What We've Learned About Writing Fantasy

As I've been chipping away at the third book in my Unfairy Tale series, I've been reflecting on how much I've learned about writing fantasy over the years. The main thing I keep coming back to: Be patient with your story. The characters, plot, world, etc. might feel flimsy at first, but every round of revisions will make them stronger. 

That's my bit of wisdom. Let's hear what some other Inkies have to say.

Hilari Bell's 3 rules for writing about magic:

1st Rule: Magic must cause more problems for your characters than it solves. 

The title of the writing tip in which this appears is: Taking Away the Easy Button--'nuff said.

Corollary 1 of Bell's first rule: If the climax of your novel is a magical duel, it better be something besides magic that lets the hero win.

Corollary 2 of Bell's first rule: Don't make your magic so powerful that there's no excuse for the hero not to use it to solve his problems.

2nd Rule: Magic can't happen offstage.

Which not only means that the POV character can't just shut her eyes while magic is happening, it means that the author has to describe it in detail.

3rd Rule: All characters in your novel must react to magic in the way that a real person in that situation would.

Because the way to make your reader believe in the unbelievable is not to have the POV character accept it, but to have the POV character doubt it, and have it proven to him.

Dawn Metcalf's three magical tips: 

1) Read, read, read & write, write, write. (True of all genres, but still!)

2) Believe it. If you, the author, believe in yourself and your world and could answer any question that might come up in order to explain how everything works, then that will read true on the page.

3) Don't go with Idea #1. Your first idea lights the spark, but it's usually the easiest idea, the one that floats on the surface of your thoughts. Keep pushing, delve deeper, ask hard (and often contradictory/devil's advocate) questions in order to have what Terry Pratchett's witches might call Second Thoughts and Third Thoughts about your idea. It's amazing how it will gain width and breadth and spread in directions you never would have imagined. That is it's own kind of magic!

Lisa Gail Green's short but sweet advice:

1. Always write about what excites/interests you the most.

2. Write what scares you. Let go of your inner editor at least for the first draft.

3. READ.

Erin Cashman's writing encouragement:

1. Allow yourself a lot of imagination time. Take walks, turn off the radio if you're driving alone . . . really let the What ifs play out in your head. Have the courage to take a big leap of faith.

2. Don't talk yourself out of something because you're afraid it seems stupid. When I first wrote the scene when my main character communicated with a hawk I worried it seemed cheesy. It ended up being my editor's and my agent's favorite part of the book.

3. If a character has a power or gift, it should feel authentic to that character. Don't just put it in as a plot device. Think about what it would be like to be him or her, and write accordingly.

4. Have fun and have faith!

Jennifer Nielsen's words of wisdom:

I've learned that magic has to have rules. As a beginning writer, I looked at magic as the er, "magical solution" to any sticky situation in which my characters might find themselves. Now I understand that within any world that I create, there must be strict definitions for what magic can and cannot do, where it originates from, who can and cannot use it, and whether there is a price for its use. Defining those rules gives structure and authenticity to a fantasy story.

Okay, now it's your turn! What's the biggest thing you've learned, as a reader or a writer, about fantasy?

Featuring A. G. HOWARD and SPLINTERED

Hi, P. J. Hoover, here, and I'm so happy to be here today featuring A. G. HOWARD and the release of her debut YA novel. I adore everything about this book, from the cover to the author to the words inside!

SPLINTERED by A. G. Howard (Amulet Books, January 1, 2013)

You can read my review here!

And now here is A. G.

*****

PJHoover: You’ve run into an old classmate from high school and you tell them SPLINTERED just came out. They ask what it’s about. What do you say?

AGHoward: It’s a modern spinoff of Alice in Wonderland, in which Alice Liddell’s granddaughter has to face the darker side of Wonderland’s whimsy to fix Alice’s mistakes and the resulting curse on her family.


PJHoover: I love hearing happy publication stories. Can you tell us the path to publication for SPLINTERED?

AGHoward: Wow, that’s a tough one to sum up in one answer. To really get the full effect, you’d have to know how low I was just after writing it. I actually left my first agent over this book, and worried I’d never find representation again. As any good writer knows, showing beats telling, so these three links can show you my journey better than I can tell it:

http://author-aghoward.livejournal.com/tag/agent#asset-author_aghoward-20744

http://querytracker.net/success/ag_howard.php

http://authoraghoward.blogspot.com/2011/08/overwhelmed-ever-grateful-blessed-and.html


PJHoover: I love the blend of classic literature and fantasy both above ground and down the rabbit hole! What made you decide to create this wonderful, twisted retelling for ALICE IN WONDERLAND?

AGHoward: Thank you! I’ve always been a huge fan of Carroll’s masterpieces, but the actual spark lit back in in April, 2010, when I first saw the Tim Burton & Disney Alice adaptation. I’m a very visual person, and the Burton cinematography was so vivid, techno-colored, and evocative that I didn't want the movie to ever end. So I came up with my own settings in my mind, and played out Wonderland continuations and scenarios. The idea became too big to contain in my head and I needed to get it out on paper.


PJHoover: There are tons of books out there. What are five awesome reasons why SPLINTERED should be the one for them to read?

AGHoward:

1. SPLINTERED’s main character, Alyssa Gardner, has been blessed (or cursed) with the power to talk to bugs and hear their whispers, the very thing that sent her mother to an asylum. So to keep herself from going crazy, Alyssa does the only thing she can to silence them: capture and smother them in bug traps. But, being a frugal and artistic gal, she doesn't waste the corpses ... she preserves them and uses them in her mosaics. The girl's not squeamish, which is a good thing, considering some of the creatures she encounters in Wonderland.

2. Alyssa’s best friend/secret crush, Jebediah Holt, is a bit of a bad boy due to his scarred childhood. He rides a souped-up Honda CT70, wears a lip labret, and is fiercely protective of Alyssa and his younger sister, which sometimes triggers glimpses of his white-hot temper. But like Alyssa, he relies on his art for therapy, curbing his violent side through sketching and painting. His favorite subject? Gothic faeries with veined-wings—black tears pouring from their eyes as they stand over withered human corpses in haunting depictions of misery and loss.

3. Alyssa’s sexy-but-enigmatic guide through Wonderland’s warped landscape is Morpheus, a fae-like creature who may have dark motives all his own. His characterization, wardrobe, and smug sneer were heavily influenced by two of my favorite anti-heroes in fantasy movies from my teen years: Jareth from The Labyrinth, and the Crow from, you guessed it … The Crow.

4. Both Alyssa and Jeb skateboard, proof that an author’s passions sometimes bleed into their books. Although I never actually learned to skateboard, I can rollerblade with the best of them. In fact, when I get stuck on a story and need inspiration, I go to a neighborhood park and roller-blade several times around. It opens up my mind to new ideas and directions I might never have come up with while sitting boxed inside four walls.

5. Throughout SPLINTERED, Alyssa often turns to her mother’s copy of Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece to help her solve riddles. I’m hoping this will set my book apart from the other Alice in Wonderland young adult spinoffs being released in the near future. From what I’ve seen, SPLINTERED is the only one that is actually a tribute to the original Lewis Carroll tales, with creepy counterparts of the characters from both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

PJHoover: When it comes to marketing, what do you think makes the biggest difference in whether a book is successful?

AGHoward: An online presence. Especially for YA authors. You need to be on FB or twitter and have a blog / website where you can connect with your fan base and let new readers know about your books.


PJHoover: What is next? WIPs? Future publications? Please tell all!

AGHoward: I was signed for two YA novels, but the contract didn’t specify a series, so I’m working on another contemporary fantasy. I’m not at liberty to give any more info than that yet (but soon, I hope!). I also have one New Adult novel, a Victorian gothic paranormal love story, that I hope to sell sometime this year, if my agent and I can find a publishing home for it!


PJHoover: What has been your favorite experience as an author thus far?

AGHoward: Hanging out and chatting with the readers who love your book and characters. THEY ROCK!


PJHoover: Please share your favorite inspirational thought!

AGHoward: You always pass failure on the way to success.


AGHoward: Thank you for having me, PJ! <3

PJHoover: Thank you so much for being here!








From Amazon:

This stunning debut captures the grotesque madness of a mystical under-land, as well as a girl’s pangs of first love and independence. Alyssa Gardner hears the whispers of bugs and flowers—precisely the affliction that landed her mother in a mental hospital years before. This family curse stretches back to her ancestor Alice Liddell, the real-life inspiration for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Alyssa might be crazy, but she manages to keep it together. For now.

When her mother’s mental health takes a turn for the worse, Alyssa learns that what she thought was fiction is based in terrifying reality. The real Wonderland is a place far darker and more twisted than Lewis Carroll ever let on. There, Alyssa must pass a series of tests, including draining an ocean of Alice’s tears, waking the slumbering tea party, and subduing a vicious bandersnatch, to fix Alice’s mistakes and save her family. She must also decide whom to trust: Jeb, her gorgeous best friend and secret crush, or the sexy but suspicious Morpheus, her guide through Wonderland, who may have dark motives of his own.

*****

About A. G. (Anita):

A.G. Howard was inspired to write SPLINTERED while working at a school library. She always wondered what would've happened had the subtle creepiness of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland taken center stage, and she hopes her darker and funkier tribute to Carroll will inspire readers to seek out the stories that won her heart as a child.

*****

P. J. Hoover is the author of the upcoming dystopia/mythology YA book, SOLSTICE (Tor Teen, June 2013), the upcoming Egyptian mythology MG book, TUT (Tor Children's, Winter 2014), and the middle-grade SFF series, THE FORGOTTEN WORLDS BOOKS (CBAY, 2008-2010). You can read more about her and her books on P. J.'s website or blog.

Would You Wear It?

So I was trying to think of a post, and I came up with the topic of jewelry (or jewellery, for our British and British-spelling Canadian friends), but when I tried to come up with some kind of angle that was deep, or insightful, or compelling in any way...well, let's just say Holiday Brain hit, and this is what you get:

Would You Wear It?

Good Jewelry: Good Jewels help you. They guide you somewhere important/safe/hidden, they gift you with untold powers, they make dead-ish, super old, mind-numbingly beautiful Faerie Queens get all glowy and come talk to you in the middle of the night and show you stuff you need to see. (oh, and if you've never read Sarah posting about her own jewelry talismans and the stories behind them, and how one inspired the design of Eye of Elena, you should).

Verdict: WEAR IT

Powerful, Ambiguous Jewelry: Amplifiers in SHADOW & BONE...trying not to give too much away...suffice to say if you're from Ravka, you might have certain powers, and those powers would benefit from a magical amulet of some sort, called an amplifier. Anyway, if you've read the book you'll understand why this one's ambiguous (I guess, technically, they could all be considered ambiguous). 

Also included here are the magic rings from The Magician's Nephew that transport the wearer to the Wood Between Worlds, which could be either the most awesome adventure EVER or terrifying beyond imagination. Seriously, be careful with those things!

Verdict: Depends on how you feel about amped-up power and possibly dangerous adventures

Cursed Jewelry: Cursed Jewelry is Bad News for the wearer. Just ask Katie Bell, who somehow survived the Floating Brain Death curse of the opal necklace, but will probably never wear another necklace. 

Verdict: Yeah, this one's a no, no matter how purty it looks in the shop window

Bad Jewelry: Bad Jewelry does Bad Things to Good People. MOTHER OF ALL EXAMPLES: Onering, Lord of the Rings. Need I say more? It bends hearts intent on good to betrayal, turns Galadriel into an alarmingly skinny photo negative of herself, and swells Frodo's eyes to alarming and greedy proportions. Good thing Gollum is there to take the fall for EVERYONE. *cries* (why is Gollum my favorite? always has been, even in the books) (well, Gollum and Samwise)

Verdict: NO NO NO NEVER DON'T DO IT REMEMBER SCARY GALADRIEL

Those are all the examples I could come up with, but that's because I am horribly underread, in spite of all the times I was caught with a book in my lap during class (Babysitter's Club does not count as fantasy, and, as babysitting does not support the buying of much jewelry beyond the plastic variety found at Clare's, there weren't really any jewels of significance in that world). Feel free to school me in the comments! 

P.S. Jewelry is officially the hardest and most annoying word for me to type. It even beats 'appropriate'...well, almost. I HATE typing appropriate.

New Comment System!

Hello, fellow Inkies!

Just wanted to pop in to say that we've converted the Enchanted Inkpot comment platform back from Disqus to Blogger's native system. Many of us were having issues commenting and Disqus was acting unstable in some respects. We hope that this change to the Blogger commenting system will encourage more discussion on the Inkpot! We know that many of you simply come to read, but one of the biggest pleasures we take as contributors is to get into fabulous conversations over fantasy books, craft, reading, etc etc.

Cheers! Here's to a fantastic 2013 with many great books ahead!

Cindy Pon is the author of Silver Phoenix (Greenwillow, 2009), which was named one of the Top Ten Fantasy and Science Fiction Books for Youth by the American Library Association’s Booklist, and one of 2009′s best Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror by VOYA. The sequel to Silver Phoenix, titled Fury of the Phoenix, was released in April 2011. Her first published short story is featured in Diverse Energies, a multicultural YA dystopian anthology from Tu Books (October 2012). Cindy is also a Chinese brush painting student of over a decade. Visit her website at www.cindypon.com.

Featuring LAINI TAYLOR and DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT

Hi! P. J. Hoover here, and today I'm thrilled to feature Laini Taylor, celebrating the release of the highly anticipated sequel to DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE!


DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT by Laini Taylor (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, November 6, 2012)

So with no more introduction, here is Laini!

*****

PJHOOVER: I love the blend of real world and myth in your worlds. The two worlds are layered so well throughout. What first sparked the idea for the worlds in the series?

LAINI: Thank you! The seed of the book was a scene that came out of freewriting, in which a blue-haired girl was arguing with her monster father. There wasn’t a big picture or idea, I didn’t have any premise or concept in mind, I just fell in madly love with these characters and wanted to know who they were. I have found my optimal process to be a systematic alternation of freewriting and brainstorming. Starting out, I love to just let go and see what happens, what seeds of ideas my mind flings wildly out, and which of them end up intriguing me the most. In this case, Daughter of Smoke & Bone pretty much arose from the fact that Brimstone was wearing a wishbone around his neck and was a peddler of teeth, both things that appeared by chance in that first freewrite. It took thousands of words (and several months) of what-ifs to get a complex plot to “snick” into place. So, what is initially born out of a state of forced creative abandon (freewriting) is pretty quickly subjected to a much more rigorous and analytical state of mind (brainstorming). This wasn’t really your question, but I guess the answer to your actual question is that the worlds weren’t pre-planned. I didn’t know starting out that there would be another world. I believe that my freewriting brain supplied “the other door” in the back of Brimstone’s shop—freewriting brain is always throwing me mysteries to solve!—and … it had to lead somewhere … and somewhere became Elsewhere.


PJHOOVER: When it comes to marketing, what do you think makes the biggest difference in whether a book is successful?

LAINI:
*crickets*
This is a great mystery to me, and probably always will be. My thought is that the greatest factor—and probably the only quantifiable one—is publisher marketing dollars. Authors feel a lot of pressure to generate heat and buzz, but it is just so hard. Unless you’re already famous, then your voice just won’t reach very far no matter what you do, and every moment you spend on marketing efforts is stolen from writing. It’s not that it wouldn’t be worth it if it worked, I’m just not sure it does. Depressing answer? Sorry. I might be totally wrong!


PJHOOVER: Finish this sentence, and tell us why. Writing is a lot like…

LAINI: Writing is a lot like … um … dieting. No, really! It takes a lot of will and discipline and stubbornness, and it really affects your emotional well-being. A good writing day and I’m on top of the world, filled with confidence, pride, calm, happiness. A bad writing day and I’m anxious, grumpy, self-scathing, good-for-nothing. It’s the same with dieting. In both cases, at the end of the day, my self-worth is up or down depending on how I did!


PJHOOVER: What has been your favorite experience as an author thus far?

LAINI: It’s very hard to say! My earliest awesome moment was at a writing festival, when an 11-year-old boy swooned at my feet! He was a fan of my Dreamdark books, and literally fell into a swoon, on the ground, upon meeting me. That was pretty great. After that, I’d have to say that the parties that my publishers themed on Daughter of Smoke & Bone were pretty much beyond my wildest dreams. Little Brown’s was in New Orleans, and included “smoke” and “bone” cocktails, props like skulls, a fortune teller. My UK publisher hired this amazing costume firm, Prangsta, to kit out a historic nightclub in Piccadilly—and I got to dress up like a chimaera!


PJHOOVER: Please share your favorite inspirational thought!

LAINI: For writers:
"Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal: my strength lies solely in my tenacity." - Louis Pasteur
I have a lot more on writing, and a whole column of favorite writing-related quotes here: http://notforrobots.blogspot.com/

PJHOOVER: Thank you so much for being here!

***

About DAYS OF BLOOD AND STARLIGHT:

Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a world free of bloodshed and war.

This is not that world.

Ar student and monster's apprentice Karou finally has the answers she has always sought. She knows who she is--and what she is. But with this knowledge comes another truth she would give anything to undo: She loved the enemy and he betrayed her, and a world suffered for it.

In this stunning sequel to the highly acclaimed Daughter of Smoke & Bone, Karou must decide how far she'll go to avenge her people. Filled with heartbreak and beauty, secrets and impossible choices, Days of Blood & Starlight finds Karou and Akiva on opposing sides as an age-old war stirs back to life.

While Karou and her allies build a monstrous army in a land of dust and starlight, Akiva wages a different sort of battle: a battle for redemption. For hope.

But can any hope be salvaged from the ashes of their broken dream?

*****

P. J. Hoover is the author of the upcoming dystopia/mythology YA book, SOLSTICE (Tor Teen, June 2013), the upcoming Egyptian mythology MG book, TUT (Tor Children's, Winter 2014), and the middle-grade SFF series, THE FORGOTTEN WORLDS BOOKS (CBAY, 2008-2010). You can read more about her and her books on P. J.'s website or blog.