This article is by Autumn M. Birt.
Have you read a classic novel recently?
Or maybe have a child/nephew/cousin reading one of the touted best of the best in school? Something like Moby Dick or Ivanhoe, maybe even Pride and Prejudice or Wuthering Heights.
If so, have you heard them complain about being bogged down in description?
Ever wonder how armies of tens of thousands of men spring up from the ground overnight like weeds?
How these weedy men go clickity-clank across the landscape with few troubles?
Do you question the ability of a feudal society to maintain said massive weed crops which they throw willy-nilly to the wind against one another?
For me I think that actual weeds have the decency to drain the land of its resources. I do not see any gardening of any sort go on in many of today’s fantasy stories that involve large scale warfare. No one is watering these things, feeding them the nutrients they need to batter down the other bigger weeds in their way.
As a fantasy writer, you’re likely to create new and fascinating worlds for your stories to take place in. You have entirely new races, and their cultures and histories date back thousands of years.
You have gods and religions, dragons and monsters, heroes and villains. You have magic.
In short, you have a world.
Now it’s time to bring it to life.
Sure, the story is the important bit, but having your story take place in a living, breathing world just adds to the magic – and isn’t that part of the allure of reading and writing fantasy?
A while back, I came across the following question:
How do you write so much dialogue without it getting boring?
Conversations and dialogue are perhaps the biggest parts of my stories. It’s where things happen – in the interaction between the characters. I write a lot of conversations, and I’ve put a fair bit of thought into how I do it and how to make them work.
This article is split into three parts. First, I’ll mention some general advice that I’ve found to be helpful. Next, I’ll explain the method I’m using. Finally, I’ll go through an example of a conversation I created using this method.
This article is by Daniel Adorno.
As a fantasy and scifi geek, the settings I choose for my stories are always quite imaginative. I want to transport the reader to some distant planet outside of our galaxy. Or to a magical realm with a deep history and interesting creatures like centaurs or wyverns flying around. It’s the fun stuff that comes with being a speculative author: worldbuilding.
Unlike realistic genres like thrillers, crime, and romance, the environments in fantasy and science fiction novels are very important. They’re almost another character in the story.
This is the second part of my Beginner’s Guide to Writing Descriptions. The first part can be found here.
In this part of the guide I’m relying heavily on the belief that the best images and the strongest impressions we get from stories are those we create in our own minds.
I’m sure there are exceptions to this – as with all rules – but for the purpose of this guide, I’ve chosen not to dwell on that. If you have a good example of an exception though, please share it in the comments.
The guide is divided into three parts:
Now and then – both on the forums here on Mythic Scribes and elsewhere – I come across the question about how to write descriptions. This guide is meant as an introduction for beginners and will start with the very basics on how to set up, and write, a description of something.
In this part I will touch upon three things:
This guide is based on personal opinions and experience. These are not rules for how to write descriptions, but rather an explanation of what works for me.
This article is by Duncan McGeary.
I’ve never subscribed to the notion that one must “write about what you know.”
I mean, what do I know about a wild pig apocalypses? Or vampires who evolve? Or Donner Party werewolves? Or Bigfoot and gold miners?
This stuff is spun out of my imagination, and even when I research, I like to have the basics correct while I allow my ingenuity to create the rest.
But I see no reason why I can’t set my stories in places I know, as much as possible.