How to Write a Good Fantasy Story: The 5 Basics and the Bullshits
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The first thing I think of when I hear the word fantasy will surprise everyone.
Dr. Jordan B. Peterson
No, he's not a famous fantasy author that's going to take G.R.R. Martin and J.R.R Tolkien and shove his cock through one's ass and have it burst out the mouth of the other. He's a simple psychology college professor that became famous after he was attacked by violent liberals when he refused to obey the new thought police of Canada back when The Triggering was at its strongest.
Now, ironically, the fantasy world of the liberal left isn't exactly what makes me think of fantasy when Jordan Peterson gets mentioned. Instead, it's his approach to mythology, legends, and stories that gets my creative gears greased up like an Indian in a sauna surrounded by moist vegene. The guy is a master at explaining how something as simple as the lack of parents in Harry Potter is a big part of a much more important range of themes and ideas that we get at a face value. I've been writing stories for years, and just a few minutes of watching his lectures blew my mind instantly in how simple so many things I missed were.
And that's exactly what we're going to try to explore today: how to blow someone's mind with fantasy stories.
Fantasy, be it in the form of a book or a movie or show or game or whatever you plan to do, is any form of speculative fiction that is set in a fictional universe. It can be based on our world, but it doesn't exactly have to be our world, and usually it's BETTER when the world the fantasy takes place in is entirely made up.
But... it's usually never made up, is it?
I mean, when we think of fantasy, it usually takes place in a strangely familiar setting: medieval Europe. And why not? Most of the fairy tales we know of, and the setting of Lord of the Rings takes place in that very setting. Castles, dragons, kings, queens, sleeping beauties, bad wolves, vampires, white knights trying to defend trannies, slavery, the death of millions from disease and famine. It has everything liberals love and more. If you think about it, almost anything in a fantasy could relate to liberals these days.
White knights who are willing to sacrifice their masculinity to defend a person they don't know in the hopes they don't have their inner rapist become revealed. People magically changing what they are in the blink of an eye. Humans turning into violent furies because they can't control their gay thoughts. Psychic pedophile vampires. Walls defending a prosperous nation from invading savages and mindless zombies. There's freaking black people, now, saying that they are orcs and considering an orc "bad" is racist.
We're living in a fairy tale, people. Wake the hell up. The matrix is full of glitches. Hit or miss is an encrypted message from the admin saying there are too many errors and too many big butts. I'm tired of these plastic bitches waddling around like rugrats because they got butt implants. Feminine anime girls are much better and Asians are superior.
I know you're confused, and that's a good thing. So is everyone else. Why did you even click on this? You wanted to learn how to write fantasy, right? You thought this was going to be easy? What, you think this is your mom, you faggot? Nothing involving writing is that easy, son. Are you offended? Hi offended, I'm dad.
Introduction
There's a lot of bad advice out there, and a lot of beginners, naturally, fall for it. We think it's safe and the right direction, but then we, later on, pay for it without knowing. This is the bullshit I hate, the stuff from articles and even books (most notably the Stephen King: On Writing) where we take a professional opinion and stay as a nobody.
Then there are all of these basic things that people don't realize are the footholds of writing fantasy, yet we have everyone trying to hide them and make us forget what we're intending on doing in the first place.
I don't want to get into conspiracies here, but I will say that a lot of professional writers don't want competition. Why create competition and better writers when that means you will become irrelevant? I'm on to you guys, you can't pull this charade forever. You Marxist writers and your postmodern commie propaganda are not taking my guns away!
5. Inspiration
When we write a story, something inspired it. Something got you to say "hey, I totally need to write a story like this!"
Fantasy is the perfect place for that! You can write whatever you want, but instead you want to write another medieval fantasy, right? You played too much Skyrim, played too much Dark Souls, watched too much Game of Thrones, played too much D&D, JOed your D with your H until you Ced. You know what you're problem is, you're on that cell phone all day and it's rotting your brain. Those aren't thoughts, those are tears in the matrix as dimensions are merging because the amount of radiation entering your brain wasn't meant for humans to endure daily.
I get it, you're in the zone. It's this area of thinking I like to call "inner autism" and it's time you unleash it. Don't contain your inner autism like you're trying to hold back your nut after humping twice and already feeling the pre-cum flowing out because you feel like you're on a time limit since you're trying to hurry up. You have work tomorrow. It's late, but you're horny and there's no way you can get any shut-eye with ol' throbber poking out of your pajamas.
Whatever your inspiration is, just make sure you try to experience anything and everything. The second you prevent yourself from experiencing something is the second you close a door to an opportunity. This doesn't mean you should start reading up all the gay porn on Tumblr fanfiction. You have to simply keep your mind open, but also reasonable.
In other words, read Mein Kampf.
Not only should we know about the things we love, but we should also know about the things we hate. In fact, the things we hate should be what we know the most about.
The basic: read anything and everything, especially if it's taboo and especially if you hate it.
Just imagine hating something and not knowing anything about it. To go back to Jordan Peterson, he is a big researcher in communist things and even goes far enough to buy and get excited for soviet artwork. Not because he agrees with their ideas, but because he's fascinated with what he despises. For us to create good fantasy, we have to know what our narrative is supposed to tell and even more what we should avoid.
Have you ever seen something mainstream that you just didn't like, but you never actually SAW it? We can go to a lot of go-to punching bags like Twilight and maybe even Harry Potter, but what we don't realize is that we are using our hate to block off and hide from something. We are preventing ourselves from knowing what we don't like and why.
The Bullshit: Reading what's famous or critically acclaimed.
Now, this point is a bit iffy, since I will always love a lot of critically acclaimed like Lord of the Rings and Conan the Barbarian, but what I mean here is that people want us to read them and find out why they became popular, rather than why it was written.
It's like saying "look at the Bibble and see why it's sold so many copies" rather than saying "look at the Bibble and see what it can teach us about life and ourselves". And as we all should know (including the atheists out there) The Bibble is a powerful thing.
We should not close ourselves off to any idea, and we shouldn't limit ourselves to what is popular. Doing so will prevent us from advancing in fantasy, and it's been in a standstill forever since Lord of the Rings was written, pretty much.
But why has it been in such a stable setting? Why do most fantasy stories relate to the same kind of setting and plot that we've seen a million times?
4. Plot
A good fantasy story is a fable or a fairy tale. One that can be summarized and used as an example to explain an idea or belief. Just go through the list of all your favorite fantasy stories and take your favorite parts of it. Can you use them to compare to a real-life situation or even a real-life event?
Let's continue with Lord of the Rings. It's a journey with strong characters and weak characters and people die all the time, but there's the hobbit that takes the ring and throws it into the volcano to stop the cold war before the nukes could be launched. It's an amazing story revolving around the teachings of the bible and all this good stuff. But a lot of times, we don't want to reference the bible, we want to reference Lord of the Rings because it's almost a more refined and appealing version of the bible.
It has those Norse mythology bits that make us want to talk about it and feel safe talking about it. No longer are we referencing a region, we're just talking about orcs and elves. But there's still the dark lord, and the white mage that is revived, and the tempter that follows the weak hobbit, there's the dependency on friendships and affiliations, and a great evil bringing opposing groups together to stop it.
Now take all of those themes and throw them in the trash!
I know I'm going to get a lot of flak for this, but I have to say it. A lot of popular writers these days are hacks that only want the paycheck and they are making basic slop to play it safe and not offend anyone.
It's pathetic.
People don't want to include the Bible references from LOTR that made it so worthwhile to read. People don't want to include ANY real themes in their works. Sure, there's a lot of more popular books now like The Black Company and Game of Thrones that hold a lot of political themes and tightly wound plots, but it lost all meaning of what fantasy is for.
Think to yourself for a second: is there anything "religious" about these stories? If you say no or "not really" then you can see that they are playing it safe. They are not telling us anything about a belief, but rather trying to impress us with a basic retelling of things that already happened in real life.
The Basic: You're NOT supposed to play it safe and go for the most basic story possible. You're supposed to make sure people get challenged and that ideas are challenged and your reader has to question their own morals and ideas. The second a person is invested in a fantasy world is the second you've won as a writer.
I talked about the game Banner Saga before, and I still think this game has one of the best fantasy stories out there. Not simply because it's all about Norse mythology, but because it tries to challenge the beliefs of the player. It makes us think, and you should want your reader to think too.
Nothing makes me happier than when a person reads one of my stories and then starts asking questions. You want questions. You want to get interrogated and you want them to shock your balls and whip your back with spaghetti noodles. And you also SHOULD OFFEND PEOPLE.
I don't mean you should start shouting the n-word in a Planned Parenthood lobby, but you most certainly should have offensive content in your fantasy story. I was offended when they killed Aeris in Final Fantasy 7. I was crushed, and it feels so good to see it after so many times because it's something that made me question the progression of the story and everything in it.
The Bullshit: Focusing on size.
This may seem like a complete reach-around compared to every other advice you'll see, but a lot of your plot will be useless. There's so much in a lot of books that don't have to be there, yet mainstream books are forced to be over 300 pages, movies have to be 1 hour and 30 minutes long, shows have to be around 12 episodes. There's all this stuff that is not needed.
At the same time, a lot of short stories (including my own) almost require more to be fully appreciated and enjoyed. It's this line between "give me less" and "give me more" that we simply need to realize what is important, rather than what could fill the page.
Like, do I have to go into dick references to make my point? I'm sure you can already imagine what I'm trying to say with it after just mentioning dick.
It's okay to have a basic plot and it's also okay to have a convoluted one. I think the most important thing is to make sure you can handle it and if you can make it your own. Fantasy is all about enjoying yourself and putting all your thoughts into a world you make. If you can handle a big idea like a Final Fantasy story, then, by all means, go for it, but keep all your ideas in mind and don't depend on filler for fulfillment.
The plot is all about what you want to say and what you want to express in your belief. The last thing you should do is waste time talking about something that you don't even believe in. If you are trying to go for a full novel and cannot fill the pages with useful points in your belief, or symbolism to enhance it, then you should go back to planning or plan on trimming the fat.
3. Characters
No fantasy story could go without a set of characters to torment. Isn't that what we do as writers? We torment and torture our characters, putting them to the edge, and challenge them in every way imaginable.
But why do we do this?
It's because, our characters are a part of us, and an important part of our ideas and beliefs. In fantasy, the character is less of an observer and more of a cause for events and changes. They challenge the world they are given and overcome things they normally shouldn't have. But what is a character without an idea behind them? What do your characters even stand for?
The basic: have your characters represent an idea bigger than they are.
I don't want to talk about Jesus all the time, so let's talk about the most common fairy tale out there: Prince Charming.
Just the name of the guy and you get a whole story out of it. What is he? He's the charming prince that saves the princess from a dragon, right? Fat Frumos, is what he's called in Romania, for those who are wondering about Romania for whatever reason.
Why is he a prince? He could have been any normal dude, but he has to be a prince. He could have been a king, but he's not, he's a prince. For a second, wonder to yourself: why a prince?
He's a prince because a prince is a seeker. He's not sitting down on his throne, controlling things, he's seeking something bigger. He still has to prove himself and turn into the king he's destined to become. He's incomplete without his princess, he's still trying to find his kingdom, he still has to do things with his own hands. He's charming because he's likable and charismatic and kind-hearted.
We don't want to hear about Prince Slob, waddling around with mustard stains. We want to hear about a charming man who we want to become, and it's the basic idea of a charming seeker getting the girl in the end. It's the classic tale of boy meet girl.
All these ideas relate to us on a personal level. We want to be accepted and liked and get the girl. But we can't do that sitting on the throne. It's this basic idea that makes any story about a Prince Charming so worthwhile and enjoyable, even when it's at its most basic form. We like to hear about this kind of stuff.
Now, you don't have to make every character a prince charming, but you should make your characters represent an idea. Have a guy represent murder and make them all about murder. Have someone represent learning and make them all about learning. Portray them in different ways, give them different things to do, challenge them in different ways.
A lot of us think that when we make our characters one note or a one-trick pony, then that's lazy writing. Here's the thing, it's not one-note, it's one instrument. Some characters can be an orchestra of sound, and that's beautiful, but others can be a guitar or a drumbeat, as long as you change up there tune once in a while.
The Bullshit: diversity and NPCs.
Okay, I can get into a lot of "I hate liberals" stuff right here, and I might. There's a lot to hate, especially articles like this that make diversity sound important.
Here's a spoiler: diversity is a lie from NPCs.
"What is an NPC?" you may ask. Well, an NPC is a "non-playable character" who is pretty much a program in the matrix. I know, it's a long story, it's a meme, but it's almost entirely true with how a lot of writers and bloggers act. Pump out a trendy article that doesn't help and make money from it. That's all they do, and it's so pointless and worthless, you cannot believe.
There's nothing more to diversity than following a trend and trying to appeal to a (possibly) bigger audience. But what kind of audience do you gain? Why nothing more than a bunch of NPCs of course. The people you appeal to should not be for false profit nor those who believe in a false prophet. Your audience should be people you can relate to on a personal level and almost a spiritual level. The second you try to sell your soul for diverse characters is the second you failed as a writer and are lost in history as another hack who didn't know what to do.
Now, this doesn't mean you shouldn't have diverse characters. Of course you can have different kinds of races, genders, disabilities, among other physical and mental traits. But this is all they are: traits. They don't mean anything to the actual story itself, and even if it's in a symbolic meaning, the meaning is so small that it wouldn't make a difference in a story with a bigger message.
Don't fall for the NPC lie. All they want is for you to fail and for them to make money off of your failure. They are crabs in a bucket of cum and the cum is all stale and moldy.
2. World Building
The building of your world is one of the most important elements in your fantasy... world. We have so many things to keep track of, and as writers, it's all part of the fun. Sometimes we have too much fun, get lost in our vast imaginary landscape. That's a good thing. It's all about daydreaming.
However, once the dreaming is done, it's time to get down to business and defeat the Huns.
Basic: give everything in your world a purpose.
As Smith talks about in The Matrix, the purpose is rather subjective. Or at least that's what he talks about. I don't know, The Matrix is a confusing movie unless you're simply watching the fight scenes.
Either way, it's up to you as the writer to decide what is important and what isn't. If you're bad at it, it will show, and that's not good. Being bad is bad, and being good is good, but if you're good at being bad, sometimes that's good.
Am I making it more confusing? Good.
You need to keep a level head and plan things accordingly. Write down what the idea is for your world, it's purpose, and the reason you need to include it. If the reason is weak or the purpose is not needed, then why keep it?
Sometimes, the purpose is mostly about parody and homage, and that is what makes it so good.
My heart turned into jew ash when I saw what Warhammer did with the fantasy tropes we all know and love with 40K. People think that the space theme wouldn't work and that a parody of these tropes is dumb, but it then became one of the most well known and loved franchises out there.
You have to be conscious of your ideas and about the world, you're making. Filling holes that don't need to be filled is like trying to glue over the pores on a cork. Why are you doing that? Stop it. I'm on telling you!
A lot of supposed dumb ideas become classics later on. You know, not a lot of people liked Lovecraft when he started out, but he kept on pushing through and now he has a freaking genre named after him!
Sometimes, your world-building is almost more important than the stories themselves, and this is why fantasy is so beautiful because it lets people explore the corners of their minds and flaunt all of their creativity without limiting things to realism.
Reality kills creative ideas, just how communism kills anyone who isn't a political toy.
Don't be a communist, be a great writer!
Bullshit: getting bogged down in your world building.
Oh man, how many times has this happened to you? You're writing up your ideas and talking about the tit size of your furry army when suddenly it dawns on you: there's no story.
It happens to the best of us. We get so caught up in the world itself that we forget there's supposed to be characters doing stuff with a plot and all that.
But it's so simple. You just... put the characters in the story.
I see this complaint a lot of Reddit. So much so, I think we are all tired of it by now. People complaining that they have a world, but no story. At that rate, the writer must be an artist with no art skills, because all you're doing is making a landscape.
What I don't get is why it's so hard to make a story if the world is so great. Could it be that it's a world full of nothing? That's fine, a lot of our world is full of nothing going on.
A dog is sniffing the ground, a tumbleweed tumbling by, some flies buzzing around a trash can, a homeless person asleep in a pile of his own vomit. Nothing is happening.
But, once we start going into the perfect way to make a story, and trying to fill in all the holes, now we're getting somewhere.
Seriously, a lot of our problem with story writing is that we are afraid of writing something new, or we are stuck with wanting to write something old, yet are too prideful to stoop to that level.
Stay on the level you're on, or advance to a higher level. Read more, mix genres around, mix plots around. The ideas are there, you're just not looking and thinking about it properly.
This is your fault and you should be ashamed of yourself.
1. Execution
Let's go back to Hitler, shall we?
He had the plot, made the characters, he had his world-building, he had his socialist inspiration. He had his idea down, he wrote a book about it. What stopped him was his execution, or rather, the mass of executions he had done in such a short time. You don't want to be like Hitler, right?
So, execute your story properly!
Basic: Make every sentence matter.
Sure, not every sentence is going to matter in the long run, and there's a use for every different kind of sentence, but it's the idea of why you wrote that sentence in the first place that counts. I would say "every word" but sometimes the syntax gets so abstract and we want to perfect everything, I think it's best to focus on the sentence importance itself, rather than how well you like a particular word alone.
Hell, there are hack writers like Stephen King who don't pay attention to the majority of what they write, word by word, and they get millions of sales from old people and wannabe hack writers. What do I know? The thing is that a lot of these people get lucky, they make it big out of nowhere. Harry fucking Potter was rejected more times than Chris-chan in high school.
But for certain, it was the way they executed their ideas that helped them become who they are, what they stand for, and how everyone sees them from now and forever. There are all the people in the history books, for better and for worse, who wrote their way into fame. Why not try your luck with it? Why not put your foot in the poo-stained doorway and start going at it?!
However, you shouldn't run into the door, that is stupid. You need to make sure you're ready, and you need to make sure your story is ready to be read, and you cannot do that until you make every sentence count. This is something that's all about editing and re-writing and it's a lot of hard work at first. After all the hard work, it's practically orgasmic how good you'll feel. You'll wipe the sweat off your balls and thank me after.
If you scream my name, I don't mind.
I believe more of your writing time should be spent on how the entire thing is going to be executed, rather than the other 4 points I mentioned here. And that's what is so hard about writing a good fantasy book, or any book in general. Nobody can teach someone how to execute a story. That's all on you, and you suck at life. I don't mean you as a person, I mean you as in "all of you, and including me". We all suck at life, that's why we always die in the end.
Bullshit: being afraid of failure.
Failure is what makes people avoid even trying in the first place. Nobody is immune to failure. It's like creative super AIDS that prevents us from actually going forward and instead we just sit there being useless like a communist slave.
The worst execution in the world is the worst thing you can do with your story, and that is never finishing in the first place.
Not finishing your story is the biggest sin you can do for your muse. You spend all this time planning, making the world, doing everything possible to begin, and then you don't finish?
Hitler didn't finish, and now he's infamous as a bad guy who did some things. You don't want to be like Hitler! Chant that to yourself when you take a shower in the morning, get yourself pumped up for your writing. You don't want to leave the world hanging on an idea that was going to blow everyone away. You want to let everyone know your idea, and then do it right.
But then there's also the idea that your idea is not that important. I'm sure a lot of us have had these huge and amazing ideas as a kid and then later on we totally forget it all and don't even want to bother with such a thing. How many firemen became firemen? How many soon-to-be-astronauts became flat-Earthers?
The world is crazy, and time only makes it crazier. There are so many ideas out there, there are so many stories, and here you are trying to reboot the same garbage. The thing is: that's okay. A lot of us don't know what's good, it's difficult to find out.
If you try to do the same thing over and over again or help in doing so, you're simply repressing your passion. If you follow the crowd, you get lost in the crowd. Don't be a sheep in the turd soup.
Be a chad.
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