15 Things To AVOID When Writing Fantasy | WritingCraft

so you are a writer you're working on your first fantasy novel or series I'm going to be sharing with you 15 Cardinal writing sins that you should take great care to avoid when constructing your story and I'll even be sharing some practical strategies on how to work around these common writing mistakes as ater and a writer myself these are things I've noticed that bother me and as I continue on my writing journey I want to be making more of these writing related videos not only to help fellow aspiring writers out there but also to help myself so these videos act as sort of a journal that I can look back on to make sure I'm not making these mistakes in my own writing if you avoid the 15 things I'm going to be sharing with you your writing is going to see a big Improvement [Music] real quick this video is sponsored by glassesusa.com it is the holiday season which means it's the best time to buy the thing you have been eyeing for a while glassesusa.com is one of the biggest eyewear 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than any other genre fantasy requires a lot of planning and structure because depending whether you're riding low or high fantasy you're basically creating an entire world and structure is the skeleton that gives stories shape and so I think it's very important to have structure but you don't want to plan out everything and this is something that I struggle with myself I am not a panther by any means I am a planner I like to have everything figured out so that I feel like I have Solid Ground to stand on when I'm writing but I'm realizing that I don't need to plan out as much as I thought I needed to if the story is left without any Breathing Room it can actually disrupt the natural flow of the book and it can close you off to opportunities that you might realize later on sometimes it's good to Branch off on where the story naturally feels like it's going even if it's something you weren't planning readers that have been around for a long time can sense when a storyline has been forced into the narrative it can feel unnatural and it can break immersion now an effective way to work around this is to create a rough outline but leave chances of flexibility down the road that way when you're writing if new ideas or a different direction pulls up the narrative you can adapt to that the next thing to avoid is a slow beginning there are plenty of slow Burns that I love Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb or the dragon bone Chair by Tad Williams being two that I highly recommend however if you're a new writer trying to get into the genre one of the worst things you can do for reader retention is start your story slow you should be trying to make the beginning as intriguing as possible because for a debut novel the first chapter pretty much decides the fate of your novel for instance with the book that I'm writing originally I start it off just by having the main protagonist meet up with an informant in a Tavern they share some drinks they joke around and then they move over to the ministry headquarters to get their their mission this is how I changed it page one starts off with the main protagonist realizing he's poisoned he feels the symptoms starting with tingling in his fingertips to a numb tongue and his mind is racing trying to discover what poison it is if he has an antidote and who in the room poisoned him my protagonist is a traveling doctor he also knows a lot about poisons so not only is it giving some information about him but it's also adding a ton of tension and it's leaving unanswered questions why would somebody poison the Doctor Who in the room poisoned him and how is he gonna find an antidote jumping right into action and supplying the reader with a bunch of unanswered questions is a great way to do it now you do not necessarily need to start off with like a life or death action scene by any means but you do need to deliver enough Intrigue and questions to keep a reader reading and turning the next page and the next page and the next starting slow with the history of the land or a monologue of a person or place is going to put the reader to sleep keep in mind verbosity the quality of using more words than needed wordiness long flowery indulgent paragraphs that are packed with adjectives and uninteresting descriptions are going to fail to hold the interest of your reader which leads me to the next one do not info dump I feel like this is pretty basic advice that any person is gonna give but even some of the best authors on my shelf that I love are prone to info dumping now and then but you should try to avoid it as much as possible some writers want to explain the history and give a detailed event of the plot and things going on right in the first chapter and it ends up just sounding like a history lesson an intricate description of your magical realm is not actually gonna interest the reader until they're well acquainted with the protagonist and the plot a better way to build your world is to give small little details that can be explored and unraveled as the story moves along long this makes it appear much more natural during the beginning stages the reader has no idea what you have to offer them as an author and so you should be trying to all them with your entire writing Arsenal rather than giving them a long-winded and boring history lesson and guess what if you place a large part of your world building at the beginning nobody is actually going to remember it you also do not need to over explain the mechanics of your magic system right from the get-go you need to trust that the reader is going to pick up on these as they read through the story first you need to create Dynamic scenes and then you could delve deeper into the finer details later in the story my next advice if you have a storyline that doesn't actually contribute to the main plot then you need to cut it this can be extremely hard to do I understand you have poured your heart and soul into the side quest where the protagonist helps a lonely old lady befriend a pigeon so that she won't be lonely anymore it's very heartwarming stuff but you need to cut it it needs to go it can be very easy to lose yourself in your writing and start writing without purpose or intent but you don't want to write just to write and have a bloated manuscript with story threads that don't really have any substantial value this can be difficult to do on your own you might want to hire an external editor or proofreader or even some beta readers so they can help point out things that don't seem necessary a prime example of a complex fantasy where all the storylines converge is A Song of Ice and Fire by good old Georgie Boy no matter how many conflicts are happening at once they're all important and most the time they have to do with who will sit Atop The Iron Throne you also don't want to introduce too many characters at once the fantasy genre especially epic and high fantasy is known to have a large cast of characters and have different point of views switching every chapter and if you don't introduce them in a timely manner and with care the the reader's gonna feel overwhelmed and frustrated they may even mix up the names and the personalities which can ruin the story for them it is good practice to restrain the amount of named characters and different points of view so you don't overwhelm the reader The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan is pretty notorious for having a ridiculous amount of characters The Wheel of Time Has 2787 distinct named characters those aren't all point of view characters but still it is a lot to wrap your head around however it doesn't start off that way the majority of book one is from rand's point of view where only a handful of characters are introduced until later in the book where the point of view shifts between Rand perin and naive maybe that's a bad example anyways my point is do not not confuse the reader with a ton of different characters don't confuse the reader in general that's kind of a sub point for a lot of these you also don't want to confuse the reader with multiple voice Styles this may seem like an obvious thing to avoid but it's actually a big issue with a lot of new writers as a general rule of thumb you don't really want to be switching between first person and third person constantly it's not gonna have the intended effect on the reader that you think it will have there is some exceptions there's some stories that do this really well if they have a sort of frame story like the Name of the Wind by Patrick rothfuss this does it extremely well but to execute this well you need a lot of skill and you need to handle it carefully along those same lines the tenses of your verbs should stay consistent as well if your story is being recounted as if it already happened you need to make sure your verbs are in past tense if your story is unfolding before the eyes of the reader then you need to make sure your verbs are in present tense if you want readers to feel like you're a professional if you don't want to scare them away way consistency in verb tense is key magic number seven relates to your magic system you want to have limitations in place do not give its users Limitless power many aspiring fantasy writers run into issues when it comes to crafting their magic system mainly because they have no defined repercussions of magical use in their narrative every magical use should have a consequence to it and you need to find a way to explain this to the reader otherwise it just looks like magic can fix whatever and there's no downside to using it this eliminates the element of danger and suspense and it can take away from the Integrity of your story not to mention overpowered characters can be very boring to read readers love tension that's what keeps us reading and we like to feel like danger can strike at any moment this keeps readers on their toes which translates to more engagement also another tip once you specify those rules and limitations of your magic system you need to be consistent with it don't go breaking those rules later on because readers are going to notice and there's no worse turn off in a book than writing inconsistencies do not give everything away like I said readers hunger for suspense and tension and mystery I have been building and building my world I've been working on the magic system the religion the currency everything but sometimes it's also good to have some mystery and unanswered questions a mysterious atmosphere not only evokes imagination but it is a prerequisite for creep and wonder and these can be very powerful however creating a sense of mystery requires restraint you the author need to keep yourself from Overworld building keep them guessing throw some red herrings in there and a ton of foreshadowing so they feel rewarded when they do discover what's going on I recently discovered something in my story that I I realized I revealed too early so instead I decided to add in foreshadowing and build up to that reveal do not base your narrative around common fantasy cliches and tropes tropes are not inherently a bad thing I mean you find them in everything there's tropes that I like and there's tropes that I dislike but you want to steer clear of setting up your story around these heavily overused fantasy tropes now there is a reason why many of these tropes we've seen over and over and why they have success because fantasy fans are drawn to some of these ideas the best thing you can do to make your story stand out and feel original is to rework some of these give them your own creative spin to fit your narrative subvert the reader's expectations there's plenty of examples of stories that subvert some common tropes Gray's sister by Mark Lawrence turns the prophecy Trope on its head The Magicians by Lev Grossman subverts the magic school and the narnia-esque Fantasyland tropes really it's pretty much a theoretical deconstruction of the genre as a whole our Scott Baker is all about subversions of tropes read the darkness that comes before for example book of the new Sun half the book is about subverting tropes A Song of Ice and Fire is constantly playing with readers expectations Terry pratchett's Discworld books these books not only stick to certain tropes to a key but they also subvert them and they do it in a satirical way and it's amazing please please do not use excessive fantasy jargon and overly complicated names it can be fun coming up with names for characters and cities and mythical beings but it can also go way way too far if I read a book where immediately I have all these fantasy made up words and I have no idea what the meanings are of them and characters are referring to events and places that I I have no idea what they're talking about after a certain amount of time trying to figure all this out I might just end up giving up but yeah difficult names to pronounce that are extremely complicated is is kind of a big turn off for me when I'm reading books especially if it's a protagonist's name that I have no idea how to pronounce one of my favorite series The Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson he kind of jokes about this by naming one of his characters this but people call him Rock for short and I thought that was hilarious avoid making Perfect characters with no flaws or if a character is just plain boring if they don't have many opinions if they lack a distinct voice and they don't have many flaws I'm gonna have a hard time caring for them readers are drawn to characters that have admirable qualities but also shameful ones as well it makes them feel more realistic and relatable because believe it or not we're not perfect and if there isn't any character blemishes there's not room for character development I would even say it's important to introduce your character as imperfect as soon as you can if you intentionally make them flawed this also opens you up to different story paths later on and can help with building more conflict and the more conflict the better your hero does not need to make the best choice every time let them mess up you need to show their ups and downs rather than just having them on a never-ending winning streak you do not want to make a Mary Sue character do not Place action over plot action in a story can be utilized to keep the reader engaged it can make them worry for the survival of the characters they love and overall it just builds up that tension that we love so much not to mention battles and sword fights assassinations it can all be really exhilarating and fun to read but not if they're pointless or excessive if there's no goal and no end in sight I'm gonna have a hard time being invested in this action scene try to only use action or battle scenes when the plot actually requires it this leads me to the next one avoid Miracles what do I mean by that I mean Miracles that bail characters out of life or death situations many many fantasy writers are guilty of this mistake and I it annoys me every time when all hope is lost somehow our heroes escape a situation unrealistically or the rules of magic Bend to save them or some other Miracle a deus ex machina this is when a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly solved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence rather than feeling like a major plot twist it ends up feeling like a cop-out because the author didn't know what to do it's much better to find a different way to resolve the issue and you gotta remember that it's okay for your protagonist to not win every single time read are actually going to become more attached to the characters that fail and go through hardships because they feel believable have your protagonists succeed at some obstacles and fail at others this is going to keep the reader guessing next you don't want to use your dialogue as a history book oftentimes you're gonna see writers use dialogue as a way to explain different events in history and different aspects of the world and this works much better than just doing a big info dump but you also need to make sure your dialogue feels conversational and emotional and not like a textbook imitate real life speech as much as possible and write dialogue that moves the plot forward if the main characters Converse in melodramatic cliches that feel like it belongs in an ancient Greek play then the reader is probably going to put down your book pretty quickly you don't want it to sound overly literary and you also want to avoid overly long conversations that mess up the pacing and don't add much value in real life people don't always talk in a straightforward question and answer format oftentimes we might want to evade a question by changing the subject or using other tactics writing your dialogue like this is going to help it feel more realistic and maybe you even want to read your dialogue out loud so you can tell whether it sounds real or not and finally do not underestimate the importance of pacing you don't need to have non-stop adrenaline fueled action but you also don't want to bore your reader with long periods of nothing happening over the course of your novel having a variety of pacing is key periods of high intensity and action followed by laws where the reader can kind of absorb everything that just happened and most importantly you want to have a continuous escalation towards the climax of your novel if you don't do this the payoff at the end might not have the intended impact that you wanted the climax of many of Brandon sanderson's fantasy books have come to be known by fans as the sanderlanche because of how well he escalates things right near the end this is something you should be planning in the outline of your story I would recommend looking into the classic three-act structure because this is a good foundation for your writing and it also is a good example of how to Pace your story so those are 15 things you should avoid while writing your fantasy novel let me know if any of these helped you or if you have some other advice you would like to share feel free to leave it in the comments don't forget to check the links in the description for glassesusa.com they have a bunch of holiday deals going on right now also let me know if you want to see me make more videos on writing because I really enjoyed making this video anyway that is it I'll see you guys next time [Music]

Channel: Captured in Words

Views: 174,549

Keywords: writing advice, writing tips, authortube, fantasy writing, things to avoid when writing, writing mistakes, writing fantasy characters, booktube, writing advice for beginners, writing advice fantasy, how to write a book, writing, reading, books, read, fantasy books, brandon sanderson, writer, 15 writing mistakes, top writing mistakes, top writing tips, best writing tips, how to start writing, publishing advice

Id: fo40-m03WVg

Length: 19min 3sec (1143 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 07 2022