The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy: The Opus Magnus

The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy #2

by Tee Morris (Editor), Valerie Griswold-Ford (Editor), Tony Ruggiero

Tee Morris and Valerie Griswold team up as editors for the title that picks up where "Alchemy With Words" leaves off. The Opus Magus takes on the advanced topics of writing, such as incorporating horror, mystery, herbalism and advanced worldbuilding.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction

294 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2004

About the author

Tee Morris began his writing career with his 2002 historical epic fantasy, MOREVI The Chronicles of Rafe & Askana. In 2005 Tee took MOREVI into the then-unknown podosphere, making his novel the first book podcast in its entirety. That experience led to the founding of Podiobooks.com and collaborating with Evo Terra and Chuck Tomasi on Podcasting for Dummies and its follow-up, Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies. He won acclaim and accolades for his cross-genre fantasy-detective Billibub Baddings Mysteries, the podcast of The Case of the Singing Sword winning him the 2008 Parsec Award for Best Audio Drama. Along with those titles, Tee has written articles and short stories for BenBella Books’s Farscape Forever: Sex, Drugs, and Killer Muppets, the podcast anthology VOICES: New Media Fiction, BenBella Books’ So Say We All: Collected Thoughts and Opinions of Battlestar Galactica, and Dragon Moon Press’ Podthology: The Pod Complex.

In 2011, Tee returned to his first love—fiction—with the steampunk romp Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel, co-authored with Philippa Ballantine. This debut novel from Harper Voyager won the 2011 Airship Award for Best Steampunk Literature. Now the series includes The Janus Affair (Harper Voyager), Dawn's Early Light (Ace Books), and the Ministry Protocol anthology (Imagine That! Studios). Find out more at ministryofpeculiaroccurrences.com.

When he is not writing, Tee enjoys life in Virginia alongside Philippa Ballantine, his daughter, and three cats.

Reviews

[Kim Headlee]

I am one of the contributors, so of course I'm going to rate it 5 stars! :)

Seriously, whether you are new to writing Fantasy or an old hand at it, you will find something here to help you hone your work. Perhaps many somethings. Topics include:
-- Myth Busting
-- Writing Short Stories & Novellas
-- Worldbuilding in Asian Cultures
-- Writing Fantasy for Younger Readers
-- Incorporating Mystery, Horror, or Romance in Fantasy
-- Government & Social Structures for Fantasy Realms
-- Developing Alternative Magic Systems
-- Herbalism in Fantasy
-- Writing for RPG and Media Tie-Ins
-- Self-Editing
-- Writing about the Arthurian Legends, my contribution to this tome.

[Nic]

This book has fewer basics than the first one, but is still fun to read and takes a deeper look at certain things you might or might not want to incorporate into your fantasy writing, like herbalism and Arthurian legend. There's also some advice on mixing fantasy with mystery, romance, or horror.

[Brenda Jenkins Kleager]

Way cool. This book might even get me to the point of being published!

[Michelle Roberts]

Quite a few chapters that kind of rehashed stuff from the last book or were so basic as to be useless. Also: soooo many typos!

[Brie]

Very helpful.