Hardest Fantasy Themes to Write

[Duleigh]

I'm wrestling with that too, @Duleigh. Working on a thing that's going to hit moments from when the MC is 6, 10-12, 18, 19, 21 and 22. I really want to arrange them out of chronological order. The story feels stronger that way. But I feel like I'm just asking to be yelled at by people who won't notice that the year is written at the top of the section.

Madam Beta/Editor and I worked on the story for an entire day making sure that the flashbacks were clean and there was a good introduction to the flashback, I even added a graphic <><><><><> centered on the page showing a separation between "now" and "then" I had readers who missed it. "You have some serious timeline issues in this story, it's like you were jumping around"

Duh.

You can't please them all so take your time and please yourself.

 

[Djmac1031]

Magic is hardest for me.

It has to function in a way that's plausible without being overpowering. It becomes too easy to rely on it to fix plot holes, which is just lazy writing.

I love magic. I love writing magic. It's fun to play with, but when I write magic, I get sucked into that world for a long, long time because I need the magic to work yet be tempered in a way that serves believability, function, and plot without overtaking any of it.

I tend to lean on Wiccan and Pagan beliefs about magic when I write it.

Nothing annoys me more than a story that "saves itself" by pulling magic in a way that makes you question why it took two hundred pages to do the thing they could've done on page one.

It's the easiest to fuck up, in my opinion.

I've been VERY careful how I approached magic in my Angels And Demons stories, because I agree, it can be too easy to just solve every problem with it.

And so I made my She-Demon character Cozbi a "Lesser Demon," a woman once human who was converted to the ranks of Hell after her death.

And so while she had powers, she wasn't as powerful as the First Fallen, the original Angels from Heaven who were outcast.

I even made a rule she couldn't simply conjure things out of thin air, only summon already existing things to her with a teleportation spell.

 

[Duleigh]

Magic is hardest for me.

It has to function in a way that's plausible without being overpowering. It becomes too easy to rely on it to fix plot holes, which is just lazy writing.

I love magic. I love writing magic. It's fun to play with, but when I write magic, I get sucked into that world for a long, long time because I need the magic to work yet be tempered in a way that serves believability, function, and plot without overtaking any of it.

In Gods Save the Queen I resolved all that by inventing my own form of magic lightly based on anime "Manna" style magic but also on ideas from Terry Pratchett's Discworld

 

[YmaOHyd]

Offhand, I think there are three keys to magic in the hands of protagonists: it has to require effort, discipline and control, it has to have a cost, and there have to be times where not doing magic is the better choice.

 

[Djmac1031]

Offhand, I think there are three keys to magic in the hands of protagonists: it has to require effort, discipline and control, it has to have a cost, and there have to be times where not doing magic is the better choice.

Again, agreed.

My She-Demon character was smart and strong, but bad at casting anything other than very simple spells.

She tried a memory altering spell on another character that totally backfired and was about to try it again when she was talked out of it by an Angel who warned her it could totally destroy her friend's mind.

 

[Husky_Embrace]

Sounds like you got a story all worked out. You should write this.

I started it, as I've started so many others. Got a kid a few weeks ago, so my slow plodding pace with writing stories has come to a virtual stand-still. I hoped that it would free some of my fingers to type on my phone as I would walk with him to get him to sleep, but this baby takes a lot more effort and hands.

 

[Statius]

I started it, as I've started so many others. Got a kid a few weeks ago, so my slow plodding pace with writing stories has come to a virtual stand-still. I hoped that it would free some of my fingers to type on my phone as I would walk with him to get him to sleep, but this baby takes a lot more effort and hands.

Congrats!

 

[YmaOHyd]

I started it, as I've started so many others. Got a kid a few weeks ago, so my slow plodding pace with writing stories has come to a virtual stand-still. I hoped that it would free some of my fingers to type on my phone as I would walk with him to get him to sleep, but this baby takes a lot more effort and hands.

Baby time is for planning, taking notes and outlining. When you put them to sleep, that's when you start writing. That's my experience over the last three months, anyway.

 

[Husky_Embrace]

Baby time is for planning, taking notes and outlining. When you put them to sleep, that's when you start writing. That's my experience over the last three months, anyway.

I'll take that advice to heart when he's older. Right now he's still too young. When I get him to sleep it's an hour or two past my own bedtime. A worthy sacrifice, though we all hope we don't need to make it tomorrow.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I'll take that advice to heart when he's older. Right now he's still too young. When I get him to sleep it's an hour or two past my own bedtime. A worthy sacrifice, though we all hope we don't need to take it tomorrow.

This last month, warm formula and a walk around the block has been my best friend for getting the little girl to sleep.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Would Vampire stories be fantasies?

 

[Soixenta]

I don't find "magic" as a general concept hard to write, but as I wrote recently (in Prophecies and omens) I found it difficult to make an oracle work. The balance between something that moves the story forward and is useful to the characters, but is also cryptic enough to be misunderstood. I hope I have succeeded in the chapter that I am working on.