My Additional Novel Ideas

Here are a few ideas for future novels I plan on writing. They are all gathered here because they are all in their very early stages.

High Fantasy Doorstopper Writing Project

My High Fantasy Doorstopper 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 Comedic Fantasy Adventure Trilogy is three shorter, semi-standalone books, set a year apart from each other, this ‘Doorstopper’ 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 The 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 absolutely massive. 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 hintings of a world map. And that’s about it. I brainstorm about this from time to time, but really my focus in on the Comedic Adventure Fantasy Trilogy.

A Journey-to-the-West writing-style pastiche Fantasy Novel

I simply adore the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West. In addition to enjoying the story, plotline, characters, I really love the way the book is written. For example:

  • We are hardly ever given insight into character’s thoughts. Everything is mostly what characters are saying and doing.
  • Lengthy descriptions are not delivered through prose, but rather beautiful poems. The text of the novel is takes breaks for these poems constantly.
  • Distances are traversed incredibly quickly
  • The author talks to the audience in certain ways that I find charming

I find this writing style incredibly charming aund fun to read, and would love to do something in a similar style. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Even though I’d love for this to be another fantasy epic, I’m going to shoot for a shorter length this time. As stated before, though, this is not worked on often.