Fantasy to Novel -4 steps on how to turn your fantasy into a novel

Fantasy to Novel -4 steps on how to turn your fantasy into a novel

It would be convincingly human to admit that once in a while you do have those crazy out of this world imaginations where for some reason, unicorns exist, giants are the bad guys, and no good thing can come out of a cave.

Sometimes you become so influenced by Tolkien and Rowling that you can’t just help but picture a chimerical dragon flying to rain down hell on an unsuspecting castle. For some people it is effectively so, for others they just find it a pickle to knight their prominent characters, Sir Dean, Sir Honestus, Sir Veillance?

Yes, we do have those fantasies, and sometimes it gets so bad that we release our grip on reality and slide into daydreaming that’s the only way an individual plagued by life traumas and made haggard by excessive responsibilities can escape running mad; that’s the only way a grown-ass man can escape the unending harsh realities of Mondays.

But have you ever stopped to think about what you can make out of a fantasy thought? Except for a mental orgasm and a half-hour of peace and serenity. Well, you can easily make out a book from those wide crazy imaginations. For your upheaval your ideas would be original, untapped, and can even resolve to crown you a bestseller.

That is if the A6 blank pages you have filled with your thoughts are something tangible and alluring.

All genres are complicated, and this is involved, as a matter of fact, this is the wildest and one of the hardest to piece together; it involves you expanding your cognitive reach till you meet new horizons and colonize new lands that no one has dared to think about, they might not be a lot of rules governing a fantasy work, but I know for a fact that they are certain elements that must be included in your story or idea before it can qualify to be a product of fantasy.

You see, there are many things fantasy readers bend over to pick from a book, your readers are more like the jury and judge. They at times, consider the apparent presence of ogres and trolls, arrow-shooting elves and giants as a pass mark for a fantasy work but that only happens on good days like Fridays.

Major determinants for a fantasy work rest on an expansive concept that harbours distinctive elements of which we would be diving into. Consider adopting these five elements in order to refine your mere ideas into another Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

1.  Magic scheme

One factor that distinctively separates this genre from the rest is this. The magic scheme, magic system, magic organization, etc., for your story or idea to pass as a fantasy one, it is essential that it contains some magic fulcrum.

By this, I am referring to the occurrence of the unpredictable ones that subsist in your story. Okay for the sake of broadening your horizon, inculcate anything and everything with no rooted fact, evidence, or logic in the real world into your work.

Things like that are often branded as magic, things like; witchcraft, necromancy, fantastic beasts, and where to find them, supernatural occurrences where skeleton are alive and cursed mummy tombs actually exists. Just apply things that sound exceedingly ridiculous and have zero propensity of ever being actualized.

Try as much as possible to make yours different from the hobbit. It doesn’t have to look like Terry, Kenneth, and Tolkien’s legend of the seeker. Let your own be a point of difference. Curating a good fantasy work involves you spawning out an absorbing and captivating magic system.

Everybody wants to know how Authur pulled a sword out of the stone, same with Pocahontas and joyously taking a suicidal leap of faith from the steep end of a cliff, does she come out alive after such a fall? Yeah, people would like to know about such. That’s one essential element that pushes market sales.

Your magic scheme should have a key role in your story, in fact, it should be the cause of drama and conflict, it should be what drives the plot till it is broken down page by page. It should be a means of character development and identification.

Magic is very important in a fantasy novel. Yes, your imagination is strong enough to captivate the next guy, but what would embed that frozen awe expression on his face is how brilliant you’d be able to execute a magic system in your work.

See the world’s finest Harry Potter by J.K Rowling, see American Gods by Neil Graham, see A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le. Guin. Brushing through the above works of those established authors you will notice a discernable pattern of what a well-constituted magic system contains and how it should be applied to influence the entire containment of the book, not just the plot alone.

Aside from the above that I doubt you would dissect for more insight you can consider looking into Eragon by Christopher Paolini, there we see a fine display of magic at its fullest, and we see the presence of a dragon a harbinger professing magical realities.

You can as well take a divide into C.s Lewis’s Chronicle of Narnia, where the entire order of the book brings to a conceivable perception the existence of magical worlds where talking animals and unbelievable oddities exist. Once more, if you are very interested in bringing your finest imagination to a readable book, begin with threading its plot with a magic system.

2.    A properly developed world

This aspect should be treated with caution because this as well is one major pillar that supports the whole idea of your novel. If you are writing a fantasy novel, you must, in the same way you created the idea, engineer the production of an entirely new world that will steal readers from their present condition.

Even if you decide to root your word on earth, its cities must be identified with new monikers and sobriquets. In order to achieve the intended idea of a Narnia-type world or Alice in wonderland, you must engage yourself copiously in a thorough brainstorming exercise.

Similar to sci-fi, the fantasy novel also requires world-building; for you to accomplish Rowling’s unparalleled brilliance in world-building, you must be ready to draw out societal culture till it appears on the map of realism; you must be able to cultivate history and lore till a civilization grows out of it here are few tips you can go by with

• Who wields authority in your world? Is there a God they pray to? A deity?
• How can the people be identified and distinguished?
• What are the norms of society, and how does it affect the daily lives of people in it?
• What popular beliefs exist in the community
• What does the world look like? Are there castles with fairies and unicorns? Does giant exist on mountaintops and trolls under bridges?
• What are the climates available? They have to be more than 1?
• Dress patterns?

3.       Presence of complex characters

It is indeed the characters and the events surrounding them that pocket the attention of the reader. Your plotting, the world may be captivating and engaging but if the characters are plain and devoid of any peculiarity your work may not receive the desired reader’s impression.

Like most fantasy novels there is an elaborate description of plentiful characters both primary and auxiliary—because the continuity of the serial work demands it. This exists to satisfy the cry for diversity and interest sorely. I may not be aware of how many characters you would be involved in your work because it is up to you to account for that.

But the uniqueness of their individual essence should be something everybody should attest to. Why not overhaul your plain characters and make their distinctiveness stand out, see Voldermort from harry porter for example, how often do you see guys shaded in blue ink?

How often have you seen a character with no nose? How often have you perceived a talking lion? See Chronicles of Narnia. Similarly, in Alice in Wonderland, where frogs are given roles, and teapots and kettles are seen gyrating.

The idea is to spawn complex character design with a never before seen background-origin and physical divergences like the king Kong vignette, where the central character is a giant gorilla or Gulliver’s travel, the original tale, where talking horses and height retarded people are seen.

4.       Conflicting drama

What makes a remarkable story is its conflict. When the stakes are unequally heightened, the main character faces dire circumstances, the story tends to harvest the interest of a reader, which is the dream of every fantasy fiction work.

There are major types of conflict you can delve into as you’ll go ahead to battle for the attention of your reader

• Small-scale conflict:  this is a type of unfolding scenario where your characters get entangled with another character in an uneasily boycotted rivalry.
• Inner conflict: this is one that exists between the character and himself, its more about pushing his limits and testing himself
• Large scale conflict: this is one in which your characters go up against unimaginably powered foes.

While creating conflict, do not force actions for the sake of actions being present. This would make your work seem false and expel whatever captivating trait exists within it. try as much as possible to let conflict flow naturally.