A Girl who wrote Fantasy

Do's and Don't

Fantasy series such as George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and Rowling's bestselling Harry Potter series still win over new generations of fans. How can you also write a successful series, avoiding clichés of the genre? Here's how to write fantasy series, the 'do's' and the 'don'ts':

First thing is you must (And I mean must!) know your Genre and an Important part of writing in any Genre is knowing a little about its History.

Our oldest literature is fantasy fiction. From The Epic of Gilgamesh to The Odyssey to Beowulf, the stories that have survived the disappearance of ancient civilizations are stories of powerful Gods, magic, quests and monsters. This isn't to say that fantasy has to include all these things. There are no Gods in Harry Potter, for example.

J.R.R. Tolkien is generally considered to be the father of modern English-language fantasy fiction. There were fantasy novels written prior to Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings cycle, such as Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees and The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison, but it was the commercial success of Tolkien's work that really mainstreamed the modern genre.

Tolkien based his own work on his study of northern European sagas and linguistics. One of the other strong influences on modern commercial fantasy fiction was the role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons. It was itself influenced by Tolkien, and the enormous popularity of both spawned countless works and tropes.

If your fantasy series features traditional creatures likes elves and trolls and wizards, you are going to have to do something very original with it.

If you're writing a fantasy series, you likely know your genre well. But do you read widely, or do you prefer a specific handful of authors?

The only way to really become familiar with the clichés and pitfalls of fantasy is to read across decades and subgenres. Try not to read only portal or medieval fantasies. Even if you think a fantasy novel is bad, note what makes it bad and remember to avoid doing the same.

If you're writing a portal series, for example, you'll show your characters travelling to a parallel, magical world at some point in the story. In J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, the portal in the first book is the hidden 'Platform Nine and Three-Quarters' at King's Cross train station.

This is not a typical fantasy portal. It's not a magic arch wreathed in unearthly vapors or some glorious destination. Rowling's magical passageway is something as mundane as a real, major non-fictional train platform in London. It's outlandish, but Rowling makes it believable by explaining why 'muggles' or ordinary people can't see it. And it's hard to use the portal your first time. This makes the portal and its function detailed, believable.