HOW THE FANTASY CREATION ZONE WORKS

In the Fantasy Creation Zone, we’ll tell you the basics of how to construct a fantasy world and send a hero on an exciting adventure there. As you read through, you’ll see three kinds of entries:

Create a World. These sections will be full of tips for imagining your own fantasy world, and then filling that world with mysterious places, extraordinary creatures, and all the other details that will make it a unique, exciting place for readers to visit.

Quest Log. In the Quest Log, we’ll look at how to create a hero character, and then send that hero on an exciting quest full of villains, obstacles, and danger!

Idea Storm. This is where you create an adventure! Each Idea Storm will guide you through the steps of writing your own story set in a fantasy world. If you do every Idea Storm, then by the end, you’ll have a complete story!

Besides that, we want you to keep in mind two important things:

First, your story is not going to start out perfect. You’re going to make mistakes, cross things out, change your mind about what should happen, and make a big mess. If you’re doing all that stuff, then you’re doing things exactly right. Nobody’s story looks perfect on their first draft. For example, when they were writing Quest for the Crystal Crown, Annabeth and Connor knew they wanted Laura to see an animal through the cracks in the wall in Chapter 1. In the first draft, they made it a yellow bird. Then they realized a bird could fly over the walls of Hillview, so it wouldn’t be very exciting to Laura. She probably sees birds all the time! So in the second draft, they changed the animal to an orange fox. That’s an animal Laura definitely wouldn’t see in Hillview.

If you’re writing with a pencil and paper, it can also be helpful to skip lines when you write. That way, it will be easier to cross things out and add new ideas whenever you need.

pleasantly One utterly sunny, windless day, Laura was looking through the cracks in the wall a fiery orange fox when she spotted a yellow bird.

Second, give yourself PERMISSION TO GET WEIRD. Every fantasy world is different, and yours doesn’t need to look anything like one that anyone else has ever thought of before. Sure, many fantasy worlds have elves, and dragons, and magic wands—but these things are all made-up, and all of them started out as somebody’s weird idea. Imagine, for example, that you had never heard of a magic wand before, and someone started describing it to you: “It’s like a normal stick, except this stick has special, imaginary powers! If you touch someone with it, they’ll turn into a frog! Or you can shoot a lightning bolt right out of the end of it.” For someone who’d never heard of a magic wand before, this idea would sound INCREDIBLY WEIRD. In your fantasy world, you need to give yourself permission to come up with ideas that are just as bizarre and that no one has ever thought of before.

Does that mean you need to keep every single weird idea you come up with in your story? Of course not! If you don’t like your idea, you can cross it out, erase it, or delete it. But if you write it down first to see how it sounds, you might just come up with something WEIRD…and awesome.

See that? Every time it shows up, that means it’s the end of a section. — If you got here by flipping forward from this page, flip back and keep reading!

But come back here soon! The next section is fun: It’s all about drawing your own map. Angie, if you think that I love maps just because I’m a pirate…well, you’re right. I do love maps. That sounds awesome.