GenresFiction
Fantasy
Magic, other worlds, and the rules that bind them.
Fantasy lets you change the rules of the world, and then it asks you to live with the rules you chose. Magic, other species, invented histories, and countries that never existed are all available, which is wonderful and also a way to write a book that never quite starts, because you are still designing the map. Readers will follow a strange world if a person in it wants something they can understand.
The magic, or the politics, or the monsters, should cost something. If anyone can do anything, nothing is interesting for long. You don't have to explain the whole cosmology in chapter one. Tell the reader what they need in order to follow the next decision, and let the rest arrive when the story leans on it. A fantasy novel can be huge or it can be about a single shop on a single street. Both are fine, so long as the world feels as if it continues past the edge of the page.
The kinds of book inside it
Epic / high
Several people, a wide map, and a conflict that is bigger than one household, which means you need to keep the threads from turning into a list.
Urban
The magic is in a city the reader half recognises, and the fun is in how the ordinary systems, police, rent, night buses, deal with what they weren't built for.
Dark fantasy
The wonder is mixed with cruelty, and the book shouldn't flinch, but it also shouldn't be grim only because grim looks serious.
Portal
Someone crosses from one world into another, and the crossing has to change them, not just give them a new set of clothes.
Sword & sorcery
Adventure comes first, with magic and steel close to the ground, and the hero is usually more rogue than monarch.
Mythic
The story borrows the shape of myth, fate and gods and old bargains, and it works when those forces still leave room for a person to choose.
Cozy fantasy
The stakes can be a bakery, a library, or a neighbour, and the magic is there to make a small life richer rather than to end the world.
Romantasy
The romance is central and so is the fantasy plot, so neither can be solved in a scene while the other waits outside.
Low fantasy
The world is mostly ours, with one impossible thing in it, and that one thing should be enough to rearrange someone's life.
When you want a first sketch, Storywell can draft a story summary in this vein. You are still the one who writes the book. Compose an idea.