Sea of Genres: Fantasy/Paranormal

Alright, fantasy and paranormal writers.

This post is for you.

Today, I'll be covering tips for writing fantasy and paranormal.

These two genres can be very similar and the tips can be interchangeable, so I decided to combine them for today's Sea of Genres blog post and give you an extra long read today.

Enjoy!

Fantasy:

I love fantasy. I don't know about you guys, but fantasy is one of my favorite genres to write.

It is also a hard genre to write.

Basically, you're creating your own world. With your brain, paper, and a pen, you're weaving—with your words as your thread—a place where readers can escape.

This is the first genre I'll be covering in today's blog post.

Before I give you my tips, I have something for you to remember.

It's your world.

This is the most important thing to remember when writing fantasy.

It's your world you are creating.

It can be anything you want it to be.

You make the rules.

You make the boundaries.

It's all up to you.

You don't have to be as factual as you would have to with a genre like mystery or suspense.

That's the lovely freedom that fantasy has.

Now that we have that out of the way, let's go over the 3 tips I have for you surrounding this genre.

Remember to educate your audience.

Especially in fantasy where you are creating the world, it's important to remember that the readers don't know what you do.

If you decide that the type of creature you've created is allergic to copper, you have to tell the reader that. You can't just say, "He avoided the copper". You have to make sure you explain why he avoided the copper.

This is true for little details as well.

I know this sounds like an obvious thing to do, but sometimes when we're writing, we can forget that the readers don't have all the knowledge we do. Sometimes, we'll accidentally add in something and forget that the readers don't know that piece of information because we haven't written it.

What if you are writing about a make-believe race of creatures that you created and you have so many details that you just can't figure out where to cram them onto a page?

A simple fix is to write a prologue that goes through the history of those creatures. In that prologue, you could just run down their characteristics and any important details needed later in the story.

Remember, though, that you might need to reiterate certain details when they come into play later in the book since people often forget some things from the prologue.

Explore your ideas.

Don't label ideas too weird or out of this world before you try them.

In this genre, you can do whatever you want in your world.

So explore those ideas before tossing them out!

If you need to, you could even get someone else's opinion if you feel like something's too weird.

Trust your judgement.

If you try something and it just seems not to go with the story, trust your gut. You're going to know best when it comes to that.

But don't be afraid to try your ideas that seem a little "out there".

Fantasy is probably the most "free" genre there is in regards to subject matter.

You can literally create any world you want.

Describe.

Let's say, for my book, I created creatures called "Winders". You don't know what those are because I created them. So it's my job, as the author, to tell you exactly what they are and exactly what they look like.

And how do I do that?

Description.

Description is a very important part of fantasy. Especially since there are many "make believe things" in this genre. You have to describe them in such a way so that your readers can picture their appearance.

When we're describing, it's important to not just say, "Their face was wrinkled," if their face was wrinkled. It'd be better to say, "Their face was like a raisin, each line seemingly chiseled into their leathery skin." Doesn't that give a better picture of their face? And isn't it better to read?

This goes with the "show, don't tell" phrase, commonly used by writers or editors.

Similes and metaphors are also very helpful for description. You can find my post, "To All the Similes I've Used Before" where I discuss this.

So description is a must for fantasy books. It's imporant in any genre, but especially this one.

Paranormal:

Let me first give you a quick rundown of the difference between paranormal and fantasy because I know they're similar and can get mistaken for one another.

Paranormal can mean a lot of different things and it is similar to fantasy. But there are a lot of differences.

Normally, paranormal is about supernatural beings or creatures and it's often stuff that already exists in the literature world. Witches, vampires, werewolves, and such can all be found in the paranormal genre.

Fantasy is usually about magical creatures or worlds. Elves, mermaids, even witches or wizards could be considered fantasy.

There is a lot of grey area in what makes paranormal so different than fantasy, because, technically, you could probably call any paranormal book a fantasy book.

But overall, paranormal is about the supernatural and fantasy is about the magical.

Don't be fooled by the title "paranormal". Research can actually help.

Very much like fantasy, it’s important to remember that when creating paranormal stories, it’s all from your imagination.

But, I find that for paranormal, you tend to write about beings or supernatural creatures that already exist in the book or movie world. For example, vampires.

While it is true that it is a work of fiction and imagination, and you can quite literally do anything you want in your book, it pays to do a little research.

Let’s say you’re writing about a werewolf. Maybe you could spend a little while on the internet just reading up a little about them. It doesn’t have to be long. Just 30 minutes. Look up stories about werewolves or urban legends about them. You might be surprised at how many little facts or details you can find about a completely make-believe creature.

Now, it’s your book and since werewolves—or whatever you choose to write about—aren’t even real, you can do what you want with them.

However, I’ve found that if you research a little bit about them and kind of get a feel for them, your writing will turn out a lot better. You’ll have a better time picturing their lifestyles or figuring out how their minds might work

You don't necessarily have to research on the computer and look up what you can. You could just try and picture yourself in their shoes to get a feel for them.

Don't be afraid to change things up.

The best part of paranormal is that even though you're often writing about supernatural creatures that already exist in the literature world, you can change it up.

You can do whatever you want.

It's your book so feel free to change things around.

If you decide that a certain aspect of the type of creatures you're writing about isn't what you want, that's okay. You can change it.

Afterall, even if these creatures already exist as myths or fairytales, they are make-believe so everything about them has been made up. That means you can change it if you want.

I wouldn't recommend making a huge change that goes against practically every book written about them, but there's nothing stopping you from doing so. If that's what you want to do, go for it.

Describe their surroundings well. Don't neglect it and don't overdo it.

In a paranormal book, usually, people live in their own sort of kingdom, town, or world that's different from where we live.

What I feel like I'm not given enough of sometimes is the description of what those places look like.

Often times, the author will simply gloss over where these "supernatural beings" live and not provide any (or enough) detail of what it actually looks like.

Don't be shy, guys! You've created this world. Show it off! Give us a feel for what the place is like! Don't just leave us with, "He lived in a kingdom." Tell us what the kingdom is like.

Even something so simple as this:

He lived in a kingdom where the ocean met the sky, the towering evergreens being the only divider between the glassy surface and the endless, blue expanse above it.

There, the streets were dusted with dirt, but the walls of the buildings lining them were filled with intricate carvings and facades that never quite seemed to show their age. And sitting at the back of the antique-looking town was the castle.

The castle he called home.

This is what we love to read. Even though it's simple, it gives us a feel for the kingdom this being, person, or creature is living in.

We see that it has character—the carvings and antique description showing that—and their surroundings seem quite beautiful—water nearby and towering trees in the sweeping landscape.

This is a way to add in some level of description of the place without slowing the pace of the book.

You could describe it in a lot more detail than this and you could also describe it in more depth later in the story.

Also, notice how my description is not completely specific?

I give you the feel and the rough outline of the world, but leave some of what it looks like up to the readers.

This is part of what's great about literature.

The reader gets to picture the places and characters how they imagine them.

When writing a description, don't write it like this:

A brown building with a stone fecade stood in the middle of the town with smaller houses with thatched roofs surrounding it. In the middle of each house, sat a door with either a roughly etched doorknocker or a peephole on the face of it.

The road was around 10 feet wide and paved with dirt and stone. A few acres of grass outlined the small town.

You don't want your descriptions to sound like blue prints.

When you do this, you don't leave any room for the reader's imagination and it's also not as fun to read. It gets boring when descriptions are like this.

Try using creative language.

Above, I wrote, "He lived in a kingdom where the ocean met the sky, the towering evergreens being the only divider between the glassy surface and the endless, blue expanse above it."

I could've just written, "There was a large ocean around the kingdom, towering evergreens stood here and there."

But isn't it less fun to read?

When we use creative language, it makes it more fun to picture and leaves some room for interpretation, giving the readers a say in what they imagine for the kingdom.

Description is mandatory.

Regardless of where you put it, it needs to be there just to give the readers an idea of the world they're adventuring to. But don't write blue prints as your description. Make it artistic and leave some of it up to the readers.

All of these tips can be applicable to both genres, but I created each tip with the specific genre they're under in mind.

I hope you found these helpful! If you have any questions, just contact me in the bar below.

Happy writing!

-Jocelyn