New Models for Magicians
In many fantasy stories, magicians often follow one or two traditional models. Many are often portrayed as guides or teachers that assist the protagonist. Often this mentor is described as…
In many fantasy stories, magicians often follow one or two traditional models. Many are often portrayed as guides or teachers that assist the protagonist. Often this mentor is described as…
I recently I submitted a story to my writing group for critique. It was a secondary-world fantasy set in a pre-industrial port city. Of all the comments I received, the…
In fantasy, we see a lot of magicians, shape-shifters, werewolves and all manner of humanoid characters with supernatural qualities. One type of powerful character that crops up more rarely, however,…
Each month in our forum we run a short story contest. The winning stories are then posted here on our main site. If you are interested in entering our contest…
The exploration of human nature has been a writer’s responsibility since the dawn of the word. Storytellers are accountable, whether or not they aim to be, for a representation of…
Writing the other can be a challenge, it’s often difficult to convincingly portray a character that greatly differs from your experiences. Without a personal frame of reference the writer is…
Hoglers don’t exist. You’ve never heard of them, and I’ve certainly never heard of them. As an object of the imagination, they defy description. This is a challenge that faces…
One of fantasy’s most commonly mocked tropes is the chosen one. This makes sense; it’s also one of fantasy’s most recurring tropes, and there are a lot of very good…
It’s often said that characters are the heart of the story, and most of the time people are referring to the central protagonists when they say this. It’s only natural;…
Battlemage is an epic fantasy story where overt magic is front and centre, with powerful men and women able to change the very course of the war that has swept…
Last time we focused entirely on characters drawn from the YA SFF spectrum, visiting authors from Cassandra Clare to Maggie Steifvater and Meagan Spooner/Amie Kaufman. Whilst we’re still not done…
From the humble page all kinds of fantastic characters can spring to life: dashing heroes, devious villains and everything in between. But only a few of these creations will reach…