Fantasy: the refuge of the obese, teenage boys with skin conditions, and people who want an escape from reality without devoting themselves to the violence that being a member of ISIS or a K-Pop fan necessitates.  Still, fans of fantasy literature are a tough nut to crack. While I’m not much a fantasy writer, I was a long-time fantasy reader who read dozens of fantasy manuscripts from up-and-coming authors before my publishing company was shut down for siphoning electricity from the building next door. And I can’t tell you how often I’d spend a cozy evening in that office, draped in six or seven Afghans, reading under the light of a dozen candles, ready to be taken into a new world, only to have cliches, stereotypes and paper-thin backstories bring me back to the real world and remind me of all the blisters on my hands from pulling copper wire out of the walls. Anyway, we’ll look at the biggest mistakes fantasy writers make on this edition of Stories’ Matter.

Now, in this video there’s a lot of common mistakes that could be applied to any type of fiction that I won’t go over. Everybody knows a good book has little expository dialogue, has characters that are three dimensional and doesn’t use words like “rizz,” “spankbank” and “beer-o-clock.”

Mistake One: Using Info Dumps and Having Inorganic Worldbuilding

Does this sound familiar? “At the start of the Fourth Age, during the reign of King Vailor the Wise, the worlds of men, elves and grogs were divided…” You get the idea. The only good thing about books like this is they usually burn long enough to provide adequate heating for your office once the city cuts your gas line.

Sure, one of the selling points of fantasy is the history and the worldbuilding. But it’s got to be organic, to relate to the characters and their struggle. While history is important, the average person doesn’t have a great grasp on it. In America for example, people think history is a bunch of granite statues of traitorous slaveholders, instead of, you know, things educated people wrote down in a fucking book. Anyway, my point is, I don’t think about Sir Walter Raleigh every time I open the office window to have a smoke.

So, instead of starting your fantasy novel with a history lesson or a lore dump, start with some immediate action, like a bar fight, a house burning down in the middle of the night or two home intruders trying to hide the corpse of a man they killed on accident. Your reader will relate to this more because, if they’re anything like me, something like this has happened to them in real life.  

Mistake Two: Overreliance on the Hero’s Journey

Easily the greatest of Joseph Campbell’s crimes against humanity, several generations of fantasy writers have been doomed by the hero’s journey. Though Campbell’s not to blame entirely: if Homer, Tolkien, and Boll hadn’t been so successful, we wouldn’t have a million hacks trying to copy them.

But, you might be asking, what I am supposed to write about it, if I can’t write about a farm boy who sets off to fight a great evil, is tutored by an old sage and finds a special weapon to help him on his journey? Well, what I’d do, is take the plot of any other kind of movie and convert that into fantasy.

I mean, who wouldn’t want to read a fantasy retelling of films like Bio-Dome, How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days or The Squeeze? I went in a more artsy direction with my first fantasy novel, a retelling of My Dinner With Andre, about two monks having dinner in a tavern after one comes back from sabbatical. It was actually my best reviewed book of the 2000s even though it sold poorly and was partially responsible for my business partner’s suicide.

Mistake Three: Having an Inconsistent or Incoherent Magic System

The great thing about being a fantasy writer is that, unlike drama, mystery or historical fiction writers, you don’t have to be smart enough to think of logical reasons for things to happen. But just because you can write yourself out of a corner doesn’t mean you should.

Your system should be well-defined. Maybe, like in Harry Potter, the use of magic takes decades of study, though why it takes decades to learn how to flick your wrist and say, like, ten different goddamn Latin words, I guess I don’t know.

And you need to put limitations on your magical system. If your monks are able to immaculately conceive children while keeping their vows of celibacy, what’s to stop any pervert from impregnating every fair maiden in the village? Of course, I explained this in my novel, though, as I’ll show later, it led to a whole other list of problems.  

Mistake Four: Giving Your Characters Shitty Names

Just look at some of these names. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to pronounce most of these. And don’t go the other way and give them common every day names. No character should ever be named Greg. Hell, no person in real life should be named Greg.

There are a few hacks for people who have trouble with names.  Dead tongues are always a great choice, but don’t make the same mistake I did and try to use ones from the Voynich manuscript.

Portmanteaus are another solid option, which is where you put two words together. This is how George RR Martin came up with the name Daenerys and how I came up with the name Dickswayne Heathersmash.

You could also use your take the people in your own life and slightly modify their names, but that’s not always a good idea, which leads me to the final mistake…

Mistake Five: Making it a thinly-veiled confession of your personal debauchery

Fantasy often works best when it’s an allegorical response to modern day issues, like the British class system or how a power vacuum can lead to religious fundamentalism.

It works less well when it’s an allegory about how you impregnated your business partner’s wife on a trip to Mexico and you’re hoping she leaves him for you. And even if you can convince your fans that your Stephen King diet of corn, milk and pure fishscale cocaine was to blame, you’ll probably burn a lot of bridges and need to move to a cheaper office in a part of town where drug dealers hide bodies of rival gang members.

The main takeaway: Fantasy is about escape from the disaster that is your personal life. Keep it that way.