What fantasy readers expect
Readers expect a world that feels like it existed before page one: history, politics, geography and a cost to magic. Magic that can do anything removes tension, so the strongest fantasy defines what magic cannot do, what it costs and who can use it, then uses those limits to make the climax hard.
Subgenres set different expectations. Epic fantasy follows large casts and kingdom-level stakes; sword and sorcery stays close to one hero and one adventure; urban fantasy brings magic into a modern city; cosy fantasy lowers the stakes and raises the comfort; romantasy puts a romance arc on equal footing with the plot. Name yours in the brief.
Length and structure
Fantasy is one of the longer genres. Many standalone and first-in-series fantasies land somewhere between about 90,000 and 120,000 words, and epic fantasy often runs longer, while cosy fantasy and novellas can be much shorter. The Epic preset (90,000 words, 30 chapters) suits most quest and epic books; a custom target goes higher.
A common shape is a quest or a war: an ordinary life disrupted, a threshold into the wider world, trials that teach the hero the rules of magic, a midpoint revelation that reframes the enemy, a dark point where the old approach fails, and a climax won by using the limits the reader has learned. If your book opens a series, decide what this volume resolves and what it leaves open.
How Inkora writes fantasy
Planning produces a setting description, a cast list with each character's role, want, flaw and arc, and a synopsis that includes the ending. Put your magic rules in the brief and they become part of the bible the writer works from on every scene.
Invented names are where long AI drafts usually slip. The continuity pass after each chapter writes down atomic facts (the city of Vel Marrow sits on the river Ash; Tarin's blood-binding costs a year of memory; the king has two daughters, not three) and every later scene is written with an instruction never to contradict them.
What to put in your brief
The brief is the “Your book idea & instructions” box in the new-book wizard. The more specific it is, the less generic the book. Here is an example, with the settings that go with it:
Epic fantasy, standalone with series potential. In the river-city of Vel Marrow, magic is drawn from memory: every spell costs the caster a memory they never get back. Iselde, 24, a dockside forger of contracts, discovers she can spend other people's memories instead of her own, which makes her the most dangerous person in the city and a target for the Archive that rules it. Her brother Tarin is an Archive novice. Rules: no magic over running water; nobody can restore a spent memory; the Archive's power comes from memories donated by debtors. Ending: Iselde breaks the Archive by returning every memory she can, and loses her own memory of Tarin in the process. Tone dark but hopeful, close third on Iselde.
Other wizard settings
- Genre
- Fantasy
- Audience
- Adult epic fantasy readers
- Tone
- Dark & atmospheric
- Point of view
- Third person limited
- Length
- Epic (90,000 words)
Example outline: The Memory Tithe
A brief like the one above gives a plan along these lines. You can rename, reorder, add or delete chapters before any writing starts.
- 1
Forged Hands
Iselde forges a debtor's contract and, panicking, casts with a stranger's memory instead of her own.
- 2
The Missing Afternoon
The stranger wakes unable to remember his daughter's birth, and the Archive's hounds take notice.
- 3
Novice Tarin
Her brother warns her what the Archive does to people who cast wrong.
- 4
Running Water
Hunted across the bridges, Iselde learns why no spell crosses the river.
- 5
The Debtors' Quarter
She finds the people whose memories built the Archive and the cost of their tithe.
- 6
A Borrowed Childhood
Training with a renegade archivist, she spends a memory too many and feels the theft.
- 7
What the Archive Keeps
Midpoint: the vaults hold every memory ever donated, still intact.
- 8
Tarin's Choice
Her brother is ordered to bring her in and does.
- 9
The Hearing
Before the Archive council, Iselde learns her gift is how the first archivists began.
- 10
Flood Season
The river rises into the city, cutting off the Archive's magic for one night.
- 11
The Return
Iselde pours the vaults back into the debtors, one memory at a time.
- 12
A Stranger Named Tarin
She wakes beside a novice who says he is her brother, and decides to believe him.
Condensed to 12 chapters; the Epic preset plans 30.
Common mistakes
- Opening with three pages of history before anything happens. Let the world arrive through what the hero needs.
- Magic without limits or costs, so the climax is solved by a new power nobody mentioned.
- Dozens of invented names in the first chapter. Introduce the cast the way a reader can hold it.
- Writing book one of a trilogy that resolves nothing on its own.
- Changing a rule mid-book because the plot needs it. Fix the rule in the bible instead.