Have you ever thought about how your characters keep time? Our observation of time shapes our days, years, and lifetimes, shaping what we focus on when and how we are able to interact with others. If you haven’t yet shaped the calendar and divisions of time in your world, now is a great time to start. ;) This post will help you understand the critical Continue reading “Calendars & Timekeeping in Fantasy”
Category: Geography & Foundations
How Should Christians Write About… Allegorical Religions?
One of the earliest installments in this series covered how to write about false religions, those that aren’t even real within your world. But today I want to cover the separate issue of how to write about religions that are designed to reflect the truth of who our God is within the context of a fictional world.
As always, this is intended to be food-for-thought, not the one proper Continue reading “How Should Christians Write About… Allegorical Religions?”
How Should Christians Write About… Magic?
Magic can be a hot-button topic in Christian fantasy circles. Is magic ever okay? What is the difference between the magic in Lord of the Rings and the magic in Harry Potter? Should we just avoid it all? Does the faith of the author make a difference?
As with the other topics addressed in this series, magic in fiction is a matter of personal conviction and the intention of these posts is not to tell you what to think but rather to pose food for thought and my personal understanding of the topic based on what I see in Scripture.
To start with, I want to highlight a few different categories of “magic,” because I think a lot of conflict arises when we’re unclear about what we mean by “magic.”
I tend to see Continue reading “How Should Christians Write About… Magic?”
5 Types of Dragons (with Examples)
A reader recently asked me where to start with books featuring dragons, and I ended up giving a handful of recommendations featuring different types of dragon portrayals. I thought it would be interesting to write a blog post about these different portrayals, plus provide some dragon book recommendations for other readers, so here we are!
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1. Villainous Dragons
In western literature, anyway, dragons were originally Continue reading “5 Types of Dragons (with Examples)”
The End of the World as You Made It
You’ve been imagining your world the way it is “now,” whether “now” is the particular time span for a novel or even a larger time span that you’ve fleshed out around that. You likely also know how your world was made (and what your characters believe about the creation of the world, whether those two are the same or not). But have you ever considered how (or if) your world will end? Well, that’s what we’re about to look at in this post.
Does Your World End?
The first, most obvious question is Continue reading “The End of the World as You Made It”