FANTASY RULES

1. Your fantasy world must be easy to visualise by your readers.  It can be somewhere they'd love to live or equally somewhere they're glad they don't (!) but it must be something they can see in their own minds as they read about it.
   
2. Magic is inevitable but what are the consequences of it?  Can too much cause damage?  What price does it exact on those practising it?  What are the restrictions?
   
3. There has to be some form of government.  Is is accountable to the people or a dictatorship?  What are the reasons for the government being the way it is?  (Dozens of stories are possible from answering that question!).
   
4. How is your world organised in terms of how people live, their hierarchies and so on?
   
5. Do you know enough of your world's history to write about it convincingly?  The history will also impact on whatever the current political situation is, the way history always does, and that should show in your story too.
   
6. Your story should be an "easy" read with a good pace.  Information should be "slipped in".  As with any other kind of fiction, there should be no boring bits.
   
7. What is different about your world than anything we know on Earth?  (I don't think the use of magic in itself is enough of a difference.  I think you need to show how the species are different to name just one other example).  What makes your world fantastical?
   
8. How do your peoples interact with each other?  Nobody is going to get along all the time and this should be reflected in your world too.  A whole novel (at least) can come from this.
   
9. Dragons don't have to be inevitable!  Other monsters are available... and you can always invent your own!
   
10. Where you have a world with non-magical species as well, explore how they survive.  Are they necessarily downtrodden by magical practitioners or have they found ways of bettering them?