How do you handle writing epic-length fantasy?

airship wreck said:

How do you handle writing epic-length fantasy?

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Easy: I don't plan to write epic fantasy, and I don't plan on sequels.

How much do you know about your own personal fantasy world?

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Enough to make sense of the world when I'm writing it.

How do you outline and worldbuild in a way that's easy to refer to later on?

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Don't. I get a concept of what I want the world to be, then start writing the story into it. I figure out the details as I need to.

What parts of the writing process have been harder or easier than you expected?

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Pertaining to epic fantasy? Ah... there really isn't anything harder or easier as apposed to my other stories. They all have their challenges.

On a side note: I suggest you spend more time polishing the first book than working on the others. You would only query the first, and if it doesn't show promise or doesn't sell well, the four other books would be a waste. It's very rare for a publisher to take on an entire series from the get go and sell them all within close proximity--this means that they would rather take on the first book, test the waters with it, and possibly call on you for others (and they will give you time to write them). Write the first as a standalone, query it as a standalone that has "series potential" and speak about it later with the publishers.

This where you get to balance effort versus gain, Airship. Lots of folks will tell you don't need to waste time on worldbuilding, and you should submit a completely self-contained mms to an agent.

But that worldbuilding can be a strong foundation as long as you don't get obsessed by it. Having the other books in the pipeline (and telling agents you have 'series potential') is good strategy. Especially if you think you might self-publish.

Go with what you need to do, but maximize your chances along the way. Story trumps everything, so make sure your first book is as strong as it can be.

airship- I too find myself looking forward to the next 2 books I plan to write to follow my first novel. Although, I suddenly have great ideas for the 2nd or 3rd I just have to write it down in a journal for later. In order for you to get to the point of writing 2 and 3, perfect the first book. Then you may find editors and people don't like some story twist and you'll have to change it. The story must have continuity throughout and you would hate to have to change everything after you've written it.
Just my perspective, keep all those great ideas close by until its time. Draw out your outlines but be prepared to change them. I didn't create a whole new world, just played off of the myths that were already around. Worldbuilding is important but it has to show editors the potential for more books. Draw a map or keep a timeline of everything to stay on track. Good luck, ill follow you on twitter to see your progress

Just remember if you write all of it before you sell the first, you may have to go back and essentially rewrite every single novel that follows once you find an agent/publisher. (If you go that route.)

Patrick Rothfuss had all of his books finished. Submitted the first. Made enough changes that it required major revisions to the 2nd, then MASSIVE for the 3rd. (Think ripple effect on changing plot items.) You sell your first book, chances are, there will be some changes required. Some minor, and some (likely) major.

Here's an interesting link on Rothfuss and his revision process:

This is everything he did on his 2nd book. That was "finished."

As for writing epic fantasy, well, I'm there with ya. It's a lot. I learned after my first draft that I needed macro-level assessment and organization. Post draft, I went back and looked at each chapter, wrote down who the main character was, what the character wanted, and what was standing in the way. Needed all of those things present. Then, I made notes on how this chapter was progressing the story forward. Was it filler? Or did it contribute to my character's overall arc? (For me, some filler is okay as long as motive/obstacles are present for character-building.)

I have 5 rotating POVs. That was a bear to manage in terms of TIME. (Had to mark that off in a spreadsheet as well--what DAY is it? How much time has passed?)

Worldbuilding . . . yeah, fun. A LOT of fun for me, but challenging. For me, I can't just dump in a lot of information up front. I need a reason for it. My suggestion here is to see how other writers do it. Read a lot. See what those opening chapters look like. How does the world unfold? Probably in small bits--things that are important to the character.

A character is traveling down the street. What will he/she note normally? Where can you slip in a line or two about the past? The mythology? The geology or society? From what I've noticed, it's small bits. And those bits have to be relevant to the present and to the character.

A lord's son is taking his horse through down. What does he notice? What details does he reflect upon? Why do those things matter to him. RIGHT NOW? Maybe he's on his way to see his favorite whore and he's going through a part of town that's a little shady. He knows better. He might notice the sinister way the shadows fall on the slanted shanties. He might reflect on a body found earlier that month in some dark alley. He might look up to a new moon and say a quick prayer to the goddess of the night. Give me safe passage because the mythology says she takes pity on lovers.

It's just a matter of me closing my eyes and thinking, "what matters? What needs to be described? Why now?" And how I can do a tiny bit of world-building.

In terms of being able to reference your world building, I'm a huge advocate of Scrivener. The program helped me organize all my world building and character profiles while I wrote. It seriously changed everything for me.

For world building--to an extent I agree with WillSauger, I didn't build anymore than I needed for the story--but I ended up needing a lot of world building for my particular fantasy because it ranged over 16 different races/religions and cultures--all of which I created from scratch in an effort to avoid the "usual fantasy tropes". Some people's stories don't need much world building. That varies so much. And even though I only planned what I would need for the story--in the actual writing of it, I ended up not even needing everything I planned.

Don't be afraid to scrap stuff.

I would keep the outlines of future books very loose. Your story could change so much between first draft to published draft and your outlines subsequently will change a lot too.

I'd add: expect your outlines to change. For the better.

For worldbuilding purposes, I do a few things. First of all, I throw all my inspiration into folders on scrivener--pictures, website links, charts, outlines, ramblings. Second, I have a paper notebook that I keep all of my "worldbuilding" in. I do the paper version for two reasons: 1. I organize better when using paper and pen and 2. it gives me something physical to refer to when writing, rather than having it in separate files. If you're not a physical person, keeping all that stuff on computer is probably just as good.

I have general ideas where my epic fantasy series are going to go, but I don't meticulously plan the later stories until I've finished the ones before them. Even when I outline, I like to leave myself room to change things, and an outline right from the start can become almost useless.

Also, you should try to make the first one as much of a standalone as possible. It doesn't have to resolve anything, but it has to have a satisfying ending. Don't end with a cliffhanger. You might get away with it in later books, but not in the first.

airship wreck said:

For three years now, I've been working on a fantasy series that (I'm hoping) will span five books of around 120k words each when it's done. Although I have a solid second draft of the first book complete, I want to draft the other four before looking for an agent. I figure that way I can plant early references to characters and concepts that don't become important until later, and I can keep the plot from growing beyond my ability to resolve it.

Still, I'm having a hard time keeping this world under control. I'm wondering if anyone who's done this before can offer me any perspective. How much do you know about your own personal fantasy world? How do you outline and worldbuild in a way that's easy to refer to later on? What parts of the writing process have been harder or easier than you expected? I'm interested in hearing anything and everything you have to say about writing very long, very complicated fantasy.

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I work similarly. I know that it's not necessarily the best idea to write second or third novels before I have an agent or publisher, but I'm enjoying it, darn it.

I tend to do a lot of world-building first. It doesn't necessarily make it into the finished product, but I like to know what the world looks like so I can make reference to it if necessary. Makes it feel more fleshed-out, IMO. I also work out the main characters and their life stories through that point, so I have a really good sense of who they are.

I outline in a basic sort of way, so I have a general idea of how the plot proceeds. Once I have that down, I just throw things into motion and write what happens. This sounds haphazard, I know, but you get a feel for it after awhile. I finished the second book in the trilogy awhile ago, and it came in within a few thousand words of how long I thought it would be.

When I started on my novel, I planned five sections in it, which are like chapters, except they are shorts with different adventures that my characters go on.

I planned out most of it. I'm now enjoying being overwhelmed at every turn.

cwschizzy said:

I planned out most of it. I'm now enjoying being overwhelmed at every turn.

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I think that's a perfect way of putting it. "Enjoying being overwhelmed."

I don't think of epic as being a length, honestly. Epic is in what's happening in the story, and the story will be as long or as short as it's going to be. I generally know in the ballpark how long a story will write out, give or take a few thousand words. The fantasy novel I'm working on now will run about 125K, for instance, and is an epic fantasy because of its content. However, it isn't part of a series.

I do have a fantasy series of five books I'm planning, but the books will probably be more in the 80-100K area each.

I'm an "organic"/pantser writer, so I don't plan ahead. I despise worldbuilding, so I keep it as simple as possible. I don't keep notes (outside of a spreadsheet for all names for cities, people, etc. so I can be consistent in spelling) on any of it. I establish a "world feel" to serve as ruler for anything created, and as a creative launch point. As for details, I'm gifted with a pretty good memory, so I can simply remember the vast number of details of the world. If I can't remember something, I go back and reread the chapter I remember it appearing in (yes, I'm generally right in where it is) to refresh my memory.

Epic doesn't have to mean word count, but with the stakes at an "epic level," I feel like you're going to have to scramble to build up to those far-reaching, world-changing moments in less than 120k words.

But, that's me.

I try to break it down to the smallest bits possible: scenes. When I figured out the worldbuilding and most characters (which, I must say, took four failed drafts), I wrote an outline showing everything that would happen on the story, in chronological order, even the events that I wouldn't narrate directly. I also divided the story by sets of characters whose subplots were deeply fused together. This way, I separated the overall outline not only by time, but also by the characters involved in the events.

Then I did a scene by scene outline, detailing precisely what was the purpose of each scene and what each character would do and react towards the action or development. And then it was the fun part, actually writing the thing. Since I broke it down in parts of 1-2K words maximum, it was easy to manage the whole story and find the spots that needed fixing, afterwards (I'm in the process of rewriting an entire character arc and it has been fairly easy with this method).

I'm afraid I can't offer much insight into worldbuilding, though. I changed a great deal of my novel just to avoid getting deep into my universe, haha.

Well my current project I suppose could be called epic, though it doesn't feel right.

It's intended to go over 4 books, though the length of each is something I worry about once the story is written. I generally know what is happening from one part to the next, though there are always surprises.

I agree with the idea that worldbuilding is important. If you don't know who is where, and what they are about, then you will easily get lost, you have to have some sort of idea as to the geography of a place, and probably a bit about it's demography as well. Beyond that will depend very much on the world and the story you are telling.

I am of the ilk of those who have ideas of what is happening later on in the overall story, but perhaps not the exact spot of where they will go. I know roughly (what book and roughly where in that book) a particular part should go, but so far I've always known when the right time for those parts was.

I always edit as I'm writing, before I do my full on editing runs once it's finished, different people have different processes.I find that I am able to put most of those little hints you mentioned in when I write, though I have had to fix them up on occasion afterwards.

In short, you can never prepare enough and you can never edit/revise enough.

My advice is to be methodical. If you're building a world you may be best served by creating an informal mini-encyclopedia.

Hammer down the physics, and then outline your story around a very firm foundation of how the world "normally" operates.

Don't violate your vision of how the world should function unless the story idea is much better than how the physics originally operated, and do so only if you haven't released the first book.

The best advice I can give you is to track every plotline you create and every character. I can't think of a single series where all those little plotlines that seem cute and minor in early books don't turn into fire breathing dragons down the line and the longer your series goes on, the more secondary plots will appear in it.

Each book in your series needs to have an inciting incident for that story and a plot that is central to that book that can be concluded as well as an overlying arc for the series as a whole. Each book can be looked at as a chapter of the series so you need to make sure those plots aren't driving you off course.

By the end of the series' final book, every secondary plot needs to be adressed and resolved, just as the primary plot does, which usually means many of those seemingly insignificant characters associated with those plots will need to be adressed as well.

I would also suggest routinely reading your series start to finish, it's shocking what can pop up in later books that you addressed far earlier or ideas that can and should be pushed into later books where they fit better.

Seeing this thread again, I thought of something. If your series is going to go on a very long time, with many POV characters, don't be afraid to take a character completely out of a book if they don't serve any purpose in that book.

I've seen too many authors that feel like they must keep following every POV character's story. If they're not important anymore, stop following them. Bring them back in when they're important again. You can also kill them off if you want.

I am a word count fiend and EF is my natural genre home. I go completely gaga when I write it. I enjoy every moment!

I'm a pantser by nature. But with this genre and the books I am working on,I had to create what I call a story bible. It's bascically my egomanical name for an outline.

The first part was devoted to creating cultures,social rules,landmarks and worldbuilding. I have various notes about armor,swords and other things about the worlds I've created.

The second part was the various characters and their respective motivations. Everything from the names of the houses,their sigils,motto's and all the good stuff,lol.

The third part was breaking down major moments,character reactions and how all of it ties together. I examine whether the major event hits all the things I need or whether it's not that important.

I tend not to reread a story until I've finished,but with this series I've gone back and changed things so that more mess can pop off for maximum impact.

I can honestly say there haven't been any hard parts. These books have been very enjoyable to write.About the only issues I have is POV. I can't decide whether each major character should have a chapter or to just leave things alone. I;ll make up my mind one day!


rwm4768 gave some very good advice that I am going to keep in mind. I am guilty of having characters who've served their purpose reappear in the story.

rwm4768 said:

Seeing this thread again, I thought of something. If your series is going to go on a very long time, with many POV characters, don't be afraid to take a character completely out of a book if they don't serve any purpose in that book.

I've seen too many authors that feel like they must keep following every POV character's story. If they're not important anymore, stop following them. Bring them back in when they're important again. You can also kill them off if you want.

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Great advice for anyone doing an epic series. Don't make massive wordcounts or numerous books when you can cut or kill off viewpoints as needed

One very left field suggestion - which may or may not help - is that some series are based around ready-made happenings or chunks of time which help to break up the long sweep of history into book sized bits. This can help the author to remember where he (or she) is in the broader sweep of things.

And now I'm sitting back and looking at that paragraph. Heck, I think I know what I mean, even if it didn't come out the way I intended.

Maybe a few examples would say it better:

Each Harry Potter book is a school year and the whole lot adds up to his school life.

Each James Bond story is a self contained mission which flows from briefing by M, equipment by Q, a round of golf, a bit of sex, blow up a volcano.

In the Helliconia series, Brian Aldiss bases each book on seasons within a very long year.

In the Hornblower books, several of the books deal with a promotion from one rank to another.

It's by no means essential, but I suppose it's one way to keep a handle on a logical structure inside a very long saga.