Recent content by SergeiMeranov

If you're talking about Lord of the Rings the answer is "Hesitantly Yes". Saying the Lord of the Rings is a good book is a bit like saying Citizen Kane is a good movie. They were revolutionary in their time and had a large impact on their fields but at the end of the day you're still reading a...

My immediate reaction was the Powder Mage trilogy did this, but upon reflection they tended to use magic as more of a "buff" than outright spell casting. At least that's my memory of the series. I do know that they heavily incorporated magic use into the regular military though. It might be a...

This article by Philip Athans is a good discussion of part of how I approach villains or what I like about good villains. I think the general key is to avoid mustache twirlers. People that are evil for the sake of being evil. That's really only well suited to psychopathic villains and...

I'd echo what seems to be the resounding chorus of people here to argue that it's mostly a discipline thing. I say this as a rather undisciplined person when it comes to my writing: There is no secret sauce or technique or method that is going to just suddenly make words pour out of you. It's...

On some level I think this is mostly a pedantic argument. If you define Tolkien broadly enough and fantasy narrowly enough you could probably come up with some definitions under which all fantasy is in some way derivative of Tolkien, but what are you really saying when that happens? Is it that...

I tend to not write and/or create many worlds with a significant magical bent to them, but my general considerations fall into two categories: 1) What are the practical, real-world effects this would have on society? In other words, if there are people that exist that can throw fireballs from...

In no particular order of importance, these are the questions I came up with: 1) Why was the Father threatened by his son that craved power? 2) What exactly is magic? If it's a finite resource then what created it? (I know you said it came into the world when the one God died) Where is it...

Skip.knox hit this on the head. I'd say perhaps you're thinking about it in only the partially correct way. Worldbuilding should serve the story, not vice versa. If there's a story purpose behind all this other stuff then there's nothing that would prevent it from working. J.K. Rowling made...

To touch on the character bit, I agree with everyone else that said previously that character tends to set great stories apart despite similar story structure. To me, character is going to be one of those things that's hard to define. Good character, for me, means a character that I can either...

I'd second Demesnedenoir. At the end of the day there is no trick to it. You just need to sit down and write. Touching off something you said, I too frequently worry that what I write down will be absolutely unreadable or terrible or what have you. I think the key is to write anyway. Just...

If you're just looking to create a world, then I find these mapmaking tutorials to be helpful: Link to Map-Making Tutorials for GIMP and Photoshop There is also this: Link to various generators. Though it looks like he took out his medieval world generator. As far as the history or other...

I like to gain a sense based on an actual nation's size. For example, Rome around 117 AD was around 5 million square kilometers or 1.93 million miles square. It occupied around 3% of the total available land on Earth. France, at the end of World War 1, was around 212,000 square miles...

If you read pretty much any book regarding how to write compelling fiction it will address this question. The resounding chorus of answers is to not try to write what is "vogue" because that is a moving target that you're never going to hit. If tomorrow a new vampire series takes off like...

I'd echo the first response in this thread by saying it is really a matter of what serves your story best. If it's important for the reader to slip into the shoes of your viewpoint character than first person seems more appropriate. If it's more important that they identify with what's going...

Thomas is pretty on point. The real answer seems to be "do what feels right to you". I think the only caveat is not to get lost in the weeds. It's really easy for some people (me) to spend a lot of time world building and never get around to the story. Many of the writing books I've read...