Fantasy Worldbuilding: Drinking Songs

THERE'S WHISKEY IN THE JAR

I have to admit: I'm a fan of drinking songs in fantasy and science fiction. And not just drinking songs, but folk songs in general as a form of world-building in the genres.

Disability in Epic Fantasy

Disability in Fantasy: Questions to Consider

Disabilities aren't too common in many epic fantasies and science fiction, though I see them often in the form of characters losing limbs (hands seem to be a common theme...looking at you, Star Wars). Here are some things to think about when creating your characters.

Cultural Diversity in Epic Fantasy

So you want to include diversity in your story? 

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Great! I'm really glad you do, so let's get started.

What to Do When You're Not Writing

Have Writer's Block?

I've been writing for a long time. Everything from newspaper articles, to magazine editorials, silly fanfiction--all of those works have contributed to my writing style. Like everything else in life, I find that I can't keep my marathon-writing at full speed.

MAGIC!! 

I'll admit: I'm not an expert when it comes to creating magic systems. How can I be, when I'm not a published novelist (yet)? However, having spent a few years exploring and building my own magic system has given me some insight into the creation process. But Hanna, you may say, what do you know that none of the other thousands of articles on the Internet have told me?

Flintlock Fantasy: Why You Should Read (and Write) It

Flintlock? What's That? 

Traditional fantasy encompasses the usual tribe--elves, dwarves, orcs, hobbits--with a not-quite-so-historically-accurate medieval flavor of sweeping robes, majestic dresses, and a plague or two. Sound familiar? I'm sure a few stories have popped into your head already.

No offense, Cersei.

April Book Update!

From what little I've experienced of being a writer (albeit on the side, and whenever I can) is that experience provides so much of the details that make the writing come alive. This means that sometimes I do crazy things to be sure that I know what I'm talking about, even if the character I'm writing doesn't.

Even with my primary genres being epic fantasy and science fiction, I feel like experience is even more important. Details ground readers in a fantastic world otherwise foreign to them, and those details can come from anywhere. 

For those who don't know, I'm currently in the editing  process for the first book of my epic fantasy trilogy, currently named The Hymns of Creation. While I have other writing projects, this is my main project that I've worked on since high school. Wow! Over seven years old and still going!

Some examples:

• Traveled for four months in the United Kingdom (though for school, I applied much of the experience to fiction, mainly for anything I wrote that was located in London). 
• Learned how to discover my location using the stars (astronomy class, for a character who needed to discover his location and had nothing else). 
• Learning how to cook: there's nothing that brings a fantasy world to life better than sensory details. Thinking about how much goes into food, and what ingredients are available, actually help build the world by forcing you to think about what is available in a character's environment. 

What I'd love to do:

• Get in better shape and start hiking. A lot of epic fantasy includes characters traveling over long distances. How long would it take to travel someplace by foot? Hard to know unless you do it yourself.
• Visit the rice terraces in the Philippines not only because they look cool, but because of certain elements in the epic fantasy trilogy I'm currently writing. 
• Visit a vineyard and really interview a winemaker. Thanks to Dad, I've written a character whose profession is a winemaker. I've gotten in touch with someone from Clos des Amis, a local winemaker, to participate in the bottling process. Just waiting for a bottling collaboration on the weekend! 

Finding the time and energy to edit this book has been exhausting. It was hard to find time before Dad passed away, and without him it's even harder. But even through the exhaustion, and even through everything that has happened, clarity has arisen. I see the superfluous text, and I eliminate it. I begin to see how all of my experiences, as short as my life has been, can create something that speaks to others.

I lend my characters my practical experience, dressing them just a little with words and details to make those experiences reality. And yet I also lend them my grief, which breathes life into them in a way I never thought possible. All these details, of hiking and baking and wine-making, don't mean much without the emotional details. And through this writing, through this editing process, I hope to pour out every tumultuous emotion I've felt over the past few months into these characters. It is this process that is making this book so difficult to revise, but I believe that it will make it stronger.