Fantasy 101: Plot & Scope

18Feb/091

This is the first in a series of articles that describe my thoughts on writing fantasy fiction. I've read a few books that claim to teach a person how to write fantasy, and I didn't like any of them. Each book was a step-by-step spoon-feeding session that used cookie cutter techniques to "teach" a person how to write one specific type of story.

I want to discuss considerations more than specific techniques. I want to explore a way of open-ended thinking that I hope will allow you to develop diverse, living fantasy stories. With that said, let's get to work right away.

I've broken this discussion into three areas:

Story elements
Character elements
World elements

In all honesty, these three areas can't be completely segregated. Each one affects the other two, but we have to organize it somehow and start somewhere. For better or for worse, this is my system.

Story Elements (Two from many)

A quick Internet search will produce hundreds of documents that discuss all the parts that make a story (theme, mood, tone, conflict, etc.) I'm concerned with only two. The first is plot, which we'll address in a moment. The second is something that many texts fail to mention, but I'm convinced it is of paramount importance to a fantasy writer. I'm talking about scope.

Scope and plot work together to determine how much effort a story will require. You probably have a million ideas running through your mind. Cool fight scenes, sexy babes in distress, horrible monsters, dark caverns, and so much more are flying around inside your skull as you try to get a handle on the story you want to write.

Stop. Take a deep breath. Focus. Get a piece of paper and a pen. Concentrate on the basic plot. Don't worry about names of characters, names of places, the distance between cities, or how many ways your dragons like to cook virgins. There will be a time for as many minute details as you want to generate, but that time is not now. Right now, you need to write a generic, but structured, plot. It will probably read like a stripped-out summary of your story:

Main character is left for dead by his uncle.
Uncle tries to force the main character's true love into marriage.
Main character is discovered by dragon creature.
Main character regains strength and fights uncle.
Main character defeats uncle and is reunited with his true love.
Main character weds his true love, and after a few blissful years of peace, they have a son, but are unaware the child has dragon essence is in him.
Child is a half-breed, is now heir to the throne, just as the dragon intended
Main character traverses the continent, until he finds and slays the dragon.
Main character and his wife take their son deep into the country so they can live in peace. The end (for now.)

This plot isn't very helpful as a writing tool, but it will help you devise the scope of your story. Does the story take hours, days, weeks, years, or eons to complete? Does it span a single cave, a town, a barony, a kingdom, a world, or a multiverse? Are the main characters peasants, warriors, heroes, nobility, kings, queens, or gods? Do the events of the plot change minor aspects of life for a few people, or is the entire world changed? Perhaps the very fabric of time is altered. Does the story involve one person, a few, many, or armies?

These are questions of scope, and they're essential. The answers to these questions will determine how much work lies ahead of you in terms of world building and character creation. A story that involves a peasant child in a single cave will require less work than a story that has legendary heroes at the heads of armies that battle between parallel planes of existence. A single town is much easier to design than an entire world.

A basic plot and a solid understanding of the story's scope will make it possible to organize and design the rest of the groundwork. We still need to build a world, (or a portion of one,) and we need characters. Tune in next time to read Fantasy 102: World Building