50 Stages of Writing Creative Fantasy
By Shania O’Brien
Picture this: you’re in your room, sunlight fading in the background. You’re sitting at your desk, blank word document open on your laptop. You’ve just finished reading a fantasy novel; maybe it was Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin, Cassandra Clare, or C. S. Lewis. Or, maybe you’ve just watched a fantastical movie or television show. Whatever it is, you’re ready.
You’re motivated and it feels great.
You don’t remember the last time you wanted to write this bad.
An idea swirls and begins to take shape in your head, but you don’t know what it wants from you (yet).
There are vague concepts now.
And words.
So many words you never knew you knew!
Stormbringer. Earthshaker. Bloodeater. Witchslayer. Lightbringer. Godkiller.
You see a dark forest, a sun-lit path in the middle, blood rain beginning to fall from the sky.
The rain soaks the greenery; it falls, iron-willed, never ceasing, never wavering in the slightest.
But where is it coming from? You don’t know!
You take a step back, trying to brainstorm.
Okay, you’ve got this.
You close your laptop and open up a notebook, pen in hand.
No, you switch to a pencil. That’s less permanent.
It is set in medieval Europe.
You need to come up with a protagonist now. Characters drive the plot. Characters crafted to fit the plot are often two-dimensional. She has to have an ethnically-ambiguous name like Alena. Okay, now that that is out of the way, she needs a personality. She is the Chosen One, of course. The Lost Princess. The Secret Heir. The only one capable of fulfilling an age-old prophecy and saving the world. She is blonde, but has “tan” skin, and can hold her own in a fight. She is vicious, the only girl in the whole world willing to stand up to the Big Bad. But, alas, she longs for a “normal” life. She wants to give up her powers, eat chocolate cake, and read by the fire. How relatable.
But she needs more titles! To show how special she is! You feel the words coming to you—
They keep coming, springing into existence out of nowhere.
Warbringer.
Cursebreaker.
Okay, Alena needs a love interest. He is 500 years old, dark hair, technicolor eyes. Darkness swirls around him, representative of the darkness he hides within. He is an asshole, but we forgive him because his heart is broken (for now. Alena will “save” him, of course). He has mounds of gold and more power than he knows what to do with.
You think you don’t need to come up with more characters because they will fit in later. You are wrong.
Magic, magic, magic. You establish vague-but-uncontestable rules. You don’t know how to worldbuild properly, because you haven’t bothered to finish your ancient history readings, so you attempt to subvert the worlds that have been created by other people and hope no one notices.
Things appear to be going downhill.
You backtrack and try again.
And again.
And again.
Okay—you think you’re onto something. You decide to be different, decide to scrap the Return of the Lost Heir meets Brooding Male plot, and try something else.
You’re going to write about a heist. A magical heist. Aha—but there is a twist! You are going to task your characters with stealing a person instead of a thing.
You pat yourself on the back for coming up with that, and decide to take a little break.
You return the next day, a new idea in tow.
You have to start again.
You do it.
You keep starting again, keep writing 30,000 words only to abandon them because you don’t know where you were going with it.
You have learnt from your mistakes, and keep a document full of unused ideas and dialogue and character sketches.
You write every day, every week, every month.
You write and you write and you write and you write.
You’re getting better at it.
You don’t need to play into tropes anymore, don’t need to wonder if you’re going to get flagged for accidentally plagiarising something.
Your ideas are your own, and you know it.
Your skill matures with your confidence, and you start setting smaller goals to accomplish.
You write a poem, three short stories, and a novella.
It’s time for you to start again, to attempt what you originally wanted to write.
You sit at your desk, months and months between the last time you worked on this particular project.
You’re nervous, but your mind is clearer now.
You can see it in your head, every step you need to take to accomplish your goal.
You know your world’s religious beliefs, their gods, their culture, their footwear.
You know how their magic works, how their political system functions, what the military does in times of crisis.
The sky is raining blood . . .