Gillian Bronte Adams writes YA epic fantasy novels, including the award-winning Of Fire and Ash and The Songkeeper Chronicles. She loves strong coffee, desert hikes, and trying out new soup recipes on crisp fall nights. Her favorite books are the ones that make your heart ache and soar in turn. When she’s not creating vibrant new worlds or dreaming up stories that ring with the echoes of eternity, she can be found off chasing sunsets with her horse, or her dog, Took. Gillian loves to connect with readers online through her website and Instagram.

Have you ever had an idea for a story that felt supremely ambitious? Like maybe you could write it if you were Brandon Sanderson and it would undoubtedly be brilliant, but he’s him and you’re you? Sometimes, that’s fear or imposter syndrome talking, and sometimes, you just know deep down that a story is going to demand a skill level you don’t have yet.

Whether you’re drawn to write about themes that require a lot of nuance, or are contemplating a complicated narrative style, or are dying to write a sweeping epic with a stacked character list, some story ideas are equally exciting and terrifying. Like your brain suddenly flipped the difficulty level of the writing video game from easy to extreme. (Thanks, brain!)

One of the ways we grow as writers is by tackling projects that challenge us. When a story idea sits just beyond the comfort zone of our skills, we have to stretch for it, work for it, grow.

We all know the phrase “no pain, no gain,” right?

But what about when the gap between your current skill level and an idea feels like a chasm? What do you do then?

That’s the exact situation I found myself in when I first had the idea for my YA Epic Fantasy Of Fire and Ash ten years ago, and it’s a topic that has come up several times recently in conversation with other writers, so I thought I would share some of the strategies I’ve learned along the way.

1. Reread to level up your storytelling

Most writers are lifelong readers, so this strategy probably feels like a no-brainer, or at least, the best homework assignment ever, but trust me, there is work involved. What are the books that inspired your ambitious story idea? What authors are writing the type of story you want to tell and doing it well? What books tackle similar nuanced themes or complex narratives or the kind of mindbogglingly epic world that you want to emulate?

Start there. Read those books, then reread them. More than once if you can. Pay attention to the story’s pacing, emotional beats, powerful moments. Would you have thought to write it that way?

What are you picking up on now that you missed on the first reading?

It never ceases to amaze me how many new things rereading reveals. Because I now know where the story is going, I can start to see what the author is doing and how, and that is the coolest thing.

Try listening to the book on audiobook too. Having the story read to you changes the way you receive it. Oftentimes, when I’m reading, I catch myself rushing through those high impact (high intensity/high emotion) scenes, skimming a bit, in my hurry to find out what happens. But when you’re listening to an audiobook, you can’t rush through those moments. You have to sit and soak them in. Feel them. Wait them out. Listening, you can pick up on the mechanics of the story, like how the author speeds up the pacing or intentionally slows it down to help you to feel the weight of what’s happening.

Most of the time as readers, we’re hoping to be sucked into the story’s illusion. We don’t want to think about the mechanics that make the story work. We simply want it to sweep us away.

But this time, I want you to try to peer behind the curtain of the story. I promise, if you’re anything like me, this won’t ruin reading for you forever; instead, it will simply grow your appreciation and awe for storytellers as you expand your skills too!

2. Establish limitations for yourself and your story

I know the word limitations probably makes you think of suffocatingly restrictive things, like speed limits and “lights out” and guardrails on the edges of cliffs. But wait, you say, aren’t those actually good and helpful things? Yes. Yes, they are!

Limitations are helpful when it comes to writing too. In fact, all of writing is a matter of choosing limitations. You choose to set your story in one place and not another. You write about this character and not that one. Your story has a beginning, a middle, and (hopefully, one day) an end.

Limitations are how we define what our story is and is not, and when you’re tackling a particularly ambitious story, it’s a good idea to establish them from the get-go.

When I started brainstorming my epic fantasy, I knew early on that the scope of the world, the plot, and the character journeys combined was going to be a beast to tackle. It was going to stretch me significantly as a writer, and the story could very easily spiral out of my control. So I started by setting limitations for myself. One of those was choosing to tell the story through only three point-of-view characters (aside from the epilogue).

Having three main POV characters is still complex, and depending on your genre, that could be too many. But compared to the typical scope of epic fantasy stories, choosing only three forced me to narrow my focus and hold onto the heart of my story.

3. Look for places to scale back

Each element that you add to your story—whether that’s multiple POV characters, difficult themes, tough or potentially triggering topics that require a lot of research and feedback to handle, twisty plots, oodles of subplots, a wide variety of settings, etc.—adds another layer of complexity. When you try to tackle too much in a single project, you can easily lose your story beneath all of the layers.

More isn’t always better. Actually, I’ll go so far as to say that more typically isn’t better.

So when you know that one element of your story is going to veer more complex (like, say, a really twisty plot), consider scaling back in others (like writing from just one POV or sticking to one major setting). You might be surprised to discover how scaling your story back actually helps you to hone your skills and ensures that your chosen elements take center stage.

Ask yourself: What elements are necessary to this story? What elements do I absolutely love? What elements spotlight the heart of the story? What can I consider scaling back?

4. Give yourself and the story time to grow

Sometimes you and your story idea just need time to grow. The first time I set out to write Of Fire and Ash, it was set in a completely different world. One with no firebreathing horses, so naturally, I found it boring and set it aside. The second time I set out to write it, I had (finally) figured out the world, but that had also catapulted the project well beyond my current skills.

So I did the unthinkable and set the story down for several more years. Turns out, that was the best thing I could have done! If I had tried to push through with that first draft, or even the second, it would not have been the story that it is today. Because back then, I hadn’t yet dreamed up some of the elements that now form such an integral part of the story that I can no longer imagine it without them!

Sometimes loving a project means being willing to give it (and yourself) the time to grow.

But … what do you do in the meantime? Try working on something else. Tackle another project, preferably one that’s not quite so challenging but that will still help you grow. Focus on the foundations of storytelling—character goals, motivation, story structure, etc.

Is there a specific area—worldbuilding, voice, suspense, characterization—where you know you struggle? Set yourself a practice project, like a short story, to work on it! (Side note: Practice projects are amazing. You get to bust the lid off your creativity, do wild and crazy things, test out new skills, and the best part is, nobody has to read it, if you don’t want them to.)

While Of Fire and Ash sat and gathered dust (and ideas), I completed the second and third books of a separate trilogy, and writing and editing that series gave me new skills and tools to draw upon when I was ready to pick up my dream project again.

So as scary as it might feel to set a project aside, even for a short time, I guarantee that if you keep writing and reading and living and learning, that time will not be wasted.

5. Write it wrong

Sometimes, the idea just won’t let go. Sometimes, it demands to be written now, even if you know that you don’t have the skills yet to fully do it justice. Sometimes, you just have to write the thing, and know that you’re going to write it wrong, and that’s okay.

You will learn a lot along the way, and you might emerge on the other side gasping and feeling like you got there by the skin of your teeth, but honestly, sometimes, that’s just novel writing.

In all seriousness, I did debate whether or not to include this strategy, because while I know that there are some people who learn best by diving into the deep end and just doing, it is still a hard way to learn. Constantly bumping up against the boundaries of your skills can be frustrating, overwhelming, and flat out discouraging. It can leave you convinced that you are the worst writer in the world, when really, you’re just trying to tackle something that’s very difficult.

Which is why it can be so helpful to intentionally seek to grow your skills using some of the other strategies listed above before launching a particularly ambitious project. 

But at the same time, eventually, if you want to tell the story, you just have to tell it, and the best way to fight off that discouragement and disillusionment when your skills still don’t measure up, is to go in expecting to do a lot of work. I still didn’t feel ready to write Of Fire and Ash when I started it the third time. But I did it. That third draft (the first completed draft) ended up 30,000 words over my target word count and it was still missing one of the three POV characters.

It was messy. It was so wrong. It needed a ton of work. But it was written.

Which meant that finally, I could see the places where it was wrong, and I could fix them. The revision process took me a year, and I threw out a lot of words. But I learned so much through writing that completed draft of the story that the revised version is what you can read today.

So … if that’s you and you’re at that point … it’s okay to go ahead! Write it wrong. Write it messy. Write it at the skill level you have now. But write committed to do the work—and all the revisions—it will take to do your story idea justice.

Have you ever tried to tackle a story idea that felt too ambitious? What steps have you taken to level up your storytelling? Which of these strategies resonates with you the most?