Last week’s post looked at worldbuilding in general and why it’s so important to have a well-developed setting as it is the foundation on which the story is built. It’s critical to have well-rounded, convincing characters, and it’s just as critical to have a developed, convincing world. Today’s post is digging in more to take…
Category: Writing Tips
Fantasy Worldbuilding Part 1: Why Worldbuilding is Important
Worldbuilding seems to be either every writer’s bane or boon. Its importance is often underestimated and incorporation of it into a story is sometimes completely abandoned. Yet worldbuilding needs just as much development as your plot and characters do––your story and the people in your story constantly engage with the setting.
Why Taking Breaks from Writing is Important
Taking breaks is important. As mortal Earthlings, moderation with everything is vital; we can’t handle too much of anything. This is why we sleep at night. This is why we take breaks at work. This is why we take school breaks during the summer and Christmas time. And this is also why we should take breaks…
Realism and Antirealism in Writing
As a writer, I draw upon realism to create antirealistic worlds. As a reader, I have to accept truth on different terms when I immerse myself in a book and believe in the fantastical world the story is about. Versimilitude is the appearance of being real or true. It’s important when it comes to both…
3 Writing Exercises with Music
Sometimes you need to take a break from your main writing project. Spending all your writing time on just one project can get overwhelming and you might notice that your coffee fuel starts draining faster the longer and more often you spend working on one particular story. When it comes to my writing for Fiction’s…
Writing Main and Secondary Characters
A few days ago, I ran a poll on Twitter, asking fellow readers and writers what kind of characters make up the majority of their favorite characters. 32% voted “Protagonists/MCs,” 15% voted “Antagonists,” and 53% voted “Secondary characters.”
Preparing to Kill Your Darlings: 4 Questions to Ask Yourself
Well, it’s time to kill a character, you say. Wait! Stop! First, identify your reasons. If you’re killing simply because you’re frantic for some impact or looking for a way to get your readers to respond to your story emotionally (just ’cause you do, usually doesn’t mean they will), or if you’ve hit writer’s block…
Fixing Tropes in Fantasy Fiction
The Google dictionary defines the fantasy genre as “a genre of imaginative fiction involving magic and adventure, especially in a setting other than the real world.” With fantasy, you have freedom. You can make whatever you want possible. You can create your own worlds, your own species, your own rules and laws. And yet, fantasy…
Writing with Word Count Goals: Pros and Cons
If you’re a writer, you may at some point have set a word count goal for a story you were writing. If you’ve ever been a NaNoWriMo participant, you know the real struggle and pain and the hard-earned reward at the end of the month once you finally reach 50K. Sometimes writing for word count…
Psychology, People, and Personalities in Writing
Psychology has always been a fascinating subject of study and scrutiny for me. Only last week I identified the source of frustration I constantly felt about people: I just want to understand them. What goes in each of their little minds that causes them to do, say, act, feel? What thoughts and emotions and beliefs…
7 Tips on Creating a Complex Antagonist
When I first developed my story for Netherworld, I just created a villain simply so that my protagonist had some evil to fight against. But when I started questioning my villain’s motives, I realized that to have a full story, it is crucial to develop the villain because that’s the crux of the problems that create…
Ambience Sounds for Writing Fantasy + Playlists
If you’ve been following my blog for a good while, you may have noticed that I like to talk a lot about listening to film scores while writing and how the emotions composed specifically for movie scenes could also be used while writing similar scenes in your story. Up until a few days ago, however,…
Plot Bunnies and What to Do With Them
The amount of time that has passed since I last wrote a blog post didn’t really hit me until I noticed the age of my featured post. Now, (a month and a half later) I decided to get my act together and delve back into the groove of posting on the blog weekly. Starting with something…
Aesthetic Boards for Writers: A Guest Post by Harley Rae
This is Susannah, jumping in really quick to introduce this guest post by Harley Rae. I have been ridiculously busy in the last several weeks, what with school, musical theater, etc. that I haven’t been able to post for a long time. Thankfully, the amazing human Harley was willing to lighten the burden of this…
11 Tips for Character Development
Your plot is ready to go. You have a protagonist, an antagonist, a secondary character, an old mentor, a love interest, a traitor, an opposed parent, a jealous sibling, and an intelligent talking horse named Phillip. Hopefully, by the time you sit down to start writing the first chapter of your first draft, you have a…
TEA WITH TUMNUS 