building is what intrigues me the most, then character and literary style, and only then the plot details. I think the plot line and how the writer gets from the initial status to the triumphant (or otherwise) end of the quest is more important to most fantasy readers, so maybe my suggestions are beside the point.