How To Become a Fantasy Writer: Where to start?
In an age of ever-increasing content, it's easy for someone, who doesn't know the world they're about to enter, to get lost in the sea of blogs and YouTube videos at hand. Don't get me wrong. Later on, they will be beneficial, after a certain stage in your journey. However, most people are overwhelmed with so much information coming in from all sides at such an early stage in our journey. "So where do I start?" you ask... Well, from the beginning, of course!
Any way leads everywhere
Any point is the center of infinity
Fernando Pessoa summarizes, in two simple sentences, the answer to the dilemma in which so many aspiring writers find themselves in, nowadays. Start wherever you want and whenever you feel like it. The book is yours.
Later, during the planning phase, you may be concerned with characterization, worldbuilding or the 3 act structure. Now there's only one thing to worry about. Take that idea that only exists in your head and spread it across a page using your words. The rest comes later.
In my case, it was the year 2013, I was unemployed, living in Porto, in a tiny To apartment, with my girlfriend, and an image came to me while I was doing the dishes, next to our small circular window to the world.
In my head, two kinds of darkness reigned at that time, and I began to ramble about them. And as I rambled on, I started to assemble a scene of the creation of two deities, with characteristics of these different states of darkness. So, along with the first creation of Greysui, my God, my fantastic universe was born.
I don't remember anything else as I sat down at the table and the words started pouring onto paper. It wasn't until I finished, and looked at those pages, that I realized I had created something. Something that didn't exist anywhere else. It was mine. It was my creation just like my God's.
As you will understand later, the example of JRR Tolkien, author of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings", is always used to illustrate what I am trying to explain here. The Oxford Professor was a language enthusiast and developed his own languages, namely Elvish and its different derivations. Years later, wanting to create a world to perpetuate his languages, he invented Middle Earth.
My advice is for you to use your inspiration, something that comes from your core, and let it flow into your fingertips to anchor it in our world. From there, take it wherever you want. Start by telling a snippet of your twisted mythology, like the Norse Gods, talk about a city and something that led to its destruction, or about an important person within its history. At this point, you can't go wrong. Your world is in your hands.
Here's a simple sheet that you can print, or reproduce by hand, to give you a little push to start your world, big or small.
Before saying goodbye, I leave a passage of the same poem by Fernando Pessoa, with which I started this article, to encourage us both in this joint journey through fantasy writing.
Shall we have for ourselves the truth
To accept illusion as real
Without giving credit to its reality
And, eternal travelers, without ideal
Except never to stop, inside us,
Shall we get from the trip always nothing
Others eternally, and always alone;
Our own journey is traveler and road.