This could be keeping continuity between between books in a series or making a fictional world believable.
‘…partly because it was difficult to establish dividing lines between high fantasy and other subgenres, and partly because of the difficulty of accommodating portal fantasies to the scheme.’Įven so, many fantasy lovers still talk about high fantasy as a distinctive genre. In his A to Z of Fantasy Literature, Brian Stableford says that ‘high fantasy’ as a term didn’t catch on hugely: This is contrasted with books set in our own, ‘real’ world that simply have magical objects, creatures, characters or events (Brian Stableford, 2009, p. Alexander (who wrote the Chronicles of Prydain series) used the term to describe fantasy fiction set entirely in secondary or parallel worlds.
The term ‘high fantasy’ was coined by the American fantasy writer Lloyd Alexander in 1971, in an essay published in The Horn Book Magazine titled “High Fantasy and Epic Romance”.
Read on for tips on how to write high fantasy fiction that captivates readers and makes them reluctant to leave your fictional world:įirst, what is ‘high fantasy’? Defining high fantasy ‘High fantasy’ is one of the most popular. There are many fantasy subgenres ( this list suggests that there are at least 64).