Writing Fantasy Fiction

Most of you know this already, but just in case you don’t, one of my passions is writing fantasy fiction, mostly novels, but short stories and now comic books as well.

Unfortunately, like most passions, writing fantasy fiction isn’t profitable outside of the 0.01% of authors who are lucky or connected enough to earn big money from it. That’s why I’ve (thankfully) never focused on it as a primary business or form of income.

In addition, soon AI will be able to write fiction (fantasy or otherwise) as good as most humans, meaning that human fantasy writers will become far less in demand and micro-niched instead of mainstream like they are now, driving profitability even lower.

That being said, I have written three and a half full fantasy novels in my lifetime so far just as practice, for-fun projects. I have also written many short stories and many issues of the Black Dragon and Pink Firefly comic book.

Some of these comics I released in rough format to my Alpha Male 2.0 audience about a year or two ago for free as a test, which was successful, so a more professional version is coming soon.

The novels I’ve written in the past I will never release because they’re not good. Again, they were mostly for practice. Most of the short stories I will also not release but there’s a handful that are pretty good; I will probably release those next year when I enter into my next phase of life. More on that in a minute.

My Writing Process

I’ve done a lot of research on successful and talented fantasy fiction authors and I’ve found that pretty much all of them have a different process for writing their stories. This is pretty cool, since if they all had a similar process and I didn’t like it, I’d be sort of stuck.

My process for writing fantasy fiction, which I have no idea if it’s “right” or not, works like this.

First, an idea for a cool scene or a character will pop into my head. It will just be that: a scene or character with no other background, setting, or plot.

Examples I’ve had in the past:

• A monstrous wizard that manipulates ice in front of people who have never seen ice before.

• A hand-to-hand battle of heroes vs. villains atop a gigantic eagle and small dragon-like creature while flying thousands of feet in the air.

• A young woman going insane as she realizes she has vast, destructive power she’s never used before, causing chaos on a city street.

• An explosion equivalent to a nuclear bomb going off in a medieval fantasy city.

• A goofy scholar getting yelled at by his stuffy superior within a grand royal library.

• And so on.

Second, I will construct details around these characters or scenes. I will create other characters for them to interact with. I will create motivations for all of the participants in the scene as well as character backgrounds. Why are they there? Why are they doing what they’re doing? How are they different than characters we’ve seen before? Etc.

Third, I will create the setting immediately around the scene. Is it a city, castle, desert, or ocean? Is it inside a volcano or in some strange dimension?

Fourth, I will finalize the dialog. Since I’m a character myself (goofy, politically incorrect, outcome independent, blunt smartass) my dialogue tends to veer in that direction by default, but since not all characters in a story can act just like me (that would be boring) I make sure to have most characters speak and behave differently… but I usually have one or two blunt smartasses in there… I can’t help it.

Lastly, as a distant last, I will eventually create the wider setting of the world these characters inhabit. I will take a great deal of time to do this, to really flesh out the details, but I will always do it last since I think setting is the least important of the three key elements of a fantasy story, characters being the most important and plot being second.

If you have amazing characters and dialogue, a mediocre setting, and weak plot, you get Game of Thrones.

If you have amazing settings and fantastic plotting but mediocre characters, you get Brandon Sanderson.

If you have great characters and plot but a weak setting, you get both First Law trilogies.

If you fall in love with your characters but don’t bother to really plot out anything, you get Stephen King.

If you just rip off characters and settings from other authors, you get the Witcher and Terry Brooks.

The goal is to nail all three (characters, plot, and setting), which I admit is hard.

The Themes From My Stories

And then you have themes.

Themes arise organically from my writing, as I think they should. The themes from stories come from the author’s subconscious (as I think they should).

Therefore, often themes from my stories tend to revolve around things like individuality, nonconformity, freedom, sex, sarcasm, masculinity, political incorrectness, individual achievement, humor, and people striving for a goal.

I never sit down and say, “I’m going to write a story about individuality because that’s what I think the world needs!” or at least I try not to. Again, I think themes are best when they arise from the story rather than from the author’s purposeful intentions.

Since I am a product of American 1980s culture, some of that seeps into my writing as well, making it different from the accepted left-wing norms of the current-day Collapsing West.

As a few examples, in most of my writing,

• Rich or successful people are not always portrayed as evil.

• A lot of men (though not all of them) are muscular, don’t take any crap, kill a lot of people, and like to have sex with women.

• A lot of women (though not all of them) are feminine, have long hair, visible shapes of their breasts through their clothing, are generally happy people, and don’t hate or berate men.

• Striving for personal, individual achievement is shown as a good thing.

• There’s plenty of (heterosexual) sex and sexual activity.

• There’s lots and lots of bloody violence… but virtually none of the pure nihilistic brutality common in much of modern-day grimdark fantasy.

• Characters are smart instead of irrational, thoughful instead of emotional. (So much of fiction/movies/TV today is characters sitting around talking about their fucking feelings. I don’t do a lot of that because I find it boring.)

Again, I don’t add these elements consciously (with rare exception); it just comes out of my writing as a man who is a product of a certain culture (Americana) and era (the 1980s).

What I Will Publicly Release and When

I’m rapidly entering into my third phase of life (the Self-Actualization Phase, as I talk about in The Unchained Man), which means I’ll have a lot more time to focus on my fantasy writing. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.

While I don’t have a 100% solid plan on this yet, here are my intentions.

• Release at least two of my short stories early in 2026, either for free or for a very small amount (like one dollar or something). I won’t care how much money this will make.

• Start re-writing the novel I’m working on now (which takes place in the same world as the short stories) and perhaps publish that in late 2026. Again, I won’t care how many copies I sell; I just want to do it.

• Release the first few issues of the Black Dragon and Pink Firefly comic book very soon and start releasing one issue every 3-4 weeks as a regular thing. It’s fantasy but also a silly comedy with characters loosely based on me and people in my life. Unlike my other writing, this will have a business purpose and will serve as a funnel for my Alpha Male 2.0 brand (since people don’t read books anymore) and will be its own ongoing brand similar to what Gary Vee is doing with VeeFriends (although much more niched and to a much different type of audience). Seven issues are 100% complete, I have issues written out to issue #12, and a story arc written out to around issue #35. I’ve been working on this for a long time.

• Start writing a second novel, perhaps set in a different world than the first.

I’m very excited about all of this. It feels weird to be this excited about a project in my life with no monetary objectives, but it feels good.

Here’s the cover of issue #8 of Black Dragon and Pink Firefly. More on this coming soon. Much more.