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And the Best Story Goes To…
Is It Okay for My Disabled Character to Use Futuristic Assistive Devices?
Greetings Mythcreants, I recently listened to your episode about disability tropes and I’m worried about the way I wrote one of the characters in my novel. She’s disabled and uses a wheelchair. However, since my setting is futuristic with advanced technology, the way her disability … read more »
244 – Characters Who Should Have Lived
We all have our favorite characters who we hate to see go, but sometimes killing a character is actually bad for the story. That’s what we’re talking about today, and we promise it’s not just an excuse to complain about deaths that made us sad. … read more »
Five More Underused Settings in Spec Fic
Novelty is one of the four critical elements that make stories popular, and in speculative fiction, settings are a great place to harvest a novelty crop. I’ve got nothing against castles, forests, and space battleships, but mixing things up creates opportunities for new kinds of … read more »
Reconciling Character Choices With Your Plot
Sometimes, the reactions we assign to characters in the outline stage don’t feel natural when written out. In these cases, it can be difficult to judge whether planned character behaviors are unrealistic or the storyteller just isn’t in the right mindset. Since character choices can … read more »
The Familiar and the Frost
Camella the rat familiar perched upon the highest shelf of Witch’s cottage and stared down at the spy. Warlocks and wizards sent spies into the cottage to steal Witch’s powerful charms. But this wasn’t like any spy Camella had ever seen, not like the mechanical gnomes and flame sprites that warlocks and wizards preferred. Read more »
How Should We Approach Problematic Authors?
I was listening to old podcasts of Mythcreants and caught “The author is dead.” I’ve heard that a lot before, but what about when you love a work from a living problematic author or value their writing advice? You can’t really pretend the author is … read more »
243 – Multiple POVs Revisited
A long time ago, on a podcast far far away, the Mythcreant hosts debated the merits of multiple points of view. Battle lines were drawn, harsh words were exchanged, and it was clear that the two sides would never see eye to eye. But it’s … read more »
Siege Warfare Before Gunpowder
The fantasy genre is stuffed with sieges, even in series other than Lord of the Rings! From the Battle of Winterfell to whatever Prince Caspian was doing at Aslan’s How, fantasy storytellers are always eager to show us battles of catapults and scaling ladders. But sieges are complicated, … read more »
Six Rape Tropes and How to Replace Them
Unless your story is specifically about sexual assault, you should probably remove any rape, attempted rape, or even mention of rape from your story. This is because these depictions normalize sexual assault and are often hurtful to survivors. Let’s go over how rape ends up … read more »