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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30263
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30263
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

As far as I can tell from the MSS I have read in critique groups and from the kind of questions asked here, the biggest mistake of aspiring fantasy writers it to focus too much attention on worldbuilding, followed by too much attention on word choices, with very little attention being paid to story, and the story that is there existing mainly or entirely to animate the world that had been built.

The point of writing a fantasy is that it gives you a stage to tell a certain kind of story, which is to say that it lets you more easily isolate and expose certain themes and ideas that you want to express in your story. Worldbuilding should be done in the service of story, and no more of it than the story requires. The great danger of worldbuilding that the the writer then tries to fit all the features of the world they have built into the story whether the story needs them or not. Build no more world than your story demands.

As to word choice, a compelling story will be enhanced by the right word choices, but it will not be held back greatly by indifferent ones. It is not the power of your prose that is going to sell your story, it is the power of your story that this going to sell your story.

Think less about worldbuilding and less about word choice and focus on the heart and the limbs of your story.

Original score: 10