Browsing all articles tagged with worldbuilding.
Exploring Rural Landscape
The quest is a hallmark of great fantasy fiction and some of the best quests see our heroes traverse a variety of locations before reaching their goal. When done well, the environment can become a character in its own right. But all too often in writing fantasy, the environment can be bland, the landscape uniform. [...]
The Fantasy Language Problem – Part Two
This is part two of Django Wexler’s guest post on fantasy languages. You can read part one here. (Click or mouseover links for humorous footnotes.) The preceding section is not intended to be an exhaustive list of troublesome terms, but rather to merely convey the scope of the problem. [#11] It should be obvious by [...]
The Fantasy Language Problem – Part One
(Click or mouseover links for humorous footnotes.) From the very beginning of the genre, one of the biggest problems fantasy authors have had to solve has been languages. It’s an odd sort of problem, actually, because for the most part readers don’t actually seem to pay much attention to it. Some writers seem to be [...]
Pretend to be a Dungeon Master and Level Up Your Storytelling
I think it’s a safe bet that many Fantasy-Faction readers have at some point played Dungeons & Dragons. I’m also willing to bet that many readers, myself included, have packed away our dice and minifigs and left them to collect dust in a forgotten drawer or in our parents’ attic. But there are a proud [...]
Consider Worldbuilding
One of the great joys of fantasy are the worlds those stories inhabit. In many of our beloved classics, the worlds are as important as the characters themselves. But the task of creating them for our own stories is a daunting prospect that involves much more than just drawing a map. It involves close study [...]
Mapmaking for Fantasy Authors
A good map is, I’d venture to say, just as vital to you as it is to your characters; you need a map to know the size of the world they occupy, the length of their journey, its difficulty, and distance. Furthermore, a good map serves as an important tool for your readers as well. [...]
