/lit/ I got the idea in my head that I want to try writing fantasy.

There's a thread dedicated to fantasy

Well yesterday we had the guy who disliked erotica but wanted to write in the genre, and today we have the guy who wants to write fantasy but hasn't read a fantasy novel in ages!

Do you mongrels think Cervantes wrote Don Quijote without having completely immersed himself in chivalry novels?

>>8606558
who's don coyote

>>8606513
Honestly, your writing may be more interesting if you avoid reading fantasy.

>>8606706
This. The tropes of the genre are hard to shake once you start using them.

>>8606719
>>8606706
I'm not OP, but should I refrain from reading Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter? I'll be sad if that's true, but oh well. I have political books I can read instead.

>>8606804
Lord of the Rings is a classic. You should read it. But refrain from taking elements from it (especially races and societies) as fantasy has been ripping off Tolkien for the better half of a century.

Harry Potter is a series for children. If you're writing childrens' fantasy, it might be worth a read.

>>8606808
>if you're writing childrens' fantasy
what about young adults? Being one myself, that's my target

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
Indoeuropean Poetry and Myth by M. L. West

Then look for a bibliography of any historical period of your choosing.

Don't read genre fiction, read mythology and history.

>>8606825
young adult lit isnt for young adults senpai, its for children

>>8606855
That's retarded, but I'll buy it with every ruble I can call mine.

So I just write and hope that I'm hitting the right age group with it?

Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

You don't need to have read the originals -- the author didn't.

>>8606849
Also look for videos on HEMA, historical fencing, archery and so on.

Your objective is to practice descriptions of fighting, so first you go with describing the killing of a non-resisting, probably unaware person, meaning a homicide, then you continue with duels, then brawls with multiple participants, and then move on with larger scale battles.

Systematically ignore everything /tg/ has, gives or produces in terms of belief, prayer and ritual. The media they consume is different than what your write.

Follow these two posts of mine and you'll be miles ahead of any fantasy writer.

>>8606861
If you want to write for the teen demographic, here's what you want:
-Teenage hero for your audience to project themselves on
-Adults giving teenaged opinions the time of day. This doesn't happen in real life, so having it happen in your story is a must.
-Adults being generally useless compares to teens.
-Gratuitous swearing and PG-13 sex.
-Dystopian setting
-Liberal political themes. Try to find a happy medium between subtlety and anvil-dropping, leaning towards the latter.

>>8606513
Lord of the Rings has pacing like a supertanker. In the first book it barely moves at all. You slog through pages and pages of pointless description and wonder when it's going to get going. By book two it's clearly doing something. It's still slow but it's speeding up. When you get to Return of the King, it's unstoppable.

Don't give up after book one. Tolkien wrote LotR over many years, and he got much better with time.

>>8606849
>The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
This is ideal for when you want to write the same boring shit everybody has already read hundreds of times before.

>>8606885
It ain't broken, no need to fix it.

>>8606874
I kek'd; this is truly the YA starter kit

>>8606874
While that entire post actually really helpful, I think what we both mean by 'young adult' are two different things. I was meaning the roughly 20-30yr age group.

having said that...
>Dystopian setting
makes me uneasy because it's part of my premise. Not the centerpoint, but it's important.

>Adults being generally useless compared to teens
makes me feel a lot better, because I know damn well that I'm not going with that in my story.

>>8606894
In the literary market, "young adult" translates to "teen". Keep that in mind if you every try to get this thing published. If it's not for teens, it's not YA.

>>8606894
They say "young adult" because it is far better - marketing-wise - than the more precise "retarded teenager."

>>8606912
>>8606901
Yeah, I just read it up on Wikiped. The term I was looking for was "New Adult Fiction".

I'm aiming to write for New Adult Fiction.

>>8606917
Read a few books in the genre, and practice writing. Ideally, you should go into a writing workshop. You can also just write fanfiction, as this will give you a good idea of what you can expect from the lowest common denominator, i.e. the primary consumers of that sort of garbage.

>>8606953
Thanks man. Already writing fanfiction, but i could use a workshop sometime. At least i already have an editor

>>8606706
This is very on point. Fuck, historical fiction is less creatively bankrupt than fantasy. That being said if you don't care about originality or are just here to make sick $$$ then by all means, go for it.
_
Just be sure to actively analyze and break down what you're reading. Try to figure out the why and how of emotional impact and why greasy nerds think the middle ages would be so much cooler if there were dragons or whatever. Be sure to figure out why things don't work as well. There's way more to learn from bad books than good books.

Finally, I'd recommend picking up children's/YA fantasy or fantasy adjacent stories. You can mine interesting ideas from there. Like I wouldn't necessarily say Invisible Cities is straight fantasy, but you can effortlessly pull some cool stories from it.

>>8606558
that exclamation point made that post amusing and pleasent.

>>8606883
>fellowship of the ring, le sing a song every two pages and 500 pages of bombadil meme book XD