This article is by Autumn M. Birt. Have you read a classic novel recently? Or maybe have a child/nephew/cousin reading one of the touted best of the best in school? Something like Moby Dick or Ivanhoe, maybe even Pride and Prejudice or Wuthering Heights. If so, have you heard them complain about being bogged down … Read more
Ever wonder how armies of tens of thousands of men spring up from the ground overnight like weeds? How these weedy men go clickity-clank across the landscape with few troubles? Do you question the ability of a feudal society to maintain said massive weed crops which they throw willy-nilly to the wind against one another? … Read more
As a fantasy writer, you’re likely to create new and fascinating worlds for your stories to take place in. You have entirely new races, and their cultures and histories date back thousands of years. You have gods and religions, dragons and monsters, heroes and villains. You have magic. In short, you have a world. Now … Read more
A while back, I came across the following question: How do you write so much dialogue without it getting boring? Conversations and dialogue are perhaps the biggest parts of my stories. It’s where things happen – in the interaction between the characters. I write a lot of conversations, and I’ve put a fair bit of … Read more
This article is by Daniel Adorno. As a fantasy and scifi geek, the settings I choose for my stories are always quite imaginative. I want to transport the reader to some distant planet outside of our galaxy. Or to a magical realm with a deep history and interesting creatures like centaurs or wyverns flying around. … Read more
This is the second part of my Beginner’s Guide to Writing Descriptions. The first part can be found here. In this part of the guide I’m relying heavily on the belief that the best images and the strongest impressions we get from stories are those we create in our own minds. I’m sure there are … Read more
Now and then – both on the forums here on Mythic Scribes and elsewhere – I come across the question about how to write descriptions. This guide is meant as an introduction for beginners and will start with the very basics on how to set up, and write, a description of something. In this part … Read more
This article is by Duncan McGeary. I’ve never subscribed to the notion that one must “write about what you know.” I mean, what do I know about a wild pig apocalypses? Or vampires who evolve? Or Donner Party werewolves? Or Bigfoot and gold miners? This stuff is spun out of my imagination, and even when … Read more
This article is by Jacob Gralnick. How do you convey an entire idea, feeling, or characteristic without saying a word? The same way you can foreshadow a future event in subtle passing, and you can do that with a little nifty thing called symbolism. Used correctly, and at the right time, symbolism can add meaning … Read more
Surprising a reader requires that an author think differently from others. As I mentioned in my previous article, being creative means finding new material to trigger ideas in your mind, or digging deeper for ideas in the material you have. But when I showed my post to my wife, she referred to it as the … Read more