Six Pitfalls Aspiring Fantasy Authors Should Avoid
One of the greatest things about the Catholic homeschooling community is how many aspiring authors there are! I think every homeschooling family I’ve ever met has at least one kid hoping to get into writing. Fantasy is an ever-popular genre among Catholic youth. And why not? Fantasy allows us the maximum liberty to create entire worlds that reflect our own ideas, values, and creative passions.
Over the last several years, I have worked professionally reviewing and critiquing manuscripts for aspiring authors, providing detailed editorial feedback on structure, style, and storytelling. In that capacity, I have evaluated more fantasy manuscripts than I can count. Patterns emerge quickly when you read at that volume. Today, I want to share six of the most common and consequential pitfalls I encounter in fantasy writing. If you have an aspiring fantasy author at home, these observations may save them a great deal of time — and significantly strengthen their craft.
1. Tonal Inconsistency
Tone is the author’s attitude, emotion, or persona they bring to a work. Maintaining a consistent tone throughout a work reinforces the sense of immersion a reader feels when getting into a work of fiction. Tone inconsistency occurs when authors unintentionally switch tones, disrupting the sense of immersion.
In works of fantasy, this often means switch between modern casual and archaic or formal tones within the same scene. For example, “Verily, the dragon approacheth!” said Sir Edmund. “We gotta bail, dude,” replied Marcus. This is admittedly an extreme example, but it aptly demonstrates the problem. This usually occurs when the writer has not made clear decision about narrative voice. Instead of transporting us to a faraway fantasy realm, it begins to sound like modern people wearing costumes, especially is characters slip into contemporary idioms unconsciously. For example, if your story takes place in a medieval fantasy realm and your character says, “We need to put that on the back burner for now,” the phrase “back burner” refers to a modern stove top oven, something your character should not know about. Such phrases take the reader out of the fantasy.
This is certainly not to say you must use any one specific tone; some tones are very casual while others can be high or archaic. The important thing is to choose a tone that reflects the setting you are creating and then be consistent with it.
2. Worldbuilding Infodumps
Any good fantasy story needs a fair amount of worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is the process of constructing your fantasy setting. It can be fairly comprehensive, including geography, history, politics, culture, and, if necessary, magical or technological rules.
Worldbuilding is pretty dang important. It’s what gives your creation a real sense of place—skillful worldbuilding is why Tolkien’s Middle Earth feels real. But worldbuilding can also be a lot of information, so its delivery needs to be handled skillfully.
A major problem I see in fantasy manuscripts is what I call worldbuilding infodumps. This is where the author stops the narrative to explain the magic system, history, or politics for pages at a time. This often takes the form of “as you know” exposition. This is where the author utilizes a conversation to dump information on the reader. For example, “As you know, Bob, the Three Kingdoms have been at war for fifty years because of the Incident at Razmodan, which happened when the Red Wizards discovered…”
Conversation can, of course, be a valid way to convey information; the problem with “as you know” infodumping is that there is no in-world reason for the conversation to be happening. In the example above, if Bob already knows the history of the Three Kingdoms, why would the speaker rehash it?
Worldbuilding infodumps happen when the author is excited about his or her world but doesn’t trust readers to pick things up; it fundamentally confuses worldbuilding with narrative. When possible, it’s best to do the hard work of worldbuilding through action and believable in-world dialogue, not narrative lectures.
3. Prophecy as a Plot Crutch
What would a fantasy tale be without a good prophecy? Prophecy is a staple of fantasy and science fiction, successfully used by storytellers as diverse as J.R.R. Tolkien, Frank Herbert, and even George Lucas. But sloppy use of prophecy can turn it from a useful plot device into a crutch that actually weakens your storytelling.
Common problems with prophecies include making them too vague to mean anything—or, alternately, far too specific, such that they simply give the plot away ahead of time. A good prophecy needs to be sufficiently particular to have a pointed application but vague enough to leave us delighted with how it is fulfilled. A prophecy is ultimately a kind of riddle: it is somewhat opaque in the moment but clear after we understand it. Another problem with prophecy is when it is delivered and then entirely ignored until the plot needs it. For example, “The chosen one will save us when the moon turns red,” then nothing relevant to this happens for 400 pages, then suddenly the moon becomes important in the last chapter.
If you’re going to use a prophecy, make sure it is well integrated into the worldbuilding, has a firm place in the plot, and has sufficient qualities to deliver the reader a delightful payoff when we see it fulfilled.
4. Everyone Sounds the Same
In real life, people sound different. They have unique manners of speech, vocabulary, and character that shine through the way they communicate. One of my personal pet peeves in fantasy is when real-life diversity isn’t reflected in the characters we meet; they all have identical speech patterns, vocabulary, and personalities. The grizzled veteran, the young princess, and the street urchin all talk with the same voice, same jokes, and same references.
This happens when an author simply writes from his or her own voice, with no attention to character backgrounds. It often goes hand in hand with what I mentioned above about infodumps, i.e., relying too heavily on dialogue as a plot delivery mechanism. Remember that people are distinct, and that their complexities should come through in their speech.
5. Moral Simplicity
The best fantasy stories are those grounded within a sound moral framework. Characters are interesting precisely because we get to witness how their moral principles are challenged through their circumstances. Some characters will use these challenges to rise to the occasion and become heroic, such as Samwise Gamgee. Others will succumb to temptation and corrupt themselves, becoming villainous—such as Saruman. Whether we are talking about heroes or villains, any good fantasy character has a moral arc written into the narrative that helps the audience understand their moral progression. Their stories are morally complex. This is a hallmark not only of good fantasy, but good writing in general.
Why, then, do so many manuscripts struggle with morally flat characters? I think what happens is that many Christian fantasy authors do not understand the difference between moral complexity and moral ambiguity. They do not want their characters to be amoral or their story to be a gray sludge of moral relativism, so they reflexively create moral characters with no depth behind their choices. Good guys are purely good, bad guys are purely evil, choices are obvious, and no one struggles with moral complexity. The Dark Lord wants to destroy the world because…he’s evil! The hero must stop him because…he’s good!
We definitely want characters with well-defined moral principles who act in accordance with them. However, that doesn’t mean they ought to be morally simple. In real life, our moral compass is constantly being evaluated, tested, and refined through the crucible of experience. We become who we are by navigating those experiences, either living up to our moral principles, failing them, or sometimes reevaluating them altogether.
That is moral complexity, and that’s what makes people interesting. It is precisely this moral challenge that creates the space for the heroic in literature. If you are writing a hero or a villain, think about their motivations—why do they behave as they do? Adding moral complexity to your characters will make your fantasy story so much more engaging for your readers. The best fantasy is that which makes us think (incidentally, a good book on this subject is The Moral Premise by Stan Williams).
6. Magic Systems Without Limits
Most fantasy worlds are going to incorporate some kind of magic system. It might not be magic in the high sense of wizards and fairies; I am using magic as a catchword for any system of abilities that exists in the fantasy world that does not exist in the real world; e.g., the Force in Star Wars, the bending in the Avatar series, etc. The successful incorporation of magical elements is part of what constitutes fantasy as a genre.
Magic is part of worldbuilding, and as such, it needs to be treated carefully. I often see stories where magic is so unlimited that it becomes a substitute for good writing. Magic can do whatever the plot needs with no cost, rules, or limitations. For example, a scene where a wizard waves a hand and solves a problem, but later in the book the same magic doesn’t work because… reasons. In other words, magic gets used haphazardly without any sense of structure or limitation. The only reason characters use (or refrain from using) magic is that the plot needs it to happen.
I understand why this happens; authors want cool magic—who doesn’t? But this generally happens when an author doesn’t sufficiently think through the implications of the magic he introduces, such that the magic becomes a plot solver the author trots out whenever he or she has written themselves into a hole.
Always Pursue Quality!
Mastering fantasy writing is a lifelong pursuit, but avoiding these six pitfalls lays a strong foundation for compelling storytelling. In a literary world that has become inundated with fantasy, it’s important for fantasy writing to stand out for its quality. I’ve read a lot of fantasy manuscripts, and I can tell you, if a young person can overcome these six pitfalls, they’ve already placed themselves significantly ahead of their peers.
Fiction Writing Resource
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What are your thoughts on this topic? I invite you to join other homeschooling parents and me in the Homeschool Connections Community or our Facebook group.
