Five Tips To Writing A Better Fantasy Novel

This article will show you some tips on how to write a better fantasy novel. If you’ve never written a book before, don’t think that it is too daunting of a task. On the other hand you should know that the best way to finish writing a book is to keep at it every day, and once started don’t stop until it’s done. Here are some ideas that should help you stay on track with writing your fantasy novel.

1. Make sure you know the world you are writing about.

This is one of the first places that people get strung up. You need to know what your fantasy world is like. If you can’t describe what the vegetation and trees are like in your world, you will have a hard time crafting a story that is very lifelike.

A good way to go about this is to take the time to think about your fantasy world. What is the landscape like there? What sort of creatures inhabit it? Are there any extremely different terrain features from the real world that would help make this world stand out? Think about yourself as a world builder when you are writing your fantasy novel.

2. What political factions are there?

A great way to bring more intrigue and plot lines into your fantasy story is to introduce opposing political or religious factions. Some questions to ask are: Who is the ruler of the land? Do people like him/her? Are there people who want to rule the land? What is the relation of this country to that of the other countries surrounding it?

3. Know your characters.

Often in writing text there is the section regarding the characters of the book. They often want you to write a character sketch of the person. This often doesn’t work that well for every writer. In some cases it is better to get a few chapters under your belt and see how the characters react to situations. Then go back and make notes about your characters.

In a fantasy novel, there are plenty of times where the characters have varying physical or mental qualities that are not found in the real world. This sort of attribute needs to be well thought out in order for it to become convincing to the reader. A good course of action is to have a hindrance added to a special quality that would seem to give the character an advantage over others in the story. This lends to the character being a bit more believable and is a great opportunity to add sub-plots into the story.

4. Magic

If you have any sort of magic system introduced to your fantasy world you need to do your homework here. First, think about the magic system and how it affects the world and how it affects the individual. Here are a few questions to ask yourself when introducing magic into your fantasy writing.

What are the qualities of the magic system? Can anyone have magical abilities? What about animals and humanoids? How does the average person in the world react to magic?

5. Read the classics.

It is a great idea to have read the classics before venturing out and writing your own fantasy novel. The biggest reason for this, is that you will know what sort of things have written about in the past and it will save you from becoming a poor repeat. In addition, by reading the works of those such as Tolkien, Wiess & Hickman, and more, you will come to appreciate just how tightly woven the characters and world come together and how they react with and against each other.

Writing a fantasy novel has its great advantages- you can make anything up- however, you have to be more calculated with your writing to make it believable. Click on the link provided to learn more on how to better your writing

Five Steps To A Tighter Plot

For most people, writing isn’t really that hard. However, writing a novel and coming up with a believable plot is something else entirely. It often amazes me how people who have never written much of anything before, can think that they should be able to just sit down and write. Just because someone knows how to take medicine for a headache doesn’t mean that they should assume that they can now be a doctor. Both professions take time to learn.

It’s possible to learn how to write a novel, and even a great novel, if you are willing to put in the time and hard work. This is where Five Steps to a Tighter Plot, will be able to help you. But remember, the two most important aspects to becoming a published writer, is to read a lot and to write a lot. Every novelist will tell you this; there is no shortcut.

Step One: Think about the villain first. It’s often easier to think about what the bad guy is going to do before thinking about the protagonist. When coming up with a tight plot, there has to be the element of risk and by thinking about the risk and dangers first will make it easier to develop the plot.

Step Two: Brainstorming the plot is crucial before writing anything. Think about anything and everything that you can, no matter how ridiculous you may think it is. Often, a nugget of a great idea can be found in the most insane ideas.

Step Three: Once you have as many ideas as you can think of for the plotline, weed out the ones that aren’t going anywhere. You will be able to tell this by the plot line ideas that don’t stimulate other ideas. They just sort of lie there on the screen or paper and lack any sort of creative imagery. Put those to the side for now, so when you are making up your plot you can look back to any of these discarded ideas to help further develop your plot, if they happen to mesh well, or a little, with what you have so far.

Step Four: Detail the plot ideas that you’ve created. Think about what sort of ramifications are going to come from the bad guy doing this or that. How will that affect the main character and those he or she cares about? What would be even worse? Take that thought and twist it even more to make your plot tighter and more compelling than before.

Step Five: Now this is where you start to think about your main character. They are usually going to react to any situation. Think about it, they are going along through life without a care in the world until a problem or danger present themselves. Without this crucial element to the designing of plot, you don’t have much of a story. This is where you’re going to plug in your protagonist and start to strengthen the plot and tighten the plot to make sure that the whole novel is as concise, compelling, and page turning as possible.