My High Fantasy BRICK Writing Project is a nascent writing project, in which I intend to write an epic fantasy novel of great length. For the word counters out there, something around 230,000 words. Whereas the My Huge Epic Fantasy Trilogy Writing Project is three shorter, semi-standalone books separated by a year each, this BRICK project is intended to be one giant book, with a months-long story, reminiscent of the bigger fantasy books of the 80’s and 90’s. I want this thing to be an absolute monster. For reference, think of Terry Brooks’s 726-page Sword of Shannara, or any of Tad Williams Memory, Sorrow, and Throne volumes, which run about 900 pages each. Melanie Rawn and Dennis L. McKiernan had some pretty huge books during this period as well.

As stated above, this book is intended to be large single narrative and have all the trappings of 80’s and 90’s High Fantasy, mostly in terms of scale: a large cast of named characters, a few thousand years of history, some prophecies, miles and miles traversed by foot, looming war, monsters, maybe a magic sword or two, giant battles, and so on. (Unless I want to do away with those things, that is!)

I realized recently that, even though I love fast-paced stories, at the end of the day all of my favorite fantasy novels are the big, huge doorstoppers. It is unclear to me why this is. There is just something about getting lost in a giant book’s big world and getting to really know the characters. I am looking forward to recreating this feeling for readers when I get around to it.

But as stated before, it is in its earliest stages. So far I have a name for my wizard, an idea for an overall plot, a main character name (maybe), a few opening scenes, and the first semblances of a world map. And that’s about it. I brainstorm about this from time to time, but really my focus in on the Trilogy.