Genre Guide — Fantasy

Fantasy is such a broad genre that this question is much better answered in the subgenre you want to work in. But for the people who are just poking their toe into the deep waters of fantastic literature for the first time, I'll do my best.

My first few novels were all intrusion/urban fantasy. I think it's a great genre for beginning novelists, as you're given half the setting for free and can dive right in without all that pesky worldbuilding.

Dark fantasy is for those writers with a darker sensibility than other fantasy writers. Where other fantasists imagine the woods filled with fey creatures, we see them filled with monsters. Their castles are of white stone with banners flying; ours are tumbled down and haunted. There may be a happy ending (doubtful), but if there is, you can be damn sure the characters paid a price to reach it.

If you want to write in a genre, you have to read that genre. Experts in the industry are consistent with their advice that you must be an avid reader of a genre to write well in it. The books listed below will teach you about the genre and help you get a feel for all the different things you can do with it. 

Dark fantasy covers a lot of ground. From fantasy intended mostly to frighten to fantasy with nihilistic or depressing themes, it is the subgenre where bad things happen to good people and the light is never guaranteed to drive off the dark by the end of the tale.

Intrusion fantasies come in two different types, depending on the protagonist:

The Fish Out of Water —The protagonist begins with no knowledge of the fantasy element that is going to be introduced

The Skilled Practitioner —The protagonist is already fully immersed in the new (to the reader) culture the fantasy element has engendered.

If you want to write in a genre, you have to read that genre. Experts in the industry are consistent with their advice that you must be an avid reader of a genre to write well in it. The books listed below will teach you about the genre and help you get a feel for all the different things you can do with it. 

If you want to write in a genre, you have to read that genre. Experts in the industry are consistent with their advice that you must be an avid reader of a genre to write well in it. The books listed below will teach you about the genre and help you get a feel for all the different things you can do with it. 

Historical fantasy reimagines history if magic existed. The Napoleonic War with dragons. The Romantic poets as vampire hunters. Victorian England protected by a league of sorcerers. Let's face it, history is more exciting with a bit of fantasy thrown in.

Grimdark is the unwanted bastard of high fantasy. The battles are graphic and gory, the politics dirty, the protagonists venal, corrupt, selfish, and flawed—and those are the good guys! But there's something refreshing about everyone in the book acting like humans in all their cheating, lying, duplicitous glory.