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 shaped…
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The whole smash! This is every article on every topic sorted into date order and unconnected from the category sort. This is just a sorting view without attempt to classify anything. Without the categories you could sort them how you like, I suppose.
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 avoid…
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Fantasy tropes – love them, hate them, make them your bitch 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…
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Reading and smelling books by an unashamed serial bookworm Reading is a sensual experience to me. Yes, I smell the paperbacks and hard cover books I read. Don’t you? The smell of them comes from the breakdown of the chemical…
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Druid tools are items of mysterious purpose both to our modern understanding and to non-Druids in the past. Since the actual Druids never documented their practices, it’s tough to know the real or exact purpose for some of the Druid…
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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 delivered,…
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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 into…
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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 should…
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Upping my game this past year or so involved creating associations I never braved before. And most of them had some sort of “interview” component that included wanting to know about my writing process. Y’know, so people can get to…
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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. Removing…
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