Making Fantasy Fresh: How, Why, and an Example

Whether it's a prologue, or a scene from another POV to set the mood, here's tips, tricks, and examples

Ever opened a new fantasy novel only to sigh, This again?

I’m with you, in fact I wrote an intro years ago that gives me that exact feeling.

Let’s fix it.

We will split this into three parts:

• The excerpt

• A flaws analysis + fixes

• The edited excerpt

I’m going to focus my edits on the following:

Purpose:

Why is this scene here? Why have them say that, write three sentences not three paragraphs, and so on.

Brevity and Trust

“Brevity is the soul of wit” says Polonius in Hamlet, and it’s key in prose too. Overstating or repeating things can be boring and insulting.

Character

The most epic scenes from fantasy did not occur necessarily because the author had this awesome idea of the scene in mind (though it could start this way) but because the characters are believable and understandable within the scene.

Prose

Writing is subjective, but there are some clear guidelines which help a lot if you actually want people to read the book, especially for fantasy.

The Intro

A figure crested a small hill that hid a small village from view. Catching sight of it, his face creased with memories, and he paused. A tear slid past his nose but a passerby would have only seen his hood. He resumed his stride again.

Soon he meandered down the center lane, although he kept to the shadows of dusk near the buildings. The canter of a horse brought to his mind a different time. The sun shone brightly, bringing heat to the back of his neck. The canter sent vibrations he could feel through the barrel he sat on. He could taste the candy in his mouth again, from the kind old lady who sat front right on Sunday. They rolled past the saloon, and the doors opened—

And then the saloon doors did open, and he stopped short to avoid running into them. A pair he didn’t know sauntered out, rolling as if on the deck of a boat in startled waters. They took no notice of him, and he slid past the closing panels and into the room.

Even in a small town, the business was steady and substantial, and the crowd hid the new arrival’s entry easily. The bartender noticed the potential customer, and a few more wary took note of the hood and made sure their guns were close, but the babble of conversation continued. The hood made his way quickly to the bar, and tossed coinage onto the countertop.

The clatter of metal on wood echoed, a familiar sound from an action he used to make so regularly. He blinked, and the barman appeared ten years younger, the grey in his once immaculately trimmed beard darkened to black, and the eyes regained their friendly light.

“Steele!” Arty’s tone rang out jovially, “Your usual aye?” He closed his eyes and breathed in the musky scent of tap beer and smoked pipe. Back where everything was home. His eyes opened and the glad reply died in his throat.

The barman’s beard became grey and slightly unkempt, his eyes returned to their searching, mistrusting look. The coins disappeared so fast he wondered if they’d been there at all, and the smell so wonted became mixed with gunpowder, and cheap liquor laying unwashed.

“House…house special.” He gave a muted command as to his drink.

The bartender disappeared, and returned moments later with the drink. Arty set it in front of him, and routinely began to list the ingredients. One part Alrundo Vermouth, two parts Farthen Brandy, and…house mix? He’d already begun to look away as he said it, all the pride gone from his voice. There was once a time when he smiled and brandished the list like the achievement it was, Alrundo, Farthen, and “…a special mix to get ya buzzing in all the right places!”, then a wink along with it.

Steele gripped the glass before Arty could remove his hand, holding him in place. Before the bartender had even finished turning, his other hand had gone to his belt where he knew there was a gun. Now, anyway. Steele’s heart was saddened, and his anger grew.

“Arty.” Steele slowly raised one hand to his hood, and removed it. His storm grey eyes pierced into the hazel spheres he’d once known to gaze back with revitalizing intensity. Arty gasped, and Steele let his hand go.

“Steele? Valen Steele?” His brows stayed elevated upon his forehead in disbelief. “You…” He suddenly glanced around, and then brought his hands together in a pleading gesture. “Val!” He paused, and dropped to a whisper. “You gotta leave, Val.” His eyes left Steele’s and slid to the floor. “Nothing’s changed,” he sighed defeated. Valen couldn’t remember the last time he had heard such a distraught plea come from the man. In fact, he didn’t think he ever had.

The crowd began to quiet as they realized something was amiss. Arty became ever more panicked, and his gaze kept dragging to the far left corner of the room.

“Valen—“

“Then you know why I’ve come.” Valen cut him off, letting some of the anger enter his eyes.

Arty’s eyes widened, and then he took a step back and his face relaxed as he accepted the inevitable. He raised his hands as if to plead innocence, and then turned around and picked up a glass and rag. Valen had prepared for as much, but that did not stop the pain. But hopefully he might mend even this.

Now in the room was a raucous silence. Hammers caught the latches of guns which had no intention of leaving unused. He scanned the room, knowing where he would focus his gaze. It rested on one man in the corner.

“Angus Beaumont.” His voice cut like hard metal, the edges lined with a malice that was unmistakable.

“Valen Steele.” The oily-smooth voice of Angus dripped out in scorn, contempt to match the malice. And then, Angus was standing, his cloak was shed, and a single long barreled six shooter pointed straight at Valen.

Valen’s hands had been on his drink. They came away slowly, rising as they did and clearly no threat to Angus. Even if he had gone for his guns, there’d be three holes through him before the butt of the gun brushed his palm, then three before he hit the ground. Just like his father.

“Angus.” The word spat from his mouth like a bad dip, and it hit the audience much the same. Palpable anger and pain radiated from the single word like the sun. “Leave this town. And take your ilk with you.” For a moment Angus almost seemed to lose his nerve. Steele no longer looked like the whelp he’d sent packing ten years ago. But his men were around him, and his resolve hardened.

“Or what, Steele? You’ll draw and fire faster than I can pull my trigger? You’ll continue firin—“

“I shall not ask again.” Valen could as well have fired a gun; he had just threatened Beaumont at the end of gunpoint. The cloak he wore dropped as he unfastened it at his neck. Audible gasps rose as they saw what he carried. And Arty’s eyes flickered once, before giving up what hope he had.

It was not high quality hurlers of fire and lead that Valen Steele brought to a fight, but knives. Two of them hung from an oddly fashioned belt. The belt was not the only oddity, but his boots, and clothing too. They were not riding boots, or even casual walking boots, but soft hide boots. His attire beneath the cloak mimicked the boots, tan garments and leather with a soft edge. Valen looked more like an Indian than anything.

Laughter rang out from the corner of the room. Angus bellowed as he released the tension that had built up in him as he had even begun to doubt that he had the upper hand. His gun dipped and wavered, seeing no need to train itself on one so ill opposed to contest it.

More of his men joined in on the laughter, hands falling from weapons and tension draining from backs. Even the townspeople gave small sighs of relief, entertaining the notion that perhaps there would be no bloodshed tonight.

But slowly the crown realized there was one voice that sounded as though it sobbed. They gradually quieted as they heard the edge of terror that laced it. Beaumont’s own men quieted as they perceived it came from one of their own. Angus frowned as his eyes sought and found the strangely foreboding man that uttered the sound.

He stood and took a wobbly step forward revealing himself to the room. He shook for a moment, his eyes darting towards, but never reaching, the figure of Valen Steele.

“You uh—” he choked, then tried again, “Did you earn those…up north?” He asked quietly.

Valen Steele nodded once, a self assured and small motion.

“Ah!” A sharp cry escaped the man’s lips, and he headed for the door, taking care to remain as far from Steele as he could in the path he chose. As soon as he made the tavern doors he quickly pushed through them and turned sharply, as if afraid from some ranged retaliation from a man who carried knives. His boots could be heard on the gravel, beating out a straggled run that gradually faded away.

Angus’s boots scraped the floor and he holstered his weapon, before sitting down in arrogance and contempt. “Valen you shoulda come with a weapon.” There was humor behind his words, and he punctuated it with his boots by slamming them on the nearest table. “Then I could have at least had a good story to tell!” He laughed at his own vain attempt at humor, and only his closer cronies followed suit.

Valen simply lowered his hands to his knives, and drew them forth with infinite patience. They were very ornate, almost overly so, but no less functional for it. The blades were also much wider than any normal knife design those in the tavern were accustomed to seeing.

And he held them. The folk gathered there had seen many men hold a gun.

There is the way of a child; he holds a weapon with comfort, but only for his ignorance of the weapon’s danger and ultimate function.

There is the way of a teen; he wears his father’s guns and believes that everyone within a hundred miles stares at him for it. He draws close, he holds tight, and he shoots little, for he knows the danger, but has no experience to temper it.

There is the way of a man; he knows what he carries, has practiced its function, and knows what it is like to be on either side of the table. He draws quick, shoots quicker, and wishes he had not.

Finally, there is the way of an artist. He wears his chosen instrument as if he were born from the womb carrying it; he brushes past doorways and sits in chairs and the sandalwood of the stocks misses these by the barest of a hair. He’ll draw and never look, countless years of habit telling him whether he needs to cock, or simply lay a finger on hair-trigger.

While no soul in the room thought for a moment knives could match flintlock and powder, there was no denying the hands that handled the knives. Valen Steele was beyond an expert with his chosen weapon. If this bothered Angus Beaumont, he did not show it.

But then Steele moved forward. His path was straight towards Angus, and then knives spoke clearly.

“Valen you take three more steps and I’ll put a bullet in your gut.” Valen took the steps without faltering.

No one ever believed the story when Arty told it, but it happened all the same.

Angus pulled leather, and lead spat from the barrel at Valen’s midsection. But not even a second after the gunfire was the clang of metal. Valen had intercepted the bullet. The following silence heard the bullet hit the ground.

The Critique

Made it through that? Whew, congrats. Me nearly ten years ago wrote that one, and I’ve (hopefully) learned a lot since.

Purpose

This is the largest issue with the current excerpt. Ostensibly, Angus is the antagonist and Valen our hero, but after this the reader has no reason to keep reading. Valen appears quite likely to win, and there is no other driving question aside from that.

Would you believe me if I told you he wasn’t there to kill Angus?

Not one bit. Valen watched his father die, went off to train for revenge, but while training saw past the anger, and realized he’d left behind what truly mattered to him: love.

I was carried away entirely by tropes, hence the tired and trotted feeling to the piece.

So we need to do a few things:

Establish his goal

He wants to find Avenella; but why go to Angus? Fix: he entered town and asked around, but has been recognized and people are already off to go tell Angus.

Put Angus in the way

No one wants to tell him, as they fear Angus.

Introduce questions if we answer any

The original asks the reader “Can Valen beat Angus?” and the answer is yes. Even worse, that was the only question. Since we will still have Valen beat him, we need a new question.

How and where are the Trangians taking her?

That question will make more sense when you read the edited version, but in any case the principle is the same when you are starting your novel: Ask more questions than you answer¹.

Foreshadow Bullet Slicing

That’s a pretty wild action. This was pure western up until this point, and so it makes it jarring rather than epic. Tossing in some magical elements before this will make it feel planned, rather than causing the reader to wonder if I am asking them to believe someone could do this.

Brevity

Taken as a whole, the first six paragraphs just want to say “he grew up here and doesn’t want to be noticed and it’s nighttime”, plus a bit of setting. Tons of bloat. As we established in purpose, it’s also not what we care about.

Additionally, my young self just wanted to paint the “epic warrior returned home” scene, but I didn’t bother to consider what this warrior looks like.

Odysseus returns home, and has to pretend to not know his dog, who is the only one who recognizes him through his disguise. Then the dog dies. The richness of that, given the city’s decrepit state and who Odysseus is now would be felt even if you hadn’t read the stuff before. You would be missing out on a lot no doubt but my point:

Scenes do not exist in isolation.

Next, I basically hit you over the head with “hey guys he’s been here before” again, and to what affect it’s not really clear. I also tell you anyways… “Back where everything was home.”

Yeah thanks I hadn’t noticed.

Really, everything until he starts talking to Arty could be cut into 2-3 paragraphs, because their dialogue conveys most of what I conveyed right before it.

Next, his interaction with Angus begins, and mostly gets on with things, but still slows at times.

The interaction with the Unnamed Man Who Is Scared is mostly mud though. Cut, cut, cut.

The final piece that needs trimming is my attempt at some poetic comparison. We’ll touch on the prose, but for brevity’s sake alone it needs changing. He’s about to be shot at and we…spend 240 words talking about how he holds a gun?

Character

The most interesting character in this intro nearly ends up being the bartender, and in my opinion a single three-word sentence, “Like his father”, is the only reason Valen Steele holds any intrigue.

We’ve all read a flat character like Valen before. Strides into town, self-assured, dunks on the bad guy, everyone claps.

The father lore is having to carrying the entire story, and ironically that’s not even the story I wanted to tell.

Our changes within the purpose section fix the most glaring issues with Valen; but Angus and the unnamed man remain boringly archetypal without serving the story for being that way².

Angus can remain somewhat flat, our aim is to thrust Valen on a journey, but his hilariously overwrought speech and lack of even the slightest unique characterization we can solve with speech patterns, an act of kindness, and believable dialogue.

The unnamed man will become a single sentence. With other changes I have planned, it will be less obvious that Valen is capable of winning, and so the one-sentence hint will hit harder than all of the meandering did before.

Prose

Everyone has their own voice if they write long enough to find it; mine has both changed since writing that, and been further discovered. As such, I won’t spend too long delineating those kinds of changes, but instead focus on glaring issues that smack of amateur.

• Repetitive: "A figure crested a small hill that hid a small village."

  • You can do this poetically; that’s not what it is here.

• Overly dramatic gesture: "A tear slid past his nose but a passerby would have only seen his hood."

• Ambiguous imagery: "rolling as if on the deck of a boat in startled waters."

  • Movement + deck/boat + water state = state

• Awkward memory transition: "doors opened— And then the saloon doors did open..."

  • Rarely will being clever surpass clarity. Writing a whole book is clever enough.

• Overexplained actions: "Steele gripped the glass before Arty could remove his hand…his other hand had gone to his belt where he knew there was a gun."

  • Yeah, if he gripped one hand I do suppose it was the other that went for the gun.

• Excessive internal commentary: "Valen had prepared for as much, but that did not stop the pain. But hopefully he might mend even this."

• Clichéd dialogue: "Or what, Steele? You’ll draw and fire faster than I can pull my trigger?" | “hazel spheres” | “pulled leather”

  • Read your genre widely, and look up overly used phrases, and then avoid them.

  • Don’t use weird words likes ‘orbs’ or ‘spheres’ for eyes unless you have a reason for doing so

• Unnatural detail: "They were not riding boots, or even casual walking boots, but soft hide boots."

  • I think my world is cool, but this level of detail doesn’t do anything for us here.

• Expositional dialogue: "Did you earn those…up north?"

• Forced metaphor: "His voice cut like hard metal, the edges lined with a malice that was unmistakable."

  • Good thing I told us metal is hard, and wouldn’t we want sharp metal for cutting? Touching on brevity too, [objected] could be ‘lined’ or ‘edged’ but it’s clunky to use both like I did.

• Pacing disruption: Lengthy digression on "ways of holding a weapon" interrupts action.

And now, the final piece.

The Edited Excerpt