Why I Love Fantasy

Published July 7, 2026

by Kaitlyn Price

Ah Fantasy. My favorite genre.

My love for fantasy began at an early age with movies like The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, and The Neverending Story. The worlds created in these movies were so unlike reality that I was instantly enamored. How did one imagine such vastly different worlds from our own?

When I began writing in middle school, I was most drawn to the world-building aspects of creating a fantasy story. From creating cute creatures to drawing maps, to building unique pantheons of gods, I was hooked. In my opinion, world-building is the best thing about the fantasy genre. You can literally create anything and do anything, with no limits but the ones you create. (And creating limits is part of the fun! Limits lead to conflicts, which lead to stories.)

After finishing my first full-length novel, with an expansive race of vampire-like creatures with little personality, I learned a hard lesson about world-building. It was not the most important aspect of creating a story, even if it was the one I loved the most. My novel lacked deep, three-dimensional characters that fit into that world and drove the plot forward.

Creating characters that fit into my worlds became just another level of world-building for me. Beyond cool magic and monsters, I started to consider history and politics, and how everything within my world interacted, and what consequences arose from those interactions. I had to learn about the history and politics of our own world to better understand how to create my own, too.

And just like the heroes and villains of our history, characters would emerge from the conflicts, along with the stories.

There is so much more to world-building than just surface-level designs and added genre elements. While crafting a world, you must consider a seemingly never-ending list of possibilities. It’s hard not to get caught up in the details of history, politics, economics, races of humans/creatures (and all their backstories), magic systems, etc., etc.

As someone guilty of getting caught up in those details often, I don’t think I can provide the best advice on crafting a Fantasy story. However, I am an avid reader of craft books and podcasts, and I can recommend a few that can help you embrace the daunting but incredibly fun journey of writing in the Fantasy genre.

First, I want to recommend Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer. This is not a traditional writing craft book. It is filled with pages of strange artwork and unique stories from other creatives. This book really encourages readers to embrace their creativity and explore the strange and weird. This book may not be for everyone, but I do think it is such a unique craft book that I recommend it often.

For a more traditional craft book, I suggest The Secrets of Story by Matt Bird. This is not necessarily a Fantasy-specific book, but I feel it has great suggestions on building realistic characters that translate well into Fantasy worlds.

On Writing and Worldbuilding by Timothy Hickson is a more genre-specific craft book. There are several volumes to this series, and I also highly recommend checking out the author’s YouTube channel: Hello Future Me. He explores a lot of Fantasy tips, tricks, and tropes in pop culture media that are quite interesting.

Speaking of YouTube, Fantasy author Brandon Sanderson has a series of lectures on YouTube that are very informative and completely free. Brandon Sanderson is also one of the original hosts of the podcast Writing Excuses, which has several fantasy-focused episodes.

I am also a big fan of genre mashes with Fantasy. The Romantasy genre has surged over recent years, with novels like A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas and Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, featuring novels set in fantasy worlds with a strong romance plot of varying spice levels. But Romance isn’t the only genre that works well with Fantasy.

I’ve read fantasy books with a heist plotline (The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch) and fantasy crossed with sci-fi and a bit of horror (Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir). The Dark Tower series by Stephen King is considered a fantasy with Western elements, and The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher are very much Crime stories with urban fantasy elements.

For other recommendations on Fantasy books that are sure to get you hooked on the genre, I suggest checking out some of these titles:

• The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemesin
• The Elements of Cadence series by Rebecca Ross
• The Daughter of Smoke & Bone series by Laini Taylor
• The Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks

Whether you’re a seasoned Fantasy lover or just dipping your toe into the magical waters, I hope you’re able to take something new away with you from this post and create some magic in your life!

Kaitlyn Price, who writes under the pen name KK Quinn, is a Colorado native, fantasy fan, and animal lover. When not reading or writing, she also enjoys playing various video games, watching shows and movies with her husband, or building book nook kits. She has a short story, The Snake God, published in the 2023 Pike’s Peak anthology Journeys Into Possibility. She also won third place in the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Colorado Gold Contest in 2019.