Utilize the ugly normal to revitalize your fantasy narrative.

Science fiction and fantasy need to be thrilling, adventurous, and invigorating. Too often, in our efforts to write super-exciting genre fiction, we elevate our characters and the action onto stilts of heroic perfection.

Though laudable, these efforts can backfire. Readers need a bridge, a measure of safe relatability to help them cross over and fully inhabit the worlds that we write.

Idealized fiction:

Hornby drew, in one swift motion, his shining broadsword, and beat away the advancing hordes of screaming elves.

“You will never take our city!” Hornby bellowed. He hacked away limbs, and lopped off the heads of his seemingly-endless opponents.

“Keep them back while I conjure the great death!” Moriven cried. The wizard’s two slave girls propped him up on a high chair of bamboo, and Moriven’s beard spun like ice down his knees as he conjured a spinning…