THE BEGINNING: THE WORLD
CREATE A WORLD: STARTING WITH A MAP
An idea for a fantasy world can come from anywhere—even a dream.
When Angie Ortiz was trying to think up ideas for a fantasy setting, she had a dream that she was trapped in a box but could see outside through a small sliver of light. This gave her the idea for Hillview, a small town surrounded by huge walls, where the only way people know what’s happening outside the town is by looking through a tiny crack. From that simple beginning, she used her imagination to add more and more details, until eventually she made a whole map of the town.
Here’s Angie’s map:
Of course, you don’t have to wait for inspiration to come in a dream. Some writers get their first idea from thinking about something really simple: the weather. Maybe they want a land of gigantic deserts, or freezing glaciers, or a very wet world with hundreds of islands, or a world where the sun is blocked out by huge volcanoes erupting constantly—some shooting lava, some shooting ice.
But what if you have no idea where to start? That’s okay, too. Sometimes the easiest thing to do is to start with a map and let the ideas come from there. It’s easier than it sounds! All you have to do is draw shapes on a piece of paper and see if anything sparks your imagination. For example:
Is the line you’re drawing part of a continent? The top of an island? The line of a river? The border of a gigantic desert that stretches out so far nobody has ever been across? Or maybe you don’t like the line you’re drawing. Just flip the paper over and try again, until you see a shape you like better!
Once you get going, decide what else you want in your fantasy world. Mountains and trees? Cities and roads? Giant robots and magical fairy waterfalls? You can get as weird as you want. Try coming up with names for everything you’re drawing and labeling them on the map. You can use names that you’re familiar with (you could name an island after your hometown, or your sister, or one of your pets), or you could make up weird names that nobody has ever heard of before. Just start making nonsense sounds and see what you come up with! (“Garrr…bayyyy…luuuhhh…zoooo…Garbailazo Island!”) Or you can just name things after the shape it reminds you of: Does that mountain look kind of like a velociraptor head? Make it Raptor Mountain! Did you draw a country that looks sort of like a chair? You could call it Chairland…or just use that as a starting place for a made-up name, and change it around until you like the sound of it: “Chairland…Charlund…Sharlun…Lunshar! That’s the one!”
Are there big gaps in your map, and you’re not sure what to add there? That’s great! In fact, that’s one of the best things about maps: They tend to be full of blank spaces for your imagination to fill in later when you get a new idea.
Did your map turn out to be a whole gigantic planet or continent? Also great! That will give you a lot of ideas to play with as your story goes on. For the very beginning of your story, however, you’ll have an easier time if you choose one town, or city, or small corner of the world, zoom way in, and make a map just of that area (like the map of Hillview that Angie drew). It will be much easier to start your story with a small area you know a lot about. Save the rest of the map for when your main character goes on a big adventure (because they will—more on that soon).
If you got here by flipping forward from this page, flip back and keep reading!
CREATE A WORLD: WHO IS IN YOUR WORLD?
We humans like to think of ourselves as the smartest animal in the world—the only one that can talk, and think intelligently, and truly understand what’s happening around us. And maybe that’s true. Maybe we are special, and no other animal is as smart as we are.
On the other hand, maybe all the other animals on Earth can talk and think. Maybe they just don’t like talking to us.
In a fantasy world, it’s up to you what kinds of creatures can talk, and think, and communicate with each other. Many fantasy worlds have humans in them…but those humans aren’t the only ones talking. Sometimes the animals can talk with each other, and even with humans (when they want to). Sometimes horrible monsters can talk, especially to taunt people and reveal their horrible plans. And sometimes there are imaginary people in the fantasy world who are different from humans in important ways.
As with everything else in your fantasy world, the way these imaginary people work is up to you. Sometimes they might be part human, part animal (maybe they have the bodies and legs of a horse, like centaurs, or maybe they have wings and can fly). Sometimes they are very weird and alien and look nothing like any human, or any animal, on Earth. And sometimes they look a lot like humans but have important differences. They could be bigger, or smaller, or have heads shaped a little differently, or have a third arm, etc. Take the Lysors in Quest for the Crystal Crown, for example:
The glowing green hair is weird, but it’s such a small detail that if Lysors wanted to disguise themselves as humans, all they’d need to do would be to cover their heads (and in fact, that’s exactly what’s going to happen in a few chapters). They also have magical powers: They are healers and have some control over the elements of nature. We haven’t learned much about this magic yet, but you’ll be finding out a lot more as the story goes on.
To help you plan out imaginary people for your world, draw a picture, like we did of the Lysors, and label the most important details you want to remember. This will come in handy when you start to think about your main character (more on that soon). Also, the Lysors aren’t the only imaginary people in Quest for the Crystal Crown. Keep an eye out, because there are going to be some new, very different people showing up soon….
QUEST LOG: WELCOME TO THE WORLD
So let’s say you have a map, and you’ve imagined lots of details about your fantasy world, including what sort of people live there. How do you actually start writing a fantasy story?
The short version is: You should show your readers around your imaginary world! After all, you spent some time making it up, so you probably think it’s cool! But at the same time, you want to make sure you’re showing it to them in an interesting way that will get their attention.
One simple way to start is to write about what people are doing in your world on a regular day. You should especially think about what they’re doing that is weird or unexpected or exciting, and that will tell the reader something about the world you’ve created. Are there huge walls in your setting, and nobody can get in or out? You might begin by writing about someone desperately trying to look through the cracks. Or is your world incredibly cold and covered in ice? You could start off your story by showing some people going about their daily business on the giant super glacier. (“Let’s ice-skate a couple of miles over to the grocery store—it’s not as cold as usual, you’ll only need to wear three coats.”) Or maybe your world has really weak gravity, and kids play a sport where they try to jump over the roofs of the houses in their neighborhood. (“Watch out for the chimney!”) Whatever your world is like, decide what weird or interesting things people there are doing, and you’ll have an interesting place to start writing.
And here’s a bonus idea: To help the reader understand exactly what it’s like in your world, choose exactly the right words to describe it. As you start off your story, you want your readers to feel like they’re right there in the middle of things. They should feel the rocks under your characters’ feet, or the cold breeze blowing through their hair, or the fear as they look out into a dark, foggy swamp, unsure what’s in front of them as they take step after soggy step through the mud….
To help do that, we have a list of words you can use to describe different kinds of settings. Is your world cold? Don’t just tell the reader that it’s “cold” over and over again! Look at our list, and shake things up by telling your reader about the “frigid” temperatures. Or don’t just say it’s “hot”—let the reader know about the “scorching” heat of the sun. You get the idea! Check out our list:
WORDS FOR PLACES THAT ARE…
Empty, with few plants or animals
barren
desolate
forsaken
uninhabited
Full of plants and animals
abundant
bountiful
lush
verdant
Unbelievably stinky
fetid
putrid
rancid
reeking
Scary
direful
eerie
ghoulish
ominous
Rocky
bouldered (full of big rocks)
gravelly (full of small rocks)
jagged (full of sharp rocks)
rugged (lots of climbing up and down)
Very hot
blazing
blistering
scorching
searing
Very cold
frigid
frosty
glacial
wintry
Windy
blustery
breezy
gusty
windswept
Foggy
hazy
misty
nebulous
vaporous
Dark
dim
gloomy
murky
shadowy
Rainy/wet
damp
drenched
sodden
water-logged
Bright
dazzling
luminous
radiant
sunlit
Just plain weird
bizarre
extraordinary
oddball
unique
These words aren’t only for the beginning of a story, either! Keep coming back here anytime you want to find exactly the right word to describe part of your world.
IDEA STORM: WRITE YOUR WORLD
Now you try it! Write the very beginning of a story, where you let the reader know about your imaginary world.
You can start by brainstorming tons of details about that world. You might draw a map to help you get ideas (see this page), or draw pictures of the imaginary people you’d like to live there (see this page). Come up with as many details as you can, and remember that you always have PERMISSION TO GET WEIRD! Do your best to create a world unlike anything that’s been written about before.
Once you have some ideas, you can start your story. One interesting way to begin is to write about something weird or unusual that the people in your world are doing. Are they magically growing food? Dodging volcanic eruptions? Playing a weird sport that nobody has ever heard of before? There’s no wrong answer to what they might be doing. The only thing that’s important is choosing an activity that makes sense for your world—maybe even an activity that would only happen in the weird, unique world you’ve imagined.
Where does your story go from there? Keep reading! We’ve got more ideas coming right up.
If you got here by flipping forward from this page, flip back and keep reading!
QUEST LOG: THE HERO
You might not be able to tell quite yet, but Laura isn’t just any main character: She’s going to be a hero. The moment she saw that arrow flying through the air was just the beginning of what will turn into a big adventure.
The difference between a normal main character and a hero is the size of the problem they’re going to be facing. A heroic character needs a HUGE, Hero-Sized Problem. We’ll see some examples of Hero-Sized Problems after the next chapter, but in short: It’s a problem where lots of people (a whole community, or city, or country, or entire fantasy world) need a hero to save them from danger. A hero doesn’t deal with problems that affect only themselves; they need to save people. (Laura doesn’t know this yet, but the whole town of Hillview is about to be in big trouble. Keep reading….)
Heroes can come in all shapes and sizes.
Some are the strongest and most powerful people in the land. They might be brimming with ancient magic, giving off a glow as they bend the forces of time and space to turn their enemies into harmless kittens with a sweep of their hands. Or they might swing a huge sword, their armor flashing in the sun as they charge toward a terrifying dragon. Or perhaps they fly through the air, not bothered by heat or cold, diving down into smoldering volcanoes and icy seas to save innocent people crying out for help.
On the other hand, some heroes are more unexpected. Like Laura, they might look like a regular kid going about their day—nobody would ever suspect that the courageous heart of a hero beats inside them and that they will never, ever give up until the job is done. Or for some heroes, the extraordinary thing about them is their mind: They’re not the strongest or the fastest, and they don’t know magic, but they can outsmart much stronger enemies with cunning, creative plans. Then again, some heroes are simply born leaders who know how to get lots of people to follow them: They give awesome speeches to rally people to help those in need or inspire others with their bravery and compassion. A hero is much stronger if surrounded by lots of friends and admirers.
Or maybe you want to write about a hero that is just plain weird! Some heroes have very unexpected talents and powers and make the reader laugh with the bizarre ways they find to solve problems and help people. For more on this kind of hero, check out the next section on this page: “Hero’s Talent Challenge.”
The most important thing is to create a hero that YOU are excited about. You can choose any of the kinds of heroes we just listed…or you could write about several of these kinds of heroes, working together to accomplish a quest…or even none of these kinds of heroes—maybe you have a totally different idea you want to try. That’s great! The only thing that really matters is finding a character who is going to solve a HUGE problem and help lots of people.
On this page, we filled out a Hero Creator, which is designed to help you come up with interesting details about your own hero. Our version shows Laura so you can see how it works. Let’s look at each of the prompts on the Hero Creator, one at a time:
Draw your hero! Label important details you want to remember. Drawing can be a great way to come up with ideas. As you can see here, Laura is a regular girl…except she has the glowing green hair of a Lysor and longs to find adventure outside the walls of her small village.
Hero’s name. In your fantasy world, it’s up to you how names should work. They can be normal-sounding names from our own world (like Laura, Millie, etc.). They can be weirder-sounding names, from your imagination (these could really be anything: Merpo, Pthhpop, whatever you can think up). Or you can decide that in your world, names work in a totally different way. For example, maybe everyone in your world says their parents’ names and something about their town when they introduce themselves: “I am Rarlage, son of Duggie and Rulah, of the great boat-making city of South Ferry.” Or maybe they get their names in an unusual way: “When I was a baby, before I could talk, I used to make the sound ‘Bah-boo.’ That is why my name is Bah-boo.”
What is your hero really good at, or what is your hero’s talent? What talents make your hero a force to be reckoned with? Are they incredibly strong? Good at magic? Sneaky? Courageous? Or is it something more unusual? In Laura’s case, her talent is her love of adventure: She is just really, really curious about the outside world. She wants to see as much of the world as she can, and this drives her to take risks and be brave in situations when other people would be too terrified to do anything. If you want more ideas for heroes with unusual talents, check out the Hero’s Talent Challenge on this page!
What is your hero NOT good at, or what are they afraid of ? Every hero has some kind of weakness—if they didn’t, then the story wouldn’t be very interesting! They’d just solve the problem instantly and never be in any danger. Picking a big, interesting weakness for your hero—and then putting them in situations where they’ll have to deal with that weakness—is important for keeping things exciting. Laura has a few weaknesses: For one thing, she is very independent and doesn’t work well on a team—which is going to cause her problems if she ever has to work together with others. But her biggest weakness is that she’s a kid going on a big, adult adventure! She’s not super strong, or super magical, or super experienced at doing heroic things. She’ll probably meet people, animals, and monsters who are much stronger and more powerful than she is, and she’s going to be in danger a lot (which is going to make the story very exciting!)
What is your hero’s biggest dream in life? We all have dreams we hope to accomplish—and so do heroes! Any dream will work for your hero, and for you as a writer, this can be a key to making your character do interesting things over the course of the story. Laura dreams of being an explorer just like her mom—which is going to make her very excited to explore, as soon as she has a chance (which she will, very soon). Does your hero dream of having a cool pet? Maybe every time they see an animal on their adventure, they’ll try to make friends with it. Do they dream of eating the tastiest ice cream of all time? Maybe they’re always trying to collect interesting ingredients for an ice cream recipe. Do they dream of becoming a star basketball player? Maybe they’re always trying to find ways to practice making shots, even if there are no basketballs around, so they practice by throwing rocks into the mouth of a dragon. You get the idea!
Who is your hero’s helper? Most heroes can’t do their job alone. They’re going to need some help along the way. When Laura wanted to look out over the wall, it was Millie who helped her—and Millie is going to continue to be important for Laura as the story goes on. Even heroes need someone they can trust and to support them when the going gets tough. There are different kinds of helpers your hero might have:
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The sidekick. This is a character who goes on an adventure with the hero and helps throughout the whole story. The hero is in charge, but the sidekick is always nearby when the hero needs an extra boost (like Millie is for Laura). You might also choose to have the sidekick be good at things the hero is NOT good at, to make them the best team possible. For example, if the hero is very smart and sneaky but not all that strong, the sidekick might have incredible strength to help out in those situations where they’ll need to lift a giant boulder, or wrestle a huge alligator monster, etc.
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The teacher. Whatever the hero’s talent is, the teacher has been helping them to better use their skills. Later on in the adventure, when the hero is climbing a mountain…or driving a flying car…or using magic…or dodging attacks from stone statues who have come to life…the hero will think back on advice this teacher gave them and use it to accomplish a goal. (“Remember what your teacher always said: Stone statue monsters are strong, but they’re slow. Focus on dodging.”) The teacher may also offer important advice about the dangers the hero will face on the adventure. (“If a tree in the swamp offers you a slice of cake, whatever you do, DON’T EAT IT.”) Or they may even recount a riddle or prophecy that the hero will have to decipher later. (“It is said that when the three planets form a triangle atop the pyramid, in that moment the door will be revealed.”)
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The motivator. Sometimes, in the beginning of a story, the hero doesn’t want to go on an adventure or solve a big problem. Maybe they’re scared, or don’t believe they have the skills, or just think that it’s not their responsibility—someone else should be the hero! In that case, your hero may need a motivator: a helper who convinces them to step up and be a hero. The motivator might give them extra courage. (“I believe in you! With your talents I know you’ll succeed!”) Or they might try to convince them logically. (“If you don’t do this, who else will? Someone needs to take up the challenge.”) Or they might even get angry with them. (“You sicken me! Don’t be a coward!”) It doesn’t matter who this motivator is. They could be a parent, a friend, a next-door neighbor, a magical talking dog—all that matters is that they pump up the hero to deal with a big, scary problem.
As you create your hero, think about what kinds of helpers might join them on their adventure, or teach them important skills, or even just convince them to step up and be a hero in the first place! There can also be more than one helper. We focused on Millie here, but Laura will definitely be finding more help along the way in this story.
QUEST LOG: HERO’S TALENT CHALLENGE
Are you tired of watching the same old heroes on TV every day? Have you read about so many heroes with the same superpowers that you think, “I wish they would do something new and different”? Do you see heroes shooting magic lasers at each other and think, “Can’t you surprise me for once, and change the rules of the hero game?”
If you’re having thoughts like those, then you’ve come to the right place! Welcome to the Hero’s Talent Challenge.
In this challenge, we’re going to help you flip the script and surprise your readers with heroes totally unlike what they’re used to. The place to start is with the hero’s talents. Every hero has talents, or powers, or things they’re good at, but we’re going to help you practice coming up with weird, unusual talents. Talents that you might think have nothing at all to do with saving people and solving big problems. And most of the time, you’d be right: Usually heroes don’t have talents like these—which is what makes this a challenge! But it’s also what will make these heroes new and interesting.
Here’s how it works: Take a look at the following list of Unusual Hero Talents. Choose one, or make up your own. (Maybe this list will give you an idea for a different, very unusual talent.)
UNUSUAL HERO TALENTS
Singing
Dancing
Cooking
Swimming
Whistling
Doing magic tricks (not real magic—just tricks)
Playing an instrument
Training animals
Writing stories
Knitting sweaters
Being a door-to-door salesperson
Spinning a basketball on one finger
Telling jokes
Making sandwiches
Sneezing
Jumping rope
Balancing on one leg
Having shiny hair
Making funny sound effects
Being very fluffy and cute
Next, you’re going to choose an obstacle. Don’t worry—this isn’t a big, Hero-Sized Problem yet. It’s just a Warm-Up Obstacle. Consider it a training mission for your hero, where they face a smaller problem and see if they can figure out a way to get past it. Go ahead and choose one (or make up your own Warm-Up Obstacle, if these give you an idea):
WARM-UP OBSTACLES
- There’s a canyon, forty feet wide, blocking the hero’s path.
- A herd of angry cats is attacking the hero.
- A pack of cute dogs is trying to lick the hero.
- A monkey stole the hero’s food.
- The road is incredibly icy and hard to walk on.
- The hero steps in quicksand.
- Garbage is flying in through the windows of the hero’s house.
- A boat carrying the hero is sinking.
- A boat carrying the hero is on fire.
- A boat carrying the hero comes to life and won’t let anyone steer it.
- Ducks are pecking the hero’s feet.
- The hero’s hand got glued to the side of a stone wall—the hero’s stuck!
- The hero is lost inside a dark cave.
- The hero is stuck high up on a tall tower with no way down.
- The hero needs to get over a one-hundred-foot-high wall.
- The wind is blowing so hard that the hero starts to fly away.
- It’s raining so hard that the hero starts to float away.
- It’s snowing so hard that the hero is getting buried underneath the snow.
- A wizard turned the roof of the hero’s house into a pancake, and birds are eating through it.
- A giant guitar is so loud it’s causing musical earthquakes.
Now comes the fun part! Try to figure out how the hero could use their Unusual Hero Talent to get past the Warm-Up Obstacle. This will be most interesting if you pick a talent that seems like it has nothing to do with the obstacle. For example, let’s say you chose “Having shiny hair” for your talent and “The hero steps in quicksand” for your obstacle. You might ask: “What does having shiny hair have to do with quicksand?” It’s not an easy question, but that’s why you have PERMISSION TO GET WEIRD! There’s not a wrong answer.
Maybe when they get stuck in quicksand, the hero points their shiny hair toward a nearby town to signal for help. Maybe birds are fascinated by the shiny hair, so the hero calls some over—then the birds grab on to the hair and pull the hero up. Or maybe the hair is so shiny it reflects the heat of the sun onto the quicksand and evaporates all the water to turn it into regular sand.
You can probably come up with other answers, too! In a fantasy story, the rules of how the talent works are up to you. Try stretching your imagination with this challenge—or try stumping your family and friends to see who can come up with the best way for a hero with an unexpected talent to get past an obstacle.
IDEA STORM: INTRODUCING THE HERO
Now make up your own hero! Draw your own version of the Hero Creator on this page, and use it to come up with ideas for a hero character that fits your fantasy world. Will they be human, or some kind of imaginary person? Will they be extremely strong and powerful, or will they be someone you’d never expect to be a hero at first glance? Remember that a hero can be anybody, as long as they’ll rise to the challenge of solving a HUGE problem and saving people.
What will your hero’s talents be? If you want to create a new and unusual hero, practice by choosing an Unusual Hero Talent and a Warm-Up Obstacle from the Hero’s Talent Challenge on this page. Be sure to also decide on something they’re NOT good at, and give them a helper of some kind. The helper doesn’t have to be a sidekick that sticks with them for the whole story (though they can be) but can be anybody who gives the hero advice, or training, or even just motivates them to get out there and be a hero!
Once you have a hero character, start writing about them! One place you could begin is by giving the hero a Warm-Up Obstacle and describing how they get past it. This will let the reader see a glimpse of the hero in action so they have an idea of what the hero will be like when real danger strikes later in the story. You could also introduce the hero by showing the reader something about their greatest dream in life: If they want to be a basketball player, write about them playing basketball! If they want to eat the most delicious ice cream ever, write about them taste-testing ice cream! If they want to be an explorer, write about them trying to see over a giant wall and catching sight of danger….
If you got here by flipping forward from this page, flip back and keep reading!
QUEST LOG: HERO-SIZED PROBLEMS AND THE VILLAINS WHO CAUSE THEM
Let’s get this out of the way first: You don’t need a villain character in your fantasy world. You can write an incredible adventure story where the big problem doesn’t come from a villain at all, especially if you create an interesting “Hero-Sized Problem.”
Any character in any story can have a problem, big or small. (“Oh no! I stepped in a puddle! Now my shoes are wet!”) A Hero-Sized Problem, on the other hand, is a problem SO big that it affects an entire community. (“Oh no! The puddle has mysteriously grown, and now it’s spread over the entire town! Everyone is wet, and the water is still rising!”) Only a hero can find a way to solve this problem!
There are lots of different ways to come up with a Hero-Sized Problem. For starters, you could do exactly what we did in the last paragraph: Think of a very small problem (“A squirrel just bit my toe!”) and decide how you could make that small problem grow, and grow, until you have a HUGE, Hero-Sized Problem on your hands (“Angry squirrels have overrun the city! They’re attacking everyone!”).
Another way to come up with a Hero-Sized Problem is to imagine a huge natural disaster: a meteor speeding toward the planet, or a gigantic volcanic eruption, or a powerful storm. You could also imagine a much weirder and more imaginary disaster: Maybe that meteor is actually a terrible space monster, or maybe the lava shooting into the town isn’t coming from a volcano but from the chimney of a tiny cottage in the woods, or maybe that powerful storm lasts for years and years and forces a whole kingdom to flee somewhere safer…. Or maybe there is a problem with your world that is SO weird it’s never been thought of before until it enters your imagination.
Any of those Hero-Sized Problems could happen without a villain being involved at all. If you don’t want a villain in your story, all you need is to create a HUGE problem that affects a whole community, and then decide what the hero needs to do to save everyone.
But on the other hand…writing about villains is fun! So is reading about them. If it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be so many stories about them. If you’re planning out an adventure story of your own, chances are you’ll want to create a villain who’s causing the Hero-Sized Problem. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular kinds of villains so you can decide which one might be right for you:
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The villain who wants to take over. Some villains just want to be in charge. Their biggest dream is to take over and boss everyone around. This is a very popular choice for fantasy adventure stories, but it’s been done so many times that for a writer, it’s actually a challenge to make this kind of villain exciting. You’ll need to find ways to make your villain’s plan new and interesting so that your readers don’t get bored with yet another story about a villain trying to take over the town. For tips on how to do exactly that, read “So You Want to Take Over the Town…” on this page!
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The villain who wants to destroy. This villain is similar to the one who wants to take over, except they are interested only in destruction. They don’t want to take something over, they just want to bury it under lava, or sweep it away with a power-ful wind, or magically make it disappear. This is probably the hardest kind of villain to do well, because to make this villain interesting—or to make this villain even make sense at all—you have to think very, very hard about why they would want to be so destructive. Why would they want to blow up the world with a magic fireball? What are they going to do after that’s done, besides just sit around on a smoldering, burned-up fire-world eating popcorn all alone? What’s the point? We’re not saying it’s impossible to write about this kind of villain, we’re just saying it’s hard to make them make sense. Think very carefully before picking this one.
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The villain with a BIG project. This villain is working on something BIG! They’ve got an incredible idea for a new invention…or new kind of magic…or new kind of travel…or new kinds of creatures they want to bring to life, etc. The only problem is, there are also BIG side effects! This new invention has the power to hurt people…or this new kind of magic freezes farmers’ crops…or this new kind of travel rips a hole in the universe…or these new kinds of creatures are dangerous and frightening, etc. The villain thinks that their BIG project is so important these side effects don’t matter, even if people get hurt. But the hero disagrees.
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The hidden villain. At first, it seems like there isn’t actually a villain. Maybe there’s a natural disaster, like a volcano, or a more mysterious disaster, like monsters appearing in the woods. At first, the hero is concerned only with helping people through this disaster…but then, it turns out a villain is secretly behind the whole thing. Why is the villain causing a volcano to go off, or causing monsters to appear, or causing whatever else the problem is? That part is up to you: Maybe it’s the first step in a plan to take over the town…maybe it’s a side effect from a BIG project they’re working on…or maybe it’s something much weirder! In any case, it can be fun to have the villain be hidden at first, and then surprise the reader.
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The legendary villain. This is very similar to the hidden villain, except you give the audience hints that there might be a villain. Nobody knows for sure why that volcano is erupting or those monsters are appearing…but there are rumors that it’s being caused by a hidden villain. Maybe an old man in town remembers a problem from long ago that was eerily similar, caused by a villain who everyone thought had been banished from the world. Or maybe there is an ancient legend, or prophecy, that a villain would come and cause problems just like the ones happening right now. Or maybe someone who works for the villain is purposefully spreading rumors that a very powerful villain is causing the problem, to scare people, or even to try to get some people to come to the villain’s side. The hero will need to investigate and figure out exactly who they’re up against. For a writer, this is also a great way to get the audience excited to meet this villain, building up the suspense and mystery, until the villain finally appears later in the story.
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The personal villain. In some stories, the villain isn’t even behind the Hero-Sized Problem—they’re just trying to stop the hero from solving it. For example, maybe they didn’t cause the natural disaster, but it fits in with some sort of Villainous Plan. (“I’m the best carpenter in town—if the volcano destroys everyone’s homes, they’ll have to pay ME to build new ones!”) Or maybe they just don’t get along with the hero and would enjoy seeing them fail. (“That hero is so annoying—if I stop them from solving the problem, everyone will see the hero isn’t as perfect as they think.”) Or maybe the villain isn’t even such a bad person! Maybe they’re just in some sort of competition against the hero. (“If I finish the quest before the hero, I’ll be the one to solve the problem! The hero is too weak, anyway—I’m the only one powerful enough to save the town!”) Sometimes it’s more interesting if the reader can sympathize with the villain and see their point of view.
On this page, we put together a Hero-Sized Problem organizer to help you come up with ideas for your own Hero-Sized Problem. In our version, we laid out all the details of the problem in Quest for the Crystal Crown. Let’s take a look at each question to see how it works:
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What is the Hero-Sized Problem? There are lots of different Hero-Sized Problems you could put in a story, as we discussed at the beginning of this section. In our case, the town of Hillview is in danger! The Hexors are threatening to come back and destroy it while they look for something called “The Crystal Crown.”
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What SOUND does the problem make? THWUNK! BOOM! Sometimes people first find out about a Hero-Sized Problem by hearing a strange and terrifying sound. It can be exciting for readers if you write the sound before you write anything about the problem—this will leave them wondering “What was that sound?” There is no one rule for creating a sound word. All you need to do is ask yourself, “How would my problem sound?” For example, is a volcano erupting more of a WHOOOOOSH or a KRKRKRKRRRPPKKRR? The sound—and the spelling—is up to you!
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Is there a villain causing this problem? Who are they? Drawing and labeling a picture is a great way to brainstorm ideas about a character, so the Hero-Sized Problem organizer includes a picture of Erika and Hugo! We’ve also let you know that these two aren’t the only villains in the story: There’s a hidden villain you haven’t read about yet. If you’re planning a hidden villain for your story, you can definitely still draw them and label as many details as you want—but we didn’t want to give the hidden villain away just yet, so we left it a mystery for now. (And if you don’t want a villain in your story, you don’t have to answer this question, or either of the ones after it!)
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Why are they causing this problem? This is a very important question for a villain—and “because they’re evil” isn’t going to be a very interesting answer. If the villain wants something, and is causing the problem as part of a plan to get what they want, your story will be much more interesting. As we know, Erika and Hugo want the Crystal Crown—and they also blame the Lysors for making them live in the Putrid Forest, so they’re out for revenge.
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How are they doing it? For Erika and Hugo, this answer is pretty simple: They searched for Hillview for years, and then finally found it. Now they’re coming back with an army. For more tips on how to come up with an interesting answer to this question, check out “So You Want to Take Over the Town…” on this page.
QUEST LOG: SO YOU WANT TO TAKE OVER THE TOWN…
We’ve all been there.
You’re an aspiring villain, and you want to take over the whole town…or the whole city…or the whole country…or even the whole WORLD. It sounds great at first! You’d get to boss everyone around! You’d be super, super rich! You could make people put up statues of you and hang pictures of your face on every wall for all to adore! What’s not to love?
But then your plans run into reality. Every villain wants to take over the town (…or the city…or the country…or the WORLD). It’s been done too many times. People barely even pay attention to your villainous schemes because they’ve heard it all before. Your plans can’t get off the ground because the townspeople you’re trying to scare can’t stop yawning in boredom.
That’s why you need the Villainous Plan Generator! It’s our new system for aspiring villains, to help you come up with a bold, exciting, creative plan to take over the town that nobody has ever thought of before! It’s easy to use and costs you nothing except a pencil and paper to make your plan on.
Let’s start with a test drive. Before you make up your own plan, choose one of the sample FIRST STEPS from the following list. Pick whichever one you want, and we’ll show you how easy it is to design your own Villainous Plan.
MY FIRST STEP TO TAKE OVER THE TOWN WILL BE…
- Start a laundry business, washing everyone’s clothes in a magic river.
- Round up all the giraffes and hide them in a cave.
- In the middle of the night, break the main bridge into town so no one can get over it.
- Put a spell on the bakery, causing all the bread to dissolve into sand when anyone tries to eat it.
- Dig a mine deep under the ground.
- Sneak an enchanted book out of the library.
- Sneak an enchanted book into the library.
- Cut down all the trees in the very center of the forest.
- Freeze a waterfall solid.
- Learn to speak the language of rats.
- Create magical creatures that look exactly like pancakes.
- Invent a strange new flying machine.
- Buy the biggest farm in the whole kingdom.
- Build an underwater house deep in the ocean.
- Transform into a goose.
- Get extremely good at playing a musical instrument.
- Start a mountain-climbing school.
- Construct a railroad.
- Become a famous firefighter.
- Give away a huge mansion as a present.
When you’ve chosen one, plug it into the Villainous Plan Generator on this page. You have PERMISSION to get very WEIRD here as you answer the questions. For example:
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What is the first step in your Villainous Plan? Let’s say you chose “Round up all the giraffes and hide them in a cave.” That’s a weird one. How is that going to turn into a Villainous Plan to take over the town?
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Because of this…(How does the first step help you get what you want?) Well, let’s see…what do I know about giraffes? They’re tall, they eat leaves…Maybe this should be: “The trees around town will grow much bigger, with a much thicker covering of leaves, because there are no giraffes to eat the leaves off the top.”
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What is the next step in your Villainous Plan? Okay…how could I use big trees to help me take over a town? What about…“I’ll use my tree-enchanting spell, and soon these extra big and strong trees will be working for me!”
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Finally…(How do these steps help you get what you want?) One final step! How could those enchanted trees help me finish off my plan? “The trees won’t let anybody in or out of town unless I say so. I’ll force the people to put me in charge of the town, or else I’ll hold them all prisoner and not let any food get through from outside. HAHAHAHAHA!”
And sure, maybe a hero will decide to go on a quest to find the giraffes and bring them back to eat the trees down to a normal size…but you’re a powerful villain! Surely you can stop a puny hero with a plan like that.
Want to keep practicing? Make up your own weird, creative “first steps,” or challenge your friends and family to see who can come up with the best ones! When you’re ready, you can use the Villainous Plan Generator to create a brand-new Villainous Plan for your story. If four boxes isn’t enough, you can also add more steps to your own plan. Keep adding as many boxes as you need to see the plan through!
IDEA STORM: THE HERO-SIZED PROBLEM
Now write about the Hero-Sized Problem in your story!
Be sure to make your problem so HUGE that lots of people are in danger and will need a hero to save them. Maybe you start by imagining a small problem (“There’s ice on the road!”) and make it bigger and bigger (“There’s ice covering the whole town!”), or maybe you come up with a natural disaster (“The volcano is erupting!”), or maybe it’s something much weirder (“The castle just vanished! There’s a shimmering field of energy where it was standing!”).
If there is a villain involved, think up lots of details about what they’re like. If you want, you can make them mean and destructive (like the Hexors), but they don’t need to be. Just like a hero, a villain can be anybody, as long as they’re causing a Hero-Sized Problem…or trying to stop a hero from solving a Hero-Sized Problem. You can also use our Villainous Plan Generator on this page: Make up the villain’s “first step,” and then work out the rest of the plan from there.
When you actually start writing about the problem, sometimes writing the sound the problem makes is an exciting way to begin. One minute, you’re telling your reader about a normal day in your world, with the people there tasting ice cream, or playing basketball, or looking over a wall, and then the next minute…thwunk! What was that?! Your reader will be excited to keep turning the pages to find out!
If you got here by flipping forward from this page, flip back and keep reading!
QUEST LOG: CHOOSE A QUEST
Bloato wears the Crystal Crown.
What does this mysterious sentence mean? Who is Bloato…and where would Laura be able to find him…and the crown?
What we’ve got here, folks, is a quest. A quest is how the hero gets what they need to solve the Hero-Sized Problem—and usually it involves going on a dangerous adventure, where they’re trying to find something very important. Here are some examples:
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The quest for an object. Sometimes the hero needs to find a special object to help their community. It may be an object with magical powers (like the Crystal Crown that Laura is after), or some sort of medicine to heal people, or a tool that the hero will need to solve the problem. It may even be an object full of such evil power that destroying it will solve the problem.
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The quest for a person. The hero might be on a quest to find a person. This could be someone who is in danger, and needs a hero to save them. Or it might be a wise person, who can give the hero important information or special training. Or the person might even be a villain who the hero needs to defeat…if they can only catch them first.
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The quest for a place. Maybe there’s a community in danger, but to reach it, the hero will need to travel far. Or maybe there is a legendary land the hero is looking for, where they believe great wisdom or power can be found. Some heroes even go on a quest to get back to their own home—and solve whatever problems await them when they finally arrive.
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The quest for knowledge. There may be a forgotten magic spell…or a treasure map…or an ancient secret about the world, which explains why things are happening in the present day. The hero needs to find this piece of knowledge in order to solve the Hero-Sized Problem.
What all these quests have in common is that they are very hard to accomplish. Usually the hero needs to go on a long journey, full of extreme danger and many obstacles, in order to achieve their goal. The quest should be so hard to accomplish, in fact, that it takes an entire story for the hero to finally do it.
To help you come up with ideas for your quest, you might also choose to draw and label the quest object: the thing, or person, or place the hero is trying to find. Here’s our picture of the Crystal Crown.
And once you’ve decided on a quest…congratulations! You’re almost done with the beginning of your story! Hold on tight, because in the middle, the action is going to kick up a notch.
CREATE A WORLD: DIALOGUE
A voice below said, “Where do you think you’re going?”
One of the best ways to put the reader into your world, feeling like they’re right in the center of the action, is by writing interesting dialogue between characters. Hearing characters talk will bring those characters—and the fantasy world—to life like nothing else.
How do you write good dialogue for a fantasy story? There’s no magic formula, but here are a few simple tips to get you started:
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Decide what’s special about the way people talk in your world. Dialogue is a great way to show how your fantasy world is different from the real world. For example, you might think about what people in your world say when they meet each other. Do they just say “hello,” or do they phrase it very differently? Do they have a weird, unexpected greeting (“Your nose is shiny today, my friend”)? Or do they have a greeting that tells us something about their world? For example, do they live in a city on the back of a gigantic insect, and say “Bless the six legs that carry us” whenever they meet? You can also decide how people in your world say good-bye, what they call mealtimes, what they call their parents or children, what their money is called, their names for different jobs (Do they say “doctor” or “healer” or “bandage lady”?), etc. So far in Quest for the Crystal Crown, we’ve seen one big example of people talking in an unusual way, when the Lysors use words from an ancient language (such as talamh’e) to cast magic spells. Is talamh’e a real word? Nope! The authors just made it up. In your world, you are free to make up as many imaginary words as you want—just make sure the reader can figure out what they mean. (For more on magic words, check out “Create a World: Magic” on this page.)
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Remember the character. Writing dialogue can be extra fun if you’re writing about heroes and villains. You will get lots of chances for the villain to say something villainous (“Just go, you drooling oaf !”) and the heroes to give a heroic speech (“Everyone deserves to be healed. Lysor or Hexor, it doesn’t matter. Always remember that.”). But it’s also fun to write dialogue no matter who your characters are! If your character is a goofball, have them say something goofy. (“I accidentally bit off my whole fingernail.”) If your character is scared of everything, have them say something cowardly. (“We have to run! We have to hide!”) Whatever your characters are like, dialogue is a fun way to show off their personalities to the reader and give a sense of what they’re like to be around.
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Tell the reader what the character does while they talk. There are lots of examples of this technique in Quest for the Crystal Crown. Instead of just writing said next to every piece of dialogue, write what the character does. This helps bring the scene to life in more detail for the reader and also gives you an easy way to show how the character is feeling while they talk. Here are a few examples of what we mean:
Torian clapped his hands. “Who’s ready for some gray pears?!”
Erika nodded. “Eleven years looking for this?” She spat onto the ground.
His eyes crinkled in concern. “Maybe not. But we have to try.”
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Tell the reader exactly how the character says it. Here’s another way to avoid writing the word said over and over again: You can choose words that get more specific about how the character says whatever they’re saying, so the reader has an easier time hearing it in their head. In this book, for example, there has been dialogue where characters “wailed” and “squeaked” and “snarled” and “huffed”—and that’s just the beginning! Here are a few more examples of words you could use instead of said, which you can choose based on how the character is talking (we chose these words especially for heroes, who often are in an emergency, or like to brag about their accomplishments, or get annoyed at setbacks, or have to speak quietly so that villains can’t hear them):
For bragging about something
boasted
bragged
claimed
exaggerated
For an annoyed character
argued
complained
muttered
whined
For an emergency situation
commanded
cried
ordered
pleaded
roared
screamed
warned
yelled
For speaking quietly
confided
murmured
whispered
Here, as always, you have PERMISSION TO GET WEIRD and come up with a totally different way to describe how the character is talking. For instance, in a few chapters, you’re going to meet a very disgusting character who says something “in a voice like curdled milk.” What does that mean, exactly? It’s hard to say, but it sure sounds disgusting! If you have a character who talks in a disgusting voice, compare it to something disgusting. If your character has a beautiful voice, compare it to something beautiful (“a voice like soft rain sprinkling through a sunbeam”). If your character has a loud voice, compare it to something loud (“a voice like a refrigerator crashing into a jet engine”). You get the idea!
IDEA STORM: CREATE A QUEST
Decide on a quest for your own story! What, or who, does the hero need to find to help them solve the Hero-Sized Problem? If you want, feel free to draw a picture of the quest object to help spark your imagination. You definitely have PERMISSION TO GET WEIRD.
Be sure to write about how the hero finds out about the quest: Do they read about it in a special book? Does a helper tell them about an old legend? Does the villain taunt them? (“You’ll never find where I’ve hidden the amulet!”)
How does the hero feel about going on a quest? Are they terrified? Do they need a helper to motivate them to go? Are they excited? Do they go off with the whole town cheering them on? Or are they nervous someone will try to stop them, so they attempt to sneak out of town before anyone knows they’re gone? This is also a great time to include some interesting dialogue. Whether the hero is terrified and giving a panicky rant about what could go wrong, or excited and making a heroic speech, or nervous and whispering their plan to a helper, it will be fun for you to imagine what everyone is saying as the quest begins.
Once your hero has started off, it’s time for the middle of the story! Keep going!
If you got here by flipping forward from this page, flip back and keep reading!
THE MIDDLE: THE QUEST
CREATE A WORLD: BEYOND THE WALL
As Laura and Millie find themselves outside the walls of Hillview, unable to return, their quest has finally begun…which means we are officially in the middle of the story. The hero has started their journey into a new, unknown world, where they’ll be facing new dangers they’ve never had to deal with before (like whatever that animal was that started attacking Laura and Millie at the end of Chapter 8—keep reading to find out more about that thing).
As a writer, this is where the real fun begins. While your hero is on their quest, you’re going to be planning out lots of obstacles to put in their way. An obstacle is a smaller problem that comes up while they’re on the quest to solve the Hero-Sized Problem, and it could really be anything: a mountain they need to cross, a monster they need to confront, a maze they need to get out of, or even something much, much weirder (we’ll give you more examples as you keep reading).
Since the hero is going to be journeying to new places they’ve never visited before, this is a good time to start thinking again about a map!
If you haven’t drawn a map yet, you can go back to “Create a World: Starting with a Map” on this page for advice on how to do that. And if you’ve drawn only a map of the area where the hero starts out, try drawing a bigger map of your world that shows all the places your hero will pass through on their quest. Take a look at the map at the very beginning of the book for an example. The illustrator, Joe Todd-Stanton, used Angie’s ideas to create a map of the whole world of Lysoria.
Once you have a map, you can start using it to get ideas about what kinds of obstacles you want your heroes to face. There are three ways you might do this:
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Look at what you’ve already drawn. Do you have a tall mountain, a pool of lava, or a terrifying monster’s lair on your map? Pick a dangerous place you want your hero to visit, and come up with more details about what it’s like there.
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Look at the blank spaces. One of the best places for your imagination to go wild is in the blank spaces on a map. Find a place where you haven’t drawn anything yet, and think about what kinds of obstacles your character might find there.
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Think about the story so far. Maybe your hero already knows about some of the dangers they’ll face. For example, if you know there are Hexors roaming around the land, you can decide where the hero might run into them while on the quest.
Do you want more advice on creating interesting obstacles? Keep reading! There’s more on that coming up soon.
If you got here by flipping forward from this page, flip back and keep reading!
CREATE A WORLD: MAGIC
Wizards shooting colored rays out of magic wands! Witches turning heroes into toads! Sorcerers floating in the air and forming interdimensional portals with their hands!
Magic can be a fun thing to write about in a fantasy adventure, but as a writer, you need to decide exactly how magic works in your world. Hopefully your world is a place that will seem very real to the reader, even though there are very imaginary things, like magic, taking place there. The more you decide exactly how that magic is going to work, and figure out lots of details to make it special and interesting, the more real it will seem—and the less it will seem like a copy of the magic in every other story.
As always, in your world the rules are up to you—and if you don’t want to have magic in your world, that’s fine, too: Just skip this part! But if you are planning on including some magic, it can help to ask yourself these questions:
Who can do magic in your world? Is everybody magical, or are some people magical and some aren’t? How do people find out that they’re magical? When they’re little babies, do they just start burping magical dust one day, or do they need to be trained and learn how to use their magic skills?
How powerful is the magic in your world? In some fantasy worlds, magic is everywhere, with wizards constantly casting powerful spells and evildoers attempting to use magic to control everyone and everything. But in other fantasy worlds, magic is much less common: Very few characters can use it at all, and many characters don’t even believe in it. When magic does appear, it’s an extremely rare surprise. And then there are worlds like the one in Quest for the Crystal Crown, where in the old days, magic used to be very powerful, and the Lysors wielded it to keep the world healthy and beautiful…but by the time of our story, magic is much less common, and regular people don’t really trust the “small mages” that can use it. Why would a writer choose this kind of world? Well, if magic used to be very powerful, that means it’s possible it will be powerful again someday. In fact, maybe by the time the quest is complete, your hero will find out how to use some of that old, powerful magic and really surprise the villain….
What kinds of magic exist in your world? In the world of Quest for the Crystal Crown, magic comes from the elements: Certain people have control over fire, or water, or earth, or air. This is a fun kind of magic to write about, but it’s far from the only kind of magic possible in a fantasy story. Here are a few other examples:
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Magic words. Some magic is all about saying the right words. If you can learn those words, magical power will flow through you, and you’ll be able to make all sorts of bizarre things happen: People will transform into animals, furniture will fly through the air, castles will build themselves out of nowhere—whatever you can imagine. These magic words might be in a made-up language (“Blabbity bop, rargy gargy!”), they might be a short poem (“Triple my hair, look at a bear, make the furniture fly through the air!”), and in some stories writers just use words from other real languages to be their magic words. (Lots of wizards do their spells in Latin, the language they spoke in ancient Rome. That’s not a joke—do a little research on Latin and you might see some words you’ll recognize from your favorite fantasy story!)
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Illusion. In some stories magic is mostly illusion. A powerful magician can make it seem like the sky is turning green, or that a house has suddenly appeared in an empty field, or that they’ve turned themselves invisible…but as soon as the spell wears off, everything goes back to normal.
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Telepathy and telekinesis. Telepathy basically means having “mind powers.” This kind of magic lets people read each other’s thoughts, or talk using only their minds, or even try to control another person’s mind. Another kind of mind power, called “telekinesis,” means being able to lift, or throw, or play with objects using only your mind.
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Healing. Like Laura’s dad, some magic users focus on healing people who are sick, or injured, or who have had an evil spell cast on them.
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Potions. Some magic is more like cooking. First you need to find the right ingredient. That might include rare plants, parts of animals, minerals, or even much weirder ingredients (“a single drop of water that has been touched by the sunlight on planet Bailsoap”). Then, you have to cook the ingredients in exactly the right way: the right heat, for the right amount of time, with the exact correct number of stirs…. Maybe it even matters what day of the year it is, or what room you’re in, or what magic words you say as you cook it—there are a lot of weird conditions you can add for how to cook your magic potion. And that’s not even including what you want the potion to do: Transform one thing into another? Cause a snowstorm? Make a song play out of thin air? It’s up to your imagination!
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Portals between worlds. Some magic is all about communicating with other worlds—either between a fantasy world and our real world or between different fantasy worlds or different dimensions or distant planets. There are usually ways of traveling between these worlds, as well, and bringing objects, creatures, or even people back and forth between them through some kind of portal. A “portal” can be lots of different things. Sometimes it’s obvious, like a glowing circle of light or a machine made to open up tunnels in space. But sometimes it’s much less obvious. A portal can be disguised to look like an ordinary door or even to be completely invisible—you don’t know it’s there until you’ve accidentally passed right through what looked like a solid wall.
Of course, all those ideas are just scratching the surface—in your fantasy world, magic is all up to you, and you can come up with much weirder kinds of magic than anything listed here.
What’s it like when someone is doing magic in your world? When someone is doing magic, what exactly does it look like? Does the magic user move their hands or body? Is there light? Or darkness? Does the air shimmer like water, or is there some other unexpected effect? What sound does it make? Are there magic words? Does the magic itself make a sound? A fizz? A pop? A high-pitched squeal? A low-pitched rumble? Is there a smell ? Does it smell like smoke? Chemicals? Rotten tomato sauce? Or can you feel the effects of the magic if you’re nearby? Is there a gust of wind? Static electricity in the air? The answers are up to you, but the more details you can include about how you experience magic with all five senses, the more real it will all seem to the reader.
If you got here by flipping forward from this page, flip back and keep reading!
CREATE A WORLD: CREATE A CREATURE
Rotslobbers! Draguins! Cyclopopotomuses!
Some of the most fun you can have in writing about a fantasy world is imagining some of the weird, terrifying, hilarious creatures who live there. This is actually really easy to do—since the rules of your world are up to you, you’re free to just let your imagination go wild and create the coolest creature you can think of ! Does it have huge claws? Big colorful feathers? Can it dig underground? Turn invisible? Is it part robot? Or do you want to just combine two different things together into one creature? Half dragon plus half penguin equals Draguin! Boom—done!
If you’re looking for more ideas to get you started, here are a few ways you can get your imagination going:
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Start with a real animal. Lots of the creatures we’ve just met in Quest for the Crystal Crown are real creatures combined with imaginary creatures. (For example, there’s an imaginary monster from Greek mythology with only one eye, called a “Cyclops.” Cross it with a hippopotamus: It’s a “Cyclopopotomus”!) In lots of fantasy stories, writers will take a real creature and change it just a little to fit in with their fantasy world. Maybe it’s a world full of lizards, big and small, so instead of “dogs,” they have big friendly lizards that look and act just like dogs called “dizards.” Or maybe there’s a snake…but with legs. Or a whale…but it can fly. Or a cat…but it’s purple. Just start with a real animal, and let your imagination do the rest.
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Research prehistoric animals. Millions of years ago, there were real animals walking around on Earth that would look absolutely unbelievable to us today. For example, tens of thousands of years ago, there was an animal called the “Siberian unicorn.” It wasn’t anything like the unicorns we imagine today, with elegant horse bodies and magical horns, shooting out rainbows. No, the Siberian unicorn was actually a lot more like Donkeycorn. It looked like this:
It was probably very smelly and just as terrible to ride around on as Donkeycorn. Doing a little bit of research, and looking at all the weird prehistoric animals that really used to walk the earth, can be a great way to get ideas for creatures in your fantasy setting.
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The right creature for your world. Is your world covered in snow and ice? What kind of creature would survive well in the cold? What would their feet and legs need to be like to carry them through the freezing, slippery terrain? Or maybe your world is a gas giant planet, with no solid ground to even stand on. (You have PERMISSION TO GET WEIRD—why not?) What kind of creature could float, or fly, or find a way to live in a cloudy, windy place with no ground? Or maybe you have an idea for a specific part of your world, like the Putrid Forest. What kind of creature would live in a putrid forest? Probably something poisonous and disgusting, like a rotslobber! Think about what your world is like, and figure out what kind of creature would fit in there, whether it’s cold, hot, wet, dry, bright, dark, bouncy, sticky, or whatever!
QUEST LOG: HELP FROM AN UNEXPECTED PLACE
A tall man with long limbs and elbows like knotted wood grabbed Quin and dragged him deeper into the barn, the sack still over his head. The man’s face was so worn it looked like old leather.
“Trespasser!” he shouted in a raspy voice. He picked up Quin by the belt loops and tossed him into a trough full of filthy water.
On a long, dangerous quest, a hero may need to take help wherever it can be found—even from extremely unexpected places. For example, at first it may have seemed like a big mistake to go asking for help from Hobbly Knobbly. In fact, for a minute it looked like the quest might end right there, with an angry Hobbly Knobbly doing away with the hero and her friends! But then things took an unexpected turn, when he suddenly offered to help them instead.
Hobbly Knobbly is an example of a “Mighty Helper” character. Usually the hero meets this character at an important moment in the story, when they are in desperate need of help or else stuck on how to continue their quest. Just in time, a Mighty Helper appears—but getting help from them isn’t always easy. Let’s look at how to put a Mighty Helper in your story:
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Step 1. |
Make up a Mighty Helper for your hero to meet. There are two ways to go with this. On the one hand, they could be a character who is obviously “mighty” right from the start, like a powerful knight, or a magical being, or a gigantic spirit, or a ferocious talking animal, etc. On the other hand, they could be something weirder and more unexpected. Maybe they don’t look so powerful right away, or maybe at first sight they look creepy, or scary—like Hobbly Knobbly, who at first appears to be just an extremely mean and grumpy old man. |
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Step 2. |
Show the reader the character’s Mighty power. Write about the Mighty Helper doing something that shows how powerful they are. It can make your story extra exciting if they seem scary at first. Show the knight cutting solid rock in half with a sword, or show the magical being performing a powerful spell—or even (like Hobbly Knobbly) make the reader think this character is going to hurt the hero. |
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Step 3. |
Decide why they’re going to help. With Hobbly Knobbly, it was pretty easy to get his help, as soon as he saw that Laura and Millie were Lysors. But it’s not always so easy! Sometimes it takes much more work to get the Mighty Helper to actually…help. Here are a few ways it might go: |
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Step 4. |
Decide how they’re going to help. Once they finally agree to help, there are lots of ways it can happen. Here are some popular choices: |
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IDEA STORM: STARTING THE QUEST AND MEETING A MIGHTY HELPER
Send your hero out on their quest! You can start by making a map of some of the new, dangerous places they’ll need to travel through. Write about what they see and what they do in these new places. Maybe they find some weird or scary new creatures (see this page), or encounter some amazing magic (see this page).
Before too long, your hero will probably be in trouble, or feeling scared, or unsure how to keep going on their quest. This is a great time to put a Mighty Helper in your story! Just like the other important characters, you can start by drawing a picture to brainstorm details about them. Then have the Mighty Helper appear in an exciting way: Maybe they show off their incredible power by helping the hero out of a tight spot, or maybe they do the opposite at first, and try to hurt the hero.
Then, think through the steps we listed in the Mighty Helper section on this page, and decide how the hero finally gets the help they need. Does the hero find a way to prove themselves worthy or overcome some kind of obstacle? Maybe they even need to defeat the Mighty Helper in some way. Finally, you can think about what kind of help the hero receives, and where they head next on their journey!
If you got here by flipping forward from this page, flip back and keep reading!
QUEST LOG: THE “DO’S AND DON’TS” OF MONSTER FIGHTS (OBSTACLES, PART 1)
Well, folks, we’ve just arrived at the moment some of you fantasy adventure fans have been waiting for: our first big monster fight. A quest is full of difficult obstacles to overcome, and a monster might be the most exciting obstacle of all. Let’s review how it went down:
The troll grunted and turned, locking his bloodshot eyes on them. He pounded his fist on the bridge and let out an angry shout, revealing a single glistening tooth jutting from his pink gums.
There was only one thing to do.
They all charged the troll with weapons drawn! Quin shot a fireball, and it hit the troll right in the face! Millie kicked the troll. The troll kicked her back. They kept kicking and kicking. Then Laura jumped in the air and head-butted the troll. The troll roared. They kept fighting. Then they fought some more!
Wait a minute…that’s not actually what happened in the story! It’s definitely what could have happened in a monster fight, but things worked out a bit differently here. Why didn’t Laura and her friends attack the troll, combining their powers and doing cool special moves to defeat it in combat?
The best way to answer that question might be to take a look at our “do’s and don’ts” of writing a good monster fight:
DO write what makes sense for your characters. Laura, Millie, and Quin are kids. Hot Breath is a twelve-foot-tall monster (even though he turns out to be a baby monster). These kids are simply not the kinds of heroes who would take out weapons and charge straight at a troll—and if they did, they’d probably lose (things didn’t turn out so well when Quin brought out his fireball, after all). Maybe the heroes in your story would love to fight a monster—that’s fine! But if your heroes have a weird talent (see the Hero’s Talent Challenge on this page) or if they’re simply the kinds of heroes that use their minds to come up with unusual, creative ways of overcoming obstacles, it’s definitely okay to have a WEIRD idea for how they get past the monster (like singing it a lullaby). In fact, if your heroes approach the monster in a WEIRD way, it will be easier to keep many readers interested! Anytime there’s a fearsome monster, everyone expects there to be a big fight—but if you surprise the reader with something WEIRD, you’ll really make them sit up and pay attention.
DON’T just list a bunch of fighting moves your characters do. That doesn’t mean you can’t have the characters fight—it just means you need to make it interesting for the readers. On TV or in a video game, it looks cool when a hero does a triple backflip, shoots a laser out of their foot, then unleashes their ultimate power move on a monster. It’s not as exciting to read about when it’s just a list of those fighting moves. What should you do instead? Well…
DO write about what your characters are feeling, and what they say. If the characters are fighting a big, scary monster, they’re probably going to feel scared! Or maybe angry or surprised—or even excited. If your reader can feel those emotions along with the characters, they are going to be much more interested in the fight. So even if your hero does a triple backflip, shoots a laser out of their foot, and then unleashes their ultimate power move on the monster…in between those things, let the reader know how the hero is feeling. You could describe how the hero’s muscles ache as they attempt a difficult move. Or if the monster is fighting back, write down exactly what the hero sounds like as they cry out in surprise and try to dodge the attack (“UNNNNNNGGGGG!”). Another great way to show how the hero is feeling is with dialogue (“I sure hope this works!” or “Arrgg! I think we’re done for!” or “Watch this, it’s triple flip time!”). For more on this, you can review the “Create a World: Dialogue” entry on this page!
DON’T be afraid to make things go wrong for your hero. This is the most important tip we can give about monster fights—or about any kind of obstacle your characters might face. If things keep going wrong for the heroes, it will be much more interesting to read about than if they keep landing awesome moves against the monster over and over without breaking a sweat. For example, check out the “Make It All Go Wrong” sheet on this page to see how it went when Laura and her friends met the troll.
Lots of things can go wrong in a monster fight. Maybe the bridge catches on fire…or the monster eats the hero’s sword…or the kickboxing hero trips and falls on her back…or something much weirder that you haven’t thought up yet! This is true no matter what the obstacle is: Maybe the heroes are trying to climb a mountain in a storm, or cross a fast-moving river at night, or find their way through a maze deep underneath a castle. It will be much more interesting to see them deal with the obstacle if something goes wrong with their plan and they have to scramble to figure out a new plan.
If you got here by flipping forward from this page, flip back and keep reading!
QUEST LOG: GETTING WEIRD (OBSTACLES, PART 2)
Not all obstacles involve fighting monsters, or climbing huge mountains, or swimming through shark-infested waters. Some obstacles are just…weird. For example: In order to get Deirdre to use her magic powers, Laura and her friends needed to make her cry.
A great way to shake things up and have your story take an unexpected turn is to come up with a weird obstacle. Will your characters need to melt a giant block of ice? Figure out how to speak with a bird? Enter a labyrinth filled with three thousand plastic pumpkins and not be allowed to leave until they locate the one genuine pumpkin hidden in the middle? There isn’t a wrong answer; this is all about letting your imagination get as WEIRD as possible.
Once you have a weird obstacle, it’s tons of fun to decide what weird solutions your characters will come up with to get past it. For example, to make Deirdre cry, Laura and her friends told a terrible joke, attempted to tickle her, and then finally made it happen by using a slightly eaten onion. How often can you get past an obstacle with a slightly eaten onion? It takes a weird obstacle to set up a solution that weird!
If you got here by flipping forward from this page, flip back and keep reading!
QUEST LOG: BAD CHOICES (OBSTACLES, PART 3)
Sometimes the most exciting kinds of choices are bad ones. For example, you’ve probably read the sort of story where the main character is walking down the street, sees a dark scary house with a dark scary door, and then for some reason decides to go inside. You’re screaming at the character, “No! Don’t do it! Don’t go in there!”
It’s exciting to read about—but also kind of annoying, because you can’t help wondering, “Why would you go in there? What is wrong with you?” It doesn’t always make sense when a character makes a really bad choice like that. There is an easy way to get around this, however, and get all the excitement of a character doing something really dangerous, and none of the annoyance of wondering why they’re doing it: Just give the character nothing but bad choices.
Sometimes in an adventure story, the hero will have to decide which way to go in their journey, and no matter what they choose, there will be a life-threatening obstacle in their way. Will you take the road through Bog Belly or the Putrid Forest? Will you take the path over the freezing, stormy, dangerous mountain or through the deep, dark, monster-infested cave? Will you sail your boat past the monster that will grab and eat your crew or the monster that will suck your whole boat underwater?
This is exciting for the reader, and it also makes sense why the hero is choosing to do something dangerous: They have no good options! If they want to complete the quest, they need to decide which choice seems the least terrible and hope for the best.
IDEA STORM: OBSTACLES
It’s time to put some obstacles in your hero’s path! Check out our three obstacle entries on this page, this page, and this page to get some ideas!
There are also more places you can flip back to, to help you brainstorm! Do you want to create an interesting monster for your heroes to face? Try going back to the “Create a Creature” entry on this page. You can follow the advice in that section to help you create a weird, detailed monster that nobody has ever heard of before.
Or maybe you want to give the hero some bad choices and send them to a really nasty, scary place like Bog Belly. This would be a great time to review some of the “Words for Places That Are…” way back on this page, to help you perfectly describe the stinky, or scary, or foggy, or just plain weird place that you’re planning to send the hero.
Or let’s say you have an idea for a really WEIRD obstacle, but you wish you’d done it earlier in the story. Can you go back and add an obstacle before the hero ever meets the Mighty Helper…or even way back in the beginning of the story, before the Hero-Sized Problem appears? OF COURSE you can! Remember that your story isn’t going to start out perfect: Add a new page, or cross something out, or squeeze in a new obstacle anywhere you want! The rules are all up to you.
Finally, if your heroes are arriving at a really scary, weird location where there are going to be lots of obstacles, it will help bring that place to life if you use as many details as possible. Keep reading for ideas about how to do that….
If you got here by flipping forward from this page, flip back and keep reading!
CREATE A WORLD: IT’S ALL IN THE DETAILS
Bloato’s Goblin cave is a disgusting and terrifying place, and what really brings it to life are the details. Whether you are writing about a scary goblin cave or somewhere completely different, thinking about lots of details will help to make it seem like a real, unique, interesting place for your reader.
Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to help you brainstorm details about a place in your own world:
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Where do people live? Depending on your setting, people might live in cottages, or castles, or giant space stations orbiting distant stars. In the case of these goblins, they live in a setting that suits them well: a big dark cave, on the edge of a disgusting bog.
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How do people spend their free time? We learned several fun details about what goblins do in their free time, including playing a game called Ruby Toss (which you can win either by tossing a ruby into a goblet or by accidentally knocking someone out), doing a dance called the Gobtrot, and making goblin wax candles, which they do by…well, if you read Chapter 17, we don’t need to repeat it here (it’s gross). For your world, you could invent sports, or music, or books people read, or products they make, or toys they play with—anything that fits the place you’re writing about.
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What do they eat? The goblins eat a lot of things at “feasting hour,” and most of them are surprisingly tasty—everything from “salted cheeses” to fruit, to meat, to “chunky soups.” We also learn how the goblins eat, which is without any table manners. (“Forget finger food—this is face food!”) In your setting, you could choose to have delicious food, disgusting food (like the “Thew” that Millie cooks), weird food, enchanted food (which casts some sort of spell when you eat it), etc. Be sure to describe how the food smells, the texture in your mouth, and any other details that will help to bring it to life for the reader.
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How do people get around? We don’t learn much about this question for the goblins, but in many stories, it will be important to think about the transportation people use. Do they ride giant sleds over miles of snow? Do they use submarines to get back and forth between underwater caves? Do they have specially designed rockets that launch out of volcanoes? Do they ride weird animals? Again, the only right answer is the answer that fits the world you’re writing about.
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Who is in charge? And what would Bloato’s cave be like without Bloato himself? Greedy, selfish, disgusting Bloato, with his jiggling belly and the silk tablecloth that he uses to blow out the green mucus from his nose (ewwwww). Knowing something about who’s in charge can tell you a lot about the people who live in the place you’re writing about. Are they scared of their leader? Do they love their leader? Is something wrong with their leader? Does their leader rule by strength or by magic, or are they elected or chosen in some way? Your answer will be very different depending on the kind of world you want to create!
If you got here by flipping forward from this page, flip back and keep reading!
THE END: THE RETURN
QUEST LOG: COMPLETING THE QUEST
…down, down, down into the darkness.
The end of a story often starts in darkness.
In your story, the heroes might not be in an actual deep dark cave like Laura and her friends, but usually things are not going so well. They might be captured by monsters…or yelling at their friends…or suddenly realizing that there’s one last GIGANTIC obstacle in their path, and they don’t know how to get past it…or like in Quest for the Crystal Crown, it may be a little bit of all those things. This is called the darkest hour in a story: Your characters are at the lowest, most difficult point in their journey, and it’s starting to look like they’ll never complete the quest.
But then, something happens.
A new character might appear to lend your characters a hand when they need it most…or they might suddenly realize how they could use some equipment the Mighty Helper gave them…or perhaps they figure out a plan to work as a team and combine their talents to move forward, out of their darkest hour.
Once you get that far, writing the end of the quest is actually simple: You decide on a final, GIGANTIC obstacle for the heroes to get past in order to complete the quest. Besides being GIGANTIC, this obstacle can look a lot like the ones we’ve already looked at:
Do the heroes get into the biggest monster fight of their lives or deal with another GIGANTIC obstacle where things keep going wrong? See Obstacles, Part 1 on this page for more details!
Do you want to blow the reader’s mind by making this obstacle the weirdest, most unexpected thing they’ve ever seen? See Obstacles, Part 2 on this page for more details!
Or maybe you want to turn up the tension by giving the hero nothing but bad choices: No matter how they approach the final obstacle, it seems hopeless…so they decide on one terrible choice and try to do their best. See Obstacles, Part 3 on this page for more details!
And then…THEY FINISH THE QUEST! The Crystal Crown (or whatever the quest object is in your story) is theirs!
Is that it? Is everything over? In most stories, the characters aren’t quite done yet. Keep reading….
If you got here by flipping forward from this page, flip back and keep reading!
QUEST LOG: MEANWHILE, BACK AT HOME…
The heroes have finished the quest! Happily ever after, the end!
Oh wait—in all the excitement we forgot about something very important: The heroes are still far from home, and they have unfinished business to take care of. That could include one or both of these things:
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The Hero-Sized Problem still hasn’t been solved! Maybe the hero was on a quest to find an object, or a person, or some knowledge to help them solve the problem…but now they have to use what they’ve gained on the quest to actually solve it. You can write about what happens when they finally, finally have their chance to return and save the day!
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The hero discovers a new problem at home. In some stories, the hero completes the quest, only to arrive home and discover a whole new problem that came about while they were gone. Maybe a villain has infiltrated the town…or there’s a new natural disaster…or their family is in danger…or something much weirder! The hero will need to use the new skills, or friends, or items they’ve acquired on their quest to help confront this new danger.
Either way, dealing with one more big problem is a great way to cap off an adventure story and give the hero, and all their new friends, a moment to shine one more time in an exciting scene. In fact, you’re about to read a scene just like that in Quest for the Crystal Crown.…
If you got here by flipping forward from this page, flip back and keep reading!
CREATE A WORLD: SURPRISES (SPOILER ZONE)
Did you see that one coming?
Who would have thought that all this time, kindly mayor Torian was behind this whole mess?!
By the end of your story, the reader has been in your world for a while, and they’ve seen a lot of what that world has in store. That’s why it’s a good idea to keep a couple of surprises waiting, to keep them entertained until the very end of the story.
A surprise can be anything—maybe it’s something you’ve decided about the world from the very beginning but have kept hidden up until now. Maybe it’s something you think up only right at the end of the story, and you add it in to pump up the excitement.
Maybe a character who the hero thought was a friend turns out to be a terrible villain (like Torian). Maybe you create a new, incredible creature or monster, more dangerous than anything the reader has seen so far (like the giant rat). Maybe a new character appears, who offers desperately needed help (like Laura’s mom). Maybe an old friend reappears right when the heroes need them most (like Hobbly Knobbly). Maybe a character who has been around for the whole story suddenly reveals a hidden strength or power (like Donkeycorn finding its unicorn magic). Maybe the island the characters have been visiting on their quest was actually a gigantic egg, and a sea serpent a mile long hatches out and goes speeding into the ocean. (That didn’t happen in this story…but it would sure be surprising!)
All those ideas are just the tip of the iceberg of possibilities, and as with everything else: There’s not a right or wrong type of surprise to put into your story. It’s all about what would work best for the world that you’re creating.
QUEST LOG: AN ENDING FIT FOR A HERO
The crown has been returned (and destroyed). The Lysors and Hexors are rebuilding Hillview together. The quest is complete. Where do we go from here?
There are lots of different ways to end a story, but in an adventure story, there’s usually a big focus on how things turn out for the hero. Here are a few popular options:
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Become a leader. Now that your hero has saved a huge number of people, those people might be so grateful that they decide the hero should be put in charge! Maybe they elect the hero mayor, or crown the hero as queen, or invent a whole new job where they put the hero in charge of keeping the community safe.
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Retire/relax. Going on a quest is hard. Some heroes just want to live a quiet life when it’s all done—or at least take a long, well-deserved break. Heroes might go on a vacation or go to live for a while in a quiet little place in the woods. Some heroes are even so tired of being a hero that they change their names and go into hiding, so that everyone will stop congratulating them or asking them for help on a new quest.
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Look for a new adventure. Once they get a taste for adventure, some heroes just want more! They leave their home once again, looking for more problems that need solving and more quests that need a hero to accomplish them. Or else the hero begins training and honing their skills for the next time trouble rears its head.
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Paying the heroic price. To be a hero means to care about something bigger and more important than yourself and to help save people no matter the cost. Some heroes give up their lives to make the world a better place—and for some writers, this is the most exciting, dramatic, or realistic way to bring the quest to a close: The hero sacrifices themselves to save the world and is remembered in legend forever afterward.
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Fulfill their biggest dream in life. Laura became an explorer…and not only that, she fulfilled a dream she hadn’t even dared to hope for: She found her mom again! Having your hero accomplish a big dream can be a great way to wrap up a hero story—so you may want to refresh your memory about the “biggest dream in life” you came up with way back on the Hero Creator (this page). As the story wraps up, it can be fun for readers to finally see the hero playing with that cool pet they’ve been obsessed with…or finally tasting the greatest ice cream in the world…or finally getting a chance to focus on their basketball career!
IDEA STORM: FROM THE DARKEST HOUR TO THE LIGHT OF VICTORY
Now it’s time to finish your story!
How are your characters going to reach their darkest hour? Will they be trapped, or defeated, or lost in a terrifying place? Are they scared, depressed, or so angry they’re screaming at each other? Do they feel like they’re never going to accomplish their goals? Once again, this is a great place to use some dialogue (see this page) to help show the reader exactly how terribly the characters are feeling.
Then…how do they turn things around? Does a new character show up to lend them a hand? Do they figure out that it’s finally time to use a piece of equipment they’ve been carrying, or recall a piece of advice given to them at the beginning of their journey? What GIGANTIC obstacle do they get past to finally complete the quest?
Once they complete the quest, does your hero still have a problem to deal with? Maybe they use the quest object to finally solve the Hero-Sized Problem—or maybe they travel back home and find a whole new problem threatening their community. Either way, it’s time for a big finish! Decide on some things that go VERY WRONG as they try to solve the problem (check back on this page for the “Make It All Go Wrong” chart), and plan some big surprises for your reader at the last moment. Will there be a hidden villain? Will an old friend or a Mighty Helper show up again at the last second? Will your heroes meet the strangest, scariest monster they’ve seen so far? You have PERMISSION TO GET as WEIRD as you want!
When all that’s finally finished, decide on an “Ending Fit for a Hero” after a job well done.
This was the last Idea Storm. Did you do them all? If so…
Congratulations!
You just wrote a fantasy adventure story!
If you followed along the whole way, then you:
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Wrote about an imaginary world, and the imaginary people who live there
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Put a hero character in that world
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Created a Hero-Sized Problem and maybe a villain with a Villainous Plan
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Sent the hero off on a quest
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When things were getting tough, sent a Mighty Helper in to help the hero
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Created weird obstacles and made sure things went wrong for the hero
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Plunged the hero down into a darkest hour…before finally finishing the quest
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Sent the hero back home to get rid of that Hero-Sized Problem
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Finally reached an Ending Fit for a Hero
What can you do now?
Go back to the beginning, and make your story even better! Make your dialogue more exciting, your magic spells more magical, your darkest hour darker, and your obstacles full of even more things going horribly wrong!
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Make a totally NEW imaginary world, with weirder creatures, scarier problems, and the prettiest rainbow castles in the universe!
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Take a break! Do the Gobtrot! Eat a slice of gray pear pie—you’ve earned some time off. But if inspiration strikes…feel free to draw a new map and see where your imagination takes you.