Top Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Fantasy Fiction

When writing fantasy fiction, one can’t avoid making a few mistakes along the way. Editors could understand a misspelling, grammar and punctuation errors, bad sentence structures or incoherent paragraphs – because it’s their job to correct them. But the gravest mistake a fantasy writer could make is to give readers a bad story.

The sin of many writers out there is that they recycle old material and present them as new, overuse and abuse plot devices, create unbelievable situations, make poor research, present lies as truths, etc. Some writers do have the gall to make the mockery out of readers’ experience and intelligence.

Voracious readers know best. Though they would not object to old material – stories or characters – being recycled, they would appreciate it if authors could give a spin, create a twist, breath in new life into old tales – and even bring old or familiar characters to a whole new universe, like what comic book writers do with their characters and storylines. I seek a new iteration of an existing story or a different version of an iconic character (like Archie in Riverdale).

You are now familiar with how I present Daughters of Twilight. I pray I have done my best to present a whole new story to the world of fantasy. My book is my unique contribution to the world of literature.

Writing fantasy or any other kind of fiction is a tough process, and writers run risks of the following:

• Predictable plot or story lines (It’s not exciting if readers know what happens next.)
• Unbelievable situations or results (The author’s lack of research insults – and endangers – the readers’ intelligence.)
• Repetition or redundancy
• Doing a work that’s already been done
• Slow pace or development of the story
• Boring characters or the lack of unique, interesting, or diverse characters (depending on story and setting)
• Boring dialogue
• Dead space
• Bad or dull ending (I mean, a good story does not mean it should have a happy ending, like in some thrillers where the protagonist dies at the end or only one good character, not necessary the main character, gets to live.)
• Wrong assumption (You assume that your reader understands everything, so you start using certain words (jargon or technical speak) without putting in the explanations. This is utterly wrong.)

These are the top mistakes I try to avoid when writing fantasy fiction. I want my readers to  follow the story with ease. I have made the narration clear in concise sentences and coherent paragraphs. I have also provided enough details and easy-to-understand language so they could get the flow of the story.  It is useless to impress readers with ‘big words’ or ‘heady talk’ if they don’t know what you’re taking about. In Daughters of Twilight I tried to keep it simple but exciting by keeping the story fast-paced, putting in richly drawn characters, creating suspense, and throwing in some unique twist.

As a fantasy writer, my job is not to impress but to entertain readers with a great story and make them come back to me for more.