This article is designed to help you write highly unusual stories that don’t come off as “weird.” This does not mean that you have to write realism. For example, Lord of the Rings is high-fantasy, complete with magic and talking trees. But readers agree it isn’t weird. In contrast, when Spiderman fights a magical supervillain, that is weird.
How can you write fantasy that’s more like LOTR and less like eight-armed Spiderman?
- Milk your premise.
- Make your characters as relatable as possible.
- Keep your story’s level of unusualness consistent.
Milk Your Premise
When you tell the reader that your book is going to have dragons and ninjas or aliens and battlecruisers, those are part of the premise. One sample premise is “a dragon must learn the ways of the ninja to save the city.” That’s definitely unusual, but not much more unusual than the bestselling “a dragon must learn the ways of the British Navy to save London” or “mutant turtles must learn the ways of the ninja to save New York City.”
To be sure, some prospective readers won’t like an unusual premise and they’ll read something else. That’s good! 100% of the people that start reading your book like your premise. It’s not “weird” to them, any more than LOTR is “weird” to its readers.
We will make any sort of leap that you sell as part of your premise. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has mutant ninja turtles and His Majesty’s Dragon (and Superhero Nation) have federally employed dragons. Those are much more unusual than a wizard in Spiderman! But the wizard is weird because he isn’t covered by Spiderman’s science-fiction premise.
Make Your Characters as Relatable as Possible
If your story is about a guy that turns into a cockroach, relating it to your audience is hard. But Kafka succeeded because he drew on general concerns like social awkwardness, isolation and the fear that people will grow into a burden on loved ones. Even though your fiction may go far beyond anything we’ve ever experienced, using parallels to our lives will make it feel real.
You can also relate even the bizarrest settings by drawing on familiar plot elements and analogies. For example, cops-and-robbers stories feel engaging even if the cops are psychic swordmasters and the robbers are a sinister trade federation in a galaxy far, far away. Similarly, Eragon’s dragon-riders and Jake Long have a decidedly police-like role. Using that symbolism helps readers feel like the stakes are high: when the police lose, everyone loses.
Additionally, you can also usually draw on the motivations, aspirations, fears and relationships of your characters to create connections between your audience and fantastical characters. Spiderman does a really good job of making readers feel like a guy in a goofy suit could be their neighbor or classmate. He has a tough job and he has romantic troubles that we can all relate to. If you can’t tie your characters to what drives and interests your readers, you should probably reevaluate your project’s direction.
Don’t Add Too Much Strangeness
As books and series drag on, authors are tempted to sustain reader interest by introducing new surprises that don’t fit the story. Some popular examples of weird tropes that usually don’t fit the story are time travel, space travel, shrink rays, de-agers, alien visitors, underwater adventures, alternate dimensions and talking apes. Hell, over the past 20 years Spiderman’s writers have revealed that Peter Parker’s parents were secret agents, that he was a clone and that he had a previously unknown sister that was a supervillain. And Aunt May married Dr. Octopus!
