Recent content by Bropocalypse

Words are heavy. No matter how much of your world you choose to invent, you should establish just enough to get the reader going. If you start off by describing(for example) one or two fantastic creatures, that will be enough for the reader to understand that what they're seeing isn't the same...

You may consider "noble," "regal," or other adjectives. A title is a TYPE of adjective(more or less) so you may start with those. You generally find more gender-neutral things of this type when it comes to specific duties. You may also consider the fact that some words have lost the potency of...

Sorry, I was operating under the idea of providing it as an alternative to 'gulag,' and that you might have spelled it that way for that reason. I don't think it's common knowledge; most readers would not know the pronunciation. In any case, no information I provide is done so with the...

My stories tend to focus on female characters by default. That is to say it's just the starting point when I invent a character. If I had to give a single reason why, it'd just be out of preference. That said, there really is no such thing as a completely original idea, in the same sense that...

I seem to recall an anthropology professor telling me that when it comes to insults, a common theme across cultures is the insinuation that group X's men are weak and the women are ugly.

I'm not a huge fan of elaborate swearing. I prefer good, old-fashioned curses that we know and love in the real world. They will always have more weight than anything we could invent ourselves.

I have wondered this myself, but I feel that it's an inescapable fact: The meaning of words change constantly, and there is no reason to worry over their usage. In a fantasy setting you may avoid the use of phrase-turns of most type, since they arise from long-forgotten but specific inside...

There is something to be said about the sort of mystical high nobility with which tolkienesque elves are commonly shown. However, I don't think I could personally write elves that way. If I were to write an elfy tale it would feature creatures with the stance and limberness of large gibbons...

I use either, neither, or both at once, depending on what I feel. It can be fun to explore, refine, and reinvent the standard fantasy stock of races, to put new twists on what is commonly depicted or to deconstruct it. It's also fun to invent things from scratch. To make a people from nothing...

Creating a language that has parts that are not understood by the other half of what is otherwise the same group... Normally I would say that is massively infeasible. However, you do have the benefit of not working with humans, here. It wouldn't be beyond reason that with sufficient sexual...