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.…
plotting
As I Learn: How Your Story-Beast Moves
Gibril Kerefah
In the wild, lions live and hunt in prides. An adult male can weigh as much as 200 kg (mostly muscle), and an adult female can reach top speeds of…
As I Learn: Or Why I Stopped Calling Myself A Pantser
Do you already know what type of writer you are? You may call yourself a discovery writer, an outliner or a mixture of both. We traditionally think of discovery writers,…
Character Development: Character Death and the Ultimate Sacrifice
Carlyn Atkinson
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…
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…
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…
Knocking People Out: Easier In Fiction Than In Real Life
Nicola Alter
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…
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.…
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…
Swinging the Scythe
Death is an essential part of many of our stories, whether it’s just the threat of it to provide peril for our protagonists, or having some of the characters actually…
The Pros and Cons of a Macro Timescale
Most fantasy and science fiction series tend to be, by their very nature, large in scope. We expect stories about the fate of worlds, the rise and fall of empires,…
Tabletop Tuesday: Player Characters Keep It Interesting
Trent Cannon
Not long ago, I wrote about how important it is to be able to improvise when running a tabletop roleplaying game, whether the genre is fantasy, sci-fi, or something altogether…