What do you think?
Rate this book
The Original Fantasy - A Practical Guide to Writing Genre
“Emily creates a warm, funny, personable read in this guide book version of our mentorship. I love it. Even if I do come off as a stern and slightly frightening Mage…”
~ Isobelle Carmody
So you’ve finished your genre novel and it is Frankenstein’s monster.
Don’t Panic!
Whether you write fantasy, science-fiction, crime, thriller, YA or chick-lit, this humorous and helpful guide will hone your skills and lead you through the quagmire of writing original fiction.
Emily Craven details the lessons she learnt during her twelve-month mentorship with award-winning author Isobelle Carmody. Emily has included dozens of examples of her original passages, along with Isobelle’s insightful comments.
An award-winning publisher and author in her own right, Emily simplifies and demystifies the complexities of writing and editing your novel.
~ Isobelle Carmody
So you’ve finished your genre novel and it is Frankenstein’s monster.
Don’t Panic!
Whether you write fantasy, science-fiction, crime, thriller, YA or chick-lit, this humorous and helpful guide will hone your skills and lead you through the quagmire of writing original fiction.
Emily Craven details the lessons she learnt during her twelve-month mentorship with award-winning author Isobelle Carmody. Emily has included dozens of examples of her original passages, along with Isobelle’s insightful comments.
An award-winning publisher and author in her own right, Emily simplifies and demystifies the complexities of writing and editing your novel.
246 pages, Paperback
Published May 24, 2017
9 people want to read
About the author
Emily Craven
12 books86 followersChocolate. Karaoke. Star Trek. Travel. Books. Puppies. Shaking what your Mama gave you. All of these are some of my favourite things. But when I meet someone, I want to know who they are, not what they like. I want to know what’s their story? Why do they get up every morning?
For me, what rocks my world is showing daring creatives how to draw the curious down the rabbit hole with stories, how to use their tales to spark connection, understanding, and create belonging with a wonderland of their making.
Stories entered my DNA as a kid. They were what saved me from lonely lunch times with no friends when my family moved states and I was shoved into a new school mid-year, mid-puberty, mid-awkward-phase. They allowed me to escape to another world of adventure, of struggle (that wasn’t mine), of empathy, perspective, and heroes who strived against the bullies, and again and again, picked themselves. Stories showed me how to adapt, to care, to trust myself. They understood me on a level I barely understood myself. I was such a voracious reader I started writing my own books when I was 12 because my favourite authors just couldn’t keep up.
Stories were how I survived boredom. Boredom was how I ended up a Star Trek nerd. Every afternoon when I got home from school, my mother commandeered the TV to fuel her Star Trek addiction. The choice was be bored or be obsessed. You could say I was brain-washed a Trekkie and I have no regrets!
That’s the only reason I can think of for how I ended up choosing to study Astrophysics. Two years in and something happened that I never in a million years expected. I hated it. I had no idea what else I would even do if I quit. I was good at it, sure, but every six months I would have a mini-break-down in my bedroom, the words of high-school teachers and parents going around and round my head – ‘you’re too smart for art.’ If present me could time travel, I’d go back and slap them all up-side the head, with a loud, ‘hell no’ for good measure.
How many times have you been told you ‘should’? You should do this, you should do that, even though you know that box doesn’t fit you?
What I didn’t realise at the time was the reason I was so drawn to Star Trek wasn’t the science, it was the adventure. A soap opera in space; people working together solving problems, falling in love, and shooting phasers! This was the root of my unhappiness; I was suppressing the biggest part of myself. I didn’t want knowledge for the sake of knowledge, I want to create things that connected people. And the way that excited me, that lit a fire in my belly to create that connection, was by creating and sharing stories. Fictional preferably, with a hint of magic, a dash of quirky, and a sneaky side of truth.
I wish I could tell you that when I set my sights on career as storyteller, I shook off that ‘should’ energy. I did not. While I devoured dozens of courses on writing, publishing, marketing, editing and eBooks, and learnt one of the most important lessons of my life – that what you create alone will never be as good as what you’ll create together with the feedback of professionals who aren’t you and see your blind spots – I was still doing all the things you should. You should send your novels to traditional publishers, you should write short stories to get a name for yourself, you should have a ‘very’ professional website where you’re ‘very serious’ and therefore ‘competent’, as confirmed by your head shot which makes you look like you have sat on a cactus.
I waited a really long time for someone to pick me. And I was lonely, so very very lonely. When a boy who already had a 3-book deal with a major publisher got the only writing grant available in the state to writers under 30, something finally snapped for me. I was sick of waiting; it was time to choose myself. I couldn’t be rejected if I was the one creating the thing, right?
It was when I took the conscious decision to step off the beaten path that t
For me, what rocks my world is showing daring creatives how to draw the curious down the rabbit hole with stories, how to use their tales to spark connection, understanding, and create belonging with a wonderland of their making.
Stories entered my DNA as a kid. They were what saved me from lonely lunch times with no friends when my family moved states and I was shoved into a new school mid-year, mid-puberty, mid-awkward-phase. They allowed me to escape to another world of adventure, of struggle (that wasn’t mine), of empathy, perspective, and heroes who strived against the bullies, and again and again, picked themselves. Stories showed me how to adapt, to care, to trust myself. They understood me on a level I barely understood myself. I was such a voracious reader I started writing my own books when I was 12 because my favourite authors just couldn’t keep up.
Stories were how I survived boredom. Boredom was how I ended up a Star Trek nerd. Every afternoon when I got home from school, my mother commandeered the TV to fuel her Star Trek addiction. The choice was be bored or be obsessed. You could say I was brain-washed a Trekkie and I have no regrets!
That’s the only reason I can think of for how I ended up choosing to study Astrophysics. Two years in and something happened that I never in a million years expected. I hated it. I had no idea what else I would even do if I quit. I was good at it, sure, but every six months I would have a mini-break-down in my bedroom, the words of high-school teachers and parents going around and round my head – ‘you’re too smart for art.’ If present me could time travel, I’d go back and slap them all up-side the head, with a loud, ‘hell no’ for good measure.
How many times have you been told you ‘should’? You should do this, you should do that, even though you know that box doesn’t fit you?
What I didn’t realise at the time was the reason I was so drawn to Star Trek wasn’t the science, it was the adventure. A soap opera in space; people working together solving problems, falling in love, and shooting phasers! This was the root of my unhappiness; I was suppressing the biggest part of myself. I didn’t want knowledge for the sake of knowledge, I want to create things that connected people. And the way that excited me, that lit a fire in my belly to create that connection, was by creating and sharing stories. Fictional preferably, with a hint of magic, a dash of quirky, and a sneaky side of truth.
I wish I could tell you that when I set my sights on career as storyteller, I shook off that ‘should’ energy. I did not. While I devoured dozens of courses on writing, publishing, marketing, editing and eBooks, and learnt one of the most important lessons of my life – that what you create alone will never be as good as what you’ll create together with the feedback of professionals who aren’t you and see your blind spots – I was still doing all the things you should. You should send your novels to traditional publishers, you should write short stories to get a name for yourself, you should have a ‘very’ professional website where you’re ‘very serious’ and therefore ‘competent’, as confirmed by your head shot which makes you look like you have sat on a cactus.
I waited a really long time for someone to pick me. And I was lonely, so very very lonely. When a boy who already had a 3-book deal with a major publisher got the only writing grant available in the state to writers under 30, something finally snapped for me. I was sick of waiting; it was time to choose myself. I couldn’t be rejected if I was the one creating the thing, right?
It was when I took the conscious decision to step off the beaten path that t
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 2, 2017
Emily Craven is a passionate advocate of writing and self-publishing - and of learning the craft of a writer.
This book is a close look at the process she went through in writing a fantasy novel under the mentorship of Isobelle Carmody, and it's both insightful and surprisingly personal.
There are a lot of vague rules discussed in the world of writing - how you should show not tell, how you shouldn't overwrite, how you should pay attention to what characters can perceive rather than have them describe things they can't see. This takes that process and applies it to Emily's Priori novel, and seeing how those steps are applied is a great way for writers who might struggle with the general concepts to understand them in practice.
It is of course especially useful for those wanting to write fantasy, discussing such issues as the importance of worldbuilding and how to reveal that, and how to approach issues of naming characters and locations.
It is perhaps at times a little too specific in relation to Craven's own work - but then it's a great companion volume to a more general work. Don't think of this as the first book you pick up about writing so much as the one you pick up afterwards to try to put flesh on the bones of the concepts whirling around your head.
You can also follow the work on the Priori Podcast site, which turned the novel into an audio performance with a cast of actors, which might be a handy site to visit as you read the book and see how the final work turned out after all that polishing.
This book is a close look at the process she went through in writing a fantasy novel under the mentorship of Isobelle Carmody, and it's both insightful and surprisingly personal.
There are a lot of vague rules discussed in the world of writing - how you should show not tell, how you shouldn't overwrite, how you should pay attention to what characters can perceive rather than have them describe things they can't see. This takes that process and applies it to Emily's Priori novel, and seeing how those steps are applied is a great way for writers who might struggle with the general concepts to understand them in practice.
It is of course especially useful for those wanting to write fantasy, discussing such issues as the importance of worldbuilding and how to reveal that, and how to approach issues of naming characters and locations.
It is perhaps at times a little too specific in relation to Craven's own work - but then it's a great companion volume to a more general work. Don't think of this as the first book you pick up about writing so much as the one you pick up afterwards to try to put flesh on the bones of the concepts whirling around your head.
You can also follow the work on the Priori Podcast site, which turned the novel into an audio performance with a cast of actors, which might be a handy site to visit as you read the book and see how the final work turned out after all that polishing.
May 26, 2017
"The Original Fantasy" is designed to assist any writer who has drafted enough of a novel to realize that words don’t flow onto the page from the author’s mind as a fully-fledged story. Emily shares the advice she derived through a mentorship with Isobelle Carmody, author of the Obernewtyn series and more. "The Original Fantasy" is a guide for writing, editing, re-editing and editing again. There is a focus on writing fantasy, but most of the tips are valid for any genre.
The material is structured in three layers: structure, deepening the story and line. The first section tackles the thorny issues of backstory, character, voice, description, setting, flash backs, beta readers and endings. To deepen the story, light is cast on how to depict evil, how to name things and world building. Line material includes an array of tools to focus on details from opening words to the challenge of show don’t tell.
Emily’s accessible style includes quotes from Isobelle, practical exercises, and before and after shots of extracts from her own novel, Priori. I found it a usual reference for my writing and highly recommend it for aspiring and emerging authors.
The material is structured in three layers: structure, deepening the story and line. The first section tackles the thorny issues of backstory, character, voice, description, setting, flash backs, beta readers and endings. To deepen the story, light is cast on how to depict evil, how to name things and world building. Line material includes an array of tools to focus on details from opening words to the challenge of show don’t tell.
Emily’s accessible style includes quotes from Isobelle, practical exercises, and before and after shots of extracts from her own novel, Priori. I found it a usual reference for my writing and highly recommend it for aspiring and emerging authors.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews