When writing fantastical literature, your biggest problem is getting your audience to believe the fantastical elements of your story.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
In all my books, I try to have a strong element of realism underlying the fantastic.
As with all types of writing, fantastical fiction depends on the same basic rules.
The stories I write are often literal to events that have happened or observations that I've made, and sometimes they're fantastical.
A lot of times you get people writing wonderful sentences and paragraphs, and they fall in love with their prose style, but the stories really aren't that terrific.
Fantastic fiction covers fantasy, horror and science fiction - and it doesn't get the attention it deserves from the literati.
I'm not writing great literature. I'm writing commercial fiction for people to enjoy the stories and to like the characters.
Writing is incidental to my primary objective, which is spinning a good yarn. I view myself as a storyteller more than a writer. The story - and hence the extensive research that goes into each one of my books - is much more important than the words that I use to narrate it.
The magical and fantastical isn't something I'm uncomfortable with in books, and I chafe slightly at the idea that a purely realist novel somehow has more value.
That's the trouble with stories. People start out fantastic. You think they're extraordinary, but it turns out as the work goes along, they're just average with a good education.
I don't care whether the story is real or fantastical. I tell the story that needs to be told.