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…
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40 years of experience in creative and commercial writing. Find posts on writing, editing, style, grammar and related topics of interest to writers.
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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Useless 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…
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Continuity in writing is important to me. Maybe obsessively so. I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I catch continuity errors in my own work, I cringe. I mean, writers are supposed to be…
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