by Tim Dedopulos

When most people think of ‘real’ fantasy, they’re thinking of high fantasy. This is the heartland of the genre, the place where sweeping epic narratives tell of the heroic struggle of good against evil. High fantasies are set within vivid, detailed worlds which never existed – not magical versions of history, not the places that legends occurred in, but in entirely separate realms of magical wonder. In fact, the real central hero of a high fantasy is often the land itself. While a broad range of heroes and villains struggle against one another, it is the land that is truly in peril, the land that is there in every page, and the land that forms the emotional backdrop for the story. Tolkien referred to these realms as ‘secondary worlds’, a term which has gained some common use with fantasy scholars.

High fantasy is also referred to as epic fantasy or heroic fantasy, and these names give a clue as to its real nature. Tales of high fantasy are epic in scope, heroic in the breadth of their vision. There may be a main hero, but he or she will encounter a whole cast of other characters, and their actions and interactions form a web spanning both story and land. The world itself has a specific culture, history, geography and bestiary, and the story would fall apart without it.

High fantasy usually comes in big packages. Novels of 500 pages and more are common, and frequently form part of a trilogy  – or more; some core sequences have run to a dozen books. At some point though, the nature of the epic story requires a resolution. Even the longest high fantasy series must eventually come to a recognisable end. For a while, anyway. It’s not uncommon for an author to follow a core trilogy with a sequel trilogy, a prequel trilogy, or even a parallel ‘sidebar’ trilogy.

Although JRR Tolkien is the author who made modern fantasy what it is, the father of high fantasy is generally agreed to be William Morris. “The Well at the World’s End”, written in 1896 and running over 500 pages in the 1975 reprint, is a fantastical quest-romance written in archaic style. It was not particularly popular when released, but it inspired great devotion in a number of younger writers. These authors – people like Lord Dunsany, ER Eddison, and CS Lewis – went on to give fantasy its form.

These early works provided vital service preparing the ground for the 20th century’s greatest fantasy novel, JRR Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”. It was first released in three volumes from 1954-55, but it is not a trilogy so much as one long novel with six sub-sections. Tolkien himself fought hard to have the book published as one piece. At first, the Lord of the Rings seemed destined for the same sort of obscurity as Morris’s and Eddison’s romances, and it took over 10 years to gain wide acceptance.

It was with the controversial publication of the American paperback editions, in 1965, that The Lord of the Rings finally took off. The row over the pirate edition probably helped draw the attention the book deserved, and it became one of the soaring bestsellers of 20th-century fiction. Its immense success stemmed from the incredible richness of Tolkien’s grand narrative, and the sheer power of the land of Middle Earth.

Readers who made it past the first chapters – which are really just cozy – soon found themselves succumbing to the spell of the grander narrative. It is as a timeless quest that the book really succeeds. The mysterious portents, the hard travelling, the stunning landscapes, the encircling foes, the urgency of the task in hand, the magical revelations – all are handled with a superb sense of story-telling rhythm. It is a slow rhythm, for it is a very long novel, but in its leisurely way it builds an almost tidal power.

Tolkien continued to work on detailing Middle-Earth throughout his long life, and the results have been published in “The Silmarillion” (1977) and many other posthumous volumes edited by the author’s son. Whatever their scholarly brilliance though, these later works are missing the central quality which vitalizes The Lord of the Rings – that sense of raw story, in all its glorious force.

Tolkien became a huge seller in the 1960s. His work cleared a space for all forms of fantasy to take root in the marketplace. It took twelve more years before Tolkien’s direct legacy became apparent, though. The year 1977 marked the turning point – not “The Silmarillion”, but the first appearance of two big new instant bestsellers by previously unknown American writers. Both would have been inexplicable, and probably unpublishable, if Tolkien hadn’t gone before.

Terry Brooks’s “The Sword of Shannara” was condemned by some reviewers as a ‘rip-off’ of Tolkien, but it still sold spectacularly well and set a pattern for many more novels to come. Stephen R. Donaldson’s “Chronicles of Thomas Covenant” was a more original and interesting work. There is no doubt that it was inspired by Tolkien’s example. Donaldson offered a detailed secondary world – the Land, where the hero, magically displaced from our Earth, embarked on a mighty quest to defeat the corrupting powers of evil. Although the Land bore a hint of resemblance to Middle-Earth, Thomas Covenant himself was a very different character to any hero of Tolkien’s. A depressive, frequently hostile loner who suffers horribly with leprosy, Covenant cannot bring himself to believe in the Land. The alienation and resentment of this denial makes him do some terrible things, and tragedy piles on tragedy as he leads the Land to the very edge of ruin before finding the strength to let himself truly engage.

With the arrival of Brooks and Donaldson, high fantasy entered an era of commercial acceptability, becoming a type of novel which has made its authors and publishers rich. This was a vast change from the earlier part of the century, where works such as “The Worm Ouroboros” did well to sell a few hundred copies on first publication. It leads the field, now: it is simply what fantasy means to most people. If current trends are anything to go by, it will continue to give a great deal of pleasure to millions of readers for years to come.

by Tim Dedopulos

Many fantasy stories draw their inspiration from mythology and legend, which in turn often developed out of the remnants of dead religions. The great majority of the creatures that can be found in the fantasy genre began in traditional myths of one sort or another – such as the now-familiar staple elves and dwarves, for instance, which derive from Norse myth. So in one sense, all fantasy is derived from myth, directly or indirectly. So in order to make it a useful distinction, mythic fantasy is the name given to tales that are set within one specific traditional mythological milieu.

There are as many subdivisions as there are mythologies of course, but not all of them generate the same amount of mythic fantasy. Although the Norse and Greek myths have probably been the most influential in contributing to the flavour of modern fantasy, they are not particularly common settings for modern works. Perhaps they’re the victims of their own success, too familiar in terms of general fantasy to be appealing as a mythic story venue.

Other mythic cycles seem to be more attractive to fantasy writers. The Arthurian legend cycle of western Europe remains one of the most popular mythic fantasy settings. The historical origins of the ‘real’ King Arthur remain obscure. There are some mentions of a 5th-century British war-leader in some of the ancient chronicles, but they are tantalisingly slight, and generate a lot of debate. Anyhow, whatever the truth is, it certainly bears precious little relation to the mythic figure.

King Arthur’s creation in the sense we know him now dates from 1136, in the “Historia Regum Britanniae” (The History of the Kings of Britain) by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Although it claimed to be a historical account, Geoffrey’s manuscript was highly coloured, and devoted a large part of its text to the story of Arthur, Guinevere, Merlin the magician and the traitor Mordred – quite probably drawing its inspiration from older cycles of Welsh mythology. Despite its factual implausibility, the Historia was a big success amongst the nobility of England and France, and Arthur quickly became a favourite subject of medieval romances all over Western Europe.

Robert Wace added the Round Table in 1155, with the Holy Grail and Sir Lancelot arriving some twenty-five years later through Chretien de Troyes. Many others contributed, until the whole cycle was broadly cemented in its current form by Thomas Malory in Le Morte D’Arthur, around 1470. The definitive modern Arthurian fantasy – so far, anyhow – remains TH White’s “The Once and Future King” (1958). Although the text makes use of anachronistic comparisons and similes, and the story itself is considerably more overtly magical than most, this is still the most influential piece of Arthuriana.

Ancient China is another common setting for mythic fantasies. China has a unique depth of continuous cultural history to draw on, and its own self-image of its mythological past is enthusiastically magical. There are many domestic Chinese fantasies of course – in the West, the best known are “Outlaws of the Marsh”, by Shi Nai’an and Luo Guanzhong (c. 1380), and “Journey to the West” by Wu Ch’eng-en (1592), better known as “Monkey”. Both of these epics are boisterous, highly magical and, like Homer’s “Odyssey” and “Iliad”, highly repetitive, at least in their original forms.

Q: I had my novel copy-edited by another editing company, but someone told me it's still not good enough. Why are there still mistakes on my pages? I thought editing would solve everything. Thanks.

A: (Salome) A copy-edit will solve certain kinds of problems. It will get rid of typos, bad grammar, maybe repetitive words. It's basically a final polish. You can't polish away major flaws in the story.

Depending on your level of writing skill, you probably need a line edit and/or a content edit. In a line edit, the editor will look at your book on a sentence and paragraph level, rearranging sentences and pieces of sentences for clarity and power and flow of words. In a content edit, the editor will look at your book as a whole, making sure that everything makes sense on the level of scene and story and giving suggestions for improving it. (In our list of services, this would be covered under either developmental, mentoring, or heavy editing.) Many inexperienced writers believe that a copy-edit will make their novels perfect.

Publishing companies hire different people to do the various levels of editing. A content editor doesn't generally do the final copy-edit. Depending on what service you hired an editor to do, there may be a long way to go. Also, an editor is only an editor. An editor is unlikely to make your book great with editing alone unless it's already very nearly great. There are tools a good editor who is also a good writer and teacher can use to make your book great. Rewriting is one of them. The other is mentoring, helping you learn what the problems are with your writing. Mentoring is more valuable than any book on writing because a good mentor can get to the heart of your particular writing issues very quickly, and then work with you until you understand how to solve them.

As an example, one writer I worked with had almost no change of emotion in her entire manuscript. Stories need ups and downs, not just in what happens, but in the emotions of the characters. In general, people read fiction to be affected by it. Her manuscript also contained numerous errors of logic, depictions of actions that made the characters look like they either had superpowers (because they broke the laws of physics) or were extremely naive. I did a lot of extra work for her beyond the level of a copy-edit or even a light edit, but her book still had problems and there was no way for me to fix them without a lot of rewriting which was well beyond the level of editing she had paid for. Eventually I convinced her to take a course of mentoring with me and with guidance, she rewrote until she had a pretty good book.


A: (Tim) Editing is a catch-all term for several different functions -- generally known in the trade as copy-editing  line editing and structural (or content) editing. It's a bit like a carpenter's toolbox. A saw, a plane and a chisel all allow a carpenter to work on a piece of wood, but you wouldn't want to try to halve the length of a plank with a plane, or cut out a neat groove with a saw. 

Broadly speaking, copy-editing checks that your individual words are correct, nothing else. It doesn't make any judgement on whether your characters are well-developed or your plot makes sense. Most copy-editors will be concentrating so hard on the individual letters that they'll barely notice that there's a plot going on anyway. A lot of people call this function proofreading, but to be strictly accurate, proofreading is when you're comparing the publisher's final version of the manuscript with the printer's first rough output, to make sure that the printer has it all correct.

Line editing doesn't pay as much attention to spelling and grammar. Instead, the editor will be looking to make sure that the sentences read well and do the job that they are supposed to. If there are inconsistencies -- say the teacher was blonde four chapters ago, but here he's a redhead -- then the line editor is supposed to pick that up. Line editors will often notice spelling and grammar mistakes, but it's not strictly part of the job, and they're concentrating on other things. On top of that, line editing often involves a bit of rewriting here and there, and that will inevitably involve the odd typo. Line editing is more commonly known (outside the book trade) as light editing. 

Structural editing is much more fundamental than the other two levels. Here, the editor puts aside any concerns about spelling or word-flow  and instead concentrates on the basics of the book -- whether the plot makes sense, how the structure is, whether the theme is clear, the way the scenes fit together, how the pace flows, character depth and arcs, whether everything is bogged down by exposition, and so on. If line-editing is like a personal trainer, and copy-editing is makeup and nice clothing, then structural editing is open-heart surgery. 

So a novel that's been edited at one level is not necessarily going to be perfect in every respect. A copy-edit is very much on the surface. A further consideration to bear in mind is that the more exposure an editor has had to a piece of writing, the harder it is for them to effectively copy-edit it. The brain quickly marks things as familiar, and slides past them. So if someone has already done some line editing on a piece, they're not really going to be ideal to copy-edit it afterwards. The best copy-edits always come from fresh eyes. 

by Tim Dedopulos

This is the area where the fantasy and romance genres meet. Although fantasy settings are integral to the sub-genre, the main focus of the story tends to be on character interaction, with a notable element being a burgeoning romantic relationship between the protagonist and a love interest companion. The main characters usually form a tight-knit pack who adventure together in a group, and much of the focus is on the interactions of the group themselves, both internally and with the beings they encounter. This frequently spills over into at least a little political intrigue.

One notable difference between romantic fantasy and most of the other sub-genres is that magic is seen as a consequence of the natural order of the world. It’s not some demonic force from outside, as is often the case in Sword & Sorcery, or a highly arcane science that isolates its practitioners, as frequently depicted in high fantasy. In romantic fantasy, magic is a simple talent, an inborn channel of mystical self-expression. The key difference is that magic here is a wholesome force, in tune with the world. For the heroes, anyway.

The heroes of romantic fantasy are typically either young, recently bereaved, or otherwise just now finding themselves pushed into the wider world. In fairly short order, they discover dread plots against the world they live in, their own burgeoning talents, a group of talented companions who become close friends, and a life-partner-in-waiting. Companions are frequently titled nobles or other persons of responsibility and influence; the hero may be too. By the end of the story, the hero will have gained victory, magical power, true love and a place to call home. This is a shamelessly feel-good sub-genre, not a challenging one. The most influential romantic fantasy series remains David Eddings’ charming “Belgariad”.

Q: I wrote a novel and I've been querying agents. So far I've only received rejections. How do I know why they're rejecting it? And what do I do about it?

A: (Salome) This is a complicated question. There are many different reasons queries get rejected. It could be because of the query letter itself. If you want to see some of the great query letters that are out there (and so what you're competing against) take a look at Kristin Nelson's blog. She's a literary agent. Here's a query letter she liked. Poke around on her site to find more. It's a great resource in itself.

If it's not the query letter, it's got something to do with the manuscript. Perhaps some aspect of your set up doesn't seem like something that agent can sell. Maybe your first five pages are full of typos. Someone I know had their work looked at by Irene Goodman. Unfortunately, he made some last minute changes to his manuscript and there were two typos on the first page. She pointed them out as a sign that he wasn't committed enough. Yikes.

I think anyone who looks at a lot of manuscripts and reads a lot of books, who has experience with this sort of thing, can look at a manuscripts first few pages and know right away whether it interests them. The most common mistakes I see that tell me it will never sell are a bland opening and a flat voice. A flat voice is also the hardest thing to fix -- and to explain to someone. There are many other ways a manuscript can present itself as unsellable, as well.  The agent needs to feel she can sell this book to someone on her list of publishing contacts.

You can ask yourself these checklist questions: Is my manuscript properly formatted? Is the opening compelling? Is it timely? (This is a bit harder to know, but basically is it like every other sparkly vampire book that's out there? Or is it something so different and strange that it sets fire to the agent's eyeballs? Neither of these are timely.) Have I followed the agent's specific instructions? Have I not made some mistake like spelling the agent's name wrong or incorrectly naming a character in a book I'm comparing mine to? Does this agent represent the genre I'm writing?

The best way to figure out what's wrong is to have someone who has mastered this stuff look at your manuscript. The best way to solve it is to have someone point out where it's weak. It's the difference between learning to cook from a recipe and learning to cook from a master chef. You can do it on your own, but you'll have to spend a lot of time experimenting and some luck is involved.

An important thing to know is that it's not abnormal to query 25 or more agents over a period of several months to a year. If you've done that and gotten nothing but solid rejections, you probably need to reevaluate.

A: (Tim) Agents are busy. Really, really busy. Much of their time goes on looking after existing clients -- selling books, helping with problems, meetings upon meetings upon meetings. They need new books to sell in order to keep in business, and they know that very well, but they're seriously harried. On top of that, they get heaps of submissions. Fifty new ones every day. A hundred. More. If they find a submission good enough to warrant actually reading, that usually means it's work they'll have to do after they get home -- which may well not be until 8pm or 9pm. 

I've worked as an agent, and as a publisher. If one submission in 100 is of publishable quality, that's a good find. It's heart-breaking, but the vast majority of novels are unpublishable. Don't worry too much; if you're aware enough to be reading this, you're already in the top 15% or so.

Agents love books, and stories, and helping bring new writers onto the shelves. If they didn't, they wouldn't put up with the hideous hours, the massive stress, or the unreliable pay. So they really are genuinely excited to find a great new voice hiding out there. It's not just a chance of another sale; it's being part of the Great Game. However, at the moment when they open your pitch email, they're not aware that you're the rightful Next Huge Thing. You're just one of the daily dump. They're looking for an excuse to move on to the next email, so they can get through them all quickly -- without more homework. Any excuse, in fact. 

Any deviation from their submission instructions? NEXT.
Said "Dear Agent"? NEXT.
Typo? NEXT.
Premise isn't crystal-clear? NEXT.
Vampires? NEXT.
... etc., etc., etc.

Now, there's some stuff you can't factor in -- what the agent actually likes, what the editors s/he knows are after at the moment, tropes s/he happens to be totally sick of today, and so on. The rest of it however is down to you. Make sure your manuscript is great (and complete). Then prepare a kick-ass pitch letter which follows all your target agent's rules, is totally intriguing (without being annoying), and is absolutely free of typos. There are plenty of resources to tell you how to do it, and there are also lots of agent pitch doctors out there, so if necessary, make use of one of us. Then brace yourself, and get sending! You'll still get rejections, because of the stuff you can't factor in. But if your letter is stunning and your manuscript is great, those rejections will be reluctant -- and sooner rather than later you'll find the person who realizes that yes, you actually are the Next Huge Thing.

by Tim Dedopulos


Writing isn’t easy. As soon as you pick up your keyboard (so to speak), the demons come slamming down. “How dare you?” “What’s the point?” “It won’t be perfect!” “Why bother?”

Why bother writing? Well, the thing is that perfection is not the goal.

Perfection is the enemy.

(1) Perfection is impossible. There is no perfect. Writing is not a thing of absolutes; there are no hard rules to meet. Nothing will ever be perfect. Nothing can ever be perfect. Try to release the feel that you need to reach for it; as well try to write your way to the sun.

(2) Perfection is incremental. Much though it feels like it, the words you write are not carved into your flesh. No good piece of writing ever came out onto the page fully-formed. Words can be honed and polished time after time if that’s what you want. There’s no limit. After two rewrites, the Revision Police are not going to kick down the door and shoot your monitor. Give yourself permission to be rough around the edges.

(3) Perfection is meaningless. Even internally, the definition of what might be perfect varies moment to moment. The idea of anything being perfect to more than one person (or for longer than an instant) is just self-delusion. It’s the voice of authority telling the little child that they have to be ‘good’, as if that had some sort of objective definition.

I know these things are fairly obvious, intellectually. But it can take a bit of effort to make yourself believe it. Say it with me: “There is no perfect. There is no perfect.”

I’ve been writing books for twenty years. The answer to “Why bother?” is that writing is fun. Dreaming up people, places, worlds, histories, situations, relationships… that’s great fun. Wrestling with words to get sentences that do what you need and sound half-good too. Watching situations play out. Being surprised by characters who don’t do what you expect. Getting the gunk out of your head and onto the page. It’s all glorious.

Is it going to make you a gazillionaire? Almost certainly not. Is it going to make your life feel magical? Oh hells, yes.

So really, please, try not to worry about perfect. Every word makes you a better writer, and there’s no text that can’t be improved by a good editing. Every piece will have an audience of some sort — even the worst possible shades of crap. Maybe it won’t earn you money. But what it will do is make your soul sing.

by Salome Jones


I've been nosing around on the internet looking for information about freelance fiction editors. As I was reading through various fora it became clear to me that people usually have two critical questions about having their fiction edited. I'd like to take a stab at answering them here.

Why Do I Need an Editor?

A lot of new writers who have put their work out into the ebook market love the freedom of just putting it out there. No strings. No publishers or agents blocking their path to fame and fortune. They've had friends look at their books. They personally believe in their own work. (Well, they do on Tuesday, but then on Thursday they get a bad review and self-doubt sets in.)

Do you actually need an editor? Probably. People who've been writing and getting published for years still have an editor look at their work. When I was in graduate school the first time, I sat in the cafeteria at lunch and listened to my writing faculty praising or complaining about their editors. One semester in particular, a respected editor passed away. Several of the faculty had used her services. They were bemoaning how their new editors hardly wrote anything on their pages.

Friends and critique groups are helpful. And it's fun to have people cooing over your work. I was in a writers' group for several years that met weekly. I got some good feedback there. But it was never in-depth enough for me. Trying to divide a two hour meeting into time to read aloud and critique seven or eight people's work, even if limited to five pages, means no one really has time to give a thorough critique.

Asking people to read your book and give you feedback comes with its own set of problems. If they're friends, most likely they'll only give you positive feedback. They like you. And also, they don't really have enough experience to point out the kinds of problems that a publisher or an agent is going to notice. Also, unless the person is a very close friend, they probably don't have time to devote to your book.

You do need positive feedback. I'm a big believer in positive feedback. Especially for new writers. But it won't make your writing better.

A person who is trained and experienced in reading fiction, who knows what kinds of things on the sentence, paragraph, scene and story level publishers and agents will be looking for, is going to be able to give you much better feedback than a friend. Someone that you're paying to tell you the truth about your book and to help you make it better is not just going to say 'good job' and give it back to you untouched. At least that's what you hope.

How Do I Find a Good Editor?

The more important question might be, how do I find the right editor for me and this book right here?

In working with a colleague to get several novels ready for print, we subcontracted out some editing. I edited one book, someone we knew edited another, and three people who were recommended to us took on the other books. The three unknown people wrote almost nothing on the pages, in spite of edits being needed. We essentially paid them for nothing.

What I learned from that experience was that just because someone is recommended, doesn't mean they'll be suitable for the job. But then, what's a writer to do?

I recommend these steps.

1) Ask for a sample edit. Many editors will offer to edit a few pages for you free of charge once they've decided that they'd like to work on your book. It will probably be somewhere between two and eight pages. This is the best way to know whether the editor's notes will make any sort of sense to you, whether the editor 'gets' your book, and what, exactly, the editor plans to do to your pages.

2) Find out about your editor's experience and education. Before I got my MFA, I was told that if I wanted to be an editor, I'd need a degree. I'm sure some people are editing without degrees, and having a degree doesn't guarantee that an editor will be good. But if I were looking for an editor, I'd look for one with some sort of education specifically in fiction writing. (That said, my editor doesn't have a graduate degree, but he does have twenty years of publishing industry experience. And yes, I have an editor for my writing. Because a novel is hard to hold in your head and you do lose perspective when you've been working on it for a long time. It's difficult not to.)

3) Find someone who edits in the genre you're writing in. This can be a bit of a double edged sword, so use it as a guide more than a strict rule. Ideally, your editor will know something about the tropes of the genre you're writing in. This will probably be helpful to you in the sense that they'll know what publishers, and readers, expect to see in that sort of book. They won't advise you to take out something that's crucial to your book because they've never seen a book of that type before.

That said, and this is the edge that can cut you, you don't want your book to be just like every other book in the world in your genre. (Well... maybe you do.  I don't. See Chuck Wendig's rant about niche and market. ) You want an editor who can adapt, who can think along new lines. You want someone who can look at your book and see what you were trying to accomplish with it. So someone who only edits in your genre may have their limits.

4) In my opinion, the most important quality in an editor apart from being knowledgeable is the ability to grok your book. An editor should not have his or her own agenda when editing your book. An editor is there to make your book your best book. Whether this will happen depends on the editor's skill, the editor's adaptability, and your comfort with and trust of the editor.  So talk to them before you place your book with them. See if you can get them to edit a larger chunk of your book for part of the fee if you don't feel certain after the free sample. Try to have a voice conversation if email doesn't provide enough info. Ask for references or whether there's a previous client who would be willing to talk to you.

You may not need all of these things, but they should be options for you. Just recognize that good editors are often in great demand and they may have to squeeze in time to talk to you. Don't take advantage of their willingness to help you make a decision.

A Plea on Behalf of Editors Everywhere

If you've found a good editor, you will want to keep him or her. Toward that end, try to be aware that someone who edits for a living is going to have other clients. Editing is in many ways as demanding as writing itself. In fact, I'll say that editing done by a good editor can be more time consuming than writing. Especially if the author hasn't spent much time revising the piece him or herself.

Don't ask your editor to work for free. Don't ask him to do more work for you without offering to pay. You really will get what you pay for from a good editor. You're developing a relationship as much as anything - one in which you can trust the editor to be honest without brutalizing you, and one in which the editor can trust you to respect the fact that editing is her job.