In many a fantasy
you have a mix of sapient races who fill a fantastical niche in your
fantasy world. But just how do you create a race? And how do you
flesh out you races?
When you're looking
to create a race that people aren't already familiar with (such as
Tolkien-esque elves or dwarves), one way to go about it is to take
inspiration from our world. Before I wrote The Legend of Draconite, I
found inspiration for the Molouk race from a book I had about
dinosaurs. I tweaked the Molouks a bit (they're more humanoid and
have smooth skin, have hair as well as feathers, etc.) and made them
my own race. If you're going with a more familiar race like humans,
there's still elements you can add to make it your own.
Another way is to
look up legends from our world and base a race off of that. You will
want to add unique elements to that race to make it your own, unless
you want to stay true to traditional legends and write something
based in our world.
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
World Building: Races
Friday, February 2, 2018
Describing Characters
One of the hard lessons I've learned about writing is the proper way to describe characters. I grew frustrated with books that didn't describe at least their main character in some detail (it still bugs me at times), and I didn't want to be one of those authors that left literally nothing to the reader's imagination.
First
I'll talk about the mugshot description versus the narrated
description, and then I'll talk about describing character
personality and reactions.
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