We'll send our best work every month.
Oren, Mike, and Rhys rave about stories that handle diversity well. They detail what’s refreshing about each story and how works benefit from incorporating greater diversity. As they highlight the good aspects of many stories, they also discuss where a few stories fall short. Read more »
Mythcreants hosted a panel at this year’s GeekGirlCon in Seattle. Chris, Oren, Rhys, and I discussed gender in spec fic and how you can create matriarchal, patriarchal, or egalitarian societies for your stories. It was a lively event with many challenging questions from the audience. … read more »
Chris, Mike, and Oren discuss the ups and downs of using history in worldbuilding. They question whether historical realism is a worthwhile goal, cover the pitfalls of using the history of other cultures, and critique settings derived from real places and events. But mostly, they … read more »
Bad characters abound in our media, threatening to overwhelm our bastions of good storytelling. Or at least that’s how it can seem when you turn on the TV or flip through a random book. Many of these characters come from flawed archetypes that writers use … read more »
I suspect more than one reader of Mythcreants has wondered why we don’t just stick to the technical advice and avoid all that political stuff. Why are articles with wording exercises and obscure weapons intermixed with long rants on gender equality and unjustified violence? It’s … read more »
Character arcs form the heart of the story. They give audiences a reason to cheer a character on and add emotional depth to the plot. But not all characters arcs are equal. A good arc doesn’t just take a pauper and make her queen; it … read more »
We humans have spent the last 200,000 years trying to figure out how to treat each other, and while we’re still confused on a few subjects, the basics are pretty solid. At least, they should be. Somehow our fictional characters can’t go two seconds without doing something horrible. Read more »
The Deep Forest is a reinterpretation of The Quiet Year, a mapmaking game about a small post-apocalyptic community’s struggle to survive in a harsh environment. But in this game, it’s a community of monsters, who have just driven invading humans off of their land. Read more »
Telling an egalitarian story means fighting back against a lifetime of cultural programming, not to mention systematic bias in production, publishing, and marketing. So even when we try to make our stories just, problems we haven’t noticed can sneak their way in. Graded on a … read more »
Prejudice is a part of human society, and some eras were just awful. However, we still want to tell stories in those time periods. The steampunk genre is based largely on Victorian England, a time when being female was enough for people to assume you … read more »