Have you ever read a book where every character sounds the same? How about one where the main character has a set of beliefs that they work into...
writing style
Never Made it Out of the Shire (Pacing in Fantasy)
The Lord of the Rings is a seminal work of fantasy, but if it suffers from a fault, that fault would be pacing. For those who have read it, how long...
Grey Characters: No Moral Absolutes
One of the comments I get about my books is that all the characters are grey. That means that you can't just plunk a black or white hat on them and...
7 Female Love Interests
Note: This is regarding female love interests for male characters. There are many potential relationship pairings, and to keep things simple,...
4 Ways to Measure in Fantasy
How much? How far? How Heavy? How long? You've taken your readers into a brand new world, painted landscapes and cities with your prose, and devised...
7 Deadly Sins of Fantasy Writing
Writers make mistakes. They're human after all, and that's why there are editors. Some transgressions go beyond mere mistake, however, and reach the...
Off-Camera Antics
Books and movies share a common element in storytelling: Point of View. The camera or the narrator of a scene (whether it be a character or a third...
One-Word Metaphors: Stretching Words to Their Limits
"The waves lapped the sandy shore. Overhead, the stars twinkled cheerily. A bank of clouds rolled in and a driving rain chased us from the beach. We...
Whimsy or Physics? The Hidden Rules of Magic
Magic is one of the defining characteristics of fantasy. Whether you are looking at "high" or "low" magic, it's going to be in there somewhere (I'm...
Write Like a Bulldozer
There is a direction that bulldozers go. That direction is called "forward". When you consider vehicles that can look to a point some ways off and...
Villains
In response to my "7 Types of Heroes" blog, someone suggested that I take a look at villains as well. That got me thinking about just what it takes...
Earth: A Failure of World-Building
There are many elements that go into making a world fit for fantasy storytelling. World-building is a skill any good fantasy writer needs to...
Speech: The High Road and the Low Road
You hear a voice over the phone, a complete stranger. Within moments there are a lot of things you can tell about that person on the other end, even...
Amateur Cartography: the Duty of the Fantasy Author
View a larger version of the map From the Shire to Mordor, the Wall to King's Landing and every journey in between, readers have been dragged hither...
A Storm is Coming: Weather in Fiction
I sit here at the time I write this, being buried beneath the snows of winter storm Nemo. This No-Name storm got me thinking about weather in a more...
The Breadcrumbs Method
Anyone I've talked to about writing has heard this one before. When I write, I lay out a trail of breadcrumbs as I go. When Hansel and Gretel did...