Have you picked up one of the hottest fantasy novels to hit the shelves this year? Or are you already waiting in line for its highly anticipated sequel? Here are four things Rebecca Yarros nailed in Fourth Wing that can help you improve your own writing.
On this, the eve before the much-anticipated release of Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros, it seems only fitting to share with you this article on four writing lessons I noticed at work in Fourth Wing.
I wasn’t planning to clamber onto this bandwagon quite so soon. After all, I only joined the Bookstagram community recently, and most of the popular recommendations on the platform seem to disappoint me again and again. As an avid reader of literary fiction, a huge fan of the jaw-dropping, unpredictable plot twists, and a hunter for the stories that really dig deep, I sometimes find it difficult to find a book I consider truly remarkable.
However, last month I had a three-hour drive that I needed to stay awake for and a free Audible credit. In that split-second moment of decision after zipping up my duffel bag, just heartbeats before stepping out the door and leaving the Wifi (and any possibility of downloading books) behind me, Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing somehow ended up on my queue.
I’m not a fan of explicit language or on-the-page spice, and my biggest complaint for this book is that the language was so incredibly excessive that it often detracted from my reader experience.
That said, everything else left me absolutely floored, and I must now humbly admit that Fourth Wing is worth all the hype and more. Imagine if Harry Potter continued the story from a magical high school into a college setting, with more military undercurrents, way more dragons, and the cutthroat atmosphere of Divergent. That was the majority of my impressions throughout the book. Every single chapter, every single scene, every single sentence and expression and detail worked so harmoniously and was written so well, that I can only applaud Yarros for this masterpiece.
After a careful listen to the audiobook that (figuratively) tore my soul out, here are four writing lessons that we can take away from Rebecca Yarros and her book, Fourth Wing.
1. Trust your readers to fill in the “ordinary” parts of the setting to maintain a quicker pace.
The fastest way to clog up a narrative is to lean too heavily into details that your readers can fill in themselves. Yarros’ descriptions of the setting are bare bones compared to other fantasy authors, but her every word functions to drive the plot forward. She utilizes description and worldbuilding symbolically to help foreshadow coming events, and her words work together to create a picture with just enough detail for the reader to imagine the rest.
I remember a particular moment when the narrative says that the walls were stone and “the floor was smooth.” Notice how there is no mention of what the floor is made of, because that detail isn’t critical for the story. Yarros knows that too much detail will take attention away from the action.
Yarros touches on the briefest of details to set the scene and immediately moves into character interactions, because she knows all the reader needs is a little nudge for their imagination to paint a picture of the rooms and the fortress and the forest. She trusts her readers to orient themselves, and focuses on sharing only the necessary details.
If you’ve got a lot of timeline and detail and action to cover in your story, take some notes on how Yarros depicts stunning settings while keeping up the pace. However, remember that every author will strike their own unique balance between worldbuilding and action-packed prose.
2. Flawed characters are the most relatable.
We’ve seen it with Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Katniss Everdeen, and now Violet Sorrengail: the most relatable and impactful characters are not the invincible ones, but those that are both fearful and brave, weak and strong, educated and learning. The leverage of a character shines through when we see how they work around their weaknesses, gathering a team or arming themselves with tools that will ultimately help them to accomplish their task.
In Fourth Wing, Violet has a particularly long list of weaknesses. Weak joints, weak stomach, and a refusal to go for the kill shot. She’s short, unable to wield a sword, and spent most of her childhood studying in the Archives with the other scribes. Her comrades have spent their lives preparing to be Riders while she’s had only six months to catch up. But she uses her intellect, her speed, and her lightweight daggers to find unexpected ways of overcoming obstacles.
What makes Violet’s flawed character especially relatable is her consistency throughout the book. Her internal compass remains the same even as she faces new challenges.
3. Magic systems should have structure, limits, and consequences.
Many characters in Fourth Wing manifest impressive (if not necessarily original) magical abilities—we see anything from shadow magic to mind reading, healing to storms, ice to metal to breathing underwater. But one element that Yarros portrayed exceptionally well were the consequences of these gifts as each character had to learn to master them. It left them exhausted, injured, regretful if it didn’t provide the results they were looking for. Magic in Fourth Wing is subject to the same rules as any other decision the character might make, with the possibility of failure ever imminent and a degree of mastery required to succeed.
Writers could truthfully write a limitless magic system in their books, but readers are more often transfixed by the creative ways in which characters work around limitations to find unprecedented solutions. The balance of give and take in a magic system is what makes it feel more tangible, as very few things in our reality are truly limitless. Make your magic a finite or restricted resource, and you’re giving your characters even more power.
(If you’re looking for a unique way to interact with a magic system like this, check out my article on using the mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons for a hands-on experiment with the give and take of magic systems in a fictional, fantasy setting.)
4. No matter the genre, the power of the story is in the relationships.
Relationships are where the genre mechanics of the story fall away and the experiences (read: the emotions) become universal for readers. I belong to the class of writer that loves finding the perfect Pinterest art to inspire descriptions for beautiful fantasy landscapes, but readers are really committed to the story for the relationships that they can relate to. Don’t get distracted describing the tree when you could be giving the reader the tea. (I just came up with that. Did you cringe too?)
Here are some examples from bestsellers to help paint the picture a little more:
No one loves The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins) because of the Capitol or post-apocalyptic America. They love it because Katniss Everdeen proves how one person can make a difference in a broken world, and how a social scene can also be a game of survival (not just in the arena).
No one loves Holes (Louis Sachar) because it inspires us to dig tons of holes in a dry lake bed, or The Giver (Lois Lowry) because we’re intrigued by daily injections that rob you of the ability to see color, or Anxious People (Fredrik Backman) because we are apartment shopping and strangely paranoid about being taken hostage—and then fed pizza.
We love Holes because we love the redemption arc of Stanley Yelnats as he tries to clear his name. We love The Giver because we see how much awareness is robbed from us when memory is stolen. We love Anxious People because it peels back the barriers we hold up around ourselves, showing us how the lives of strangers can intersect and change one another in beautiful ways. All of these have relationships at their core.
In Fourth Wing, I’m not actually hooked by the dragons, though they’re a nice addition that we definitely enjoy. There are plenty of books with dragons in them. I’m much more invested in seeing how a heroine as weak as Violet can possibly survive in a war college, wrestle with her feelings and her comrades as she is forced to think outside the box and do things differently than others. And I am definitely invested in the rollercoasters of her various connections to her mother, her sister, her childhood best friend, and her superior officers.
These are just a few observations I noticed while listening to the audiobook of Rebecca Yarros’ Fourth Wing; I am eagerly anticipating the arrival of my special edition copy, and wish the best of luck to those of you braving bookshops all over the world tomorrow in an effort to obtain your copy of Iron Flame.
I hope this article provided some interesting insights for you! What other writing lessons did you see in Fourth Wing? What worked or didn’t work for you?
Hannah L. Ackerman
Hannah L. Ackerman Portfolio 
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