Writing Tips: Fantasy

My take of fantasy is that it is anything that is *fantastic*. Fantastic meaning, things that are not real and could never happen in our world. But that is a pretty broad term, seeing how very little in fiction could happen for real.

That is why we have sub genres.

Fairy Tales are of course the first thing one thinks of with fantasy: Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, Little Mermaid, and pretty much every Grimm story that Disney turned into a movie.

High Fantasy for example would be a fantasy story with wizards and elves and kings and queens, stuff like Lord of the Rings, Merlin, and Robin Hood. These are often very *romantic* (not the same as romance). Dragons run rampant in high fantasy. Nine times out of ten, if your story has either wizards or dragons in it, than you are writing high fantasy. Villains often consist of such beings as trolls, goblins, or orcs.

Hard Core Fantasy or Straight Fantasy, is fantasy in it's purest form. This is common in manga, anime, and video games. Here you may or may not have human characters, you probably have talking animals, monsters, dragons, demons, and things such as magic powers and evil villains abound in every corner. InuYasha, Final Fantasy, Soul Calibur, Pokemon, and Sonic the Hedgehog are all examples of this.




Yep, I found an excuse to put Sessh on yet another of my lenses.

Sword and Sorcery is very similar to both high fantasy and hard core fantasy. The difference is that Sword and Sorcery always involves sword fighting and villains with magic powers. Villains are often deities or mythical beasts. The settings are often ancient B.C. times. Xena Warrior Princess, Conan the Barbarian, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, She-Ra Princess of Power, and Soul Calibur are the most famous examples of Sword and Sorcery.

Dark Fantasy (also called Goth Fantasy or Gothic Fantasy) boarders on being horror (though it lacks the blood and gore seen in horror) and has wizards or vampires and focuses a lot on a super mean super villain. Harry Potter, Buffy, and Angel all are of this type.

Space Fantasy or Fantasy Sci-Fi is a cross between fantasy and sci-fi and could be sold as either one. It is very much like high fantasy, only the knights and wizards are spacemen and the faeries are aliens. Star Wars, Retief, and Doctor Who are the most famous examples of this.

Romance Fantasy is what it says: any fantasy story in which the plot is that of boy meets girl and falls in love (or some variation of). These are very commonly set in Medival Europe with a princess vs knight in shinning armor.

Furry Fantasy involves talking animals as the main characters. The story can be any other form of fantasy, but one or more or all of the characters are animals that talk. The animals may be *regular* animals that talk, or they may be anthromorphic animals that walk upright like humans and wear cloths or they may be humaniod creatures with animal features such as cat ears and tail. Warriors, Redwall, and Catwings are probably the most popular furries ever written.

Super Hero Fantasy is not very common in the novel sector, however it is the leading genre for comic books and graphic novels. Super heroes has a whole array of super powers or super gadgets to help them defeat the monolouging super villains and megalomainiacs. Super heroes need no introductions. Every one knows their names: Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Wounder Woman, and all the rest. Of course there are no villains who can top the awsomness of the super villains such as the Joker and Doc Oct.

The Realm of Fay is fantasy stories revolving around faerie races. Often the author was inspired by the art, books, and movies by Brian Froud. Froud's most famous creations are his book *Faeries* and his two movies *Labyrinth* and *The Dark Crystal*. Realm of Fay stories are filled with evil faeries, goblins, pixies, unicorns, merfolk, and other assorted such creatures. It is not uncommon for the faerie creatures to be evil.

Religious Fantasy is a story based on religious characters (usually Bible characters, such as Queen Ester or Daniel). These stories take the life of a religious figure and look at it through a new light.

Alternatly, the main character is often a young (usually teenaged) villager who retells the story through their eyes. The birth of Christ and the death of Christ are the two most used stories to retell.

Another version of this is the telling of wars between Heaven and Hell, or an angel and a demon.

Other versions tell heaven or hell tales: what it is like for a person who has died and gone to the other side.

In the first week of NaNoWriMo08 this question and many others like it began cropping up.

I want to write about elves. I don't know anything about elves. What are elves like?

The same question is being asked about vampires, dragons, werewolves, etc. You get the picture right? Everyone wants to write about something, but no one seems to know anything about their chosen topic.

Or do they? Fact is, they know much more than they realize. I'll explain:

What is it about elves that attracted your interest enough to make you want to write about them? That would be my first course of action.

Take mermaids for example (since I write a lot of mermaid stories). As a little girl I loved mermaids, had mermaid dolls and read the Little Mermaid books (pre-Disney as I'm on the old side) and sat around drawing and writing about mermaids. In actuality I knew very little about mermaid historically. Than came the day that I actually started writing about mermaids and it occurred to me, that I didn't really know to much about them. Like you are started asking around and looking for info. Than I started to realize that as much as I liked mermaids, I really hated the way other people were writing about them. I hated several things that were considered *historical fact* about mermaids. Than it hit me: Why am I worrying about how others have written mermaids in the past? My mermaids are nothing like these other mermaids. My mermaids do this. My mermaids do that. My mermaids live here. My mermaids look like that. Before I knew it I had written about 20 pages on what I thought of when I thought of mermaids, and that went on to become my guideline for the mermaids I write about. To hell with hw others wrote about mermaids... THESE mermaids were MY mermaids and I was going to write them MY way or else!

Well, I suggest that you do the same thing with your elves. Think about what it is that you like about elves. What do you see in your mind when you hear the word *elf*? What do they look like? What do they wear? Pointed ears or no? Dark skin? Pale skin? Multiple skin types and races? Where do they live? Are they jolly little elves 2 feet tall? Are they tall thin stately elves 6 feet tall? Do they have blue skin, live in mushrooms and are 3 apples tall and spend their lives running from evil wizards?

If you start looking at the history of elves, you may find yourself shocked when you learn that the tall thin Tolkien elf so popular today is actually only a few decades old and did not exist in historical elf stories. Historically elves were tiny beings who lived under toadstools (thus why the Smurfs live in mushrooms). Why? Because Tolkien himself was the creator of the tall thin human-like version of the elf. So when you go back in time looking for historic references to elves, you'll find a lot of tiny creatures only inches tall. Tolkien based his elves of Celtic folklore about dryads (tree spirits) so if you want to find historic info you'll be looking at dryads and tree spirits not elves.

There is no reason for you to stick with what others have written about elves. Take Tolkien's example and create your own elves totally different from the norm. Who knows, 20 years from now everyone may think of your elves first when they think elves (instead of Tolkien's or the tiny mushroom folk).

The same holds true no matter what you are writing about. Remember, it is YOUR story, YOUR character. You can write them anyway you want to!

I think it depends on the story you are writing.

Personally my fantasy is usually of the non-magical or very limited magical kind, so I do not personally put too much effort in a magic system. Reason: It is not important to my story and my story can move forward without any magic involvement at all. When I do use magic, I use it on a very limited basis. For example: in my Twighlight Manor series there are a few *magical* characters: sirens, born with the ability to control electrical currents and water; phookas, born with the ability to shape-shift and *throw* fire; and an alchemist who spent most of his life studying how to control the energy around us and use it in a typical wizard like manner. The sirens and phookas are born with their abilities, and thus technically are not *using magic*. The alchemist is the only one who really does any magic that could actually be called magic. As you can see, for the purpose of my series, I have no need to create a system, other than to write up a few rules about what these characters can and can not do. The whole system easily fits in one paragraph.

But, as I said it depends on your story. If your fantasy is set in a place where magic is a daily thing and is done by many beings, than you are going to want to write up a system of some sort. Why? Will, that's easy. If you have your ice wizard saying he can only preform a snow making spell if he has the tooth of a rare snow dragon, in chapter one, than you better not have him cast a snow storm with a simple wave of the wand in chapter 10! The purpose of writing a magic system is so that you know who can do what, when they can do it, and what they need to do it with, so that you keep your story consistent once you start writing.

So my answer to your question is this: match your level of magic system creation to the level of magic used in your story. If your story has no magic, than no system is needed. If it has minimal magic, you would only need a few lines typed up. If magic runs rampant in your story, than you may very well find yourself needing a details set of charts, graphs, and a full 50 page glossary of which spells do what. There is no right or wrong answer here, because it all depends on your story.

A real fight only lasts a few seconds. I figure it should take the reader no more than 5 seconds to read the fight. Thus my fight scenes tend to be quick and short.

Regardless of how many people are fighting, (even if it's a big battle) I pick out only two fighters, and focus on them. I describe the actual action between the two fighters, focusing more on the inner emotional response of the one that is losing, (even if they are not a MC) thus making the winning fighter seem much more fierce. Usually I focus more on the pain from the blow, than the actual blow itself.

Generally my fight scenes are less than three paragraphs long. I use short sentences (Less than seven words each). I use simple small words. I let it flow past the reader quickly, giving them the illusion that they are being pulled through the action at the same break neck speed in which the action takes place.

Granted I don't write very many fight scenes either, but anyways, I hope that helps you some. Good luck!

Fantasy doesn't require magic to be fantasy. I would alternate history either fantasy or science fiction depending on how you went about it.

If it stays pretty accurate to history, and has real historical figures as the major characters, and just retells what would happen if one event was changed (say Hitler won WWII and ganged control of all of Europe), than I'd classify it as science fiction.

If it stays pretty accurate to history, but all of your characters a fictional than it could go many ways: historical, fantasy, romance, drama, horror, science fiction, military, etc. It all depends on the actual plot and story elements that you end up using in it.

of course if it adds stuff like faeries, griffins, dragons, etc, than it would be fantasy.






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