Look at this. Obviously, this is the sentence that has the hairs raised on the back of your editor or someone who knows how a story works:
It's a fantasy novel. Well, a trilogy, actually.
If you don’t want that someone to slowly backpedal and then run, you’d best be prepared to take it in the chin and hear this: “your book sucks!”
“What makes you think my book sucks? You haven’t even read it,” you say.
We've all read your fiction
This will shock you, but we’ve all read your fiction. Every hundred times we picked up a self published manuscript, chock-full with somewhat varied but just-as-flat characters and somewhat varied but just-as-nonexistent plot.
Sad as it may be, if you’re guilty of the usual suspects:
- you don’t read
- your story is thin,
- your characters are weak or nonexistent,
- your plot is dime-a-dozen or worse: there isn’t one,
- you tell, rather than show,
your fiction will always suck.
Every successful author has work that they’re not proud of. But fiction, especially fantasy, has a greater chance of blowing up in your face as a writer, than the rest of the genres combined.
Draw from multiple wells, not just Tolkien
Tolkien had a very different process when he wrote Lord of The Rings:
- He made up an entire language,
- around which he created an entire fictional world,
- a world that had its own history and geography
He was able to do that because he dedicated his life to studying the medieval age. Or the dark ages.
Also, Tolkien taught everything he knew at Oxford, in his Literature Class, with everything that it involved.
Don’t fall into the trap. Don’t imitate Tolkien.
As a matter of fact, don’t imitate any author, ever. Because you won’t have much of a following. You’ll come off as a copy cat.
Even George RR Martin made it with Game of Thrones, because he combined two great authors: Tolkien, obviously, and another one whom you may not know, Maurice Druon, the author of the Accursed Kings.
Let Tolkien be Tolkien and Martin be Martin.
You might have the talent, but…
You don’t have the time or you don’t have the discipline that Tolkien or Martin had.
If I’m wrong, allow me to congratulate you, but most of us have a schedule that’s quite merciless and we have to make due with whatever time we’ve got left.
Tolkien was famous for starting over and tinkering his story, every time someone told him something didn’t make sense.
Yes, that means that he was starting over from scratch, each and every time.
There was no lean publishing back in the day. Because rising authors were anointed by publishing houses.
You couldn’t, at that time, take the world by storm and publish your novel by yourself.
Learn how to write a good story
Say you’ve self-published your book on wattpad and you’ve had some mild success over there.
If you want to impress an agent or a publishing house, you’d better have a premise.
Don’t know what a premise is? It’s what the story is all about.
Don’t know how to write a good story?
A good story is made from the following ingredients:
- what you write about or what is your theme
- what’s your what if question or what is your concept
- what does your hero do or who is your main character
- secret recipe to writing stories or the story structure
And a good premise is this:
theme + concept + character = premise
A great story is made from all of the above, plus a great writing voice.
A trilogy means you have three separate stories
That’s the ugly truth. Maybe you’ve thought “How do I sell more books” or “How do I connect with my readers?” and you came up with the idea that you’ll write a trilogy.
Making one story into a trilogy, with no actual meat in any of those three books will spell your doom as an author, faster than anything else.
A trilogy means three stories.
Take a page from JK Rowling’s book, when she created Harry Potter. She split the main story into seven books, but each book has its own plot. Learn how to write a story, first and only after you’ve mastered that, learn how to write a series.
You may know everything there is to know about your magical creatures, the made up language that you’re going to use, maps, charts, whatever. But I’d advise you against starting with them.
I know, because I’ve been there. Here are my two maps, from the very first novel I wanted to write 12 years ago.
I’ve blurred out the names on the maps, because who knows? Maybe one day I might carve out some time and get to write this novel I wanted to write since I was a kid.
Forget the history, the geography, the way Tolkien did it. You’re not Tolkien and you don’t have time for that.
What about Stephen King?
You might be what’s called a pantser, an author who doesn’t know how his story will end and gets to find out as he writes it, across multiple drafts.
That’s the way Stephen King is doing it, as he’s said time and again that he doesn’t believe in plot, but in the story of a rich and juicy character.
But that’s the catch, even Stephen King is doing this: he’s writing character driven stories. He’s abandoning the Tolkien shtick from his act, the whole “I’ll build my world, and then I’ll add my story.”
Even his Dark Tower series is one great big story that revolves around its characters. It’s not necessarily plot driven, though it turns out to be one great epic.
But even Stephen King has all the other elements of theme, concept and story structure covered. He might not do it on purpose, because he’s become one hell of a master at writing compelling stories, after more than 50 years, but he’s doing it alright.
Don’t believe me? Read The Long Walk, the first book Stephen King ever wrote, at the age of 18, and later published under his pen name, Richard Bachman. And after you’ve finished reading it, check out the case study of The Long Walk and find out more about its theme, concept, character and writing voice.
Ok. You’re right. What now?
See if you have a story in the first place.
Dismiss, for the time being, details like races, languages, religions and so on, and really get at the heart of it: the conflict.
What generates the conflict? That’s what you’re after.
You may have the seeds for a good conflict, therefore, the seeds for a good story and a great novel.
Say you have the generic split up medieval kingdom, from 1456 years before your present day action, though it’d be a good idea to find a setting for your story, other than a medieval one.
Your splintered kingdom turned out this way because your generic Cain and Abel had a head-on war, and at the end of that war, you had some generic hooded figure predict the coming of the generic chosen one.
Instead of the same old boring chosen one trope, go back in time and tell us why your Cain and Abel had the clash. What was the reason for your Great Sundering of The Realm?
That’s where you should start with. Don’t think “Oh, but I’ll make a prequel, once my trilogy hits the best-selling status.”
Please, please, please don’t think like that.
Prequels are only meant to meet one or two of the following ends:
- the fans fell in love with your world, because you’ve delivered a great story
- you have some unexplored ideas about the backstory of a handful of characters, once the story gains a decent following
- or to make more money, once your story gains a cult following
That’s it. There’s rarely the case where you’ve created a world so vast and wonderful, that you can do whatever you’d like, the way JK Rowling does with her Harry Potter and Fantasic Beasts world.
You should write the origins, first.
And afterwards, write the generic prophesied chosen one story, where he gets to restore balance to the realm.
There’s the old adage “write what you know.” I can safely surmise that you’ve never witnessed a realm having its balance restored, but you know a thing or two about brotherly quarrel or at least some internal family affairs that eventually got out of control.
Go back to the drawing board
Look through all of your notes and scribbles and find the nuggets of gold that will make up the interesting themes, concepts and characters.
In short, find the good and solid premises.
You don’t need armies and dragons to make a good story. All you need to write about is the human nature at odds with itself.
Once you have that, you can write romance, fantasy or science fiction. It doesn’t matter.
Find the red wire that crosses your story and you’ll be on your way to becoming an author.
If you liked this article and think others should read it, please share it on Twitter
theplotdude [at] gmail [dot] com