Creating a Fantasy Race
Aaron Miles
The fantasy genre is filled with an astonishing array of wildly different races that populate our stories. Some are drawn from older myths and legends like elves and dwarfs while…
worldbuilding
Worldbuilding Round Table with Jonathan French, Alec Hutson, and Phil Tucker
JC Kang
Of the fantasy books I have read this year, three of my favorites have been Alec Hutson’s Crimson Queen, Jonathan French’s The Grey Bastards (winner of SPFBO 2016), and Phil…
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…
The Creatures We Base Aliens On
Nicola Alter
One of the interesting things about fictional aliens is that they’re almost never completely alien. We have no real idea what extra-terrestrials would look like, and it’s nigh impossible to…
Worlds Within Worlds – Part Four: Old Grey Beards
Christopher Mahon
If you ask someone on the street to name the first three wizards that come to mind, you’ll probably hear the names Gandalf, Merlin, and Dumbledore (or Rincewind, if they’re…
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,…
Worlds Within Worlds – Part One: Writing a Good Game into a Good Book
T. Eric Bakutis
Humanity has played games for as long as we’ve been able to make up rules and keep score. As we’ve developed as a species, we’ve created thousands of games, and…
Top 10 Things To Do in a Fictional Castle
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…
Wading in the Cultural Shallows: How Irish Mythology Became A Commodity for Fantasy
Brian O'Sullivan
One night at a party I was introduced to a woman who proudly informed told me she’d named her baby daughter ‘Banshee’ in celebration of her Irish heritage. Even at…
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
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…
Worlds Within Worlds – Part One: Creating Texts for Secondary Worlds
The stories of H. P. Lovecraft are filled with references to all kinds of bizarre, ancient books, some fictional, some real: Abdul Alhazred’s Necronomicon, the Pnakotic Manuscripts, Trithemius’ Poligraphia, Giambattista…