Writer's craft

Fantasy literature is a niche in the publishing market but it has spawned a rather larger industry online: the myriad websites, agencies and resourceful individuals that promise to guide you through the process of creation, from inspirational beginnings to successful outcomes. These various agencies hold out the promise that you are not alone in your ivory tower - help is at hand.
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One of the more basic options - or quandaries if that's how you see it - in writing a novel is whether you write in the first or third person (I know; in theory you can write in the second person too but examples are few and far between). The question of point of view (POV) is not quite as straightforward as it might seem; there are advantages and pitfalls in every choice.  Read more

‘A memory,' writes Edward de Bono, ‘is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen.' Not the most romantic view of it, perhaps (for that you might want to read Proust or Cicero) but de Bono is pointing to something elusive about the past that is worth thinking about.  Read more

Your world is constructed: you have a comprehensive setting, a cast of characters (human and/or otherwise), and a plot ready to launch. You come to the first lines of dialogue in the story; how do your characters speak? In this article I'll look at some useful strategies, and some of the pitfalls, involved in fantasy dialogue.  Read more

An elf, a dwarf and a goblin walk into a tavern: no, that's not the first line of a terrible joke. All too often, however, it is the default setting for fantasy literature; a convention that, from some angles, rather resembles a cliché. In this article I'll examine some of the pros and cons of having non-human characters and how they affect your worldbuilding.  Read more