Guest Post: “How I Knew I Was Writing Epic Fantasy When I Thought I Was Writing Pastoral” by Samantha Holloway

Today, we have a guest post from the lovely Samantha Holloway. A few days ago I interviewed Samantha, so if you haven’t already read the interview then I highly recommend reading it here.

How I knew I was writing Epic Fantasy when I thought I was writing Pastoral

When I first started writing Married to the Wind, it was one book–not the three it is now–and all I had was the title, and an image of a girl standing on a hill, the sky heavy and grey with clouds before her, and the shape of a boy falling from the sky. That was literally it. I wrote what became the first maybe three chapters with only that image to build on, and uncovered the rest as it went. I thought I was writing a Pastoral–a story about a farm girl and her farm life and some magic and mysticism.

But there were gods at play, even early on, and long-lost elemental powers coming back to the land, and by the time I made it to the first break, which became the end of the first book, it became obvious that the book wanted to be a bigger story–that it already was–and that the four hundred pages I was aiming for was not going to be enough to tell this story, because I was already at over 200, and I hadn’t even gotten to the stuff I still knew was coming! The second part started in a whole new location with enough new characters to double the cast, and I had to give up the idea of a home-based Pastoral Fantasy.

I was informed by a crit partner that what I had was Epic Fantasy.

At the time, I was confused. I hadn’t yet done much research into Epic Fantasy, but I thought of it as either Conan the Barbarian, or Lord of the Rings, and both of those, while wonderful in their own ways, were not like what I was writing. I was writing a story of a girl who found out she had a twin who was actually part of herself. A girl who leaves her homeland to find the truth, not to deliver some artifact to some other thing. Who takes on power that she didn’t ask for because the world needs it. Who journeys across the world, learning the truth, and then brings it home and rallies an army to face the ultimate evil that has taken over her homeland, and free an imprisoned god…”Oh,” I thought. “I am writing Epic Fantasy.”

Because here’s the thing. While most EF has been about dudes with swords out on a quest, what it’s really about is ordinary people who do extraordinary things, about human actions that have cosmic consequences, about ancient powers and what handling them and dealing with them does to people and to the world. Epic Fantasy is about scope and scale. Not one point of view character, but lots–I have nine. Not one village, or even one kingdom, but several. Not a small walk, but a grand journey. Not just politics, but religion and meaning and fate and free will. But I wasn’t interested in a story where people solved all their problems with swords and violence, and despite the fact that there’s a huge war as the backdrop of my story, I didn’t want it to be the purpose or the focus of it.

So I wrote a new kind of Epic. One where the quest is for knowledge and the challenge is application of that knowledge. Where the final battle comes down to something other than hitting the baddie with a sword. One where it’s a girl who has the power and the dedication to save the world, and it doesn’t come down to her girl-ness, but to the strength of her character–she doesn’t birth someone to save the world, doesn’t marry someone who does, but does it herself because she’s a good person and she’s the one who can.

My first draft was somewhere around 825 pages long. The final draft was closer to 900, and has since been split into three books. Note to self: If I’m ever writing a short novel again and it comes out that much longer than I intended, I’m actually writing a trilogy by accident. But I wouldn’t have done this any other way. This book is near and dear to my heart. It grew from such a small seed–a boy falling from a cloudy sky–and came out changing it’s own whole world.

I hope it can be someone’s favorite book, because right now, it’s mine!

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About Samantha:

Samantha Holloway is unfit for anything but writing expansive fantasy and the occasional science fiction story, so she does it full time. She’s the author of the upcoming epic fantasy novel Married to the Wind, and has published dozens of book reviews, TV reviews and a few short stories. In between writing and thinking about writing, she lives in North Carolina with an aptly-named cat called Ninja, wears too much jewelry, runs a home made nail polish company for a lark, and subsists mostly on tea.

Where to find Samantha: 

On Twitter
On Instagram
On her website
On Facebook

And her books:

On Amazon