I'm writing a fantasy novel with some scifi elements about a boy who goes through a portal to a magical land

I'm writing a fantasy novel with some scifi elements about a boy who goes through a portal to a magical land.

What are some cliches or tropes I need to avoid?

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Him realizing that he need to return home at the end of the novel for arbitrary and not-well-thought-out reasons, despite having forged more meaningful connections and relationships in the fantasy world than he ever did in his own.

>I'm writing a fantasy novel with some scifi elements about a boy who goes through a portal to a magical land.
In that case you're already well past worrying about clichés. Just write and enjoy yourself.

>What are some cliches or tropes I need to avoid?
Trying too hard to avoid certain tropes or cliches, making a show of how you're specifically not doing this or that because it's stupid, or otherwise focusing too much on subverting what you think doesn't work and not enough on figuring out what does work.

Being aware of the conventional and thinking past it is good, but subversion and conspicuous avoidance are themselves long-used tropes at this point. A story can't rely on self-awareness alone; it has to be good enough to stand on its own merits.

You've already hit critical eyeroll for anyone familiar with the genre, there's no hope for you. Just have fun like said.

Conversely, a lot of isekai either never adress the MC's relationships back in his own world, or simply gloss over them by saying that anyone he could ever care about died anyway.

That said, if the MC wants to return have a legit obstacle to that goal present itself and end the story with the MC actually returning.

>Trying too hard to avoid certain tropes or cliches, making a show of how you're specifically not doing this or that because it's stupid
This too. I think you should realize that in roughly 10,000 years of written culture, EVERYTHING has been done before. If the Simpsons didn't do it, then Homer or Gilgamesh did. Focus on doing it good, plausibly and in your own way instead rather than subverting things (subversions of clichés are only slightly younger than the clichés themselves).

>boy who goes through a portal to a magical land
So isekai? You can forget about cliches and just enjoy the process.

Don't force a sad/bittersweet ending for arbitrary reasons. That tends to happen in "portal to another world" kinds of stories; there's a weird rule about how the two worlds will be destroyed unless they're separated because they're incompatible or something, and the MC is forced to make a choice between one world or the other.

OP here,

You guys are actually being incredibly constructive and helpful.

I recently got laid off, and have a bit of money saved, so I'm going to focus on getting this completed over the next two months. This would be my third book, but first full length novel.

I'm concerned about the age of the protagonist being only 13, and I also want to do it in first person, which will skew it towards YA. I don't know if this is going to be a mistake or not.

Even though I want it in first person, there are still multiple narrative threads that will be moving in the background throughout, including a conflict that will drive him to return home.

He has a large animal that he uses as a guardian in the fantasy world. I've been having trouble figuring out exactly what it could be. It moved from a bear, to a kind of griffin, to a wolf, and now I just think it should be some wholly original creature. I'm open to suggestions.

In what context does the boy's animal companion serve as a guardian? Is it simply an animal that he befriends? Is there some supernatural bond between them?