Write What You Know?
A common piece of writing advice is ‘write what you know.’ But what I know, I don’t want to write about. Much better to make it up.
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Setting
The Role of Speculative Fiction
With wide appeal and a long history, just what is the role of speculative fiction?
To use a definition from Masterclass:
Speculative fiction is a literary ‘super genre,’ …with speculative elements that are based on conjecture and do not exist in the real world.
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History, Historical Fiction and Fantasy: What Gives?
If history is stuff that happened, and fantasy is stuff somebody made up, then what’s historical fiction? History, historical fiction and fantasy: what gives?
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History, Historical Fiction and Fantasy: What Gives?Read More »
Ten-step Fictional Empire-builders’ Checklist
What goes onto our fictional empire-builders’ checklist? This is where essential world-building for culture and setting begins.
In the current fantasy-fiction challenge, our protagonist is in revolt against the Evil Empire de Jour. With inspiration from the Mythcreants blog, here’s a ten-step questionnaire for creating detailed and credible Imperial powers.
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Fantasy Genre Tropes We Love and Hate
I’ve been challenged to write an epic fantasy genre story, so I’m reading a lot of current fantasy fiction. It varies from ‘meh’ to ‘aarrrgghh!’ not only for the quality of the writing, but the vast number of fantasy genre tropes we love and hate.
A trope is any type of figure of speech, theme, image, character, or plot element that is used many times. All genres have them, but the fantasy genre is piled higher than Khazad Dum (too geeky already?).
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The Magic in Magical Realism
Proving how certain genres defy definition, here’s my fourth attempt to define the magic in magical realism.
I struggled so much with this, I’m leaning into the Masterclass definition: …
Unreal Reality in Fiction
Ever considered the unreal reality in fiction? Fiction isn’t reality. Contemporary stories and fantasy stories exist in different planes of reality but there’s a lot of gray areas. Philosophers and scientists debate the very nature of reality all the time. What is ‘real?’ …