Kane

Great, now it's turned into a philosophical discussion about why Gandalf didn't use his full power. I'll tell you why. Had Gandalf used his full power then the quest of Frodo and Sam would be unnecessary, as would the efforts of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. Gandalf was used as a tool for exposition (letting us know things about the ring and sauron and such), and he was also used to move the narration along at certain key points, helping the heros beat insurmountable odds, but then never being around when they needed to work something out for themselves.

Supreme Radness

Exactly. Tolkien always made sure to explain anything that seems rather irrational or any detail whatsoever, which is why he created his world as a whole without forgetting anything. Despite that he never explained Gandalf's reluctance to use power in either The Lord of the Rings or in The Hobbit. However, the explanation I used an analogy to describe is the one contained in the Simillarion, the sort of plot key for his saga. I believe the information of Gandalf's nature is also contained in the indexes at the end of The Return of the King. His restrictions are necessary for the story, we all know it. Let's continue talking about plot restrictions in fantasy, and the amount of power, fighting, and epicness that is appropriate in the story, it has been a good subject so far.

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Kane

I just think that plot restrictions in fantasy are irrelevant. Fantasy can be about anything and everything. One important thing to note, however, is plot doesn't really drive a story as much as characters do. Start with a character in a situation, let the character's actions define the plot. The plot ends up becoing the obstacles that the character must overcome to resolve the conflict, or maybe he doesn't resolve the conflict. Perhaps the character dies and someone else picks up the struggle, or the conflict remains unsolved. There are no limitations in writing. It's fiction.

Supreme Radness

Well, I agree that you never want to restrict yourself, but I am saying that you are restricted because you need the plot to be good, which is what everyone wants. Yes, the characters are the plot, but for legibility and time's sake I don't bother to write that every time I mention plot. The conflicts and problems making up the plot are not conflicts and problems if the characters don't consider them to be, so the characters mold what happens in the plot. The characters cause these things, creating events and the overall tapestry of the plot. You are limited by making sure the characters, problems, and overall plot are believeable and appealing to the reader. That isn't a rule, but I don't know many that don't follow that and have any in interest showing their work to others. In this case I am still referring to the magical bam blast boom kind of fantasy that Ilkyak likes in that it is necessary to insure that the reader still believes and follows what is happening.

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de_budding

Make sure it all makes sense don't go conflicting yourself. The wonderfull thing about fantasy is that you can whack it in another world/universe/multi-verse/time/dimension and write down everything and anything you can think off. if you write alot teh story telling and charecter development will all fall into place and it's easy enoug hto tell when you babbling on neadlessly and when your following the plot. the only problem with fantesy is that you'll have explain everything you can't take it for granted that teh audience will know what a elfen-water-toaist is, where he/she/it comes from and why it has a staff wit ha glass sphere on teh end intead of a penis. bearing that in mind you can't spend teh whole book explaining stuff, so try to use parralels like instead of wahsing machines a washing tree or somthing that has charataristics that resemble a wahsing machine and a soon as teh reader makes teh connection they will figuer it out for themselves.
people will tell you to read alot of fantesy novels to get an idea of how it works but the fun thing about writing fantesy is it doesn't have to be based on anything, keep it origonal and don't be pissed of if you start writing and then later that evening sit down and read a terry pratchett book and realise he has the same this tha tand teh other. just except it and try and make yours even more origonal and well thought out.
the most satisifying thing to fantesy readers is when they can make connections to stuff in there world and when the ycan work out a system of magic or somthing, like work out an order of nouns, verbs or whatever that make a spell, then whenever one is cast highlight it and by the end you'll have peopel predicting what the incantation for a spell will be, the yare satisfied the yfiguered it out, and you have a highly addictive cardgame coming into merchandising soon.
dan x

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Stewart

I would just begin with a character as if writing any other sort of fiction. Wizards and magic has been done to death though - try something original.

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