Sieges and Siegecraft – Part One: Attackers
Aaron Miles
Throughout the bloody pages of innumerable fantasy books there are countless examples of the siege in fiction. From epic wars that last for years to brutal assaults that are swift…
Writing
Scrivener for iOS
Adrian Faulkner
Picture this. You’re sitting on your own in the doctor’s surgery and they are running 30 minutes late. Or there’s been some signalling failure and your train home is at…
Society in Story
There are a number of elements fantasy writers focus on during worldbuilding, traditionally they pour over decisions like mapping locations, designing a magic system and setting empires/species against one another…
Romance in Fantasy – Part One
Amy Rose Davis
I’ve said it before: I write romantic fantasy. I never start out a story intending to write romance, but somehow, romantic threads always show up. I used to fight this…
Top Ten Books To Improve Your Writing
A likely first stop on the journey of any aspiring writer is the purchase of a writing book to teach them about the subject. Often they’re drawn to titles like…
Promoting Your Personality, A.K.A. Marketing For Authors In 2017
Overlord
I stumbled across a Facebook status by an author friend who posted that he was about to start work on the ‘0.01% of being a writer’ that was building his…
The Dreaded Adverb Problem
The poor adverb. No part of speech is more maligned than this little modifier. When authors want to insult each other, what do we do? We accuse each other of…
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,…
Plotting – What Happens Next?
“What happens next” is a question that has the power to freeze a writer’s hand over the keyboard, paralysing them with potential issues. Which route should your characters take? How…
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson: Or… A Search For Heroes
Geoff Matthews
Everyone has a book in them. At least, that’s what they say. I’m not sure who they are, but it is a truism as much as anything else. What if…
Holidays In Fantasy Fiction
With the arrival of the Christmas season I’ve been thinking about the effects of holidays on our lives. The influence of Christmas is incredibly far reaching; I doubt most people…
A Question Of Technology
When people think of the fantasy genre the concept of technology isn’t usually at the forefront of their minds. They’ll be thinking of the magic, the monsters, the castles and…