Trying fantasy for the first time

One genre I haven't ever really tried is fantasy. I've written a handful of stories taking place in modern times with fantasy elements ("urban fantasy" as the kids call it) but that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is full-on Swords and Sorcery, Might and Magic, Dungeons and Dragons variety fantasy.

I found myself in between submissions and not wanting to work on anything I currently had sitting in the "in process" folder, so I hit duotrope and browsed through some anthologies to get an idea of something new to try.

I won't name names, but the one anthology that really caught my eye had this disclaimer: Must be fantasy. It also had another: Minimum 5,000 words.

A typical short story of mine is in the 3,000-4,000 word range, so 5,000 seemed a bit long for me, but I figured I'd give it a try. Why not? Horror was getting boring and the soft sci-fi could only get me so far before I needed to start incorporating a little more sci into the fi, and I haven't been in the mood for that lately.

So as I started working on the story I realized a couple of things. First off, fantasy isn't nearly as difficult or tiresome to write as I assumed it would be. The story I have in my head is working its way onto the virtual paper without any major problems.

There have been a couple of roadblocks though. First off, it's not easy coming up with character names. Every name I find just seems clichéd, forced, phony, or cheesy. I did find a pretty decent fantasy name generator here: http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/ to help me get through my own lack of creativity, however.

Another problem I've run into is that I find myself taking it for granted that everyone in the world has already read the first six books of the Dragonlance series and that the D&D set of rules are the accepted standard in fantasy writing. I'm assuming they're not, so I already know I need to put some extra effort into the setting.

Anyhow, I'm really enjoying trying something new and my goal for the month of May is to come up with something half-way decent and get it submitted to this anthology.

And to be honest, I'm actually looking forward to it.