Tips for Fantasy Writers 1. Does nothing happen in the first fifty pages? 2. Is your main character a young farmhand with mysterious parentage? 3. Is your main character the heir to the throne but doesn’t know it? 4. Is your story about a young character who comes of age, gains great power, and defeats the supreme bad guy? 5. Is your story about a quest for a magical artifact that will save the world? 6. How about one that will destroy it? 7. Does your story revolve around an ancient prophecy about “The One” who will save the world and everybody and all the forces of good? 8. Does your novel contain a character whose sole purpose is to show up at random plot points and dispense information? 9. Does your novel contain a character that is really a god in disguise? 10. Is the evil supreme bad guy secretly the father of your main character? 11. Is the king of your world a kindly king duped by an evil magician? 12. Does “a forgetful wizard” describe any of the characters in your novel? 13. How about “a powerful but slow and kind-hearted warrior”? 14. How about “a wise, mystical sage who refuses to give away plot details for his own personal, mysterious reasons”? 15. Do any of your female characters exist solely to be captured and rescued? 16. Do any of your female characters exist solely to embody feminist ideals? 17. Would “a clumsy cooking wench more comfortable with a frying pan than a sword” aptly describe any of your female characters? 18. Would “a fearless warrioress more comfortable with a sword than a frying pan” aptly describe any of your female characters? 19. Is any character in your novel best described as “a dour dwarf”? 20. How about “a half-elf torn between his human and elven heritage”? 21. Did you make the elves and the dwarves great friends, just to be different? 22. Does everybody under four feet tall exist solely for comic relief? 23. Did you draw a map for your novel which includes places named things like “The Blasted Lands” or “The Forest of Fear” or “The Desert of Desolation” or absolutely anything “of Doom”?
Posted on: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 15:40:00 +0000
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