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”
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?”
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?”
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.
The first, most obvious question is Continue reading “The End of the World as You Made It”
Today we’re stepping back into the mythology and religion of your world to talk about underworlds, homes of the gods, and the afterlife. How much of this is myth and how much is reality will depend on your established rules regarding the metaphysical aspect of your world. Continue reading “Building Underworlds, Divine Dwellings, and the Afterlife”