Writing

There are more things in the world than folk, and there are more things in a novel than characters. The world you build for a fantasy setting should give the reader a sense of completeness, and consistency; this means that you should pay attention to the smaller, peripheral elements as well as the main characters and events.  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

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Culture is a slippery concept; it's one of those terms we all know the meaning of until we actually think about it. For the writer, culture can be a two-edged sword: ignore it and your story lacks depth, colour and context; focus too much on it and you risk bamboozling - or worse, boring - your reader into putting the book down.  Read more

Pretty much every time I pick up a fantasy novel and begin to read, the first thing I encounter is a map, or a series of maps, laying out the whole world, the country or city where the main action takes place, two or more separate (and often belligerent) locations, or all of the above. It has become a convention of fantasy literature and, I tend to think, is often rather less use to t  Read more