Fantasy tropes get a bad rap. Everybody’s used them. None of them are new. And you want to be original, dammit! Popular advice about fantasy tropes Most advice about fantasy tropes is to flat-out avoid them. A perennial topic…
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Needless words, the weak and the pointless words steal power from your writing. We all let them sneak in during the first draft, so don’t panic – you’re not alone. It’s what we do about them later that counts.…
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Story Element Tropes in Fantasy Writing Knowing what we know now, let’s have a look at some fantasy story element tropes and talk out ways to avoid the clichéd version. The bulk of advice about fantasy tropes tells us…
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Plot Tropes in Fantasy Writing This time, let’s get into ways around a clichéd version of a few fantasy plot tropes, so you can take that perspective into any others to help improve your story telling. Again, the bulk of…
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World-Building Tropes in Fantasy Writing Now let’s focus on ways to not regurgitate clichéd version of fantasy world-building tropes to make your story unique. Typical advice around fantasy tropes is to avoid them. However, knowing that all those tropes…
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Character Tropes in Fantasy Writing Let’s think about the ways we might steer clear of rehashing clichéd versions of fantasy character tropes to make your story more interesting and, hopefully, memorable. The usual advice about fantasy tropes is to…
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Reading is a sensual experience to me. Yes, I smell the paperbacks and hard cover books I read. Don’t you? I love the feel of those old cloth book covers on my fingertips. The crackle of a spine. The…
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Druid tools are items of mysterious purpose both to our modern understanding and to non-Druids in the past. Since no Druid practices were ever written down, it’s tough to know the real or exact purpose for some of the…
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What’s a Dialogue Tag? Dialogue tags are narrator interjections, sometimes referred to as attribution, that note who speak the pieces of dialogue in your story. Historically, we were taught that adverbs included in the tags, describing how dialogue is…
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Blood Runner origin – where did this thing come from? So, funny story – I never meant to write Blood Runner at all. Did I mention that before? And due to that, as I’m now working to turn it…
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Magpie of research data that I am, here’s some more of my reference, this time on Egyptian magic. Sad to say, when I scratched down my handwritten notes at the library, I didn’t fully document sources (I know, I…
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