Summary:
Fantasy is a popular genre of entertainment for adults and chilren alike. Writing in the genre is dream many people share, but most find it too daunting to bother. This article seeks to expel scary and intimidating myths with concrete writing advice and general directional tips, from stylistic must-haves to story structure, character formation, and the avoidance of cliches.

Details or Sample:
Fantasy is arguably one of the most involving, demanding and taxing genres to create within. Whole worlds must be orchestrated, including landmasses, characters, cultures, religions, even languages. As it requires so much creation, the more creative you are, the better. However, that doesn´t mean you shouldn´t heed any rules.

What follow are ten points to keep in mind when it comes to writing a fantasy novel. Don´t let them stifle you - they still allow for multitudes of creative freedom.

1) GENERAL WRITING RULES

The first thing to remember is that many necessary qualities span all genres of writing. Keep your spelling up to snuff, know your grammar rules, punctuate properly, avoid using all caps, and format, format, format! Use a new, indented paragraph whenever a new person speaks to keep your work easy to read.

Spell check isn´t an excuse to be lazy. It isn´t as smart as you are, and can miss a lot of mistakes. Write your best, and then run spell check anyway, just in case. If you can find someone well-schooled in literature, see if you can get her to proofread for you, too.

2) STORY STRUCTURE

Most stories have a general method of creating suspense: the plot builds in intensity, suspending the reader´s disbelief (that means keeping the reader emotionally involved in the plot and characters) more and more intensely. The characters are put in sticky situations, the mystery gets closer and closer to being solved, and then BAM! The climax pops up about four fifths of the way in, resolving the conflict, often with a twist that appropriately disregards the expectations built in the reader. The rest of the story is dedicated to calming down and reaching further resolution, often tying up loose ends. Every book in the Harry Potter series follows this structure transparently, aligning the end of the school year with the climax of the story.

This basic structure is open to reinterpretation and modification. Two or more of these "intensity peaks" could take place at the same time, in parallel branchings-off of the same story. Any one of these plot lines could also contain sub-plots, sub-twists, and sub-resolutions within them, taking the reader on a roller coaster ride of excitement.

Make sure to keep your reader in mind. Once you get used to writing, it will get easier to be both the creator and the entranced reader at the same time. If you can use your objective, constructively critical viewpoint to direct how the story itself is told, while keeping it entertaining and surprising, it will be all the better for it.

3) CHARACTERS

While fantasy always centers around the conflict between good and evil, no character should be all-good or all-evil. A scruffy street-rat thief can be very endearing and funny when working for the good guys, and no character creates more suspense than the double agent, whose allegiance remains questionable for most of the story (can I get a "Snape, Snape!"). Your hero should have negative character traits to vanquish internally, and your villain should have reasons for being so darn bad - at the very least, her own rationale for her actions.

The bottom line: you should be able to empathize with every single character you create. If they seem real to you, even when you criticize the believability of their motives, they´ll seem real to your reader, too.

4) THE FAMILIAR VS. THE UNFAMILIAR

The themes of your story should be familiar. Center it around good and evil, love and hate, honesty, integrity, greed, and deep desires. Let consideration of the Seven Deadly Sins (and their virtuous counterparts) be your guide. The characters should be able to relate to or embody these themes as well. You have the option to spice up the relevance of your story by including more modern issues, like racism, feminism, and politics. Terry Pratchett is a fantasy writer who does a lot of this, often with hilarious results.

The settings of your story, however, should go off in the opposite direction. Make the physical "stuff" of your world as weird as possible. Strange weapons, crazy architecture, interesting land masses, and funky gadgets can all be used to bring the themes to bear. Imagine that you´re setting up a symbolic dialog between familiar themes and weird things, in an attempt to make the familiar themes new again. Have these two parts of the story interact with one another constructively, disguising the themes within the material. For example, you could discuss racism by showing a human disdain for elves, or create a king who has an awful lot of G. W. Bush´s characteristics.

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