I talked about plants in the post Creating Fantasy Plants. Now, let talk about creating fantasy animals. Darkness has taken. Its power torments people. Animals and plants slowly evolve to thrive in this dangerous world. In Book 1 of my Merging World series, you learned about glowing plants. You discovered mutated animals in Book 3. In…
While editing my work in progress, I’m noticing I don’t describe most of my settings, at least not well enough for readers to get a good sense of place. You want readers to become so lost in your world that they feel like they’re traveling with your characters. They have to experience the setting through…
While researching why most fantasy novels don’t have modern technology, I found one reason was that people believed it’s tricky balancing magic and technology. One would disprove the other. I’m not talking about Urban Fantasy. I mean fictitious worlds with magic and technology. I understand why most fantasy authors write low-tech settings. Figuring out how…
You have an idea for your awesomely new power system. Now we’re going to discuss writing magical beings. In the last post, Fantasy Powers: How Ideas Are Born, I touched on determining who would be using the power. Diving deeper into this will help make your new power system more believable. You have a magical…
What happened to the power? Fantasy stories today have a lot less magic. That’s fine. But, I like giving my characters special powers. I like that those powers have a key role in the story. Give me memorable characters with awesome abilities. How does someone come up with a power system from scratch? This is…
As you know, I pull a lot of inspiration for my stories from anime, especially powers, character features and weapons. Now, it’s time for anime weapons. I don’t simply mean how they operate. I mean how they look. Anime has some of the most creative-looking weapons and they usually have names and personalities. 1. Scythe Scythes in…
As if naming our characters wasn’t hard enough. On top of that, we have to name lands, buildings, foods, cultures, mountains even treaties and wars. The list goes on and on. Here’s your guide on how to name a fantasy world. 1. Pay attention to everything around you. You may come across a perfect name in a restaurant sign…
For the moment, I’ve stopped working on my second novel, as often, to focus on filling the holes in my world. I’m finding Powers to be the hardest part of World Building. It’s so complicated. I’ve been trying to find some way of organizing information to help me visualize it. Outside of putting it on…
