Magical World Builder By, Stephanie Cottrell Bryant <map name="admap78618" id="admap78618"><area href=" shape="rect" coords="0,0,468,60" title="" alt="" target="_blank" /></map><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width:468px;border-style:none;background-color:#ffffff;"><tr><td><img src=" style="width:468px;height:60px;border-style:none;" usemap="#admap78618" alt="" /></td></tr><tr><td style="background-color:#ffffff;" colspan="1"><center><a style="font-size:10px;color:#0000ff;text-decoration:none;line-height:1.2;font-weight:bold;font-family:Tahoma, verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;text-transform: none;letter-spacing:normal;text-shadow:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:normal;" href=" target="_blank">Ads by Project Wonderful! The Magical World Builder's Guide is a tool for creating a fantasy universe.
Story Generator Stories This is a satire. The story is about a disloyal ranger who is stalked by a paladin. This is a pure action story. The story is about a naive CFO, a wizard, a fire fighter, and a focused stylist. This is an escape-from-prison story with an emphasis on the need for self-expression. This is a story about family. This is a tale about alienation and how the invention of man can destroy him. This is an odd-couple-teams-up story. This is a natural disaster with an emphasis on man's need for freedom. This is a horror/drama with a strong theme of trust. This is a tale about the dangers of self-expression.
The Art of Description The Art of Description: Eight Tips to Help You Bring Your Settings to Life by Anne Marble Return to Setting & Description · Print/Mobile-Friendly Version Description is something that gets in the way of many authors. Why? Well, because it's so darn hard to write. And no wonder. If you're not very accomplished at writing description, then sometimes you might want to avoid writing it. At the same time, some writers err in the other direction, including too much description. How bad is bad description? Avoid Huge Lumps of Description In the past, authors could get away with including long, detailed descriptions in their stories. Unless they're seeking out writers known for lyrical descriptive passages, today's readers wouldn't put up with that sort of thing. Of course there are authors who, even in today's marketplace, can get away with pages and pages of description. Make Description an Active Part of the Story How did I come up with that line? Describe What Your Characters Would Notice
Online - Thirty Tools for Writers [Author’s note: Of the many things I’ve written for the Poynter website, none has been as popular as my "Twenty Tools for Writers." This list has been quoted, cited, praised, debated, and repurposed by writers, editors, teachers, and other professionals who care about the craft. That folks find these tools useful gives me courage. As you can see, I’m very impressed with myself. At times it helps to think of writing as carpentry. Below is a list of 30 writing and revising tools. Sentences and Paragraphs 1. 2. 3. 4. Language 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Effects 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. Structure 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. The Writing Life 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. This list contains tools, not rules. Tags: Writing tips and techniques
Creating the Perfect Setting - Part I It was a dark and stormy night... This is one of the most ridiculed openings, not because once upon a time it didn't work, but because too many people have written their own version of it. And yet setting, the weather, landscape, the opening scene, can often lay out the feel and tone of a book brilliantly, and create an instant context, often a time-stamp, a fixed point which helps the reader find the correct emotional stance to absorb the work. The first I heard of the beach was in Bangkok, on the Khao San Road. Khao San Road was backpacker land. Note here that we don't just get setting but also information, some explicit, but a lot implicit. As David Lodge pointed out in The Art of Fiction, a distinctive sense of place was not always a feature of prose fiction. Unfortunately, the first thing some writers did was to overwhelm the reader with masses of descriptive detail, often using description only as a warm-up to the rest of the book. Fog everywhere. Writers have to think of setting.
Fantasy writing tips, how to write a fantasy novel, creative wri Sign up to my mailing list, and choose a FREE EBOOK as a gift. Join here. A Creative Writing Ebook AVAILABLE NOW from $0.99 Creating a Believable World By Sharon Caseburg One of the greatest difficulties Speculative Fiction authors experience when writing stories in this genre is in their ability to provide a believable environment for their readers. Any kind of speculative fiction, whether it be hard-core Science Fiction, Time Travel, Horror, or Fantasy requires readers to put aside the conventions they have become accustomed to in the “real world” for the world the author presents in the story. This of course holds true for speculative romance stories as well. For the most part, readers of these genres are more than willing to put aside the customs of the world they live in, for the environment the author has created. However, when the author does not provide a believable realm, readers can easily become disenchanted with both the author’s world and in turn, the story itself. Basically, this translates to the more the author knows about the world he or she is creating, the more confidently the author can write about it.
25 Insights on Becoming a Better Writer When George Plimpton asked Ernest Hemingway what the best training for an aspiring writer would be in a 1954 interview, Hem replied, “Let’s say that he should go out and hang himself because he finds that writing well is impossibly difficult. Then he should be cut down without mercy and forced by his own self to write as well as he can for the rest of his life. At least he will have the story of the hanging to commence with.” Today, writing well is more important than ever. So what can we do to improve our writing short of hanging ourselves? 1. Don’t just plan to write—write. 2. [The] Resistance knows that the longer we noodle around “getting ready,” the more time and opportunity we’ll have to sabotage ourselves. 3. Find your best time of the day for writing and write. 4. Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet. 5. Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. 6. 7. Hone your outline and then cling to it as a lifeline. 8. 9.
www.aliciarasley.com/artset.htm Copyright 1999 by Alicia Rasley Here is a quick exercise to help you explore your protagonist's relationship with the setting. Just free-write on the questions. 1. The plot requires a city exploding with growth, as real-estate development plays a role in the story. 2. Meggie is from the east, a working class town like Hartford. 3. A mover and shaker might have been born into a powerful family, or clawed the way up from the lower class. Meggie moved here when she married. 4. I think she's going to decide she has to invest herself in the place. 5. This is a pretty circumscribed place. 6. I think the old-money vs. new-money aspect would interest an outsider. 7. The basic family unit is either the two-income couple, maybe with kids, and the single mom. 8. No doubt about it- money matters in this town. 9. Meggie's overriding goal is to solve the murder. 10. Meggie must eventually either commit to this place as her home, or decide to make her home elsewhere. Go to previous articles:
Maps Workshop — Developing the Fictional World through Mapping Most of the books I’ve written have started with a map. Not with an idea, or a character, or a theme. With a hand-drawn map, doodled out first while I was sitting and keeping someone else company, or while I was on break, or when I couldn’t think of what to write and had no ideas to speak of and knew that if I drew a map something would come to me. If you want specific titles of books that began as maps, I give you Fire in the Mist, Bones of the Past and Mind of the Magic (the Arhel novels), Sympathy for the Devil, The Devil and Dan Cooley, and Hell on High (the DEVIL’S POINT novels), The Rose Sea, Glenraven and Glenraven: In the Shadow of the Rift, Hunting the Corrigan’s Blood, Curse of the Black Heron, and finally the trilogy I’m currently writing, Diplomacy of Wolves, Vengeance of Dragons, and Courage of Falcons (the SECRET TEXTS trilogy.) I have favorite tools for mapping. This first map is going to be your continent. Okay. Get out your graph paper. See what I mean about mistakes?
Creating Fantasy and Science Fiction Worlds - Intro By Michael James Liljenberg Introduction Everybody says, 'My topic is the most important thing you can learn in order to write science fiction and fantasy,' when they write a tutorial for FARP. But I'm actually not exaggerating. There are four basic parts of a story: plot, character, setting, and theme. But what sets Fantasy and Science Fiction apart from other genres is the setting. To be a good writer you need to know character, plot, and theme. Nor do you need to create a universe that is totally original or free of those dreaded Fantasy clichés. And that's the key for creating a realistic world for your story, creating the world as a whole. All this is not to say that your worlds have to be completely scientifically realistic. J.R.R. George Lucas's Star Wars universe was never very well developed, especially from a technology standpoint, but it still works. Chapter 1: In the Beginning God - Theology/Spirituality Chapter 2: Day 1 - Physics Chapter 3: Day 2 - Weather All rights reserved.