Recent Blog Posts
Society and Governments in Fantasy Worlds
If you are building an entire world from scratch for your fantasy novel(s), then there are lots of big-picture things to think about. One of those things is the overall society structure and types of governments in your fantasy world. The chances are that there will...
Top Tropes in Fantasy to Avoid If You Want a Unique Story
Tropes appear in all genres of course. We couldn’t get to the year 2020 without a few things getting repeated over the years. Tropes in fantasy and cliches aren’t necessarily a bad thing in themselves. Things are repeated and become cliche because a lot of people tend...
Should You Write Under a Pen Name? The Pros and Cons
New to the writing world or new to putting yourself out there? It’s a difficult thing to do, whether you would call yourself a shy person or not. Let's face it, many of us writers are pretty shy. One way people try to minimise this fear of self-promotion is to use a...
How to Start a Freelance Writing Business
Can you make money writing? If you're here because you like writing, you might have dreamed a few times about making a living doing just that. Of course, if you’ve ever voiced that dream out loud, there’s a good chance you’ve been told to be realistic or even laughed...
New Year’s Resolutions for Fiction Writers
Christmas and New Year are over and it’s time to get back to normality for many of us. Oh god. I don’t usually set New Year’s resolutions because I know what I’m like and I never stick with them. Plus I'm usually stuck in some kind of chocolate haze at the end of the...
A Review of The Witcher: Is It Worth Watching?
Like many people over the festive period, I binge-watched The Witcher. It wasn’t hard. There was a surprisingly small number of episodes and I had some time on my hands. So today, I wanted to put together a little review of The Witcher to share my thoughts on the...
Why Celebrate? How to Use Religious Holidays in Your Fantasy Novel
With the festive season underway, I’ve decided to write a post about religious holidays in fantasy and what place they have in your world and novel. If you’re building a world from scratch, it only makes sense to make up some kind of holiday period. Holidays or...
How to Build History in Your Fantasy World
If you want a rich and big fantasy world you have to think of everything. One key thing you should be building is the history of your world. However, when you start to build history in your fantasy world, you'll quickly realise how tricky it is. Where do you even...
What Does Your Fantasy World Smell Like? Writing the Senses
This post is all about your nose. Might seem like a weird focus of fantasy world building, but I’m all about that detail. As fantasy world builders we spend so much time describing the weird and wonderful places we’ve created, from palaces to castles, to taverns to...