Does Fantasy Have to Be Medieval?

Posted on January 6, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

Joan of Arc

Various questions come up when someone wants to write high fantasy and many of them are completely understandable.  They may deal with magic, various races, and creating a world that isn’t Earth.  Yet, there are other questions that you can see why they are asked, but they come off as shocking.  It makes one wonder about the entire genre and how it might not have evolved as much as many believe.  I’m going to touch on one of those questions here:

Does a fantasy story have to take place in a medieval Europe/Dark Ages setting?

The obvious answer is ‘No’.

As long as the genre doesn’t require a specific setting type like Westerns and WWII dramas, you can do whatever you want.  Even those ‘restrictive’ areas have some wiggle room, so nothing is set in stone.  The rules are incredibly flexible with fantasy, which really only requires that there be a magical, mystical element that can’t be chalked up to science.  This means you can do the traditional medieval setting or take inspiration from any time period.  You can also ignore that and try to make something entirely from scratch.  It is much more important to make the world work than to follow what you believe is a genre trend.

It isn’t hard to see why people think it should be medieval worlds or expect them to run the way our history did.  Tolkien and Lewis set that standard, which tends to go along without many changes when you look at the big ones.  ‘Game of Thrones’, ‘Dungeons & Dragons’, and even series that take place on a future Earth that has magic seem to go for the European aesthetic.  Castles with kings and knights traveling in search of adventure or a dragon to rescue from a fire-breathing princess.  You’re going to find more series that follow this tradition than blatantly go against it.  So, new authors get the feeling that this is a requirement instead of a suggestion that most people take.  Although, can you really blame them?

I’ve seen many readers go after a fantasy book because it isn’t historically accurate.  A suit of platemail isn’t correct or rules of etiquette don’t meant with medieval standards.  You can have a reader complain that the heroes are bathing regularly or that there are indoor bathrooms.  Had those tossed my way a few times.  As soon as you have the set pieces of medieval Europe, you’re bound to have people assuming that it will be Earth history accurate.  This doesn’t make much sense to me when it’s a place like Windemere, which isn’t Earth.  Yes, they have settings similar to the traditional, but they also have more modern things like the emergence of indoor plumbing.  This means you can’t suddenly say that something isn’t supposed to be that way because it could very well be right since it isn’t Earth.

Well, that’s my opinion and statement on this.  I’m going to be playing more with the idea when I finally get to the fantasy tip book.  What do you think about the belief that fantasy stories need to be in medieval Europe?

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Expansion Pack: Character Archetypes + a trick

Posted on January 6, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

Excellent post on common archetypes.

coldhandboyack's avatarStory Empire

Hi gang. Craig here with you again. Last year sometime, I wrote a series here about The Hero’s Journey. This is a link to PART ONE.

Then I went on to write several Expansion Packs. Those are easy enough to find by using the search function at the very bottom of our page. I’m not giving you a link, because they cover a broad spectrum of topics related to story structure. Just enter “Expansion Pack” and go.

Back when Joseph Campbell came up with all this, he included a repeating cast of characters from the most popular stories. These are a level above the stock characters I posted about this Fall. These character archetypes  are what we’re delving into today. I’m going to stay brief on them, because I promised you a trick. away we go…

The Hero: This is your main character. Choose well, because this person is…

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Fantasy Tip Book List of Topics

Posted on January 5, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

The Godfather

This is the last day of break for many, so I didn’t want to do anything complicated.  Still, I’ve been meaning to make this post for a while.  I haven’t come up with titles for most of these topics and the ones I have are iffy.  Don’t even have one for the book, which is looking more and more like a 2021 release since I have my hands full with War of Nytefall.  Anyway, here are the topics for that fantasy tip book that I mentioned a few times:

The Intro

The Author:

  1. Prologues and Epilogues
  2. Choosing Tense
  3. Plan or Pants
  4. Cliches
  5. Be You (Using your own author voice)
  6. Admit Your Inspiration
  7. Can’t Please Everyone
  8. Revel in Your Quirks

The World

  1. Setting as a Character
  2. Does it Have to Be Medieval Europe?
  3. Magic Systems
  4. Using the Classics
  5. Interspecies Relations
  6. Religion and Politics
  7. Painting the World
  8. Importance of Notes
  9. Monsters
  10. Passage of Time
  11. History
  12. The Wilderness
  13. Relics
  14. Necromancy (Necrocasting in Windemere)
  15. Accepted Levels of Violence
  16. Multiple Series in One World
  17. Riding Beasts!
  18. Dragons!
  19. Great Cataclysms
  20. Short Story Worlds

The Characters

  1. Starting Weak or Strong
  2. Evolution
  3. Importance of Supporting Cast
  4. Comic Relief
  5. Gods!
  6. Flawed is Perfect
  7. Damsels and Princess Generals
  8. Names
  9. Signatures of Characters
  10. Monsters as Heroes
  11. Types of Casters
  12. Villains
  13. Minions
  14. Fan Favorites and the Despised
  15. Holy Characters
  16. Ensemble Casts
  17. Biographies
  18. Rivals
  19. Archetypes
  20. Short Story Evolutions

The Quest

  1. Always a Goal
  2. Synergy of Heroes and Quests
  3. Rollercoaster Plot (This is where I’m at with outlining as of the writing of this post.)
  4. Good or Bad Endings
  5. Fight Scenes
  6. Final Battles
  7. Times to Shine
  8. Power of the Caster
  9. Adventure vs Politics
  10. How Dark Do You Go?
  11. Big Battles
  12. Destiny vs Free Will
  13. Romance
  14. Food and Eating Scenes
  15. Traveling Sections
  16. Distractions, Deviations, and Side Quests
  17. Killing Characters
  18. Training Without Losing Flow
  19. Next Generation
  20. Short Story Quests

The Outro

There you have it at 70 ‘chapters’ that will all be written in a casual, blog-style way.  I’m not going to use jargon or talk like it’s my way or the highway.  This is going to be something fun and informative, so I’m keeping it light.  Tried to get a good variety of topics and hit on things that people have asked me about.  Hope it works and I’m aiming to get the planning stage done before the summer.  Might make this my summer project then and push for beta readers in the Fall.  Anyway, that’s really far down the road.  Best to take it easier here.  Need a title too . . . ‘So, You Want to be a Fantasy Author?’  Ugh, everyone I think of sounds too smug, pompous, and overly professional when I’m going for laid back and casual.

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First Goal Post of 2020: Might Be a Little Anticlimactic

Posted on January 4, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

Everybody sober up or catch up on sleep after staying up until midnight?  Yeah, I’m not as young as I used to be, so the late night is still wearing me down.  Alcohol wasn’t even a factor since I had one beer and a small glass of ice wine.  Pepsi and water were consumed a lot more by me.  The whole event was low key with some guests coming over and my son being there for the evening.  His mom got him for the daytime stuff.  That’s really all I have to say about the holiday of the week.

The rest of my time since I last did a goal post was spent with my son.  The week was a little crazy because his glasses snapped on Sunday.  Nothing that he did since it was metal fatigue and the arm broke right at the hinge.  Of course, we had to get this taken care of and discover it happened the day after the warranty expired.  Thankfully, everyone was understanding and he’s getting them fixed.  Had another appointment available too, so he’s going to have two pairs within 2 weeks.  Not a bad ending to a situation that seemed pretty bad at the start.

When we weren’t doing appointments and errands, we got a few fun things done.  The two big ones were a full day LEGO project and a trip to the zoo.  I’ll get the build in a bit, but the zoo was fun.  Many schools went back into session, so there wasn’t a big crowd.  It was a little chilly, but not enough that it was uncomfortable walking around.  The lions were roaring a lot and we saw a few new animals.  Didn’t see the dholes (Asian wild dog, Asiatic wild dog, Indian wild dog, whistling dog, red dog, and mountain wolf) that were recently brought to the zoo.  They were either hiding in the back or off display.  Not entirely surprised since they are brand new and might not be okay with the weather or the crowds yet.  We’ll have better luck in the spring and they might even have a plushie version for my son to excitedly request.

Now, the LEGO project was:

Yoda stands at about 16 inches here and he’s a statue instead of a toy, so he has a space on my son’s dresser.  I had a picture of my son sitting next to it, but I realized that I might not be able to post pictures of him here without getting into trouble.  I’d have to ask permission and that can come with a cost, which is silly and you can probably take a guess how well that aspect of my life is going lately.  Anyway, we had a lot of fun with these projects and trips.

TV was a big thing too, which people may think is strange.  I introduced my son to ‘Fairy Tail’ a while back and he’s loving it.  He even has a collection of Lucy Heartfilia’s celestial spirit keys, so he runs around summoning them to help him out.  Sucks that Hulu stops having dubbed episodes at Season 3, but my son doesn’t read well enough to keep up with that.  The other anime that I introduced him to this week was ‘My Hero Academia’, which is all about superheroes.  He’s trying to fit what he knows about American superheroes into this Japanese one where 80% of the population has a power/quirk.  He’s having trouble with the names and how some of the heroes are kind of mean too.  Still, he’s really getting into it and now I’m left wondering what else I can try him on.  I’ve begun eyeing ‘One Piece’, but that’s massive.

For myself, I watched ‘The Witcher’ on Netflix.  I really want to read the books now because I enjoyed the series.  It had a different flow than other shows, which is why I liked it.  Felt like it was taking its time and building to something instead of having to hit me with constant sex, shock deaths, cliffhangers, and horror.  There was a good level of dry wit to it as well.  Looking forward to Season 2.  (Before anyone asks, I have not seen ‘The Mandalorian’ because I don’t have nor will I be getting Disney+.  Just going to stop that conversation right now.)

As you can tell, I got no amount of writing done this week . . . Well, I got a section or two done on Tuesday while my son was with his mom.  I think.  I’m not really sure if I did anything more than prepare March posts.  Began coming up with April post ideas too and had a list . . . That was destroyed by a humidifier leak.  Why did I have it in my hand while working on the damn thing?  Want to say one topic was tips on writing characters with depression or anxiety.  Maybe I should make a week of 7 Tip lists with one for depression, one for anxiety, and another for . . . I don’t know of a third one that I have enough knowledge of.  Any tips?

Next week is back to work and . . . OH YEAH!  I got my Teaching Assistant Level III certification yesterday!  Now, I have to take courses and attend meetings to reach a certain level of career enrichment.  Been told it isn’t that bad and I can do things over the summer instead of running myself ragged during the school year.  Curious to see what the courses and options are though.  I’m going back with this under my belt and I’m going to get a handle on it before I submit for full teaching certification.  That’s going to be a big step and I’m a little nervous about it.

Goals for the week?

  1. Get used to waking up at 5:30 AM again.
  2. Biking once more since it didn’t happen this week.
  3. Finish the March blog post scheduling.
  4. Finish another 1-2 chapters of War of Nytefall: Ravenous this weekend.
  5. Make Penne with Vodka Sauce, which didn’t happen this week.
  6. Find something that I can use as backings for the 32 puzzles that I’ve finished.
  7. Figure out something else to watch on Netflix or Hulu.
  8. Shtuff
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Top 5 of 2019: 7 Tips to Creating Fictional Location Names (#5)

Posted on January 3, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

I’m an idiot.  Now I know why I didn’t see a post scheduled for today or any for the Fridays in January.  It’s because there are 5 of them and I was going to do a Top 5.  I couldn’t set it up until after New Years Eve to make sure the numbers were right and I got so busy doing stuff with my son that I totally forgot.  Well, here’s #5 with a late arrival.

First, I want to point out that I stuck entirely with posts made in 2019 that got the most views.  Anything that I posted in previous years that came out on top didn’t get in here because I’ve done them already.  Seriously, the immortal tips and dinosaurs in fantasy posts aren’t going away.

Coming in from April 24, 2019!

Fictional World Map (Created by Dan Meth)

Continuing the topic of naming locations, I’m going to do my best to come up with some useful and humorous tips.  I only had to create one new place in War of Nytefall: Rivalry, so these are going to have to go outside of the new release.  Apelios doesn’t really give me a lot to work with either.  Here we go:

  1. Make the location pronounceable.  It may be funny to write one with only vowels or consonants, but you could lose a few readers if they can’t figure out how to say things.  It can help to have a pronunciation guide or mark it during the first appearance, so this is more of a guideline.
  2. Consider the terrain before you come up with the name.  You can only get away with naming a desert city after water once or twice before the joke gets stale.  The founders would have to be aware of these things too.  A person who has lived in the clouds for eternity won’t have a good chance of knowing what a worm is, so they probably wouldn’t use it to name a town.
  3. Use real world examples for your fictional ones to help get the creativity flowing.  This can really help with natural territories.  Rocky Mountains, Great Barrier Reef, Grand Canyon, and other locations in our world are fairly simplistic.  You would be surprised how many places can be named by how they look.  It can easily be chalked up to an ancient traveler being awed and not that creative.
  4. If you name a place after a person then you need to come up with some history.  It doesn’t have to be much.  Could be how the person found the area or some great feat that they accomplished to earn the right.  To relate this to the reader, you can have a local explain it briefly or have the characters read a sign about it.  To avoid an info dump, you want to be brief or spread out the story.
  5. As with monsters and characters, you can always use another language to come up with names.  Consider something about them and then go to Google Translate.  It can be related to the terrain, a historic event, their biggest export, or whatever makes this place stand out enough to be included in the story.  Do keep in mind that people who actually speak the language will understand it, so try to keep it clean.  Unless the joke is that the town is really a swear word.
  6. Accept that people will mispronounce the fictional locations if they are made by letters being tossed together.  Seriously, I’ve gotten Windemere, Windmere, WindEmere, Winemere, Winmere, Windermere, Windermore, and a few others.  (For those who wonder, it’s Win-deh-mere.  This probably doesn’t help.)
  7. Don’t rely too much on common endings for locations such as -burg, -town, City, Village, etc.  Only way to get away with using the same ending is if you build it into your world creation.  In that case, you can NEVER stray from the pattern or the whole world will implode.  The deaths of millions of fictional characters will be on your head, you monster.
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End of Break

Posted on January 3, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

I thought I had a scheduled post. Seems I didn’t or it vanished on me. Wish I knew what I imagined it was. Pretty busy today, so I’m just going haiku it.

An end to the break

Sixteen days of son and fun

The alarm is set

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Friday JohnKu – AKA – TGIF and Call for Beta Readers

Posted on January 3, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

Any beta readers out there?

John W. Howell's avatarFiction Favorites

“What on Earth are you looking for Twiggy?”
“Friday.
“Friday is already here. Today is Friday.”
“You’re kidding. I thought it was Monday.”

It is Friday again on the calendar, and yet I am so confused as to what day it is really. Yesterday felt like a Sunday because of the mid-week holiday. I had what would typically be a Sunday meal yesterday, so my body still thinks today is Monday. Yes, today feels like Monday but then if it were, tomorrow would be Tuesday and four days before the weekend, and that feels all wrong. So let’s just go with the calendar. TGIF.

My WIP tentatively titled Eternal Road – The Final Stop is now ready for a beta read. This is a different story than the one I usually tell. Here is the blurb.

James and Sam are on a quest to find James an eternal home. You…

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Immortal Wars: The Origins

Posted on January 2, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

Next Thursday, I will put up the first section of Immortal Wars: The Summoning and continue until it is all up on the blog.  This is replacing ‘Bedlam’ and I will have the sequel coming too.  Today, I’m going to give a little background.

When I was 15, I was really into comic books and fantasy.  I read Fred Saberhagen’s ‘Book of Lost Swords’ and loved the world-building so much that I wanted to become an author.  I was always dreaming up stories and this seemed like the next step.  Also, it would make my daydreaming and quiet time more worthwhile since I could consider it working when I was an adult.  I ran ideas by a friend who was into the same things and came up with:

IMMORTAL WARS

It was a series from the beginning and really tried to do far too much.  There were magical weapons, space stations, aliens, resurrections, A.I., teenagers in love, villains in love, predictable swerves, and an untrained kid in the captain’s chair.  I’m surprised I passed any of my creative writing assignments whenever I used an excerpt.  Still, this is the beginning and it is where I first flushed out a big series with a variety of tactics that I still use.  Character bios and chapter-by-chapter breakdowns are how I prepare even if the methods have changed.  So, I can’t call this a total waste of time and I figure every author has this something like this in their history.  We all have to start somewhere.

For me it was with these four teenagers who discover they are immortals with powers and have to protect the solar system.  Each one is connected to a different planet and I can’t be sure if there was a significance to the choices.  I mean, Hydrana (codename . . . Sadly, she got the best of the bunch.) had water powers and was connected to Neptune.  I’m also just realizing that her name is close to hydrant.  Whatever, I don’t think I’m going to use her again . . . Except that I believe she got moved to a Sin story along with the others, so I’m going to have to make that joke.  I’m totally off topic and have to jump to another paragraph now.

Okay, the untrained and confused teenagers are to be taught by Solix, the sole survivor of the originals.  His friends were killed and their magic weapons stolen by a group of 9 evil immortals who they mistook for friends.  In this world, immortals can kill each other because their auras cancel each other out.  The overall plot is about the heroes regaining the stolen weapons, which go back and forth, and destroying the villains.  Other enemies turn up throughout the series including a cosmic vampire.  Seriously, what was I thinking here now that I look at these notes?  It really is a simplistic plot with characters that pale in comparison to what I do now.  Going to be an interesting year as these two stories go up, especially since I have NO IDEA what the sequel was about.

In terms of writing style, I was all over the place.  No concept of smooth dialogue and my exposition was rough.  My attachment to tenses was so horrible that I’d switch from past to present in mid-sentence.  That was pointed out and I was told to pick one, so I chose present, which is what made me a present tense author.  You may see flickers of what I’m like now in here, but you’re also going to see a lot of ‘yikes’.  Not to mention clear indications of what movies, shows, and books I was into at the time.  Really makes me wonder why I’m doing this to myself.  Not like I need to be humbled this badly.  Let’s say I’m doing this for a laugh and because I have these books sitting around.

Well, the rambling explanation is done and now we wait for next week.  Some sections will be huge and others tiny.  I hope people take this journey with me and don’t be too harsh in the comments.  I’ll be hiding under the bed anyway.

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Hope for 2020 . . . Do I Dare to Be Optimistic?

Posted on January 1, 2020 by Charles Yallowitz

You know what?  I’m going with the meme up there.  I have hopes that I will do the following:

  1. Enjoy as much time with my son as possible.
  2. Continue working and having fun.
  3. Publish 2-3 books.
  4. Write 3-4 books.
  5. Make headway on teacher certification and a Masters Degree.
  6. Continue healing from the divorce.
  7. See if I can do a special project with one or two books.
  8. Do better with biking and eating better.  (I really suck at the second thing.)
  9. Might want to finish that outline for one of the Sin books . . . I’ve gotta name that series at some point.

That’s really it.  I’m going back to bed.

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Good-Bye, 2019 . . . Don’t Give 2020 Any Ideas

Posted on December 31, 2019 by Charles Yallowitz

I think I use Frodo up there a lot more than I realize.  Anyway, it’s the end of 2019 and . . . Okay, I’m writing this on October 20th, 2019 because I want to end the year writing War of Nytefall: Ravenous instead of blog posts.  That and I don’t think my opinion can change much at this point.  With any luck, I’ve got my TA Level III certification, but I only put in for it at the beginning of the month.  Now, what else can I say about this year that I haven’t said on a bunch of Saturdays?

Seriously, I’ve been an emotional wreck and I think people have steered clear of me because of it.  I’m not the type to take positive statements when I’m in a bad mood and prefer to vent it out of my system.  I sure have had a lot to vent about too:

  • Only published one book.
  • Sales plunged into the toilet.
  • Very little writing time.
  • Pnuemonia
  • Stress of keeping things off the blog.

There were some major events even though none of them involved writing.  One was the summer job, which I’m going to get out of the way.  I did have a lot of fun working at a camp and it meant I got to take my son to his first professional baseball game.  Sure, it was the Mets, but most kids start with that around here.  The only thing that went wrong here was that I had no break between school and summer job.  I entered it tired and got very worn down, which wasn’t good because I was trying to handle a lot of emotional stuff at the time.  If I hadn’t been going through so much then I would have had a lot more fun and been less stressed.

On the other end of the spectrum was the Teaching Assistant job, which I’m loving every minute of.  I’m trying really hard to not be my naturally negative self, but I do slip at times since I’ve been downtrodden for so long.  Still, I like hanging out with my new friends and the days go quickly.  I never roll out of bed wanting to not go into work.  I will roll out of bed wanting to crawl back into the warmth since it got cold, but that’s something else entirely.

Guess it’s time to get the big thing out of the way.  It really cast a shadow over the entire year even though it started in 2018.  Mostly because I finally felt like I could mention it on here.  Months of calling it the ‘life event’ caused problems because people were trying to give me advice or comfort when they didn’t know what it was.  I didn’t take that well since I was practically a wounded animal who couldn’t tell if he was healing or simply waiting for death to take him.  I mean, I spent half my life with her and then it was gone in the blink of an eye.  Still gives me pangs of chest pain.  Probably going to have to deal with that for a while because I’m a creature of memories.  I enjoy telling stories about my past and thinking back to those times, but she’s there so often.  The ranting still comes pretty fast as you can see.

I think I’ll always look at 2019 as the Year of Divorce.  Unfortunately, that was the highlight of the year.  Kind of sad now that I look at it.

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