Wednesday, February 28, 2018

World Building: Races

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.

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.