Things I have learned from two chapters of Bunch:
1. Do not use run-on sentences, they are not, and will never be, your friend. Fragments, only sparingly when effective.
“Somewhere in the crags just above the village, and Hal thought he knew just where from his solitary, but not lonely, hill explorations, the beast had its nest. The nest where dragons had hatched their young for over a century.”
2. Do not overly smeerp. Worldbuilding is your friend, and if you can’t be bothered to think about how your society works, then you should not be writing fantasy.
“Naturally, we told them to go away or we’d call the warder…Tomorrow, before dawn, I’ll ride for the city and hire the best advocate I can…That’ll put a bit of a stave in their wheel.”
Suppose he had written:
“Naturally, we told them to go away or we’d call the police...Tomorrow, before dawn, I’ll drive into the city and hire the best lawyer I can…That’ll put a bit of a wrench in their works.”
Creating a medieval fantasyland is more than just replacing any modern references with period-sounding alternatives (though a toothbrush is still a toothbrush*). Apparently, even in this world where the poor are really oppressed, there is still a sort of justice system that even a poor restaurant owner tavern keeper can call on. Which never comes up again (presumably).
3. Your main character is not an author avatar. Go play a video game for that. Your main character has his (or her) own personality and ambitions. Don’t have them wander around aimlessly until they find plot.
“He’d been offered other steady work in the two years since he’d left the stony mining village, but had never accepted, not sure of the reason.”
The reason? The author needs you to not have any attachments so you can drop everything and chase the plot, whenever it should appear. He also needs you to keep moving so that you eventually find the plot. If you’re going to do that to your character, at least give them a real reason to be a rootless wanderer. It also doubles as character-building.
4. I don’t care how beer is made. The point of the chapter is that Hal gets drunk and tries to ride a dragon. We don’t need digressions into beer-making at the hops-picking harvest festival thingy that is never going to be mentioned again. There’s worldbuilding, and then there’s relevancy.
*A note about toothbrushes in fantasyland: They don’t often exist. Occasionally I have run across a mention of scrubbing teeth with baking soda (once, in 10,000 page series), or “tooth-sticks,” whatever those might be. They do seem rather modern to be in a pseudo-medieval world. However, according to Wikipedia, methods of dental cleaning have been around since 3000 B.C. Some ancient cultures chewed twigs from certain trees, and around the 14th century A.D. toothbrushes with animal-hair bristles were in use in parts of Asia. However, it is most likely that only those of wealth and status would have the luxury for that. Toothbrushes were not mass-produced in Europe until the late 18th century, but the word itself dates from 1690. Interestingly, tooth-brushing did not catch on in the U.S. until after WWII, when soldiers were required to brush their teeth every day.
In other words, if you want your characters to brush their teeth in fantasyland, you can damn well have them brush their teeth. It’s your world. The humble toothbrush does a good job of illustarting how difficult it is to make a convincing fantasyland; you have to consider every aspect of daily life, up to and including brushing one’s teeth.
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