Writing Fantasy, Part I: Epic Worlds, High Realms & Grand-Scale Subgenres

Rosemi Mederos: 00:01

If you have plot bunnies coming out of your plot holes, it’s time for a writing break.

Just as there are many spells in a grimoire, there are many subgenres in fantasy. Some take us to sprawling kingdoms and eternal wars between light and shadow, and others hide their magic in plain sight, like in the apartment next door or in that old bookstore where the door sometimes leads somewhere else.

Fantasy lets us ask the biggest “what ifs”: What if the gods were real and bored? What if your reflection had opinions? What if magic was just another form of power, taxed by the government and sold by the ounce?

hable. From Sumerian myths in: 2500

We explored fantasy’s foundations in Episode 130: "Writing Fantasy: Building Worlds That Breathe," but in this episode, dear adventurers, I begin mapping out the full fantasy landscape as best I can. I am always on the hunt for a good fantasy book, so I want to acquaint you with every fantasy subgenre in hopes that you will summon me to join your guild.

Every fantasy subgenre has its own traditions, tone, and reader expectations. The setting and source of magic also play a role in defining a fantasy subgenre. We will focus on successfully blending genres in a few months, but as we go through this fantasy series, you'll notice that many of these subgenres blend nicely together and with other genres.

I spent more hours than I should have attempting to put all of the fantasy subgenres into one episode for you, but 73 pages of notes was too much for a sensible writing break, so, in typical fantasy fashion, this series will be a trilogy.

s, including my final rant of: 2025

I'm only covering about 30 fantasy subgenres in this trilogy, but by my estimation, there are about 88 different fantasy subgenres. I am considering putting out an e-book with the full list of fantasy subgenres and including more information on each, including specific writing tips and how to position your query letters. If this is something you're interested in, let me know. Send an email to podcast@writingbreak.com and include the fantasy subgenres you're most interested in. Now, let’s find out what kind of magic you’re wielding.

The Writing Break Café is open, so grab your favorite enchanted beverage—perhaps a peppermint and hot chocolate potion or eggnog strong enough to put a dragon to bed—and prepare to explore shining high realms and gaslit city streets.

We are starting with the sprawling, map-making, prophecy-weaving wonder of Epic Fantasy, where kingdoms fall and empires rise. Epic Fantasy is a tapestry of multiple storylines crisscrossing until they collide in a final showdown.

Magic is a geopolitical force in Epic Fantasy, and complex politics frequently drive the story, with intrigue, alliances, betrayal, and shifting power dynamics shaping the conflicts. The stakes are always high, whether it’s the fate of kingdoms, the balance of magic, or the survival of an entire world.

If you’re writing Epic Fantasy, build your world, build your history, build your magic, and then let your characters carry the weight of it all . Your world must feel vast, but your characters must feel intimate. Readers will follow your army only if they first care about your foot soldiers.

Then there’s High Fantasy, which gives us fully invented worlds with their own cultures and creatures. High Fantasy allows us to escape the familiar completely. The magic is baked in and the societies are unique.

Unlike Epic Fantasy, High Fantasy does not need massive wars or world-ending stakes. It just needs to take place in a world that is not ours. That is its defining trait.

Writers of High Fantasy get to create everything in their world, from the metaphysics to the breakfast menu. Just remember that this new world must be consistent, immersive, and unforgettable.

But not all fantasy takes us far from home.

Low Fantasy is our world, just a bit askew. In Low Fantasy, magic creeps in through the cracks, subtle enough that you might miss it at first. Perhaps a locked room opens to somewhere impossible or a creature in the backyard should not exist.

Low Fantasy thrives on the tension between the mundane and the magical. The question here is, How would an ordinary person react when the extraordinary steps across their threshold?

There are no epic prophecies here and no enchanted kingdoms. It’s just Earth as we know it, slightly off-axis.

For an adrenaline-charged story, we turn to Sword & Sorcery, where the stakes are personal, the battles are frequent, and the protagonists are often roguish, sweaty, and irresistible.

Sword & Sorcery stories move like action films with lean plots, dangerous magic, high energy, vivid locales, and problem-solving protagonists. These problems are solved with charm, grit, or a good sharp blade. Readers come here for adventure and charisma rather than politics and world treaties. They might encounter a mercenary fighting strictly for money or a thief breaking into a forbidden temple. Writers who choose this subgenre should lean into voice, atmosphere, and momentum.

Let’s journey on from action to antiquity.

Historical Fantasy blends real history with magical possibility. These stories ground us in an actual historical time period, such as Victorian England, the Tang Dynasty, or pre-colonial West Africa. The author then weaves magic, myth, or supernatural forces through it while presenting true details of the past, such as food, clothing, and customs.

If you’re writing Historical Fantasy, you’re essentially doing two jobs, that of historian and that of worldbuilder. Readers expect accuracy, atmosphere, and enchantment. They want to see the past illuminated in ways history books can’t offer. When this is done well, Historical Fantasy feels immersive and respectful.

But what if history itself changed?

Unlike Historical Fantasy, which adds magic to the past but keeps the major events intact, Alternate History asks, What if the past had gone differently?

This is a simple question with complicated consequences, and in Alternate History Fantasy, the answer is magical.

The past is rewritten by changing a single event or inventing a magical one, and every magical choice ripples through culture, politics, and society.

Maybe a forgotten civilization never fell. Maybe dragons were domesticated. Maybe sorcerers shaped global empires.

Readers of Alternate History want speculation with substance. Authors of Alternate History write fantasy that reshapes the past without erasing its gravity.

Then there are stories shaped by gods and ancestors.

Mythic Fantasy taps into the oldest stories we have: the cosmologies, deities, spirits, heroes, monsters, and creation tales that shaped cultures long before novels existed.

We’re talking real spiritual weight here. Mythic Fantasy deals heavily with fate and prophecy, and its heroes walk between realms to meet their fate and fulfil a prophecy.

A Mythic Fantasy novel feels ancient even when its brand new. The stakes are often cosmic, ancestral, or metaphysical rather than political.

Fairy-Tale Fantasy will make an appearance in the third episode of this mini-series, but the difference there is that, while Fairy-Tale Fantasy is about archetypes and symbolic logic, and the stakes are personal, Mythic Fantasy is about cosmic logic. The stakes are spiritual, ancestral, or cosmic.

Readers read Mythic Fantasy to explore something bigger than themselves.

Writers who choose this subgenre often draw on specific myth traditions—or invent their own—and present to their audience the weight of ritual, lineage, and cosmic meaning.

Now, let’s bring culture and cosmology into focus.

Indigenous or Mythic-Region Fantasy is storytelling rooted in living cultures, ancestral knowledge, and land-based cosmologies. These stories originate within, or directly honor, specific cultural traditions. These stories do not ask, What if magic existed? No, in Indigenous or Mythic-Region Fantasy, magic exists. It always has, but your worldview just wasn’t built to see it.

These stories carry generations behind them, and they showcase cultural memory and ongoing tradition. The ancestors are present, and nature is a forceful character.

Readers drawn to this genre are looking for stories that break free from the usual Western fantasy blueprint. They want something with deep roots rather than a made-up world.

If you're writing within your own tradition and culture, this subgenre becomes a reclamation.

If you're writing outside them: research deeply and approach with humility. This is sacred ground.

Are you ready to step through a doorway?

Portal Fantasy is the genre of thresholds. One moment, you’re living your normal life, and in the next moment, you’ve stepped through a wardrobe, a cave, a mirror, or a hollow tree and found that the world around you has changed.

Portal Fantasy thrives on contrast: the familiar world versus the magical one. The joy of discovery versus the fear of displacement.

Readers love this subgenre because they get to imagine what they would do if they stumbled into another world. Would they go back? Would they stay? Would they become a hero or realize they were one all along?

Portal Fantasy works best when the new world transforms the characters as much as they transform it.

And now, let’s blind ourselves with Science Fantasy.

Science Fantasy is for readers who want starships and spellbooks. Magic and technology coexist, clash, or blend into something new. Prophecies sit next to particle accelerators. Magic interacts with machines, sometimes beautifully, sometimes explosively.

Science Fantasy feeds the imagination by breaking genre boundaries. Why not let myth shape science? Why not let science explain myth? Why not have a warrior with a plasma blade facing a sorcerer wielding cosmic energy?

Readers love Science Fantasy because it feels limitless. Its familiar enough to ground them and fantastical enough to thrill them.

For writers, this subgenre is a playground. Just remember: if magic and tech both exist, they need to make sense together, whether that means harmony or conflict, without one explaining the other.

Now it’s time for some aesthetic flair.

Steampunk reimagines the Industrial Revolution with brass gears, steam-powered inventions, and retro-futuristic style. Industrial know-how meets imaginative engineering under soot-covered skylines. Goggles and clockwork abound.

Gaslamp Fantasy, which is coming up next, leans into magic and mood, but Steampunk is all about invention. It’s the Victorian era written with gadgets and grit, rebellion and resourcefulness, adventure and aesthetic flair.

Readers love Steampunk because of the atmosphere. The smoky factories, sky pirates, mechanical marvels, and worlds where science isn’t quite science.

If you’re writing Steampunk, don’t skimp on setting, lean into the machinery, and embrace the spirit of invention.

And for a more magical Victorian vibe, there’s Gaslamp or Neo-Victorian Fantasy.

Gaslamp Fantasy has more elegance than Steampunk. Gaslamp has less gears and more atmosphere, less engineering and more enchantment.

Picture gaslit streets blanketed in fog, occult societies hidden behind parlor doors, magical institutions tucked inside polite society, and mysteries unfolding in elegant ballrooms and shadowed alleyways. Gaslamp Fantasy blends Victorian aesthetics with intrigue and does so with a touch of Gothic charm and sometimes Gothic horror.

Readers come to Gaslamp Fantasy for its lush ambience, social dynamics, and sense of mystery. The romance of candlelight and corsets blend together with fae bargains and espionage.

If you’re writing Gaslamp Fantasy, remember that you’re merging magic with a real time period, so historical accuracy is important.

Before we dim our gas lamps and go our separate ways, I want to leave you with a two-part Overthinking prompt to help you figure out if each element in your work-in-progress is well-integrated. Think about your magic system, political structure, setting, monster ecology, all of that.

Which element of your world is doing the most narrative heavy lifting, and are you actually giving it the page-time, complexity, and consequences it deserves?

And that wraps up Episode 1 of our Fantasy Subgenre Series. I enjoyed crossing continents, rewriting histories, and stepping through portals with you. Next week, we head into the shadows. Dark alleys, haunted forests, neon-lit underworlds, and power-hungry magic await. I might need you to hold my hand.

Until then, thank you so much for listening, and remember, you deserved this break.

Thank you for making space in your mind for The Muse today.

Writing Break is hosted by America’s Editor and produced by Allon Media with technical direction by Gus Aviles. Visit us at writingbreak.com or contact us at podcast@writingbreak.com.