I just saw the $2.99 Kindle deal for The Way of Kings and someone mentioned “it had a slow start.”
I don’t read a lot of fantasy, but I’m trying to get more into it. It seems to me (and I could be wrong) that every seemingly uber-popular Fantasy series out there has “a slow start”. (LotR, Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time, the Stormlight Archives, etc.)
But who cares if I’m right or wrong.
Are there any fantasy books or series out there that ‘start REALLY FAST’ and just don’t slow down?
Writing a fantasy book that is fast in the way you say is not difficult—it’s writing a fast-starting epic fantasy that is difficult. A good epic is often like a good piece of electronica music&mdsahit’s the slow build, the steady adding of complexity and worldbuilding that I find exciting about the genre.
That’s not the only way to do it, I’m certain, but it is the route I took. The Way of Kings does indeed start slow. The slowness isn’t caused by what I think you may be assuming, however. It’s caused by multiple viewpoints arranged in a puzzle for which the final picture is not yet clearly obvious. There are plenty of action scenes in the first ten chapters of KINGS. There is a lot of motion and conflict. However, we don’t get a viewpoint from the main character until chapter three, and don’t come back to him until chapter five. This gives a real sense of “What is this book even about?” which, mixed with some very steep worldbuilding, slows the book down.
Contrast this to a traditionally fast book, like a thriller or mystery. You are presented with one character, and the conflict for that character is often clear in the first chapter. You know what the plot is going to be early on. There are some fantastic books written this way (Jim Butcher has been mentioned, and I think his Codex Alera books are a great example of someone doing a hybrid epic fantasy and thriller. They are some of the fastest epics I’ve read. But even they don’t “Start really fast” like you say. I think you’ll be hard pressed to find an epic that does. The examples will mostly be heroic or urban.)
I find that the slow build allows for far more explosive endings as all of the pieces come together. It is something I avoided doing to the extent that KINGS does it, however, until I already had a reputation as a writer.
I feel like starting slow and creating buildup is sort of the “classic” way to write fantasy, as that’s the way Tolkien wrote. Could that be another reason so many fantasies are written this way? Are writers are saying, “This was good enough for Tolkien and it worked and people liked it, so I’m going to emulate his method.”?
Edit: I should add that I usually like slow build-up and wasn’t really critiquing them, but rather just wondering about them.
Tolkien certainly casts a long shadow. It’s hard to separate anything we do in epic fantasy from his influences. Certainly, I’d say this is part of it. p
In the end, most writers create things like they loved to read. Hopefully, we’re adding to the tradition, rather than just replicating what has gone before.
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