Epic fantasy as a genre often includes a wide cast of well-developed characters, intricate plotlines, and vastly designed worlds. However, with all of these elements in mind, it can feel definitely intimidating to try and write an epic fantasy book with all of these things to remember. It’s also not just about keeping track of a timeline of events; rather, it is about keeping track of the many interwoven stories, character arcs, emotional arcs, and more. Keeping track of all of these elements can be the difference between a decent story and an excellent and well thought-out story. So, for today’s post, I’ll be talking about how you can balance multiple plot lines in epic fantasy books as well as some tips for keeping your narratives organized so your stories can be as amazing as they should be.
What is Epic Fantasy?
The epic fantasy genre is a subgenre of fantasy that involves intricate world building, a large cast of characters with multiple perspectives in the story, conflict, danger, an epic quest, or something of that sort in the main plot line. Oftentimes, epic fantasy is written across several books due to just how massive the stories can be. Epic fantasy stories are more grandiose and involve a lot of different elements.
I’ve talked about what epic fantasy is in my post comparing it to grimdark fantasy and I’ve also created a list of my favorite epic fantasy series that I think every fantasy reader should check out!
How to Balance Multiple Plotlines in Epic Fantasy Books
Create a Blueprint
Before you begin writing the main content of your book, I recommend you create a sort of story blueprint that serves as the broad overview of your book. This is going to be similar to the idea of outlining your story, but a bit more in-depth since you have many plotlines going rather than a singular linear plotline.
A timeline is one of the first things that you can create where you want to write out key events that occur in every plotline. Keeping a detailed timeline can help you to prevent inconsistencies and resolve timing issues as well as ensure that events in separate arcs logically align. For instance, if some characters are off fighting in a war and others aren’t, you want to ensure that the timeline of a certain battle maybe coincides with a sort of consequence that occurs in the kingdom.
You want to also try and map out the character arcs in your story as a part of this blueprint. I’ve talked in-depth about character arcs in another post before, but the idea of character arcs is that you are mapping how a character will change from the start of your book to the end of your book and doing this is very important.
Another thing you should consider including in your master blueprint for the story is the world building of your book as well. If multiple countries or planets are involved, you want to keep all that information together in one area so that you can reconcile any issues with your timelines and character arcs. If you want to learn how to get started with world building, you should check out this post!
For the most part, I recommend keeping all the information of your story in one place, which is why I recommend you either purchase a notebook (like the ones I recommend in this post) or you use some type of online tool. I recommend World Anvil because of just how robust and full of things it is, but if you’re looking for alternatives to World Anvil, you can try Scrivener or one of these other tools I recommended in another blog post of mine.
Ensure You Have Clear Primary and Secondary Subplots
If you have multiple plotlines going at the same time in your story, you have to make sure that you know precisely which plotlines are the ones that are important and which ones are not as important. Creating primary and secondary plots allows you to know what the core of your story is and what can be worked on a little later.
For instance, a primary plot is the driving force of the series. This is where the core of the conflicts, stakes, etc… take place. The secondary arcs are sort of the complementary elements of the story like romantic subplots. These exist alongside the main plot but are not and should not be the focus of the story.
Make Plotlines Unique
When dealing with multiple plotlines, you don’t want readers to feel as though the story is muddled or jumbling and confusing. Which is why you want to ensure that each plotline is distinct despite being interconnected with the other plotlines. This means that you want to work on creating unique identities, specific themes, and more for each plotline so that a reader can feel the difference but you want these identities and themes to sort of be of a similar “flavor” in a way.
You can also create different tones for the plotlines such as making some be very action-packed and some being lighter or others having more espionage/political intrigue involved. This distinction should be subtle but apparent enough that it feels like the distinction exists but isn’t too glaring.
If you want to learn how to develop a plotline for your story, then check out this post!
Connect Character Relationships Through Plotlines
If you are finding it a bit complicated to connect relationships, there’s a great way to do so via connecting plotlines in your story. This will also allow you to balance multiple plot lines and utilize your characters properly at the same time.
One of the most prominent ways to do this is to have characters from different arcs connect and unite under a common purpose. For instance, in Book 2 of my series, The Fallen Age Saga, there are many characters existing in their own plotlines until a sort of convergence event brings them together to reconcile the plotlines and create common goals for the characters.
You want to also try and create conflict between characters and introduce tension in groups of characters, even if the characters are all working towards the same goal.
Spread Things Out
You don’t want your readers feeling overwhelmed with action all the time and you need to try and develop characters and the world, as these are very important elements in the epic fantasy genre. So, one way that you can try and balance the multiple plotlines in epic fantasy books is to try and spread things out, especially when it comes to the key moments or the climax.
You want to try and resolve smaller conflicts while letting the bigger, more pertinent conflicts sort of simmer on the backburner. This way, you can work through smaller events while keeping readers strung along in anticipation for a really big climax in the story. If you want to learn more about writing climaxes, then check out this post!
Foreshadowing and Parallels
Foreshadowing is a great tool that you can use to show readers how plotlines will link at some point. Foreshadowing is essentially when you leave clues for readers that reveal major events that will happen at some point in the future of the story. If you want to learn more about foreshadowing, then check out this post. The idea of foreshadowing is that you are creating ways for the reader to try and guess how plotlines will converge, thus allowing you to balance them better for epic fantasy books, especially if yours is on the larger side.
Additionally, parallels are interesting ways to highlight and show differences or similarities between different arcs that are happening at the same time. For example, if two characters are in the same situation, they may take on different patterns of decision-making, thus showing how there are similarities and differences in the plotlines.
Ensure the End is Satisfying
With epic fantasy comes a big time investment from readers, so you want to ensure that the ending and the way the plots all come together and get resolved is satisfying and actually makes sense to your readers. You want to ensure that major conflicts are resolved in a satisfying way and you want to try and tie up any loose ends or subplots that weren’t finished yet. You also want to ensure that there is emotion in the delivery so that readers can feel like they invested their time in a story that has a good ending that they can enjoy.
Conclusion
Balancing multiple plotlines in epic fantasy books can be a difficult task at first, but by keeping track of things, creating a solid foundation, and ensuring that you are keeping plotlines unique while still being related and also allowing for characters to grow through the plotlines, you’ll be able to balance the plotlines in a good and satisfying way.
The idea is to maintain this balance but still giving enough room for the plotlines to stand out on their own but not too much that they could be just single books on their own. The nice thing about epic fantasy is that readers are more flexible with the quantity in a story, but they still want to feel like they aren’t 100% confused the entire time.
Before you head on out, be sure to check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga, and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter so you can get updates on all my latest posts, WIPs, book releases and more!