If you’ve read much G.K. Chesterton, you’ve probably realized that some of his stories are better starting places than others. Father Brown, generally speaking, is a much gentler introduction to his style and philosophy than Manalive or The Man Who
We’ve all heard the adage, “Show, don’t tell.” It’s practically the first thing any creative writing course teaches, after the formatting requirements, and I’ve made a pun off it myself. It’s sound advice, but like all short-form bits, it’s not
Magic (with its hundred other pseudonyms) is the staple concept of fantasy. It’s the excuse for a thousand plots and the solution for a million problems. In some people’s minds, magic can do anything, solve any plot hole, fill any
I have an affection for fantasy, born from The Lord of the Rings and fostered through the years, and an affection for historical fiction, born from many thousands of pages (hundreds of books, likely) in my youth. I’m not much
You can find Part One of this article, and a lot of necessary context here. Another example (of magic that isn’t Biblically condemned) is magic which is not innate but which does not originate from an exterior supernatural creature. In
Part One Fantasy, some have said, is the gateway to devil worship, sorcery, and the occult. The assertion is not entirely unreasonable: the Bible does condemn sorcery, and fantasy literature does contain an awful lot of (positively portrayed) sorcery. The
I like strange words; I like them so much I create at least one or two new ones for every story, not even counting the names. I cannot, however, take full credit for the terminology I’ll be discussing today: ‘secondary
Good stories do not use miracles to solve problems, the lore says, and they do not use miracles to solve problems because miracles, according to common wisdom, destroy a story’s stakes, rendering great thrillers into dramatic yawn-factories. Yet the great
So, last week I went over three categories of worldbuilding problems (irremediable, unremedied, and inherent) and four types of wounds they can inflict on a story (to the setting, the plot, the characters, or the theology). Today we’re going to
Worldbuilding, no matter how you cut it, is a difficult task, at least if you’re actually trying to do it right. Sometimes you feel like you have to become an expert in a hundred different fields at once; sometimes, you’re