How do I not fuck up a fantasy story?

> Be me
> Writing fantasy story
> Don't want it to become another generic genre literature fantasy story
> Much less a shitty fantasy story
What should I do and avoid?

*genre fiction fantasy story

Don't focus on it through the lens of being a fantasy story. Simply write it like you would any other story and try to make it the best you possibly can.
Your biggest mistake would to look at your story and go "it's just fantasy".
This is your work. Whether it's genre, philosophy, poetry, experimental prose, or even just drug-addled rambling, you owe it to yourself to create the most amazing work you can.
Otherwise, whats the point?
If you are doing it for money, become a bartender instead.

>write fantasy
>don't want to write generic meme shit

Spot fucking on. What you wrote is exactly what I want to do. My plan isn't to write the spiritual successor of Harry Potter, my plan is to basically write a fantasy version of Moby Dick.

A major concern of mine though was with world
building. I have some great ideas for the lore and setting of the story, but I think it could be detrimental to the book overall if I focused too much on it.
Are you implying it can't be done? If so, I have some recommendations that could change your mind. Gene Wolfe, A Voyage to Arcturus, and Gormenghast come to mind as fantasy novels that are more than just fantasy or genre fiction.

It really depends on what your focus is on.
Tolkein based his world around the evolution of the elven language and how they split into different groups and the different dialects of language that arose.
George R.R. Martin based everything on the history on houses and their past turmoils and how the actions of the past have rippled through time to affect today.
Harry Potter's is built through a fish out of water scheme. How he ends in a world he doesn't understand yet is normal to everyone else around him. This ends to his benefit as things like their petty racisms don't matter to him and benefit him through the series.

If you want to create a fantasy world of Moby Dick, what makes it fantastic? Also, are you keeping the theme of obsession and man vs nature? Is it there to inspire wonder in the reader? How are the rules in this world different from ours? Why would the reader want/not want to live in this world?

I'm planning on making the story very philosophical. I basically want to write a literary fiction-tier piece of literature, that just happens to be fantasy as well. It's not supposed to be wish fulfilment or fanfic fuel.

I'm not actually going to literally write a fantasy reimagining of Moby Dick. I said that because Moby Dick has about everything I want to include: fantastic prose heavy on symbolism, great, relatable philosophical and psychological themes, and well written characters and story. I want to write a fantasy story that contains all that. The problem I (and perhaps some others) have with those other fantasy works you mentioned is that they seem more concerned with the world than on anything substantial, and hardly count as works of literary fiction, hence why they got adapted so easily. It's not unusual to see an adaptation of those kinds of books, but what would be unusual to see would be an adaptation of Paradise Lost, you know what I mean?

TL;DR: My focus is on using the fantasy setting in a more grounded way so to focus on themes of philosophy and the human condition. Fantasy and Sci-fi have plenty of potential for that kind of stuff, you know.

Another concern I have is the scale. Is it possible to make a large-scale story with such a large cast of characters (this one involves gods and demons) that can be as well written as smaller-scale, more personal, more dramatic stories?

OP you seem like a real amateur writer, so let me explain something important to you about getting published: you absolutely need to have an audience in mind for your books. Who are you writing this story for? If you don't have an answer then what you're writing is probably not genre fiction. Genre fiction is fitted to a genre mainly because genres are easier to market to mass audiences than individual books. It creates an expectation in the mind of the reader. It's why sub-genres are a thing, because people like being able to establish patterns to more easily determine if they will like a thing before they invest a lot of time into it.

So I will reiterate: who are you trying to get to read your book? Think hard about that, and tailor your writing to that purpose. If you're writing commercially this is the first question you should ask yourself before you start writing your working draft.

Then I guess I was using the wrong words.
> you seem like a real amateur writer
I've never written before. To be fair, this isn't even gonna be my first novel (perhaps it's best if I wrote something else before so to improve my writing before publishing this passion project of mine).

My intended audience was never the general audience. My audience basically fans of literary fiction, just like me.

I don't want to write this so it becomes a "New York Times Best Seller" or for it to become a mass success so I attend comic con conventions and have TV and movie adaptations, or for any of that crap. I just want to write a piece of fantasy literature with as much literary merit as a work of literary fiction. At best, I'd appreciate it if my book became a cult classic and if it were appreciated and studied by literary critics, maybe even studied at universities, and perhaps for it to be considered a classic of the 21st century in the future. That's it really. I want to be like Dostoyevski, not Rowling.

Literary fiction is difficult because you must employ an entertaining setting and central conflicts to be interesting. If you're going to make fantasy, you better make it distinguished in every facet that you can to draw people in. If it's just Moby Dick told in a Tolkienesque coat of paint, it will lack notable punch.
Make your characters convincing and make their motivations vehicles for your ideas and philosophical suppositions; there's nothing worse then hamfisted sermonizing text dumps about philisophical dilemmas already better presented by actual philosophy writers. You can do the same with situations too -- contort them to show a dilemma.

> If it's just Moby Dick told in a Tolkienesque coat of paint
That is far, far from my intention here, so don't worry. The "fantasy" element is a little less like European medieval folklore and more like Paradise Lost and Judeo-Christian mythology (not religion, the mythology), if that makes more sense.

>Literary fiction is difficult because you must employ an entertaining setting and central conflicts to be interesting
>ake your characters convincing and make their motivations vehicles for your ideas and philosophical suppositions; there's nothing worse then hamfisted sermonizing text dumps about philisophical dilemmas already better presented by actual philosophy writers. You can do the same with situations too -- contort them to show a dilemma.
It appears we're on the same wavelength, so I guess there's not much for me to worry about.
I was also thinking about presenting multiple philosophies (represented by characters and factions), and having the reader decide which one is the one they agree with, rather than preaching my own ideology.

> make their motivations vehicles for your ideas
Good idea, but I don't want them to be mere plot devices either. I also want to develop and write them as humans. Add to characterisation by adding some miscellaneous details about them and their interactions, you know? I'm not merely writing a philosophical story, even if it is one of the intentions.

Well there's two types of literary fiction. There's marketable literary fiction, and there's unmarketable literary fiction. What you want to write sounds like the latter. Just be prepared for that reality, that it's going to be very hard to sell your book to an agent or publisher. A veteran author would in your shoes approach this project by first finding a real venue for their work, so that they don't spend months crafting a manuscript only to find out nobody will buy it. But if you just want to write a manuscript then go ahead and write it.

> very hard to sell your book to an agent or publisher
I was already well aware of the challenge and willing to overcome it. Nothing save death will stop me from publishing my Magnum Opus (until I somehow write an even better Magnum Opus afterwards).

With regards to everything else you said, you're right.

What kind of approach do you think great authors like Leo Tolstoy, Gene Wolfe, or David Lindsay had for their works? The last two names I mentioned wrote works that could basically be considered similar to what I'm talking about (Book of the New Sun and A Voyage to Arcturus respectively. Both are science fantasy novels that even non-fans of genre fiction enjoy, due to how they're written as thoughtfully as literary fiction).

Take Dostoyevski for example. His works didn't sell very well originally, but still got a cult following upon release, and are currently praised as a literary masterpiece by scholars and intellectuals. You know that kind of book? That kind of novel people at Veeky Forums and literary critics like Harold Bloom tend to love to pieces? That's the kind of story I want to write.

Making a fantastic work of literature is my main intention, but money is a good bonus as well. Not the main motivation of course, but it is something I desire as well.

What do you mean with a venue? You mean as in a convention, or simply a stand at bookstores?

Sounds good, but I'll offer you one last piece of sound advice:
Fictional characters, worlds, groups, etc, should be treated like tattoos; that is to say if a person wants a tattoo, they should first see if thier vision holds up over time or if it becomes regretful, cheesy, etc. Many people do this with tattoos nowadays by constantly carrying their chosen design with them and admiring it over a long gestation period. Sometimes they amend it, or drop it all together.
Fiction writers (especially Fantasy and Science Fiction) should employ a similar gestation period to ensure that it holds up to their personal scrutiny. Sit on your ideas, plan them, develop them, and then wait longer still. This will minimize comparable "regret" and hokiness in your characters and setting.

>Make main pov or one of the pov experienced. You don't wanna read another ya-shit where 70% of book is spent learning shit. This includes excluding "school".
Doesn't mean pov shouldn't learn new things or grow in skill.
No love triangles.
>Main POV should not be a chosen one, as in: don't do prophecy. Doesn't mean a revelation or vision can't happen somewhere in story. (Or a character can see the future, is ok, maybe.)
>PHYSICS
>Show don't tell, especially combat; don't fucking "fade to black" then talk about what just happened in past tense, x guy is over there, y guy over there back broken, guy 34 is still moving; ". . . The faggot's face -- mashed upon the curb." NO SMASH THAT FUCKING FACE, CUT THAT BODY IN HALF, BREAK THE GUYS LEG: IN REAL TIME.
If you think writing how your guy kills 10 guys would be too much text, don't make him kill 10 guys "one by one".
>Don't have more than 4 POVs. Sure you can spend a tiny chapter in the eyes from a completely new individual.
>show don't fucking tell
>JUST BECAUSE THERE'S MAGIC DON'T TREAT IT LIKE IT CAN'T BE AMAZING LITERATURE
>Nor do the opposite; we don't wanna watch the fucking Kardashians on paper.
>Don't stay in the same place too long. Unless it's intentionally meant to be about a city.
>DESCRIBE THE FUCKING ENVIRONMENT

This doesn't seem to be an issue to me, if you want the story to be philosophical and psychological, then make it just that. The setting of fantasy is unrelated to what you want your story to be. Jaws is about a giant man eating shark, but it's also about a man proving to himself that he is good enough to support a family. You can tell multiple levels of the story to appeal to difference senses of the mind whether it be from a pure literary standpoint, or from a world building standpoint.

If you are looking for something like scale, with wide events, but also smaller-scale, more personal and dramatic stories, I would look no further than War and Peace, which is exactly that.

This guy is both correct and misguided.
He is talking about getting published, while you are talking about writing. Write the story you wish to write. No one got up and though "A Series of Unfortunate Events is exactly what the world needs right now"
He simply made the story because he wanted to, because he would go crazy from not being able to tell it otherwise.
Don't pay attention to publishing, if you are building a house, build the house you would want to live in-it's your house, after all. If it's a quality one, I guarantee people will want to live in it.

You seem to know exactly what you want. Get off Veeky Forums and get to work. Those words won't write themselves.

Good Luck.

Wow guys, thank you very much for the advice and the feedback. I'll do my best.

>it's a "how do I fantasy" thread
>people are actually being respectful and helpful instead of throwing around memes
I'm amazed, Veeky Forums. I'm going to apply some of the things posted here to my own fantasy story.

Fine with me as long as it's not too similar to what I'm thinking.

>Don't want it to become another generic genre literature fantasy story

But...isn't fantasy, kind of by definition at this point, just generic genre bullshit?

>What do you mean with a venue?
A market, a way to distribute your book. It doesn't have to be the mainstream route you know, I was giving general advice about how most people try to get published. If you have an in somewhere, like a friend who owns a store you can sell your books at, or maybe a connection at a library or something, then those also work as a venue. And of course there's always the internet and self publishing, but you run the risk of being lost in a sea of garbage if you go down that road.

Anyway, good luck with your manuscript.