Thursday, June 25, 2009

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

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your blog keeps getting better and better! Your older articles are not as good as newer ones you have a lot more creativity and originality now keep it up!