Ed McDonald's Blog: Swords And All That - Posts Tagged "craft"

I started thinking about the books that I thought were most helpful in terms of learning how to write fantasy novels. Before I begin the list, there are a few criteria that I think are worth noting.

The aims of reading these books are:

- To learn the essential storytelling concepts without adopting someone else’s specific style
- To create works of fantasy fiction that feel original
- To create works of fantasy fiction that feel like they said something about the world we live in
- A book being your favourite book does not mean it teaches you good practice
- I have avoided Blank Slate character design, since there’s no need to try to learn it
- Note when I say “DO NOT read it for…” I don’t mean that those things are done badly in any of these books (they’re all fantastic) but that if you’re reading with a targeted focus on learning what an author does spectacularly then this book is not an example I’d use to teach that.

So let’s dig in.

#1: Legend by David Gemmell
Legend

Read it to learn: Stakes. Stakes, stakes, stakes. From page 1, Legend tells you what the story is about, and then everything is a build up of increasingly impossible odds. Nobody does this better than Gemmell. I listed this as No.1 because when writing your own epic fantasy, you want to start with the consequences of what will happen if the protagonist does not act. If you know this from the beginning, then you’ll have all the character motivation you need right there.
DO NOT read it for: Character depth/growth, world building, realism, or anything other than stakes. Just take the stakes.

#2: The Sword of Shadows series, JV Jones
A Cavern of Black Ice
Read it to learn: world building; character design
Jones’s world, which actually first appears in The Bakers’ Boy, is the definitive masterclass on world building. No world feels as deep as Jones’ world in terms of flavour. You can taste the food. You can smell the dark tunnels of the roundhouse. You understand the differences of culture that exist in different places. The characters are individual and unique – there are a lot of them, and they outstrip most other authors in terms of depth and development.
DO NOT read it for: pacing (it meanders a bit)

#3: Low Town / The Straight Razor Cure, Daniel Polansky
The Straight Razor Cure
Read it to learn: Grit, character writing
Polansky creates that perfect twinge of bittersweet regret, longing, and tragedy (in its classic sense) with his hero, The Warden, in what is essentially a drug dealer in fantasyville. Modern fantasy tends to have an element of grit, which now stretches far outside the grimdark subgenre. The character is one that you feel from the very first page, and we come to understand him in a way that if you make it to the end of book 3, there’s a scene which will stick with you forever.
DO NOT read it for: worldbuilding, epic journeys

#4: Crown of Stars, Kate Elliott
King's Dragon
Read it to learn: Individual Characters Matter More Than The World
The Crown of Stars series confused me a little when I was a younger reader, because I don’t think I understood what Elliott was doing a lot of the time. While the end of the series has a big old climactic punch, it takes a long time to get there, but the point of those books (to me anyway) was to walk the world with a number of characters whose personal lives are the point of the story, even if they’re caught up in major world events.
DO NOT read it for: Pacing/focused point of view

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I could pick more books that highlight other great aspects of fantasy writing, but if you read these in an academic way, focusing on the aspects highlighted then you’ll get a pretty good masterclass in how to write novels that:

- Have high stakes to engage the reader
- Focus on individual characters alongside those stakes, binding the reader to the story
- Create characters with depth, history and consistency
- Have a rich, breathable world to play around in

Let me know in the comments what you would recommend adding to the list!