Urban Fantasy
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URBAN FANTASY More bang for your fang, more vamp for your tramp By Pat Hauldren Fantasy, and especially Urban Fantasy, are hot genres on today’s market. In this class, we’ll define Urban Fantasy, explore the markets available and how each market expects different aspects of the same genre. We’ll also study the current publications in the genre, including adult, YA, and children’s subgenres, and compare our own manuscripts to these. At the end of this workshop, you will understand the Urban Fantasy genre and be on your way to writing an urban fantasy with flare. Throughout the class, we’ll work on improving our manuscripts to meet market needs. The audience for this workshop will be writers of Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, Science Fiction, Fantasy, etc. The only pre-requisite for this class is an interest in Urban Fantasy as a genre. See more of Pat Hauldren’s workshops at www.pathauldren.net Email: mailto:[email protected] Page 2 of 35 Contents Introductions, Lesson 1, & Assignment 1...................................................................................................... 4 1.1 Introductions ....................................................................................................................................... 4 1.2 Lesson 1 ............................................................................................................................................... 5 1.3 Assignment 1 ....................................................................................................................................... 6 EXTRA CREDIT 1: A little history of the Fantasy genre .................................................................................. 7 LESSON 2 ASSIGNMENT 2 ........................................................................................................................... 10 LESSON 3 : UF CHARACTERS ....................................................................................................................... 12 CHARACTERS ........................................................................................................................................... 12 THE PROTAGONIST .................................................................................................................................. 14 ASSIGNMENT #3.1 ................................................................................................................................... 14 EXTRA CREDIT 3.1: ...................................................................................................................................... 15 Characters By Elizabeth Bowen .......................................................................................................... 15 EXTRA CREDIT 3.2 GETTING CREATIVE: Creature Shop 101 ....................................................................... 18 Creature Shop 101 .................................................................................................................................. 18 EXTRA CREDIT 3.2 EXAMPLE ....................................................................................................................... 19 Example for UF intro characters: antag & protag ................................................................................... 19 TO KILL A WARLOCK ............................................................................................................................ 19 LESSON 4: WORLDBUILDING ....................................................................................................................... 20 4.1 SETTING ............................................................................................................................................. 20 ASSIGNMENT 4.1 ..................................................................................................................................... 20 EXTRA CREDIT: GEOGRAPHICAL ARCHETYPES ............................................................................................ 21 1. The City ....................................................................................................................................... 21 QUESTIONS TO PONDER: .................................................................................................................... 25 LESSON 4.2 WORLDBUILDING: MAGIC, MIGHT, & MAHEM ....................................................................... 26 What is magic ...................................................................................................................................... 26 How do we make magic believable? ................................................................................................... 27 ASSIGNMENT 4.2 MAGIC & THE SUPERNATURAL .................................................................................. 27 LESSON 4.3 WORLDBUILDING: MYTHOLOGY & RELIGION ......................................................................... 28 Urban Fantasy: More bang for your fang© by Pat Hauldren Page 3 of 35 ASSIGNMENT 4.3.1.................................................................................................................................. 28 EXTRA CREDIT & ASSIGNMENT 4.3.2: Joseph Campbell ......................................................................... 29 ASSIGNMENT 4.3.2.................................................................................................................................. 29 ASSIGNMENT 4.3.3.................................................................................................................................. 30 ASSIGNMENT 4.3.4.................................................................................................................................. 30 ASSIGNMENT 4.3.5.................................................................................................................................. 31 LESSON 5: MARKETING AN URBAN FANTASY ............................................................................................. 32 PUBLISHER EXAMPLES ............................................................................................................................ 32 ORBIT BOOKS: ..................................................................................................................................... 32 ACE/ROC BOOKS ................................................................................................................................. 32 Baen Books ......................................................................................................................................... 33 Tor ....................................................................................................................................................... 33 PUBLISHERS’ CHART ................................................................................................................................ 34 LESSON 5: KEEP WRITING! .......................................................................................................................... 35 Urban Fantasy: More bang for your fang© by Pat Hauldren Page 4 of 35 URBAN FANTASY: More bang for your fang, more vamp for your tramp© Introductions, Lesson 1, & Assignment 1 1.1 Introductions Hello, and welcome to the Urban Fantasy workshop! I’m so glad you are all here. I’ll start off with introductions. I’m Pat Hauldren, (some of you may know me as Alley, either name works fine), and I write speculative fiction novels and short stories. I’ve published poetry, short stories, Japanese Noh Drama, and I have several gigs where I write about different topics from hockey, women’s sports, the SyFy Channel, as well as on writing and speculative fiction. Currently, I have five agents who’ve asked me for full manuscript submissions even knowing that I haven’t finished my current novel yet. One agent asked me to change a previous novel into an steampunk. Now, all I need is more time in the day! As for workshops, I’ve been on the board of several of my local workshops, including my local RWA chapter, and founded a few workshops. I also teach writing both online and live. I’m very excited about November later this year because I’ll be teaching three different Saturday writing workshops in The Netherlands. You might ask, why are you teaching THIS particular workshop? Because, the more I write in the speculative fiction genre, the more my work leans toward Urban Fantasy (UF) and so I had to do some research in this area and figure out what makes a good UF? What elements are common? What does it share with the Fantasy genre? And where does it differ? Who is taking UF? And how do they define UF? (Different publishers/editors have different requirements.) And we’ll go over all of these in this class. And so I’ve been studying Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Mythology/Religion (just finished a class on it last spring), and even delving (more) into Joseph Campbell and his series on mythology. In this class, we’ll take your manuscript or story and analyze the UF elements and see how we can punch it up (ergo the “more vamp for your tramp, more bang for your fang” subtitle ). There are so many, Urban Fantasy: More bang for your fang© by Pat Hauldren Page 5 of 35 many, many UFs out there now. It’s so popular. Our mss must outshine the millions of other submissions out there. In this class, there’s one caveat (well, I’m sure I’ll think of more later ). I’m not the know-it-all on UF, F, or anything else. Please don’t be shy in offering information,