Recent content by Peat

DotA nailed it. The stakes always have to be personal, no matter what else lays on the line. You can have someone fight for the fate of the world and to rescue their wife, but you can't have someone fight just for the fate of the world without it feeling off to a great many people. Having both...

Wee story aside, its everything for me. Fantasy is cool. The aesthetics are cool. The mix of myth and history, two things I love, is awesome (although I feel the mix is off these days most times). It is also a great tool for examining reality. Any story can be, but I think fantasy's ability to...

Plus one on this. Is your culture the result of two cultures merging? Or of successive waves of immigration? Or was it a final wave of migration itself and that was the culture all along? If you want a culture to feel alive and real, then it should like part of a process, something that's been...

I'd read a story about the idea but as Skip said, there doesn't appear to be a story there.

The following is a true story. Once upon a time I was dreaming, and in my dream there were three men. One was old and grey with skin like old leather, and one was tall and dark and bearded, and one was young and laughing with hair like butter. All three of them only had one eye, and all three...

Who doesn't? I thought chucking two or more different cultures into a blender was one of the three normal ways to create a fantasy culture (with the other two being to isolate a subculture and expand it, and to transfer cultures across pretty much one to one). Obviously do your research and...

Be careful here. It sounds like your character might be being reactive instead of proactive - constantly being made to stuff rather than choosing to do stuff - and that's classically a good way to lose readers. While situations will undoubtedly play their part in turning the guy into a villain...

I've yet to finish something I'm willing to consider submissible, either in the trad sense or to the public in the form of trade publishing. Hoping to break the duck this year.

I feel a bit like I'm threadcrapping but this... is the heart and soul of it. If something doesn't interest you, don't write it. If you're having to search for reasons to include particularly fantastic elements, which appears to be the case, you're probably better of just not doing so. If I'm...

Late to the party and possibly therefore giving an example that's been made, but the Tamuli by David Eddings is a pretty spot on example of a hero going on a second adventure that leads to enlightenment of a sort (trying to be vague because spoilers).

Also, I'm a big fan of simply stealing a name from things that influenced me/the character in question. Its a nice easter egg. Think things like Lord Jordayne of the Tor in SoIaF

I respond by going uhm and aah and I haven't thought of my elevator pitch yet. That means what I should do is work on my elevator pitch.

Something I'm considering adding to my process after a chat with a friend is limitations. He argues that you've got to know what your characters can't do or otherwise plotting often becomes an exercise in pulling things out of your fundament. Me, I'd expand on the idea. When you start creating...

Amen to this with a side of "I'm real bored of it suddenly all being about saving the entirety of mankind".

People seem to be conflating someone saying "I found this theme within the story" with someone saying "I found this theme in the story and its absolutely definitely what the author intended and is the only way to view the story". The latter is very annoying and untrue. There are plenty of...