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New Writing Challenge: Fantasy???
Sep. 27th, 2021 02:50 pmQuick story time.
As a kid, I read mostly fantasy (because there wasn't really science fiction for young adults). Because of that, I always thought that I would become a fantasy author.
But when I started trying to write fantasy, I had the hardest time finishing a novel. I could always figure out how to begin a novel and how to end it, but I had no idea how to construct anything in the middle.
Eventually--many, many years later--when I finally became capable of writing complete novels, I didn't write fantasy. I wrote science fiction or contemporary/near-contemporary instead, and I tended to gravitate toward romance and/or mystery plots. I realized that fantasy as a genre describes setting, but not plot, and so I always struggled with how to plot fantasy novels.
Recently, I figured out something even more specific. As a writer, I'm not really a plotter or a pantser; instead, I construct stories using scenes as building blocks. I have to come up with key scenes for a novel first before I'm able to string a coherent story together. (I don't usually come up with the scenes in chronological order, either, which means I end up zig-zagging in time, working both backwards and forwards from specific scenes in order to link the plot together).
And my problem with writing fantasy was that I never figured out how to come up with enough scenes to make the story coherent.
With romance or mystery, it's easier to learn how to develop scenes. Both of those genres require you to hit certain beats in order to stick to narrative conventions. For a romance, it's the meet-cute, the development and setback of a growing relationship, and the third-act break up (or other climax). For a mystery, it's the discovery of a dead body (or missing person, etc.), dropping hints, red herrings, following clues that either lead to new insights or temporary dead ends, and the final reveal.
You might be wondering, "But didn't you read a lot of fantasy? If so, why did you have trouble internalizing how to construct fantasy scenes?"
Well...
My problem was, I enjoyed the fantasy books I read, but I never wanted to write a fantasy book that was similar to the ones I read. Again, fantasy describes a setting, not a plot. For example, in my teens, I tried to write a fantasy dystopian novel and then, later, a political intrigue fantasy......even though I had never read a dystopian novel (this was before the blowup of The Hunger Games and the subsequent dystopian trend in YA) or political intrigue fantasy before (no, I didn't even read Game of Thrones). Clearly, I was always destined to fail.
(I mean, technically I did finish writing that political intrigue fantasy novel, but it ended up in revision limbo and then I lost interest in it. I'd always felt like there was something deeply wrong with the story, but I couldn't figure out what it was at the time.)
Now, though, I'm much more aware of my own writing process (even if it took a lot of reflection to get to this point).
And I think--I think--I'm going to attempt writing fantasy again.
The prospect is still daunting to me, even though I'm three complete manuscripts into my writing career. That graveyard of unfinished fantasy books from my teens and early twenties still haunts me when I think about attempting fantasy. But I hope that understanding my own writing process, as well as weaving in romance and mystery plots, might help me finish writing a fantasy novel, for once.
Something that really helped me in my self-reflection was watching Alexa Donne's YouTube channel and hearing her talk about her recent YA thriller, The Ivies (which I really enjoyed). In one of her videos (unfortunately I can't recall which one at this moment), she talks about how she wanted to write a boarding school thriller, and she knew early on that she wanted a big house party as the climax, because that's the kind of scene she enjoys reading about in boarding school thrillers. I'd never considered that kind of thought process in constructing a story before.
I think a lot of writers feel so much pressure to come up with something *new* and *original*, but really, there's no such thing as coming up with a totally new idea, and also, you can only learn how to write stories by studying other stories that already exist and are written well. Hence why I failed when trying to write a political intrigue fantasy when I'd never read one before, and why I had an easier time with romance and mystery plots because I'd read enough of those books to internalize their building blocks on a scene-by-scene level. (Hell, even one of my big writing projects before my recent novels, a 20k-word-long Captain America fanfic, ended up inadvertently borrowing ideas for scenes from other fanfics I'd read.)
So yes, I'm going to try writing a new fantasy book with all this in mind. Let's see if I can make it happen.
As a kid, I read mostly fantasy (because there wasn't really science fiction for young adults). Because of that, I always thought that I would become a fantasy author.
But when I started trying to write fantasy, I had the hardest time finishing a novel. I could always figure out how to begin a novel and how to end it, but I had no idea how to construct anything in the middle.
Eventually--many, many years later--when I finally became capable of writing complete novels, I didn't write fantasy. I wrote science fiction or contemporary/near-contemporary instead, and I tended to gravitate toward romance and/or mystery plots. I realized that fantasy as a genre describes setting, but not plot, and so I always struggled with how to plot fantasy novels.
Recently, I figured out something even more specific. As a writer, I'm not really a plotter or a pantser; instead, I construct stories using scenes as building blocks. I have to come up with key scenes for a novel first before I'm able to string a coherent story together. (I don't usually come up with the scenes in chronological order, either, which means I end up zig-zagging in time, working both backwards and forwards from specific scenes in order to link the plot together).
And my problem with writing fantasy was that I never figured out how to come up with enough scenes to make the story coherent.
With romance or mystery, it's easier to learn how to develop scenes. Both of those genres require you to hit certain beats in order to stick to narrative conventions. For a romance, it's the meet-cute, the development and setback of a growing relationship, and the third-act break up (or other climax). For a mystery, it's the discovery of a dead body (or missing person, etc.), dropping hints, red herrings, following clues that either lead to new insights or temporary dead ends, and the final reveal.
You might be wondering, "But didn't you read a lot of fantasy? If so, why did you have trouble internalizing how to construct fantasy scenes?"
Well...
My problem was, I enjoyed the fantasy books I read, but I never wanted to write a fantasy book that was similar to the ones I read. Again, fantasy describes a setting, not a plot. For example, in my teens, I tried to write a fantasy dystopian novel and then, later, a political intrigue fantasy......even though I had never read a dystopian novel (this was before the blowup of The Hunger Games and the subsequent dystopian trend in YA) or political intrigue fantasy before (no, I didn't even read Game of Thrones). Clearly, I was always destined to fail.
(I mean, technically I did finish writing that political intrigue fantasy novel, but it ended up in revision limbo and then I lost interest in it. I'd always felt like there was something deeply wrong with the story, but I couldn't figure out what it was at the time.)
Now, though, I'm much more aware of my own writing process (even if it took a lot of reflection to get to this point).
And I think--I think--I'm going to attempt writing fantasy again.
The prospect is still daunting to me, even though I'm three complete manuscripts into my writing career. That graveyard of unfinished fantasy books from my teens and early twenties still haunts me when I think about attempting fantasy. But I hope that understanding my own writing process, as well as weaving in romance and mystery plots, might help me finish writing a fantasy novel, for once.
Something that really helped me in my self-reflection was watching Alexa Donne's YouTube channel and hearing her talk about her recent YA thriller, The Ivies (which I really enjoyed). In one of her videos (unfortunately I can't recall which one at this moment), she talks about how she wanted to write a boarding school thriller, and she knew early on that she wanted a big house party as the climax, because that's the kind of scene she enjoys reading about in boarding school thrillers. I'd never considered that kind of thought process in constructing a story before.
I think a lot of writers feel so much pressure to come up with something *new* and *original*, but really, there's no such thing as coming up with a totally new idea, and also, you can only learn how to write stories by studying other stories that already exist and are written well. Hence why I failed when trying to write a political intrigue fantasy when I'd never read one before, and why I had an easier time with romance and mystery plots because I'd read enough of those books to internalize their building blocks on a scene-by-scene level. (Hell, even one of my big writing projects before my recent novels, a 20k-word-long Captain America fanfic, ended up inadvertently borrowing ideas for scenes from other fanfics I'd read.)
So yes, I'm going to try writing a new fantasy book with all this in mind. Let's see if I can make it happen.
