 Fantasy: March 27, 2024 Issue [#12483] |
This week: The Underappreciated Standalone Edited by: Jeff  
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"Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it."
— Lloyd Alexander
About The Editor: Greetings! My name is Jeff and I'm your guest editor for this edition of the official Fantasy Newsletter! I've been a member of Writing.com since 2003, and have edited more than 400 newsletters across the site during that time. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me via email or the handy feedback field at the bottom of this newsletter! 
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The Underappreciated Standalone
Fantasy is a genre that places a huge premium on book series. Some of the most famous and bestselling books in the genre are part of trilogies, quadrilogies, quintologies, etc. J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is a three-book trilogy with several other ancillary works. George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (a.k.a. Game of Thrones) is currently five books long. Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files and Robert Jordan's (and Brandon Sanderson's) Wheel of Time series have fifteen books apiece. Raymond E. Feist's The Riftwar Cycle has 34 books in it, and by most accounts Terry Pratchett's Discworld series holds the title for the most books published in a bestselling series, at 45.
Given the amount of work that goes into imagining entire new worlds, it's understandable that authors want to get some more mileage out of them than just a single novel. And series are quite popular with readers as well, for the same reason. If you find an author and a series you like, it's easier to keep reading the same series than it is to search for and roll the dice on something completely different. But with such a focus on series, it can be easy to overlook the standalone novels in the fantasy genre.
Some of the more impressive standalone fantasy novels of the past twenty years include:
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke. An alternative history set during the Napoleonic Wars which sees magic return to England through the two titular characters. Published in 2004 and Susanna Clarke's debut novel, it went on to win Best Novel at the Hugo Awards, the World Fantasy Awards, and the Locus Awards.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. The story follows the title character who, being born in the 1700s, makes a deal with a "dark god" which grants her immortality at the cost of no one ever being able to remember her. Published in 2020, the book was on the New York Times bestseller list for 37 consecutive weeks and nominated for the Locus Award for Best Novel.
Circe by Madeleine Miller. An adaptation of various Greek myths, the book focus on the Odyssey as told through the perspective of the witch Circe, navigating her origin story and interactions with other mythological figures. Published in 2018, it won Best Fantasy Novel in the Goodreads Choice Award.
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. This story is about a woman who is unhappy with her choices in life and is given the opportunity to experience what would have happened if she had lived her life by making different choices. In addition to being a New York Times bestseller, it was selected as a book club pick by Good Morning America.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Perhaps most famous in author circles for being initially written as a NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) effort, the story follows two proteges of talented magicians who are pitted against one another while working at a magical circus that only appears between sunset and sunrise. It was a New York Times bestseller for several weeks.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. A man returns home after forty years and starts to remember events from the past, including a supernatural entity that entered their world years ago. It was a New York Times bestseller and was nominated for a number of awards including the British National Book Award.
In the film and television industry, screenwriters are often encouraged to decide whether a story is better told as a feature-length motion picture, or as a long-running television series. The general advice is that movies are about one specific moment in time, while television series are about an ongoing story or character arc. Standalone books and book series are kind of the same; a book series like The Dresden Files is essentially a procedural like Law & Order, where each installment is a different case the characters are working. Or it might be a long-running narrative arc like The Wheel of Time or Yellowstone that follows important events over a period of time.
Standalones, on the other hand, give authors the opportunity to explore singular ideas and fully flesh them out; to tell stories and resolve arcs purely within the confines of the front and back cover of the book. Standalones can also provide audiences with an entry point to an author's writing without a huge learning curve. It can be difficult to hear people rave about a new book that's just been published, only to realize that you need to read six other books to catch up first, because it's part of a long-running series.
In a genre so enamored with long-running and lengthy series, don't pass up the opportunity to write a really killer standalone fantasy novel if you have a unique idea that's worth exploring. You never know when a one-off story could be the thing that appeals to a new reader, and some ideas are just better told all at once.
Until next time,
Jeff
If you're interested in checking out my work:
"New & Noteworthy Things" | "Blogocentric Formulations"
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EXCERPT: By the time she was five years old, Vanis had heard the same joke so many times she was sick of it: had her mother Terese not been the guest of honor at the event, not even she would have attended Vanis’s birth.
It was probably true, though. Terese was a very busy woman as the elected willow-touched Queen of Foresse. She had no time for a husband, and even less for motherhood.
EXCERPT: Long before the Spanish Galleons arrived in America, there was an old wizard among the native peoples. He was heroic and humble and had many flaws, but without seeking payment he stood for a cause. He traveled far and wide dispensing magic to heal people and keep them safe. He was originally a time traveler from ten thousand centuries in the future, traveling back in time for anthropological reasons. A war in the future prevented him from returning, because his colleagues never came back for him. He found himself trapped in the past, with technology that could be mistaken for magic. His only option was to pass himself off as some kind of a shaman or wizard, and use his technology to help others.
EXCERPT: When the young boy found the magic wand, he used it to conjure up the video game he had always wanted. When he couldn’t beat the video game right away, he conjured the strategy guide and beat the game with the guide at hand.
Upon finishing the game, he felt unfulfilled as young boys occasionally do. Using the wand again, he conjured another more obscure and difficult video game and another strategy guide, but was once again left feeling empty for the experience.
EXCERPT: Cara gestured to the fallen warrior she had dragged to their mounds in the highlands. "My brother died defending our land from invaders," she said. "He is the only family I have left in this world. I've lost my mother, father and all my other kin to this bloody war. There is no one left to help me tend our farm, if I am left alone, I will die."
EXCERPT: The air hung heavy, a tapestry woven with the sweet decay of paper, the musty tang of dust, and the utterance of forgotten tales. In the labyrinthine library, skeletal giants, their spines groan-laden with leather-bound tomes, loomed from towering shelves. Among them, folded deeper into his hunched posture, was Jasper. Age had bent his once-proud spine, curving it into a question mark that mirrored the uncertainty gnawing at him. Jasper’s once-bright eyes dimmed by time, searched the endless rows of books. He was a man swallowed by the very immensity of his domain, a king of ancient knowledge whose reign had begun to crumble.
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