Epic Fantasy projects is a massive investment in both time and effort. Regardless of whether the work is made in the media of books, movies or video games: creating entire fictional alien worlds from our own were the story takes place in is a heavy task to carry. And many things can go wrong while making it since there are too many factors for one person to handle and keep in mind all at once.
So, how is it then possible to predict the future to the point where the ability to tell how many books the series is going to have before knowing how the story progress can seem to be a puzzling thing. What if an important character dies halfway through the series? What would happen to the rest of the volumes if the overall story progression reaches a corner and can no long continue without mass amounts of added disbelief in the process? It is true that one can not tell what is going to happen in the future. You can, however, make accurate story progression predictions based on general turning-points of fictional world events.
What does that mean?
It means that the focus on the predicted story progression is centered around how the world around the characters behave and think as a hive-mind. The predictable nature comes from knowing what a kingdom within the fictional world wants to gain from their actions. And by knowing what they want and how the general public of said kingdom’s mentality is: the output then becomes predictable. This is opposed from attempting to predict the story of an individual character where the variables are too great to make long-term decisions from the start.
This is very similar to real-life where individual people cannot make enormous tide-shifts on their own to change the outcome of the countries they live in. Changes happen due to the mentality of the people in charge, the country’s economy, the happenings of neighboring countries as well as many other factors which impact the decisions made by the people.
By focusing on the overall world around the characters does it then become possible to plan long-term Epic Fantasy works. It might seem as an impossible task looking from the outside-in. Yet the ability to predict the future become more doable when focusing on the things that make the world as it is.
And to plan ahead for what is to come.
[Date Published: Thursday, 24 September 2026]