How to make a Fantasy Series

Following is a series of easy steps to take to make you a Rich And Famous Fantasy Writer by manufacturing your very own EFP:

1. Read The Lord of the Rings. by JRR Tolkein
2. Take a bit of A3 paper and put loads of blobs, triangles, and dots on it. Give the blobs names like "The Forest of Freetard." Give the triangles names like "The Brokeback Mountains." Give the dots names like "The Free City of Generica."
3. Come up with a Main Character. Your Main Character has to be humanoid, and masculine, even if it's a woman.
4. Come up with a Quest. Your Quest must involve the Main Character going from where they are at the beginning of your text, to where they are at the end. It must also involve some kind of small, portable object. Examples include: rings, swords, crowns, cloaks, gold, or amulets.
5. Come up with a Title. It's best to base your Title around your portable object. Identify the object and where it came from/was made and then use that as your title.
   
6. Write the entire plot of The Lord of the Rings in your own words, but using your bit of A3 instead of Tolkein's map, and using your Main Character in place of Aragorn, lose the Hobbits, and use your portable object in place of the Ring (remember in your version Aragorn has the ring).
   
7. Make sure you get it all up to 100, 000 words.
   
8. Pad out the text you've written to get it up 500, 000 words. Do this by sticking an Event every 10, 000 words or so. These events must involve either a Troll, a Meeting, an ASA, or a WC.
9. Pad the text out further with Discursive Rambling, Expositional Infodumps, and Boring Internecine Politics. By this point your text should be up to 1, 000, 000 words.
10. Split the 1, 000, 000 word text into arbitrary clumps of about 100, 000 words each and label each clump as Book 1, Book 2, etc, and mail the first one to a publisher.
11. Sit back and let the moolah roll in.
    

Glossary of terms:

• EFP: Extruded Fantasy Product
• Main Character: a humanoid being that your text talks about.
  
• Quest: the thing that drives your Main Character to do what he does.
  
• Event: something that happens to your Main Character.
• Troll: a big scary monster of some kind.
  
• Meeting: your Main Character will meet some Secondary Characters.
• Secondary Characters: anyone in the story who isn't the Main Character. Some of these will be Enemies and some will be Allies. Some will also be suitable for your Main Character to perform ASAs with.
  
• ASA: Arbitrary Sexual Act
• WC: War Crime

Further Tips:

There needs to be plenty of WCs and ASAs. WCs should be against threatening and unattractive people. ASAs should be with unthreatening but attractive people.

Names should be long, vaguely foreign, and end with a description of what that person has done. Also remember that people are always "the." So, for example, Dr Perry Cox MD becomes Dr Perry Cox the Medical Doctor. Or better yet: Dr Perry Cox the Doctor of Medicine.

[[Incidentally: am I the only one who thought the last episode of Scrubs was appalling?]]

Discussions of morality and whatnot are optional: it might be worth doing it to fill up a few pages.

Your Dark Lord character doesn't really matter. It's all in the minions. ;)

Well Good Night, and Good Luck!