124-101

100 – 76

75 – 51

Unplayed Board Games 50 – 26

50: Arboretum

This is an abstract game about planting trees. What interests me so much in this one is that you play out cards to build up your arboretum, and you score points for having trees go in ascending order. But in order to score a type of tree, you need it in your h and at the end of the game. So do you risk it that you might not get a tree of the type you need in order to complete a longer route and score more?

49: Call To Adventure: The Stormlight Archive

Call To Adventure comes in a few different flavors. There is the base game which is generic fantasy. That has an expansion for Patrick Rothfeuss Kingkiller Chronicles. And while I do like that series, I knew there was a Stormlight Archives version coming out, so I waited for it. I love the setting of the game, and I think a game where you are building up your characters story is cool.

48: 7 Wonders Duel

I got this one a while ago using store credit after a trade. And the game I think is going to be fun and probably better for me than 7 Wonders which I think is just okay. This does a lot of the same things, drafting, fighting, and science, but all in a two player package. And you can win by doing more than just getting points. Though, points are one way to win. Get one of each science card, you automatically win. Push the combat all the way to your side, automatically win. I like that a lot.

47: The Dragon Prince: Battlecharged

And now we’re back to another IP (intellectual property) that I really like. The Dragon Prince is a great show. And this is a two player battling game. You put together games of characters to face off against each other in battle. Looks some like Super Fantasy Brawl with card play determine a lot of what you do.

46: Paper Dungeons: A Dungeon Scrawler Game

It’s one of a couple roll and writes on this part of the list. Paper Dungeons as it says is a Dungeon Scrawler. So it is going to give you a bit of that dungeon crawling feeling all while being in a roll and write package. I hope that between it, Doodle Dungeons, Deadly Doodles (which I know I like) and Drawn to Adventure, I’ll have some fun adventure focused roll and writes.

45: Yggrasil Chronicles

This is a bigger box game, some of that though, is because it comes with a tree. One that you put together, and then it’s a cooperative game where you are trying to protect Yggdrasil, possibly, my knowledge of this one is limited. But the game looks like a lot of fun, and I know that the original is really challenging. Plus a giant 3d tree that rotates is cool.

44: Forgotten Waters

Forgotten Waters is a campaign game that I wish I played already. It’s gotten bumped down the list a little just because I’m playing more in person. But it was a good one that could be played via Zoom. In this game you are pirates on a crew working together through an adventure. There is voice acting for the story, and overall just seem like a fun time. And it uses the Crossroad card system from Dead of Winter that I love.

43: Mythic Battles: Pantheon

Definitely a big game here. I don’t have the whole Kickstarter, just the base game and Pandora’s box and that is a lot. It’s another one of those head to head battling games, like The Dragon Prince or Super Fantasy Brawl. This one is pitting Greek gods against each other. And what really intrigues me about this one is how you can pick up trees, as a god, and use them as a weapon. So the terrain is very much in play.

42: Catacombs & Castles

We go from an epic minis game to a one versus all dungeon battling game where you flick discs. And that is what intrigues me. I like dexterity games, and Catacombs & Castles seems like a lot of fun. It also seems a bit more complex, otherwise might be higher on the list. But I think if I learn the game it’ll be pretty easy and fast to teach.

41: Adventure Land

While I’ve gotten a lot of games based off of Sam Healey’s reviews on the Dice Tower, I have less based on Tom Vasel’s but Adventure Land is one. In this game you are taking out adventurers trying to get treasure. And they move across the board right and down. That means if a treasure shows up to the left or higher on the board, you might not be able to get it. So how to balance that out getting the best treasure, but still hanging back?

40: Space Base

This falls into that category of Foodies, Machi Koro, and My Farm Shop. A game where you roll dice and no matter what you get something. I like those games, and this is supposed to be the most gamer version of that. It gives you a lot to think about and you can build up some powerful combos while you try and get points. And you have more tracks to control and keep track of.

39: Chronicles of Crime

This is a deduction based game that I’m confident I’ll love. Chronicles of Crime, from Lucky Duck Games, uses an app that you can scan cards with to interrogate them and so you can actually look around the crime scene. The concept is cool and while the cases sound a bit less in depth than Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game, it might work better for some people because of that.

38: Fleet: The Dice Game

Roll and write game and actually dropped further down the list than I’d have guessed. Fleet is a game about building up your fishing fleet and scoring as many points as you can. I’ve heard that it’s great for combos, which I love in roll and write games. And it’s also more complex. I think that it is going I’m going to play solo pretty often.

37: Raiders of the North Sea

Possibly the highest true euro game on the list, Raiders of the North Sea has you building up your crew and taking them out to plunder lands. What intrigues me so much about this one is that your turn you put a meeple on, and take a meeple off. You can’t do the same one twice in a row, so it gives some interesting strategy to the game. And as you push out further and plunder, you lock some meeples to those locations, but get stronger ones back.

36: Horizon Zero Dawn

Based off of the Playstation video game, Horizon Zero Down doesn’t take you through the story of the game, but it puts you out on hunts against monsters. I’m excited to see how this game works, I really like the video game, but need to play it more. And I like the idea of just going out on a hunt, and it being a scenario and then done. It’s a bigger minis game, but not a campaign.

35: Reichbusters: Projekt Vril

Now we’re onto a campaign and Reichbusters is one that I picked up because it looked like so much fun when GloryHoundd YouTube Channel played it. And I think it’s going to be amazing. I need to get the errata cards taken care of, but sneaking into bases in WWII and finding all sorts of crazy experiments going on, it’s very Hellboy. And that theme is just fun, plus it’s not just kick down the door and shoot the board game.

34: Bloodborne

Another video game board game with Bloodborne. Another one that it is a bigger game but doesn’t play over a massively long campaign. I believe this one comes together over three different plays. Or it might just be that’s how the chapters, that are in the box, come out. Still, fantasy, fighting monsters and bad guys. Story going on, and from CMON, I suspect I’m going to enjoy this one.

33: Time of Legends: Joan of Arc

And another big box game. Time of Legends: Joan of Arc is almost a miniatures game more in the lines of a Warhammer where you takes two armies up against each other. But it does away with all that measuring. And it comes down to scenarios, there are characters, NPC’s, that you can interact with. And it’s time of legends because it takes the legends from the Joan of Arc time period and historical records, so it can add in dragons and things like that.

32: The 7th Continent

The 7th Continent has been on my shelf for a while. And I need to get it played before The 7th Citadel comes in, because I suspect I’m going to like that one better. In The 7th Continent, you wake up on a continent cursed, and need to explore and find a way to break your curse. I’ve heard that the first one is tough and takes a lot of time to play. Mainly so you learn the continent, but as you do the other ones, you have more of an idea of where to go.

31: Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write

The final roll and write for this list, and might be the final one overall. Dinosaur Island is a big game about building out a dinosaur park with a lot of euro mechanics. The Rawr ‘n Write is similar in that you’re building out a park. And you are trying to breed dinosaurs, it just does it in a roll and write version. So I’m very excited to give it a go. Supposed to be a heavier roll and write as well.

30: The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

The Crew is a cooperative trick taking game where you have limited communication. And while there is a space version, the Mission Deep Sea is supposed to help improve a few things. Mainly because you have missions, Mission Deep Sea makes them variable. The space one they are set. I like trick taking, and I need to play more of them.

29: Land vs Sea

Land vs Sea is a tile laying game where you are trying to complete areas of land or sea. But I care about completing land areas where as you care about sea. And the tiles are four sided, so having two in your hand gives you a lot of options. I wonder if this might replace Carcassonne when I play it. A tile laying game, but one that seems like it could be simpler.

28: Heroes of Land, Air & Sea

Now we’re back to a big game with Heroes of Land, Air, and Sea. This is a massive 4x game where you’re taking over lands, exploring new locations, fighting your opponents and building up your power. Twilight Imperium 4th Edition is a massive 4x game as well that I’d love to play set in space, but Heroes of Land, Air, & Sea just spoke to me as a 4x game I wanted to own.

27: Champions of Hara

Champions of Hara is a pretty big game, and one that seems like it will be quite unique. It seems unique because all the characters seem unique, and I like that about it. It has a fantasy feel to it, but it isn’t fantasy in the normal way. And I believe that you play the game in two parts. The first part is competitive. Then the second part, really second game, is cooperative where you work together to complete the winner of the first games story.

26: Floriferous

Final one for this part of the list is Floriferous. A set collection flower game, this one looks amazing. The artwork is great, and I like the mechanics, or how they sound. You basically draft cards from the columns. But as you draft, you place your pawn next to the spot. So the higher in the column, the next round, is going to go, then the next. Plus you are drafting scoring cards, great ways to get more points, but you’ll go last in the next round.

Final Thoughts

One more list of this, and then you’ll know about all the games i need to play. I actually had a game night this past weekend and I didn’t play any new to me games. I did have a few pulled out. But with the group, and player count, not all of them would have worked.

This part of the list also had a lot of big games in it. And while some of them might be harder to get to the table, even something that is more campaign like Reichbusters, you can play on off scenarios. So I should be able to get a number of them to the table. And some of the roll and writes, probably all of them, can be played solo.

Which one should I play first from this chunk of the list?

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These are all games that Fantasy Flight has taken from a license and turned into a ton of products. I’m pretty sure I’m evening missing a game. There are also other games like the Game of Thrones living card game or the new game that came out from CMON, Song of Ice and Fire. There’s a whole system of games, the Legendary Encounters based off of Marvel Legendary (another licensed property) for Alien, Predator, Firefly, Big Trouble in Little China, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and now X-Files. The point of writing all of that was that there are a ton of board games that have cool properties behind them and there are more coming out all of the time.

Unlike Robin Hood and Lovecraft’s work which can be slapped on anything because they are public domain, there are a lot that need to be licensed. So, what are some of these other stories that I can to see board games made out of?

I’m going to give the title of the book, TV show, movie, and some description of what I think would make it an interesting game or how I might go about building a game. I’m also going to be avoiding things that I know are already board games, you might not know there is a Kung-Fu Panda game, but there is, so I won’t be making my own for that.

R.I.P.D.

R.I.P.D. is a movie and comic about a cop who dies and then becomes a cop in the after life taking crazy bad guys. I like the theme for this one and think that with a bunch of minis and different cops who you could play, it could be a fun game playing against a scenario(s). You’d be trying to defeat different bad guys, or maybe a scenario would have you get information while trying to survive long enough to get back out. There’s a good number of stories that you could do with it, and while it is a lot of the current meta, I’d lean into the supernatural. Give the players and monsters abilities that they can use that are a bit game breaking, but come at a cost to the monsters of the players. That would then give the game a unique feel as compared to other scenario based games because it’s the last ditch sort of move instead of other variable player powers.

Kingkiller Chronicle

Now, there is something coming out that can have some tie in to this series by Patrick Rothfuss, but I want to take it in a different direction than that game. That one looks like it is more about the whole fantasy world, and like I said, it isn’t an actual game on the series, it just has a module for it, so it counts for me. I’d focus on the time at the university. People could take on different students, doing different things for different classes and the game would be split into four or five parts which would be different years at the school. Each turn you’d take an action to either study, go to classes, make money, or if you are playing a character who has money, just get money. You’d play as different characters who are studying at the university and at the end of each round you’d score points and depending on how you did and your income, you’d get your tuition set for the next year which would take money from you, and you’d repeat the process. If you didn’t have enough money, you’d be limited to actions in town or going and taking out a loan to be able to stay in school, but that would be costly for you. I think you could make this game interesting by having characters increase in skills, do sneaky things, and complete missions for teachers. I think I’d then have the players try and get as many points as they could in completing their education or at least advancing in it.

Killjoys

Killjoys is a space television series about a crew who picks up criminals and turns them in and deals generally with all the problems that are going on in their world. I don’t think I’d make my game as dramatic as the show, but I do think I’d set it up so that it really focuses on bringing in those criminals like the earlier part of the show does. It would somewhat be a pick-up and deliver game where you fly to a planet, pick up what you need, and deliver it back for money. However, the longer you go, the more troubles you are going to run into completing missions and also the more events and worse events that will be happening to the Quad, the area of planets you are working in. In the end, the winner would have the most money at the end of the game from bringing in criminals, but you have to decide how to use it because you might want to upgrade your ship, weapons, or crew to make the jobs easier.

Stranger Things

I’m a little surprised I haven’t heard of one besides some company branding an ouija board with Stranger Things, because of money. For those who don’t know, Stranger things is about a girl who escapes from the grasp of an evil company that is messing around with her abilities and is also looking into another dimension, the Upside Down where there are monsters that start bleeding over into this small town. I would make this as an asymmetric game for up to five people as that’s about how it works in the game. There are the kids, the teenagers, the adults, the company, and the upside down. The upside down and the kids would be required to play the game, but the rest could be optional. As the kids, you are trying to keep Eleven safe and close the portal to the Upside Down, as the Upside Down, you are trying to capture all the kids or get enough monsters into the world that you win. If you were the adults, your goal would to find one of the kids who gets lost in the upside down, and as the teens your goal is to kill as many monsters as possible. Finally, as the company, your goal would be to keep Eleven alive, but have her under your control, and not have anyone else win for a certain number of rounds. I could also see cutting it down to three factions and having the people of the town, adults, teens, and kids, all be the same person. But I think it could be interesting, each group having their own special powers and goals that they are going for in the game.

What are some stories that you think would turn into a good board game? What are some of your favorites that are already board games?

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For the Dresden Files series, the world of the stories might seem easier than some to describe. After all, as an urban fantasy, it’s set in modern times, in a real place. Then again, I’ve never been to some of the places in Chicago that are mentioned in the books — in fact, besides driving around it once, the longest I’ve been in Chicago was a long weekend, over a decade ago. So, in describing these new-to-me places, what does Jim Butcher do that I appreciate? In an example from the book Small Favors, the characters go to an aquarium to hold a meeting with some monsters. Instead of spending much of any time describing what the aquarium looks like, Butcher lays out the reasons why it is a good spot for the character’s meet-up (despite all appearances to the contrary). With how these details are described, you get an idea for why the aquarium was picked, not what the aquarium looks like. And there isn’t a reason to describe what it looks like — most readers will have a solid idea of this already, so there’s no need to describe the outside as you drive up, because it doesn’t matter for what’s happening in the scene. Even though Butcher used an aquarium that actually exists in Chicago, it doesn’t matter if my mind’s picture of it isn’t exactly right. In fact, this covers for him in case he ends up not having every detail right in his description, because someone would likely complain if he got something wrong. And if someone knows the location well enough to catch that, they don’t need a picture of it painted for them anyway.

So, what was done differently overall in this series that sets it apart from a lot of others? In short, it doesn’t infodump — I’ve read most of the books in the series, and I still haven’t run into any long scenes of world-building; nor have there been any grand, overarching segments describing every piece of magic, lore, and landscape that’s going to be important later. There are a number of reasons why it’s good to avoid this as a writer. An example of infodump occurs in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One — the author spends most of the first three chapters world-building. He goes through a ton of 80s references and nuggets of information about the characters, their society, and their world that go on and on forever. There are a couple of issues with this; one is that it ends up telegraphing a ton of things. For most of these instances in Ready Player One, it wasn’t so much a Chekhov’s gun as it was a Chekhov’s machine gun, with the way everything was jammed into those first few chapters. It’s also frustrating because it ends up meaning that not much happens in a story full of infodump. Ready Player One is one of the few non-fantasy examples of this — authors of epic fantasy are often the worst offenders of using infodump or overly detailed description. George R.R. Martin is a bad one for this, tending to include too many details that don’t advance the plot. It also happens in Lord of the Rings (yes, I went there), in which things are described to a level well beyond what the reader wants or needs.

The question is, then, how do you balance it so that you aren’t pulling a fast one, but not putting in so much detail that it stops your story in its tracks and gets people to put down the book? I enjoy Dune quite well, for example, but I have trouble getting through it, especially early on, as Frank Herbert spends so much time developing his world, all the politics, and all the other different facets of the series. For that reason, I don’t read it in book form; I listen to it on audiobook, because that’s how I can make it through those opening chapters. But instead of just talking about how some books get it wrong, how about some ways you can do better than the big names I’ve mentioned who don’t always do it right?

(If you aren’t a writer, just think about who might do these things from the stories you’ve read or watched.)

First, I think it’s good to ask yourself as a writer/creator, does the reader/viewer need to know this? You put time and effort into coming up with all the details for your world. That is awesome, but some of those details are only meant for you. When you crest a hill and look down on the plains of Fargath, you don’t need to tell everyone about the river in it, unless the river is really important and unique. I already know what a plain looks like, so I don’t need to know the basics. The example below about the plains of Fargath is what you want to avoid:

As your band of weary travelers crested the final hill, they looked down on the plains of Fargath. Before them stretched miles of open grasslands that were turning golden in the autumn sun. Off in the distance, you could see a stream with a couple of trees standing next to it, but beyond that and a few small rolling hills, there was nothing for the eye to see. You turned to look at your traveling companions. They turned to look at you, sweat beading on their brows after a long days’ work. The horses looked tired, and didn’t appear to want to continue.

Let’s break that down. First, what I’ve described is a pretty standard plain. It’s actually a pretty boring plain. We probably already know I’ve been traveling all day, so it’s obvious that everyone is going to be pretty tired. The only useful pieces of information in the paragraph above might be that it’s autumn and that the area is called the plains of Fargath. It could be cut down to something like the following:

As your band of weary travelers crested the final hill, they look down into the plains of Fargath. The autumn air did nothing to stop the heat, but had already begun to turn the grass a golden color.

Two sentences — that’s all you need to describe what took way longer before. Now imagine traveling all the way to Mordor describing everything like the first example.

Next, unique is cool. In the example of the plains of Fargath, what sort of detail could be unique?

As your band of weary travelers crested the final hill, they looked down into the plains of Fargath. The autumn air did nothing to stop the heat, but had already begun to turn the grass a golden color. Off in the distance, you could see the head of the giant. The thirty-foot-tall stone head was clearly broken off from a giant statue, but none was to be seen.

Okay, that’s pretty cool. A thirty foot tall stone head, clearly broken off from a statue — how did that get there? It’s a detail that is probably going to be important, and that is definitely unique. Maybe they just camp by the stone head for the night and something happens there — even if it’s just an important conversation, now people are going to remember the plains of Fargath. But look at that compared to the first paragraph. It’s more interesting, because heads of statues lying on the ground are interesting. It’s still shorter, and the reader isn’t getting bored, because thirty-foot-tall stone head.

That’s one way to keep things more interesting — another would be to describe the function of the place or the reasoning for going to this place as you travel. This is what Harry Dresden did in Small Favors when going to the aquarium. He said it was off of peak season. So we now know to imagine the aquarium as being pretty empty. He talked about how unless people can see something, they don’t really know what happened or think that it happened the way it did, hence meeting indoors. We now have a clear purpose and functionality for picking the location of the aquarium. How would that work in an example that isn’t written by a prolific author?

No one went to the plains of Fargath for anything more than a novelty visit to the thirty-foot-tall head of a statue. It would be a quiet location for planning to be completed, and a place for plans to be set in motion for getting back the kingdom.

That’s really short, but again, without going into great detail about the plains of Fargath, we now have an idea of what the place is like. It’s quiet, it’s empty, there’s nothing there. We also know why we’re going there — probably something the reader would know already by that point, but a nice thing to clarify form time to time. We also know that this is going to be their base of operations. That tells us a lot about the place and why they are going there instead of just what the place looks like. Using this method also cuts down on a planning session ahead of time. It literally cut two scenes way down, potentially. It also has a sense of action to it that you lose in just a purely descriptive scene. Sure, there are plenty of ways to make description more active, but generally that adds to the length of the description. See the plains of Fargath example below:

As your band of weary travelers crested the final hill, they looked down on the plains of Fargath. Before them stretched miles of open grasslands that were turning golden in the autumn sun. The grass twitched in a breeze that barely cooled anyone. Off in the distance, you could see a stream babbling slowly across the plain with a couple of trees standing next to it, but beyond that and a few small rolling hills, there was nothing for the eye to see. You dropped out of your saddle and looked at your traveling companions. They turned to look at you, sweat beading on their brows after a long days work. The horses hung their heads and didn’t appear to want to continue.

It’s a little bit longer, and while we now have sense of motion with the grass twitching in the breeze, cresting the hill, the stream babbling, and the sweat beading, it’s still pretty much a long descriptive paragraph. If you felt like my two sentences above about reasoning weren’t enough, we can even add a little of the detail back in while keeping it very short:

No one went to the plains of Fargath for anything more than a novelty visit to the thirty-foot-tall head of a statue. Even fewer people came to see the statue as the autumn days grew shorter. It would be a quiet location for planning to be completed and plans to be set in motion for getting back the kingdom.

Now we know the season and also sets up more why the plains of Fargath will be empty. It’s probably not needed to add that, but maybe the shortening days will matter to the plot later, or that will be a trial they have to overcome. It only adds in a sentence, and not a long sentence at that.

The final way to make interesting world-building is on-demand world building. This basically means that you only add a detail to the world when you need it. Patrick Rothfuss does this in The Kingkiller Chronicle series. His narrator, Kvothe, only tells the parts of the world that are interesting to him, and only when they are relevant to the story. That does mean that information is sometimes sprung on you, but not often, and as a writer, that would be something to try to avoid if the piece of information is important for a later plot twist. What Kvothe does is about the opposite from what Wade Watts does in Ready Player One. In both cases, you’re dealing with a narrator who is the star of their own story, but Wade Watts gives you all the information to start, whereas Kvothe sprinkles in what is important where it’s needed. In Ready Player One, however, I don’t know that it could have been information dumped a ton better. As I said above, it was a Chekhov’s machine gun in that information dumping, so how do you avoid springing a surprise on the reader with that? It could have been cut down some, as there was a plethora of information and details given that weren’t needed, and that likely would have been the best solution.

With on-demand world building, it’s something that you just don’t have to use in writing or in shows or movies. I’m actually doing that with season two of Dungeons and Flagons (Found Here) where the players are helping me create the town of Bresson on the fly as well as NPCs. As a Dungeon Master, this can be a little bit scary to do, but it’s also a lot of fun, they are giving me the cast and location for this adventure, and I get to see the places that are interesting to the players and really get to be along for the ride with them. All of the suggestions above are great ideas for pulling into your RPG as well. Giving information on demand, or keeping descriptions short for a theater-of-the-mind game, or even just describing why a place is a good spot for the characters to go can all make for an interesting story.

What are some of the best and worst books that you’ve read or movies or shows you’ve watched in terms of world-building and information dumping? Is there someone who really stands out to you as being a great world-builder?

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Protagonists

These are the good guys, the main characters of your story — for that reason, they are generally more developed than most other characters. But it still takes some work to write a compelling protagonist. It comes down to a bunch of questions that you have to ask about your character.

Let’s take the example of the “nobody-to-hero” story; it’s a great one for asking these questions.

Why is this character going on their quest? Is saving their town enough of a reason? Are they avenging their family? Or is there some other reason? Why do they continue? Look at The Lord of the Rings — Frodo’s journey was to the Council of Elrond. He didn’t know that, and he didn’t have to continue after that point — so why did he? What inspired him to continue to Mordor? Anything that the protagonist does needs to have more reasoning behind it than just that they are the protagonist. Good guys are never just good guys for the sake of it. The reasoning doesn’t have to be perfect all the time, and you can hand-wave once in a while and say, that’s just the way it is. But if you develop a world where the characters have reasons behind what they do, we’ll be more forgiving as readers.

Also, along with why the protagonist is doing their good thing, you also have to ask, what are their flaws? For an example of how this is done poorly (not in fantasy), we’ll look at Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. The main character in the book has no real flaws. The author offers him one part way through the book, saying that the protagonist is claustrophobic, but it is dealt with almost immediately, so that it isn’t an issue. While claustrophobia is a problem, it’s not a true character flaw, and the story needed to have more character development for and more issues with the main character than that. Another example of what not to do is in Divergent. The main characters flaws of the protagonist are generally that she’s small and clumsy. Those don’t have anything to do with her character, and they can hardly even be seen as flaws. So when you are writing a story, ask yourself, what are my character’s personality flaws?

If you have a character who has issues, and who has a reason for going on their quest, then you’ll start to have a story with real depth. But it can’t stop there. If Frodo had been the only character with depth in The Lord of the Rings, it would have been a really poor trilogy. But every character in the Fellowship goes through their own story and growth. Sam was loyal to a fault to Frodo. Pippin and Merry went from fun-loving Hobbits to making serious decisions and going into battle. As you write, think about your side character’s motivations and arcs as well.

Now, there is an issue that often arises with this. It is very possible and fairly easy to get too far into the weeds. These side characters, while important and in need of depth, are not the main character unless it is truly an ensemble cast of characters. There aren’t that many stories like that, and even in the world of comic books and comic book movies, we mainly see The Avengers as an example of this style. While that is an ensemble cast of characters, it tends to focus in on different characters at different points in time. In Age of Ultron, there was a very strong focus on the rift developing between Captain America and Tony Stark, but Hawkeye was there to bring them all back together. So even if you go with an ensemble of characters, stay fairly focused. Don’t get lost in the weeds making everyone have a massive amount of story. If they have a reason for doing the things they do, that is enough backstory.

And one last piece of advice — don’t be afraid to kill off your good characters. Too often in shows and books, you know early on who is going to die and who isn’t. If it’s a side character who is friends with the main protagonist but you don’t write them as a believable character, we know that they are going to die early on, and the character has lost credibility. Every character, no matter who they are, needs to be a credible character in the world you’ve created. And depending on your world, sometimes you have to show that the world is dangerous. You don’t need to take it to George R. R. Martin levels where you are killing off every character, but making the reader worry about the characters can add depth and realism to your story.

So now that you’ve started telling the story and have an idea for your plot, sit down and think about the reasoning behind your main character’s actions, and why they would jump into the story you are going to tell. What is the important piece of backstory that is going to develop your protagonist into something more than a cardboard cutout?

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But what makes a good plot? What makes a plot that you want to build a story around? It isn’t too difficult — you get a story idea in your head, and you go for it. If you want to tell the epic story of the unsuspecting hero, do it. If you want to tell a story of how the king had to rise up against the evil forces that were without or within, write that story. There are plenty of big picture stories out there — the epic quest, something forgotten coming back, etc., and those are great stories to write.

Now, haven’t most of those stories been done before — and done to death? No, not really — and absolutely, all at the same time. I could write up my reasoning for it, but this quote sums it up well:

Every story has already been told. Once you’ve read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had.

-Anna Quindlen [Commencement Speech; Mount Holyoke College, May 23, 1999]

While the big pictures, the big ideas, have really all been covered, how you tell your story, and the moments, characters, and places that you create, are all yours.

That is what helps separate some fantasy series from others. Books like The Inheritance Cycle series by Christopher Paolini or Sword of Shanarra by Terry Brooks really rip off other book and movie series like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. But then there are series like A Song of Ice and Fire, in which George R. R. Martin creates an epic story that is purely its own, and breaks down the specifics of the politics, jealousy, and violence that fill it.

This is the hard part of writing a story — the line between borrowing a little, but not borrowing too much. By borrowing an epic story of the unsuspecting or unlikely hero but making the hero’s actions their own, you don’t end up with another Lord of the Rings. But if you decide to make a single spot where the bad guy who is thought to be dead is coming back, and you are spending time adventuring with your group of dwarves, elves, and a mystic of some sort, you might want to rethink how you are writing (p.s. we know it is still The Fellowship of the Ring if you gender swap characters, or make the elves seafaring, or whatever you try to do to hide it).

So, how do you set your story apart? How do you make it so that you aren’t ripping someone off and running with a story that has been told before? Build it around who you are. Now, that doesn’t mean I should go around naming all of my main characters “Peder” or something — what I’m saying is that I have life experiences that other people don’t. I’ve been through things in a different way than other people have. No two people have lived life exactly the same. So write loosely from your life experiences, and pick and choose carefully.

Another thing to do is borrow broadly. If you take from 30 different fantasy books and work the pieces together into your story, you probably won’t get accused of stealing. But when you do this, grab small things. If you like the idea of the main characters narrating his story, borrow that idea from Patrick Rothfuss, but don’t make him a kid whose parents died and who is on a revenge quest. If you want the main character to have a companion, don’t make it a whole fellowship or a gardener with a heart of gold, like in J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories.

So now you have a general idea and you are ready to start writing your story down. How do you keep track of all the details/movement of the plot? The most common answer, and the one that works for most people, is to create an outline. Now, I’ll say that I’m terrible at doing that, so I don’t, so not outlining your plot or blog posts is also a valid option. But some form of written outline is going to be helpful for keeping track of your writing. With an outline, you are going to have to get a feel for how much data you need. Maybe you need general terms about the big events that will shape your story. Maybe you write out what each chapter is going to be about. You’ll see lots of things about how to write a proper outline, but my advice is to go as detailed as you need to — you can always cut things later.

And with outlining and writing your plot, one thing to remember is that sometimes you have to kill your darlings, as they say. The scene that you loved the best and was a good fit at first may no longer work for you. Instead of trying to shoehorn it in, take those pages and set them aside. Literally pull them from the document if you are writing by hand, or cut them from your Google doc and put them in a separate one. However, don’t throw away these scenes; you never know what they might inspire in the future. Just because they aren’t right for one book, doesn’t mean that they won’t fit in somewhere else.

Hopefully these tips on plot creation will get you inspired to start devising a story of your own — and stay tuned for the next article in this series, which will be on characters. Creating characters will really help you flesh out your plot and make a basic plot into something that is uniquely you.

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So, let me start out by saying that I’m no expert when it comes to writing fantasy. I haven’t been published, and there are some good writers out there, like Patrick Rothfuss, who writes the Kingkiller Chronicles, and Tony Lee, who writes comic books, who sometimes tweet out advice and answer questions about the process of writing. However, I’m going to try to help give people motivation to work on that project they haven’t worked on in a while, and to share ideas and tips that have been helpful to me when I write.

Fantasy is an interesting genre to work in, since there are so many different subgenres within it. You could be writing a story about steampunk robots who just want to learn to love, or about a scrappy band of goblins who are trying to stop the world from ending. Your story could be set in ancient China, or it could be an urban fantasy set in the New York City underground. It could be about a world-ending disaster that has to be stopped, dragons that are terrorizing the land and creating the need for a hero, or a love story between two people/beings that should never work. Narrowing down what you want to do seems like it would be about the hardest part of starting a fantasy story.

But you can make this aspect a bit easier — start with what you already know you like to read. From there, you can figure out what you’d want to write about. For example, I’m currently working on an epic adventure involving dragons, witches, and a kingdom that needs saving from its inevitable fall to those dragons and witches. So clearly, I have a thing for epic fantasy. Looking at what I’ve read, I can see that quite quickly — for example, I’ve enjoyed reading high-concept fantasy series like Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, The Stormlight Archive, the aforementioned Kingkiller Chronicles, and my least favorite of this bunch, A Song of Ice and Fire. Just from knowing what I like to read, and by thinking about the books and series that I’ve enjoyed, I can start to shape my world. Also, playing Dungeons & Dragons helps keep that itch for creating epic fantasy going.

The next thing that I think most people, including myself, run into, is getting bogged down in the fact that your first draft isn’t amazing. It’s hard to keep writing when you suddenly remember where you put something in 2,000 words ago that now you are regretting, and there is temptation to go back over those first two or three chapters until they are perfect. Don’t fall into that trap. Keep writing; keep pushing through. You know how you get better at writing? You got it — writing. Get the words down on the paper, and if you are having trouble getting through your epic story that is going to span a trilogy and spawn great offshoot series, write something shorter. Get completed works down on paper or up on Google Docs.

There are a couple of reasons for not self-editing as you go along. The first is that it takes you out of your story and your flow. It takes a little bit of time to get into the mindset of the characters in your world, and when you keep on getting distracted by a missing comma or a line of dialogue that doesn’t sound quite perfect, you take your mind out of the world you are trying to build. The other reason is that it simply helps you finish your story. The second, third, fourth, and seventh drafts are for cleaning up mistakes if you still think you have a solid story (or even if you don’t think you do).

Now, getting and keeping proper motivation, even for a short story, can be tricky at times. So how do you do that, even when you aren’t self-editing and you aren’t trying to write the next Song of Ice and Fire? One way that I would recommend, and which I did in 2013 and 2014, is to do National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. The object of NaNoWriMo is to write a 50,000-word story in the month of November. It’s tricky to do, but you’ll be doing it along with thousands of other people across the country. Or if November is always a busy month for you, find someone else who wants to write, and have them as an accountability partner to keep both of you making progress.

Basically, the important thing is to always move forward. Seems simple enough, but too often, we go in with the grand plan of writing 1,500 or 5,000 or some other large number of words per day. And ideally, you set aside a time every day to write, but more importantly, you’re always moving forward, even if it’s just by a little. Every week, you should see that your word count has gone up — and don’t worry so much about the number of words it has increased by; just make sure that it has simply increased.

Now that you know what genres of fantasy (or really any type of book) you like to read, what story can you tell that is set in that genre? Are you going to tell the story of a pulpy detective who is as dishonest as he seems, the romance of two aliens from a far-off land, a starlet who has gotten to where she is by using magic, or what? It’s time to start putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and writing.

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