Timothy Hickson provides some excellent dedicated advice to fantasy authors
Fantasy has been my favourite genre ever since I learned how to read, and apart from a rough period during college where my mentors and lecturers were doing their level best to squeeze me into a box marked ‘Serious Literary Fiction’, I’ve always known that it was what I wanted to write.
As any young aspiring creative finding no real-life resources to help them is wont to do, I eventually turned to the internet for guidance, and it was on YouTube that I came across the channel ‘Hello Future Me.’ The channel is essentially a ‘how to write fantasy’ guide, with incredibly in-depth videos on very niche topics written and hosted by Timothy Hickson.
I’ve been aware of Hickson’s channel for many years now, but it was only recently that I discovered that he has self-published three volumes dedicated to fantasy world-building. (This is a review of the first volume only). I’m always on the lookout for books to help my writing, but this is the first one I’ve come across that is purely dedicated to the fantasy genre.
Naturally, I had to give it a go.
Pro-Prologue
Hickson starts at the beginning by discussing prologues and first chapters and progresses to various important elements of fantasy from magic systems, chosen ones, final battles, and religions.
I won’t be going into detail on the advice Hickson gives—that’s what the book’s for—but I will say that he comes across as extremely knowledgeable. Hickson is constantly using examples to back up his suggestions for what generally works best when writing a fantasy novel. These examples vary from being household name stories, to perhaps less well-known works that showcase the depth of Hickson’s knowledge.
Hickson’s never overly prescriptive with his advice either, which is appreciated. Even some of the best writing books out there tend to get a little dogmatic at times (I’m looking at you, Stephen King!) but On Writing and Worldbuilding strikes a helpful tone without making you feel like less of a writer by not taking his advice.
How Often Do You Think About The Roman Empire?
Now, I love me some discussions of niche fantasy topics, but Hickson takes this to a whole new level. There are seventeen chapters in his book, and three of these are dedicated to the detailed mechanics of how an empire might operate in your fantasy world.
Hickson pulls from many real-life examples of empires throughout these chapters, examining every possible aspect of an empire’s existence—from communication and commerce to annexation and taxes—that you might find useful to implement in your fantasy story.
The level of detail is incredible, but I did find these chapters somewhat less engaging than the others, if only because I don’t require this much detail for the empire flitting around the edges of my current work-in-progress. Still, it’s good to know that I have this information at hand should I ever need to dive deeper into the mechanics of empires in a future book.
I bring attention to this prolonged section on empires only because the rest of the novel explores much more broad tropes of fantasy fiction that almost every fantasy writer will find useful, whereas the sections on empires will have a much more selective use among fantasy writers. It’s still excellent advice—it’s just extremely niche.
I found the chapters on villains and their relationships with protagonists to be some of the most engaging writing on character dynamics I've ever read. There's a lot of writing advice out there, but not as much that gets this specific. If you're struggling at all with the motivations of your antagonist, I'd highly recommend you give this a read.
Avatar: The Last Person Who Still Hasn't Seen It
My only slight problem with On Writing and Worldbuilding Volume 1 is perhaps Hickson’s slight overreliance on examples from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Yes, this is me publicly admitting I haven’t seen Avatar. There are people who just groaned aloud, I’m sure—“This guy says he likes fantasy but he hasn’t seen Avatar?!” Look, I know. For a long time I’ve been put off from the series for the most superficial of reasons: I thought the guy that kept recommending it to me was annoying.
However, I’ve vowed to overcome my nonsensical prejudice after reading this book. Hickson made the acclaimed series sound extremely enticing, and I actually found myself skimming over sections where he went into detail on the series because I want to avoid spoilers now. I also want to read Volume 2 and think that having a solid grounding in Avatar will allow me to pull as much utility out of Hickson’s work as possible.
My Friend, You Bow To No One
Perhaps my favourite thing about On Writing and Worldbuilding was the tremendous number of ideas for stories I kept coming up with as I read. The document on my Notes app where I keep my story ideas had never seen so much activity.
The book also had me adding books and shows to my TBR list and instilled in me a desire to re-read A Song of Ice and Fire again since I caught up with the series many, many, many moons ago. Hickson’s love for good fantasy stories is infectious. More than anything, I love how seriously he takes fantasy.
Sometimes a little reassurance that the thing I love the most isn’t some childish diversion, but can in fact be important, complex, art is all I need to crack open my Word document and get working.
If you're struggling at all with your writing, On Writing and Worldbuilding might be just what you need.
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