And We’re Walking: Making Travel in Fantasy More Interesting
Kellie Doherty
What can you do as a writer to make the travel experience more interesting?
setting
You Are Writing Medieval Fantasy Wrong
Richard Marpole
*Disclaimer* This is not an academic essay. It’s a series of very shallow cuts that completely fails to delve into the complex histories it touches upon. It bounces around the…
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…
Temporal Anomalies: Timekeeping in Fantasy
A. M. Justice
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…
Taming MICE – The MICE Quotient and Storytelling
Aaron Miles
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…
Monthly Short Stories Winner: Water
Xiagan
This month we asked for stories, where water of any kind was a key element. It didn’t matter if it was a stormy sea, a misty lake, a polluted river,…
Trees in Fantasy – Part One: Trees as Symbols
Steff Humm
Magic in fantasy, myth and legend usually occurs as a natural phenomenon, with its own place in the world of the story outside of what is created by mankind and…
A Monster’s Place
The terrifying monster has been a staple of the fantasy genre since its earliest origins, when bards told tales around a fire at the dawn of time. They frightened listeners…
Tough Travels: Strongholds
Laura M. Hughes
At the start of every month, Fantasy-Faction will lead you (yes, YOU!) on a tour of the fantasy genre. From high to low, from classics to new releases, from epic…
Top 10 Things To Do in a Fictional Castle
Nicola Alter
For those of us who like a touch of the magical and the medieval, nothing quite beats a visit to a fictional castle. But with all those trap doors, winding…
Is This Normal Around Here?
So you get home to your enchanted castle, hand your coat to the golem butler who waits by the door, tut sadly at Markus; the caretaker who’s trying to fill…
Exploring Vvardenfell: How Morrowind Created an Immersive Secondary World
Christopher Mahon
Back in 2012, I was sitting with a group of fantasy writers at the PNWA conference in Seattle. Everyone had begun rolling off their favorite authors, and soon there were…