The primary duty of literature is to tell us the truth about ourselves by telling us lies about people who never existed. ~Stephen King
Introduction Last time, we discussed how location impacts the societies you’re building for your world. This week, on Saturday Setup, we’re going to talk about how culture-unique factors can also affect your world and its societies. Culture has a very obvious impact on society, one that most of us probably understand more readily than we… Continue reading Saturday Setups: Building Societies – Culture-Unique Factors
Introduction Any discussion of creatures and fantasy would be totally remiss if I didn’t cover creating your own creatures. After all, while we’ve got a plethora of well-established fantasy creatures, creating your own is one really fun way to put a unique spin on your world, and plenty of authors do it. There’s a variety… Continue reading Saturday Setup: Creatures – Creating Your Own
Introduction Last time, on Saturday Setups, we talked about different systems of magic. This week, we’re going to talk about the effect of magic on development. This is quite an expansive topic, and I could give many, many examples. But I’ll do my best to keep it short and to the point. The concepts and… Continue reading Saturday Setup – Magic: Effects on Development
I recently finished listening to The Vine Witch on Audible. It was a great listen and a wonderfully written fantasy novel. This is the first fantasy novel I’ve reviewed on here that wasn’t by request too, actually. As always, I’ll start with the reader’s review and then go into the writer’s review. Don’t read the… Continue reading The Vine Witch: Integration of Magic
Introduction This seemed like a fitting place to begin a new series on Thursday Technicalities since we talk about world building tools on Saturday Setups and since I was just discussing where I learned most of what I know in my newsletter this week. So, yes, we’re going to talk about more world building tools,… Continue reading Thursday Technicalities: World Building Tools – Weaving Together Plot and World
It’s been quite a while since I’ve done a review on here. In fact, I haven’t done one since the first one I did for Hunter by Joanna White. (If you haven’t read that yet, you can read it here.) As with the review of Hunter, I’m going to split my review into two sections.… Continue reading Shifter – A Lesson In Story Building