Browsing all articles tagged with writing advice.
Character Development: Character Death and the Ultimate Sacrifice
Killing a character in your novel is a tried and true method for advancing your plot. Allegiances are torn, revenge is sought, kingdoms fall apart. Character death feels as essential to the fantasy genre as magic—perhaps more-so. But in a narrative sense, is death really the “ultimate” sacrifice? The most effective character deaths are those […]
Weaving A Narrative
A story is more than its central plot tenants. It is more than the broad strokes of its grand events and dramatic moments. It is a woven tapestry of differing narrative threads and layers that weave together to create a cohesive whole. Yes there will be the macro arc of the greater plot that directs […]
Temporal Anomalies: Timekeeping in Fantasy
Humans are OCD about time. We obsess over birthdays and anniversaries and are ruled by the work week. We live for the weekend and look forward to holidays with either joy or dread, depending on which relatives are coming over. We count the seconds until midnight on New Year’s, and we count the billions of […]
Crafting A Fall: Turning Heroes to the Dark Side
Who doesn’t love to see a character go bad? A man pushed too far pushing back? A loyal but ambitious servant helping themselves for a change? A noble hero broken down into the blackest villain? To watch a character fall into darkness is a fascinating journey, seeing a character’s values crumble and twist, watching their […]
Creating a Magic System
The naming of a thing gives you power over it. Sorcery is the will and the word. Cast fireball now and you won’t be able to again until tomorrow and have finished your revision. Magic systems exist in scores of fantasy novels. Diverse in their rules, varying in complexity, they instruct us in how the […]
Knocking People Out: Easier In Fiction Than In Real Life
It’s a common scenario in many kinds of fiction, including fantasy: a character passes out, either because they’ve been knocked on the head or injured or drugged, and the world “goes black” or they “fall into darkness”. The unfortunate character usually wakes up several hours or days later in a new place, disoriented and sometimes […]
Blurring The Lines
So I started reading the Dragon Prince trilogy by Melanie Rawn. It’s part of the classical fantasy cannon, and the books have been on my TBR pile for ages. While I am enjoying the books, one aspect that stands out to me is the obvious tone implicit in the “sides” of the story and their […]
How Ideas Become Stories
One of the most common questions an author will hear is, “Where do you get your ideas from?” As if that was all you needed to write a successful book. Ideas are important, but they’re not some mystical spark from the divine, if you’re in the right mind-set you can probably come up with dozens […]
The A-Zs of Worldbuilding: Building a Fictional World From Scratch by Rebekah Loper
Though I usually don’t confess what I am about to tell you in polite circles, I imagine it will be a badge of honor on Fantasy-Faction: Once upon a time, when Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was still in its first edition, I was a Dungeon Master. One of the greatest joys of being Dungeon Master, […]
Taming MICE – The MICE Quotient and Storytelling
Fantasy is a genre of strange and diverse stories covering countless themes, concepts and ideas, in order to gain a better understanding of how our stories work and the nature of their structure, it can be useful to look at the ways they are categorised and study what traits make them what they are. The […]
Reaching Outside the Genre
The fantasy genre is a curious beast, its wide reach covering a range of topics and themes. It has stories about growing up, stories about overcoming problems, stories about slaying dragons and monsters. It’s not limited by location, ideas, character types, or any of the other criteria we normally use to define a genre. In […]
The Problem with Abandoning the “Strong Female Character”
Yet another descriptor has been caught in the verboten term net. Recently, several essays have appeared arguing that people should stop using the term “strong female character” (SFC) or “strong female protagonist” because a) The SFC has become just another trope in speculative fiction, providing authors with another cardboard token with which to people their […]
