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fantasy always centers around the conflict between good and evil, no character should be all-good or all-evil. A scruffy street-rat thief can be very endearing and funny when working for the good guys, and no character creates more suspense than the double agent, whose allegiance remains questionable for most of the story (can I get a "Snape, Snape!"). Your hero should have negative character traits to vanquish internally, and your villain should have reasons for being so darn bad - at the very least, her own rationale for her actions.

The bottom line: you should be able to empathize with every single character you create. If they seem real to you, even when you criticize them, they'll seem real to your reader, too.

4) THE FAMILIAR VS. THE UNFAMILIAR

The themes of your story should be familiar. Center it around good and evil, love and hate, honesty, integrity, greed, and deep desires. Let consideration of the Seven Deadly Sins (and their virtuous counterparts) be your guide. The characters should be able to relate to or embody these themes as well. You have the option to spice up the relevance of your story by including more modern issues, like racism, feminism, and politics. Terry Pratchett is a fantasy writer who does a lot of this, often with hilarious results.

The settings of your story, however, should go off in the opposite direction. Make the physical "stuff" of your world as weird as possible. Strange weapons, crazy architecture, interesting land masses, and funky gadgets can all be used to bring the themes to bear. Imagine that you're setting up a symbolic dialog between familiar themes and weird things, in an attempt to make the familiar themes new again. Have these two parts of the story interact with one another constructively, disguising the themes within the material. For example, you could discuss racism by showing a human disdain for elves, or create a king who has an awful lot of G. W. Bush's characteristics.

5) THE ISSUE OF MAGIC

Unless you're writing a techno-fantasy story, in which special powers come from technology (it's like sci-fi, but more classic in theme; it's what makes Star Wars a fantasy story rather than science fiction), magic will be integral.

Your characters can use spells in a quantifiable way, gaining abilities like in so many video games, or magic can be something more mysterious, like the Force, or hey, something in between. With magic, the possibilities are endless, and this is where your creativity can shine the most brightly.

Beware:

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