Today's topic is how to write a best-selling fantasy book. Writing an award winning fantasy book is a lot easier than many of you would think. I will give you a step-by-step walkthrough for this task. First you must make up a plot. I don't mean YOU will actually make it up. That's too dificult. You're much better off taking a popular plot and just changing the setting. In this example, let's use... Star Wars. I'm sure you know the story: Young farmboy joins an ancient band of magical knights to fight off an evil empire. Along the way he meets up with a rogue, a princess and a wise old man. Turns out he's related to the emperor's second-in-command etc. Next is the setting. This is also far too dificult. To make it easier, we'll just take the setting from Lord of the Rings, since we're using a different plot, no one will notice. We'll have godmod, omniscient, omnipotent, perfect elves and dirty, rude, drunken, brute dwarves. Now we'll get to work on villains. First of all, all of them must wear black. It's a rule: You can't be evil unless you wear black, or, in rare cases, crimson, scarlet, or some form of blood red. Not all black-wearing characters have to be evi, of course. Some can just be bad-ass. Now, for that disposable henchmen that all evil emperors have an infinite number of, they must be ugly, stupid, black, hairy, dirty, smelly deformed, or possess some other attribute that would make a bitchy upper-class white woman want to keep this creature away from her house. Next we'll discuss characters. First we have one major rule of thumb: Characters are born out of necessity and nothing else. Since we're using George Lucas's plot, might as well take his characters as well. And since we're using Tolkien's setting, might as well just change the names of his characters slightly such that the result is: Star Wars Character who's role is being fille|Character name is based on|Name Luke Skywalker+Aragorn=Aragon Princess Leia+Arwen=Arwa Han Solo+Misc. Swordsman=Murtag Obi-wan+Gandalf the Grey=Brum Palpatine+Sauron=Galbatorikz R2-D2+Saphire=Saphiru Yoda+Gandalf the White=Aromis Now to try to hide some blatant thivery, add some variable from another famous book such as Dragonriders of Pern by making that ancient order of knights ride dragons. Then alter a few minor plot points. Arwa is not related to Aragon, but she becomes his lover at the end of your book. During the period that Han Solo WOULD be frozen, Murtag betrayed the group to join Galbatorikz and also developed the power of the knights and he takes on the Darth Vader role becuase Darth Vader was killed earlier in the series. Now there is the main character. Your main character is the most important. No one else should have a personality except it. Your character must be you, only superpowered. Give it the same gender, eye color, hair color, skin color etc as you. Then make it develop insane skills in archery swordsmanship, magic, horseback riding, writing etc. in an insanely brief period of time (like two months). Now give your character some fancy titles like "Shadeslayer" and cool magical items such as a belt that allows it to use more magical power. As for the actual writing, use incredibly long descriptions that no one will bother to read. Never use the word "said". It is evil. Even if your only other choice is to do something stupid like " "Sorry," Brum apologized ". Finally use a thesaurus to find the most obscure synonym of every word in the story and replace them, paying no heed to connotatios and the actual definition of the word. Now get your parents to open a publishing company that will actually publish while skipping the editing phase and all that other necessary stuff. Quit school at age 15 to make the book famous by insane amounts of advertising and traveling. Get your uncle to make a movie out of it and hope the rabid fanboys you've gained will watch it and that's all you'll need. For good luck bribe some critics to give it good reviews and hope the rest were suckered into liking the book. That's all you need to know about writing. And I feel it is worth mentioning that this chapter is *not* the life story of an author whose last name is Paolini. Back To Home |
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