Let’s Make Fantasy Dwarves Interesting!
Richard Marpole
When people think fantasy, they think elves and dwarves (maybe orcs and goblins too). And they think of them in that order. Elves are beautiful, magical, and melancholy (or eerily…
characters
How to Create Fantasy Villains
Kellie Doherty
Fantasy villains. Either you love them or you hate them, but good villains are memorable either way. However, writing good villains is hard! I know. I’ve written two fantasy books…
On Character Voice
As many of you know, I love science fiction. I originally got into sci-fi through the world of television: Star Trek, Stargate, Firefly. Then when I finally dove into reading…
On Character Agency
Aaron Miles
What will a character do next? What can they do next? These are the questions that drive the narrative of a story forward and determine what direction it will follow.…
Worldbuilding Through Characterization
When somebody mentions worldbuilding the first thing you’ll think of is probably a lavishly detailed map, something filled with interesting geography, the locations of important cities, and maybe a dragon…
SFF and Queerness – We Need To Do Better
Leo Elijah Cristea
We’ve just said goodbye to June, month of queer visibility and pride (and gender-nonconforming visibility and pride, too—which many people (but not all) feel belongs under the umbrella of “queer”,…
Taking Comedy Seriously
Toby Frost
From Geoffrey Chaucer to Raymond Chandler—and a lot of people in between—all kinds of writers have used comedy to entertain and inform in their writing. Comedy can form a useful…
Character Development: Writing Realistic Personalities & Flaws
Carlyn Atkinson
This is the second article in our Character Development series. Click here to read the first article: Character Death and the Ultimate Sacrifice. In writing a novel, many authors are…
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…
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…
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…
A Streak of White Hair: Fantasy or Reality?
Nicola Alter
I was recently reading a fantasy romance novel where the main character pushed himself to the limits of his magical abilities and nearly died. Afterward, he was left with a…