Two authors. Why and how?
John wrote fantasy and science-fiction short stories. Cindy specialized in non-fiction articles and mystery. John’s longest story was less than eight thousand words. Cindy preferred writing novels. What an ideal (preposterous?) collaboration. In practice, “Plot Dude” John and “Character Gal” Cindy work well together, to the point where it’s hard to tell who contributed what to a finished project. Plus we enjoy working together. We meet every week or so to compare progress, try out ideas and assign who does what next. Deadlines keep the words coming.
We met as founding members of a writers group that eventually imploded. John had an idea for a novel and convinced Cindy to try her hand at fantasy. So, countless revisions and edits later, our book became Healing Magic. We soon realized there was much more to the story than would fit into one book, hence the Desert Magic Trilogy.
While you can “just make up” a fantasy world, it’s not all that easy. The world must be sensible. Most anything can be crammed into an invented world, but add too much and it’s an unreadable mish-mash. Add little that’s new and it’s ho-hum; ten pages and into the trash. And for heaven’s sake, don’t just attach new names to common things and call your work a fantasy.
The magic system is especially tricky. Here again many things are possible, but you must be consistent and not all over the map. Does the system allow transforming creatures? Neat. You want to turn that annoying neighbor into a frog? Cool. Conservation of mass suggests he’s now a two-hundred-pound enemy amphibian, not necessarily bringing joy into your life. Suspend the mass-conservation rule? Fine. The man’s now a two-pound frog. Where did the mass go? Is it in another plane of existence? Did the wizard consume a lot of magic to make it go away? Where does the magic come from and how does it get replenished?
The reader doesn’t need to know all this but, if you don’t, somewhere along the journey you’ll create a, well, “paradoxical” event. “How could they do this to me,” the audience moans. The ball game’s over, the fat lady sings, we’re out of clichés and also future sales. When one of us proposes such an event, the other’s there to keep things logical.
And that’s the why and how.
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