Brace yourselves lads and ladesses, we're going in! If something is missing from your life, it might be me in glorious technicolour! You can view me waffl- er, talking about issues around morality in fantasy, and how it can influence world building, character development and conflict. With random dubious digressions into world history. Extemporising is …
Category: World Building
Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality, Part 3: Upon What Authority?
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve looked at morality in fantasy writing and world building. This week I’m going to look at what kinds of things a moral framework or viewpoint could be based upon, what people may experience as the root of their morality. In fantasy, as in the real world, there can …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality, Part 3: Upon What Authority?
Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality, Part 2: Beyond Good and Evil
Last week I chatted about the idea that morality in fantasy fiction is often either taken for granted, (painted in simple terms of big evil versus plucky underdog good) or oddly out of step. (Why would 20th and 21st century Western morals be the norm in a variety of quasi-medieval settings?) I also mentioned that …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality, Part 2: Beyond Good and Evil
Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality, Part 1
Today I had the pleasure of talking with Jesper Schmidt about morality in fantasy world building, one part in an extended series of discussions on this topic that are well worth watching. He has a great YouTube channel dedicated to all things fantasy writing related – check it out here! He also helps to run …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: A Question of Morality, Part 1
Why I Write Fantasy: The Blind Faith Edition
So two weeks ago I talked about the infinite possibilities in fantasy, then last week I discussed why it can sometimes seem repetitive, at least in terms of setting. These things would appear to be contradictory, but I think can resolve quite easily, even as I believe we will see new authors pushing or shattering …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: The Blind Faith Edition
Why I Write Fantasy: The Why Is So Much Of It So Similar? Edition
Last week I talked about the infinite possibilities offered by the fantasy genre, but buried in there was the nagging question: “Why then is so much of fantasy writing so similar?” I think any reader of fantasy over the last thirty years knows what I’m talking about, but let’s do a quick recap without falling …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: The Why Is So Much Of It So Similar? Edition
Why I Write Fantasy: Infinite Possibilities
Now I’ve touched on this before in some circumstances, but I feel that it is worth restating one of the greatest draws for me in writing fantasy: the range of possibilities it grants you. In writing fantasy you are only constrained by two things: your imagination, and your ability to transform your fancies into words. …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: Infinite Possibilities
Why I Write Fantasy: Ideas, Imagination and the Power of “What if?”
Last week I discussed the allure of creating worlds, the joy of it often being in the freedom it grants you as a writer to shape the drama of your story from the ground up, and have the universe in which your narrative takes place become, in a sense, an active character in that story. …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: Ideas, Imagination and the Power of “What if?”
Why I Write Fantasy: The Joy of Creating Worlds
Writing fantasy fiction is a lot of fun. I’ve always enjoyed it because you get to imagine anything you want, and then find ways to make it work. I mean, a lot of the time it would be much easier to not bother with the making it work part and just throw stuff on the …
Continue reading Why I Write Fantasy: The Joy of Creating Worlds
Roderick T. Macdonald 