Per clarafury’s suggestion, this is on getting the flavor of daily life into your story.

( Some tricks )

Right. Before I start this off, I want to quote my favorite author, Guy Gavriel Kay, because he says the core principle of what I’m trying to explain here more clearly (and in fewer words) than I can ( Read more... )

The second part of the “avoiding medieval fantasy” rant, which is the last one I posted. Some of these are suggestions for avoiding medieval mindsets again, and others are for looking in different places and at different sources for your fantasy.

( Because some of the reasons people write medieval fantasy don’t just come from copying the other ones out there )

Medieval fantasy is great. It’s just one subgenre of fantasy, though, and there’s no reason…

( to write a medieval fantasy if you don’t want to )

I’ve read a lot of very conventional fantasy (conventional both in the sense that it follows fantasy tropes and stereotypes, and in the sense that it doesn’t push its own original concepts far enough). There are a lot of good medieval fantasies, historical fantasies, and alternate Earth fantasies; my two favorite authors, Kay and Martin, write in ( Read more... )