Tag: Tolkien
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Let’s Talk Tropes: Minions
No, we’re not talking today about the little corndog shaped creatures from Despicable Me. Or, more accurately perhaps, it’s not all that we’re talking about today. When it comes to combat, there are two options for making the protagonist struggle: conflict of wit or conflict of number. That is to say, outsmarted versus outmatched. Is…
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Let’s Talk Tropes: Happily Ever Afters
I’m not sure when happy endings fell out of fashion, but I do know that present-day narratives generally strive for a distorted concept of realism where the grittier and darker it is, the more “realistic” it is. At the very least, this is the case for fantasy novels, so much so that the concept of…
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15 Fantasy Books For The Curious Reader
Most of my regulars on the blog are presumably avid fantasy readers like myself, but my romance reading challenge has made me wonder what books I might recommend for those who aren’t. After all, fantasy can certainly be an intimidating genre to step into. It’s incredibly difficult to find standalone novels, or to find books…
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Let’s Talk Tropes: The Quest
Our last tropes discussion talked about Chosen Ones–ironically, one of the biggest character tropes in the fantasy genre. Today, I decided to focus on one of the best-known plot tropes of the genre: the quest. A quest is a trip that one or more characters–quite often, a group–embarks on in order to accomplish some important…
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What is Fantasy?
I recently watched an old youtube podcast involving three hosts talk about fantasy. (For the intensely curious: The Story Telling Podcast #16: Writing Fantasy) It was clear that they were not particularly well-versed in the genre, and to be fair it was back from 2013. However, as I listened to them try to to define…
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April Reading Reflections
Fair warning: This week, we’re talking about Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone. I doubt there will be any spoiler-y stuff, but if you haven’t yet read it, proceed with caution. For some time now, I’ve been thinking about the incorporation of languages in fantasy novels. As I make my way through Children of…
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The Problem With Libraries
For as long as I’ve been writing, people have been telling me what reading strategies they think I should follow to make me a better writer. Well, it’s always fun when someone with little to no writing experience tries to tell you how to become a better writer, but the question they raised is still…
Katie Bachelder 