How to Write a Best Selling Fantasy Novel

[Oddwen]

I liked numbers 58 & 71.


A couple other things I found wanting in the lists:

The young boy character has no living mother. He may, however, have a grandmother or spinster aunt who is skilled in arcane arts.

Matters of the Birds & Bees will be treated delicately or passed off altogether in the first book, but by the third, anything goes.

A plague must wipe out much of the royal/badguy family either at the time of the story, or in the near past.

The main character must discover a skill in magic early on. The Wise but Useless Guide must always be impressed by the skill level shown from the first, and compare him to famous magicians at the peak of their own skill.

Each person's magic must have their own color. (I hate this!) They may or may have not have eyes or a weapon to match.


And there are a few things in the Evil Overlord List that might be applicable here as well.