Recent content by Maunus

Tolkien half-elves have to choose what they want to be. If human mortality is chosen, then one's descendants are human and cannot choose immortality - regardless of Aragorn's elvish ancestry he is 100% human and mortal (though longer lived than most other humans). And Elrond chose to be counted...

I have shapeshifters in my story. What I find problematic about how shapeshifters are usually portrayed is that it is always assumed that their default form is humanoid - and indeed that they have a default form. This seems necessary to solve the problem of identity in stories - you have to know...

How about destruction by recurring tsunamis?

This is wrong in its entirety. Exercising judgement about what one things may be offensive to a group of potential readers, does not take away any control from anyone, nor does it remove anyone's autonomy. And stereotypes come exactly from a failure to consider whether one's own ideas are...

I have only two POV characters, and chapters alternate between their POVs. I remember liking the POV switching when I read Kate Elliot's Crown of Stards series - but also feeling it got a little weird, and losing interest in some plotlines because I liked one POV character less then another. So...

Fear of offending is a very good reason to self-censor. Probably the only good reason to do so, I would say. One of the very foundations of society, I would say. Offending people is not always to be avoided, but it is best that it be done deliberately and with intention and with a good...

Yeah, that is really difficult. I found out as I was writing that my story was too long for one book, so I had to break it down into smaller pieces that can basically stand alone. But I am struggling with how to make sure that the reader is both satisfied, but also interested in reading the...

Yeah, I wouldn't put it off that far. I wouldn't wait untill they are all finished - just untill I have done the edits I have already planned on the first one. I need about four more chapters, before the first one is finished and I start revising. I am really looking forward to hearing comments.

It is interesting for example how Arthurian inspired fantasy basically reinvents early Iron age Britain as a feudal high medieval society - when really it was something very different. This is of course because the early Arthurian writers wrote during the high middle ages and imagined the past...

I definitely plan to... eventually. Right now I have a lot of edits planned for the first part of the book, that I am not going to do untill I finish the last part. And I don't think I will put it up untill I finish that second series of edits. The thing is the story I had planned became too...

I am a linguist working professionally with language change. Some languages change a lot over 1000 years - enough to be mutually unintelligble, others change very little. Whether the change is quick or slow seems to depend mostly on whether society changes a whole lot or a little in the period...

I use the bronze-iron age transition, I think this just a really interesting period in Europe - and most fantasy seems to be more in a high to late medieval type setting.

To me writing fantasy is participating in a narrative tradition with roots in pre-modern times, and the narrative tradition I see myself as participating in a european narrative tradition, which is why I think setting the stories in pre-modern Europe makes sense. I try very much to make my story...

Hi Scribes I am well into my first fantasy novel at this point, but I am hoping to learn more about writing, and to be able to share it and give and receive friendly critique. My story is set in a mythologized early Iron Age Ireland, just as the elves are leaving the isle, and human clans are...