What is Epic Fantasy?

Fantasy, we know what that is, it is wizards, magic, and probably set in the medieval times, not always but sometimes. Epic fantasy is really something that takes it up a notch from what you normally see. It is about that epic world saving quest and heroes who need to overcome so many odds thrown in front of them.

Think something like Lord of the Rings, where the fate is for all of Middle-Earth. Or Song of Ice and Fire where Westeros hangs in the balance. Generally these stories also create a grand world. They aren’t going to be the same as you’ve seen in a lot of other fantasy. They are going to build out their own thing that feels similar yet different.

What Do I Look For In Epic Fantasy?

1. Story
2. Interesting Main Characters
3. A Unique World
4. Good World Building

Story

I told you this was going to be number one. I want some sort of unique story, to some extent. Let’s face it, if you are going to be saving the world, you’re going to be saving the world. The event that is going to destroy the world can only be so unique. The differences need to come with how the characters are going to save the world, the composition of the group of characters, and the lore of the world itself. I don’t want the world to feel like you could drop Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table into it without a problem. We have a lot of stories like that already, let’s branch out some more.

Interesting Main Characters

Let’s face it, this is a common issue in writing, the main characters are boring. People saw the success of the Twilight movies and realized that if people feel like they are the main character, because Bella is dull and lousy in the movies, that they can create dull main characters and that is fine. Divergent series is a great example of a main character that has zero interest to them.

But I don’t want that. I can already imagine what it’s like to be in your world without having to be the main character. In fact, I’ll get bored with your series if the main character(s) isn’t interesting. I want character flaws for them to overcome. I want weaknesses and traits that are never actually dealt with. I want new flaws to start in the series and mistakes to be made. I don’t want a blank canvas of a character.

A Unique World

Like I said in story, I don’t want something generic. If you can make the story feel interesting in a world I already know and twist that world, that is great. But I don’t want it to be standard King Arthur. Tainted Grail, a board game – it always comes back to board games – does a good job of this. It is a grim dark take on King Arthur, the wyrdness isn’t something I’ve seen before. Menhir are new and unique and while I get the lady in the lake and Morgan Le Fey, it doesn’t feel normal.

Good World Building

How does this vary from a unique world. Isn’t a world that is created uniquely also one that is built well? Not really. Too often authors or movies will place all the world building at the beginning. Then I got to sit through 20 minutes or 5 chapters telling me about the world. Interlace the story as a whole with the story of your world. That is what I am looking for in storytelling. Unless your world is so unique that I need a separate book to understand it, I will have the general idea. So give me the unique information as I need to know it.

Are All Criteria Equally As Important?

No, a great story can make-up for basically anything. Let’s look at Lord of the Rings, the true main character isn’t actually super interesting. Frodo is just an okay character, Bilbo in the Hobbit is more interesting. Sam, Merry, Pippin, Gimli, Legolas, and Gandolf, they are all more interesting than Frodo. But JRR Tolkien tells a good story, he makes a good world, and he gives you information as you go. And he also, literally, has a separate book that is just world building, really, in the Silmarillion. So a great story can make everything else moot, but, if the story is just good, then everything else matters a whole lot more.

Let’s Do An Example

So, I am picking a series that I know I like already and have for quite a while, the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson. But let’s talk through about what makes this epic fantasy work for me.

Story

The story is definitely strong. Sanderson blends high fantasy, epic fantasy, but also political intrigue. It takes some of what you expect from fantasy like Song of Ice and Fire and Wheel of Time, but really tightens it up. And I would say that Wheel of Time suffers from not getting that political intrigue right whereas Song of Ice and Fire suffers from not getting the epic fantasy right. So this one is really good for me when it comes to that combination.

Interesting Main Characters

The main characters are very interesting. I would say that the are four main characters in the story, though we see the story primarily through three of their eyes. And one of them, people assume that they are going mad, the other has been wrongfully turned into a slave, another is a spoiled brat, and the last one lies to get into the story in the first place. That’s not normal for fantasy characters or characters in books in general. So definitely unique characters who need to grow.

Unique World

The world itself, it is a bit unique. Sanderson does something very interesting with magic, that there isn’t much if any, but then the idea of spren. Basically little creatures or beings that are drawn to different things. It is something that is completely different than I’ve seen before. So while armies fighting amongst each other and people stabbing each other in the back for political gain are normal, the world as a whole is unique.

Good World Building

This is something that I think Brandon Sanderson accelerates at. His world is pretty unique but he fills in information on the world as you go. We get jumps back in time, we get legends that are talked about, but never is it four or five characters in a row. The information comes just as you need it or is shown in the world instead of us being told about it.

Will This Work For You?

Most likely, I think that these are good benchmarks in general for a lot of stories, whether they are epic fantasy or not. I do think that the world building piece, epic fantasy can often fall into that category where there is a lot of world to build, so they build it all at once.

What is your favorite epic fantasy story, whether it is in books, television or movies?

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Earth is in need of help, as is pretty common in sci-fi. So a group of scientist, colonists, and others head out into deep space to find a mysterious object, the volcryn, that seems to be giving off the same energy signature as telepaths on Earth do. Yes, there are telepaths on earth, and there is even one on the ship, Thale, who is dangerous, but also might be their only way to contact the volcryn. However, from the get go, things are not going like they should on the ship, the Captain Royd Eris is hidden away only showing up as a hologram, things are breaking down, and for this mission, everyone is on edge. As they go further into space and get closer to the volcryn, more things go poorly and it is clear that someone on the ship does not want them to reach the volcryn, all while the main character, Karoly d’Branin becomes more and more obsessed with finding reaching their end goal. Will they survive all the way to the end?

This show reminded me a lot of Helix, another SyFy channel show, set in space. It’s about who you can trust, or who you shouldn’t trust on the ship. And if what you’re going after is going to be worth the cost. I think that it Nightflyers, without delving into too much plot detail, is fairly standard in a lot of it’s handling of sci-fi tropes. I don’t think that’s always a bad thing, because there are a lot of interesting story elements, but for the most part, it feels fairly typical to stuff that I’ve already seen and stuff that has been a part of sci-fi for a long time. It does delve into some interesting areas about grief and humanity, but for the most part it leans into the horror and sci-fi elements in ways that you’d expect.

So while the sci-fi elements might not always be the most unique, I thought that it did a good job blending the elements of sci-fi and horror. And in the horror you actually get some more unique things, which tie back into the sci-fi nature of the show. With horror, I do believe that it is a bit all over the place at times. You some where it’s very psychological and other times where people are being frozen or jump scares or a pathogen loose in the air. But I have a soft spot for the blend of horror and sci-fi in my heart, because both of them can really dig into issues that would be too abstracted in a more realistic setting.

I think that the concept of the show works, I think while it is fairly standard, the story of the show works. I feel like they mess up some pacing in the show, there’s a large time jump for no good reason at one point in time, just to set-up the next horrific thing happening. I think the time jump is confusing as well, because it’s a slow burn show. Most of the elements are played out slowly over a long period of time and it works well in the show. You can tell the story is based off of George RR Martin, the Song of Ice and Fire series has a slow burn as well, and this matches it where a lot of the horror is based things and confusion moving slowly and building tension versus jump scares.

Would I recommend this show? It was pretty enjoyable and because it’s one season only, I think there are enough interesting horror and sci-fi elements in it that makes it worth checking out. The world building for something that basically only takes place on a spaceship is done really well. There’s a good amount of depth there, and that depth builds throughout the whole of the show, not just the the start with an info dump, but you never feel like they are info dumping on you and that you don’t have the information that you need. If you enjoy fairly heavy sci-fi with a good dose of horror thrown in, it’s definitely a show that is worth watching.

Have you seen the show, read the novella? How do they compare, is the novella worth reading if you’ve seen the show?

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This is a setting where your characters are going to be heading up nations and divinely appointed leaders. You might have to build up your nation and lands, but it has been divinely appointed to you. Birthright is a setting where you are going to play a more political game and where battles might be fought off screen or by giving orders to large armies versus the dice rolling and hacking and slashing and spell slinging that you get in other settings. You have things called domain actions where players hand out decrees and edicts that are month long actions. You could start building a castle, wage a war, or establish a treaty, any of these things that might take a while. Birthright has it built into the game to allow you to take these bigger actions. Even magic can be bigger in Birthright. You cast domain level spells or war combat spells which are going to be for a whole battle than just slinging a fireball. You might give orders to your wizards to cast 100 fireballs and that does something to the enemy troops or things like that. Every aspect of Birthright is going to be focused on this larger level.

In terms of the actual world, I don’t know that the feel of the fantasy in the world changes massively from other settings like Forgotten Realms, it’s still a fantasy setting with standard fantasy trimmings. But it’s going to feel different. This is kind of a setting where you would play Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones), you can take on roles as different houses and fight over the greater lands, or be all from the same house, make allies, and grow your influence in hopes of eventually taking the Iron Throne. That compared to a smaller game which can feel more like Lord of the Rings or Wheel of Time where it focuses in so much on the characters that you don’t pay attention to all the political maneuverings.

For some people, that’s going to be the type of game that they really want. I never really got that into Song of Ice and Fire, I prefer that smaller focus of the story, and while Song of Ice and Fire did have the characters is focused on, it was all about the grander political maneuvering. So I’m not sure that this setting would be for me. I think that there would be some interesting aspects to it, but I also have board games that give me more of an army versus army combat focus. Obviously in Birthright and any D&D or RPG setting is going to have more of that role playing feel to it. That part seems obvious, but it would make it a bit more unique, still I’m not sure interesting enough to really fully engage me.

How about you, would you play in this setting? Do you like the idea of a more political game?

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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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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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