1. Laws and boundaries need to have some kind of ramification for the characters. This rule is at the top, because it’s the one I see broken the most often. People take the time to establisha brooding council, an evil king, a cadre of badass soldiers, or what have you, and the characters skip right past them. A country that cuts the hand off of every thief? The hero steals indiscriminately, without fail, every time, and always has. A mansion guarded by the biggest, baddest bunch of guards the world has ever seen? Well, the hero and friends send a grappling hook over the wall and climbs on up. Mostly, this happens because someone is giving detail to a world, but not willing to explore it further because it’s inconvenient to the plot. After all, you want your heroes to confront the evil chancellor in the mansion, because that’s a much more interesting scene than killing guards. As tempting as it is to write an anti-hero who plays by his own rules, please keep in mind that societies have rules for a reason, and it’s very, very difficult to survive on your own outside of them. A sub-problem of this is having a very strict society, like, say Victorian England, and having a product of that society flout its rules without consequences. If a woman decided to throw off her corset, get drunk, and cavort nakedly in the street in Victorian England, I can’t even begin to tell you how badly she’d be beaten. But a lot of people write the sassy heroine with a smart mouth because it’s more fun. This bugs the crap out of me. I hate seeing an established society that a “speshul” hero is allowed to give the middle finger to. Not only are you moving into Mary Sue territory, but you’re also passing up a prime opportunity for conflict. Show me a hero struggling to operate within a society he doesn’t necessarily agree with, and I’ll show you a hero with reader sympathy.

2. If “Oh, my God” exists, I want to know why. Religion is one of the major driving forces in the real world, especially the further back in history you go. It’s influenced politics, war, and economy, whether you like it or no. Examining religion and its place in your fantasy world is very important, because a world made of atheists is going to have just as many rules and regulations as a world of a thousand gods. Whether your God or gods exist isn’t necessarily important, but the way the culture treats them is. Even in our world, an atheist says “Oh, my God” when he’s freaked, because there is a cultural backdrop behind the exclamation; our culture has religion in droves. If there are no established gods, talk of an afterworld, or even a chat about metaphysics, and someone says “Oh, my God”, it makes my brain short circuit. Where did this God come from? Is it just the one? Is he mad at you for taking his name in vain, or just his priests? Are there priests!? Either find something else for them to say, or establish that there is religion somewhere. Religion is so closely tied with cultural values that to overlook it, whether because you hate it or are attempting to be PC (see Rule 3), odds are that someone, somewhere, in your fantasy world looked up at the sky and said, “Why are we here and what happens after we die?” Differing religions, naturally, make for great conflict. Especially if the gods are real. Keep religion in mind when you’re world-building, because it’s a massive piece of the puzzle. This doesn’t mean you have to go on author tract about it, or even make it a major part of your story, but allow it to be part of the backdrop.

3. Politically correct is not a necessity. Pressure from contemporary cultural norms encourage things like equality, fair trials, and not being racist. Unfortunately, it’s only been in the last hundred years that crap like that has actually become the norm. Women could vote before black people could sit in a restaurant next to whites. Before that, you could put up a sign that said “No Irish”, and before that, you could work children in factories for 16 hours straight for ten cents a day. Before that? A lord owned your ass and the asses of your kids and great-grandkids, and could throw you off your land to starve for getting mud on his doublet. Before that? Well, you were just on your own to keep marauding barbarians off your mud farm. Even Ancient Greece and Rome treated their woman pretty bad, and don’t even get me started on stuff like the handicapped or mentally disabled. The Middle Ages are looked upon with a highly romantic air, and don’t let that stop you from writing in it, but do a tiny bit of research, please. I love the Middle Ages because it was so different; I love how they made bows, and glass, and built cathedrals. I don’t need to see peasant women being treated as valuable member of society, because they weren’t; I know it and you know it. Again, that these societies, by our contemporary standards, were unfair gives a lot of opportunity for conflict. Don’t skip over it. You need not emphasize in the other direction, like in Monty Python, but show us your world, the dirty and the clean. The good and the bad. It’ll make it more believable, and if you don’t, odds are you’re in cliche’ territory with all the other morons.

4. Warfare drives technology; in fantasy, magic would do the exact same thing. A lot of people seem to forget this. If there are people out there who can throw fireballs, I can just about guarantee you that there’s a king out there, with a lot of gold, that he’s willing to throw at their feet in order to burn his enemies. And if the fireball throwers refuse, well, they have families, don’t they? Or, if they’re too dangerous to be allowed to live, a king with an army wouldn’t mind trying to wipe them out. And maybe capturing some of their kids, so the kids can be raised to be fireball-throwers for the king. It applies to just about everything. Invisibility? Shapeshifting? Talking with animals? Espionage. Teleportation? Flying? Sneak attack. Energy blasts? Dragon-summoning? Head of the army. I never understood how Paolini’s so-called golden age of Dragon Riders wasn’t really some kind of military junta, especially since punishment for things like murder and theft would be meted out by flying, scaly death tanks. I mean, maybe your wizard is the one in charge. Magic and what it can do has to be considered very carefully, because it has huge ramifications. Magic is power, and power is everything. Just ask businessman and politicians, and look at what they do with it. I hate seeing heroes with super-awesome destructive powers, who A) never get blackmailed, bribed, or asked to do some fireworks by the folk in charge, B) never get mobbed by people or towns who are terrified of what they can do, or C) imprisoned for blowing shit up. This goes double for someone whose powers haven’t been seen in a thousand years, were responsible for the death of a civilization, or mentioned as having a hand in the end of an age/world by a prophecy. Libba Bray’s Gemma Doyle series treats very powerful magic in a realistic way, because the main character becomes embroiled in squabbling factions that each want part of her power. Same with the concept behind X-Men. Don’t just give your hero abilities and go with it; examine what kind of ramifications that kind of power would have. I mean, if people freak out about a gun in an office building or high school, imagine how they’d react to fireballs …

5. How people get food must be examined. Many fantasy writers overpopulate their worlds, not just with a human and elven and dwarven populations, but with massive, immortal dragons, marching orc hordes, and perverted centaurs. First of all, starving people = not fun. Ask anyone who saw or wrote about the French Revolution. In fact, riots in Rome were a big reason why bread and circuses was developed to keep the people happy. If a populace is well-fed and entertained, it’s less likely to riot on you. Conversely, a town under siege usually breaks because it runs out of food, in many cases after they’ve eaten the horses, dogs, cats, rats, and the dead. One such town gave their guy in charge to Genghis Kahn, because he wanted to keep fighting and they didn’t because their families were starving to death. Long story short, I have no idea how Sauron kept all those Uruk-Hai fed. Conversely, if you have a so-called evil king, who is willing to let Urgals- er, I mean, orcs, march all over the place raping and burning, pretty soon you’re going to have a pissed off population. And I don’t mean an indignant population, I mean a “I’m so hungry I’ll throw myself on a knight in plate mail for the chance to eat his horse” population. Same goes for dragons, who, if they’re bigger than elephants or even some whales, would have to eat meat. Meat was a rarity for peasants, who saw it maybe a couple of times a month if they were lucky. Sooner or later, if no one has anything to eat, it all breaks down. The ones in charge may live, but a lot of people are going to die. The aftermath of the Black Plague saw famine on a scale so massive that harvests literally rotted in the fields. So, if you have marauding hordes, tectonic plates shifting in a matter of seconds, reality torn asunder, earthquakes, or dragon attacks, you’d better show me what kind of aftermath occurs. Again, story stakes and conflict come in here, but don’t just have it for the sake of the hero. Show us the world the hero is defending and why, and we’ll be much happier.

And then we all went inside to eat Pocky and drink hot chocolate. My camera ran out of batteries twice, so I didn’t get nearly as many pictures as I wanted, but I did get a lot of videos of Piker with the galloping sillies, trying to find snowballs while my cat Ptolemy sulks. Schools closed around 10AM, except my college, which wasn’t until noon. But only 6 people showed up to class anyway. More fool them, says I, sometimes the day is all the richer for its rarity.

1.  Description is colored by POV. Man, is this ever at the top of my list.  I read stuff where a magic-wielding teenager goes into a room and gives us a top-to-bottom rundown of every object in the room, military-report style.  Even when they have ADHD and are running from a vampire.  I’m sorry, realistically, even a calm, bored teenager probably wouldn’t notice that much stuff.  My obligatory Paolini-bashing is about to ensue: Farm boy Eragon uses words that he as an illiterate peasant wouldn’t know, let alone spell, but it doesn’t stop him from using flowery purple-prose every chance he gets.  Doing this comes across as false, and breaks the reader out of the world.  Also, if someone likes a place, you’re going to get an entirely different POV description than you would from someone who’s miserable being there.  Also, optimists describe a prison cell in a different manner from a pessimist.  An ex-Navy SEAL spy is going to notice different things than a toked-up frat boy.  If a teenager doesn’t care, then the POV should reflect that description i.e., “It was some ratty little room” and move on. This can fall into that natural pitfall of a writer attempting to tell too much, but description is too often treated as this boring necessity when it should be a tool to shape story and character.

2. POV should provide characterization. This ties in closely with the first rule, but it’s still a separate one.  What a character notices and thinks about something should reflect their character.  This is a nifty tool for showing, not telling.  If someone walks into a bank and regards a perfectly nice bank teller as antagonistic, it says something about their character and their current state.  If a beautiful spring day is described as sucky and miserable, it does the same thing.  Perception is nine-tenths reality, after all, and you owe it to your reader to allow them to draw their own conclusions about a character.  When this rule is disregarded, it’s why stale and static description comes across as so tedious for reader and writer.  (On that same note, super happy perfectionists describing something is probably not a good POV, because we’ll all just end up wanting to punch them in the face because everything’s so perfect.  I’m looking at <i>you</i> Mary Sue!)  Look at your scene and ask yourself what your character would think of it.  Would they like it?  Hate it?  Be too distracted by something else to even bother?  What would they focus on?  A naturalist is going to notice trees much more than an urban socialite, who might focus on the bugs swarming her high heels.  Showing how characters describe and react to their surroundings is much better than objective statements like “The demon was evil!”

3.  Establish a POV in the first place! Granted, this should be rule one, but I thought it was kinda obvious.  However, a lot of people start out with a sorta POV, and then drift and dribble into other skins after a couple of pages or so.  It’s like they get bored with the character they’re in, or got distracted by what some other character thinks, and kind of swim between the two.  It’s not quite dropping us off a cliff, but more like pouring fog over your reader.  If you find yourself asking “Who’s the hero?” you’ve stumbled into this territory.  Here there be dragons.  A lot of times this is a result of a story lacking plot or a decisive character arc, or just plain lack of planning and attention on the part of the writer.  Sometimes it’s easy to fix, sometime it’s not. (Are you starting to see why a protagonist has to be so interesting yet?)  Give us a POV and stick with it.  If you find other characters butting in with their thoughts and feelings, you may want to switch legitimately to their POV, or, heck, make the story theirs.  Stranger things have happened.

4.  Signal a switch in POV. Holy crap, I can’t tell you how often this doesn’t happen.  I make a sound when I inexplicably find myself in another character’s skin.  It’s something akin to “Buh!?” shortly followed by another sound: <i>click</i>.  That’s the sound of me closing a webpage.  (<i>Fwap</i> applies when I’m throwing a book, but I’m usually pretty careful with my choice of books, so it doesn’t happen that often.  But the Internet-!)  Again, third person omniscient is really hard to pull off, but a lot of people end up doing it just because they forget their road markers.  We were in Tim’s head five lines ago, but now we’re in Sasuke’s, because this Naruto/Monty Python fanfic was a train wreck we should’ve seen coming by the subject matter alone.  Regardless, if you switch without warning, you’re going to lose your reader.  We don’t like it, and we don’t think you’re clever.  In fact, we’re wondering how the hell we ended up here.  A break in text, usually with a little # or * dealie, will let us know that we are about to go to someone else’s skin.  Chapter breaks are also acceptable. (George R. R. Martin does it all the time, and look at how many POVs he’s got!)  Stick with your POV as you establish it and warn us when we’re about to switch.

5. POV should provide voice. Voice is a big selling point, at least according to the last SCBWI lecture I went to.  Editors and agents want to know about voice, the unique POV your writing provides.  Voice is usually the only thing one has to stand on when it comes to pitching or insisting that your book is unlike any ever seen.  If you’re following the above rules, then you should be approaching the territory of an individual voice.  Back to Paolini, if he’d written honestly about a real farm boy finding a dragon’s egg, and really pushed his voice, I guarantee he would not have half as many anti-fans as he does.  (Or be responsible for those mass librarian suicides I read about a while back.)  Voice is honesty, the truth of your story, and if you attempt to obfuscate it or Mary Sue it, we will reject it.  Readers want an intimate connection, a story that reflects their own truths: heartbreak, joy, triumph, whatever.  POV is the tool that provides us with that connection, and voice resonates the loudest.  Think about why your story is being told from a particular POV, and when approaching a scene, whose voice would be most interesting to see it from.  Examples of good voice:  Pride of Baghdad, To Kill A Mockingbird, Push by Sapphire, and Because of Winn-Dixie.

Also, I have finally hit upon a wicked-cool style for my urban YA fantasy novel, Daemonfire.  Behold the splash page:

I’ll be updating when I can, just to garner some interest for the thing.  I’m currently fiddling with a Flash website design after completing some training in Flash, so I’ll let you know how that goes, too.

*Indicate a marketing platform in your query; even one sentence helps

*Come up with a teaching guide and market to history and world culture classes

*Use your network and get endorsements from fellow writers/illustrators/field professionals

*Look for clubs and societies willing to offer awards for your book.  Find a “hub” and push the book on it

*Get postcards and mass mail things at the beginning of the school year.  Libraries may purchase the book, or possibly invite you for a visit if you indicate you’re open for it.

Good knowledge, all.  But, these were all middle or YA historical, animal, or contemporary fiction.  Things that easily slip into the niche of school.  But me, being a fantasy author, raised my hand and voiced my one pressing question: “What if you’re writing things like fantasy, sci-fi, or horror?  None of those genres lend themselves to the whole school thing very well.”

The lecturer blinked and said, “Fantasy?  Well, you’ve got you’re work cut out for you.”  That was kind of it.  She moved on to the finer points of how having a variety of food in your stories can help you find that marketing niche.

So … fantasy can’t be taken seriously from an educational standpoint?  What a downer.  I mean, I have to admit even in professional writing circles, fantasy feels like “Oh, you write fantasy?  That’s so neat.”  Neat meaning “cute” or some other four letter word.  I got the gist of what she was saying, and I know it can be applied to the fantasy genre, I’m just dismayed that so-called “make-believe” genres were so easily dismissed out of hand.  That’s not to say schools wouldn’t have their own similar bias, too, but I’d like to point out that the fantasy writers who don’t abide by the “A Wizard Did It” rule do their research.  Lots of it.

I myself have done extensive reading on medieval horse breeds, their armor, and their training, which would allow me to market to historical societies, ren faires, and equine conventions.   I know about the Mongols, about how war dogs were used, successful battle tactics, medieval weaponry and black power weapons, and a LOT of mythology and history.  But because I use it in fantastic context, it can’t be taken seriously?  I don’t believe that.  And I don’t think anyone else writing should, either.  The same tactics mentioned above can be used; just like everything else, you can find your hub.

I guess you should just be prepared for more resistance than usual.

You can find a lot more by clicking on my icon and heading on over to DeviantArt, a much more informal place for me to draw and rant.