Recent content by Jorunn

Unicorns that aren't exactly unicorns. For instance, the karkadann. Sure it's essentially a rhinoceros but the idea of a foul tempered lumpy gray unicorn has potential for humor and fun! I also quite like the Qilin, and I have them in human form in my current WiP. I haven't seen many fantasy...

I'm diving in to NaNo for the fifth (?) time. I've only made real progress once, though, and had a great time doing it (I ended up with 50k of groundwork for a YA quest story). I've been planning all month and I feel like I can't plan anymore until I start actually writing. I've decided to go...

I think this is MASSIVELY overlooked in fantasy. When you even just dip your toes into "ancient" history you find out just how much contact various cultures had with one another. The way history is taught (in the US anyway) is unfortunate in that it fosters this idea that cultures existed in...

This is always a big question for me. In some worlds, the gods are very real and they can drop by for tea and shenanigans if the mood takes them. Those are more of a "classical" pantheon in that they have a physical existence and new ones only come about by being born of other gods. I have...

The main worry I run into with character names specifically is whether they are linguistically consistent with each other. Do they sound like they could come from the same language? And then I wonder how much that matters, because as much as I admire The Professor, I am not a linguist and...

I've been letting all this marinate over the last few days while cooking hobbit food... Sister A is gifted, a fixture of her community, and very content with her life but an emergent healing ability forces her to leave home for training. She initially wants to just get on with the bare minimum...

I've been pouring over this thread and the linked resources as this is the exact trouble I'm having with my current WIP. The difficulty is I have two MCs who each have their own goals and two ominous overarching threats/conflicts that will be resolved over the course of what is currently...

Oh, man I had a dream like that some years back. I was being initiated into some sort of secret society by a particularly unpleasant ex, the mission of which I never remembered after the dream. It was dark and raining the entire dream. We had flown to a formerly Soviet country, kidnapped a man...

I may give that a shot, actually. If I plan to work on A for a week and then B for a week it might help keep things a little more organized up here!

A lot of the time mine will show up with a defining trait or two and a couple of facts about themselves and their situation, and I build out from that keeping the trajectory of their story in mind. What sort of person would make the choices that lead them on that path? Something I did with my...

Too many ideas, not enough time (or so it feels). Since leaving college I've had a serious inability to stay focused on one story long enough to make any real progress, let alone finish a draft. I will be writing along for several weeks and then my train of creative thought gets derailed by a...

Why, yes, I believe we are quite similar! I've pretty much accepted the fact that if I do ever become published I will not be described as "prolific". :p I usually know when I have enough of a world to be getting on with, the trouble comes after I start writing and cool ideas present...

Geopoet...I love that. In that case I was struck by geopoetry the summer between 7th and 8th grade, when I read The Silmarillion for the first time. I was stunned by the depth of it, and the idea that the stories only existed because Tolkien needed speakers for his languages, and a history in...

Yes, merfolk! I'm wading in to the Age of Sail story for one of my worlds and I haven't come up with a good way to include merfolk yet. One of the main deities is sometimes depicted as a mermaid, but I'm not sure yet if they exist on their own. I need to do research!

I always enjoy a clever, non-violent solution to a conflict as long as it makes sense. Even without Good vs Evil, conflicts can be bitter. They can also be way more interesting than cosmic G v. E. When you're dealing with "my way of life vs. your way of life" like Saigonnus said, I think you...