Mythcreants

Who Wins: Legends and Lattes, Irregular Witches, or The Spellshop? It’s a battle, but a cozy one.

"It’s a D&D world, but the hero runs an inn. It’s a D&D world, but the monsters are edible. You get the idea."
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Five Flaws for Smart Characters Obviously, you know all of them already.

"Hopefully they can then turn their vaunted critical thinking skills inward to help themself grow."

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There’s something fascinating about the way cryptid lore filters out accounts of Bigfoot that are either too big or too small. He must be large enough to impress people, but not 20 feet tall or anything. That would be too silly.

that's a crime. One thousand years jail

I cannot believe they just reinvented the Youtube video essay (but way worse cause some of those are quite useful)

Footnotes in fiction are annoying, but sometimes it would be really helpful for historical novels to cite their sources. Did an old timey scholar actually give this weird speech or did the author make it up? If nothing else, it could give us peace of mind.

The Starfleet Academy trailer seems a bit unfocused. We’ve got all these teacher/adult characters, a bunch of student characters, and also they’re on a ship that has conventional space adventures. Difficult to imagine how all of that will get sufficient screen time, though we’d happily be wrong.

The Hero's Journey is a scam by big structure to sell more stages

Beautifully unhinged

An unhinged opinion was asked for and delivered, no question.

And yet I must ask: how? How does present tense disguise any of those things?

557 – Wishes in Fiction Your (earned) wish is our command!

"Hot take. Hot Aladdin discourse 2025."
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it's easy for your sequel idea to sound good when the actual Jurassic World sequels exist

Six Very Real Sequel Ideas for Popular Stories Remember, there are no bad ideas. Except for these.

"I tell you what, Hollywood: You stop making pointless sequels with ever-diminishing returns, and I’ll stop writing these joke posts. Deal? Deal."

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How to Use the Five Senses in Your Description Writing sensory language helps immerse readers in the story world.

'if you write “a bird sat on a branch nearby,” how does the viewpoint character know this?'

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Writers, please. If you’re going to have a character say “this isn’t a story, this is real life,” at least make sure the thing they’re describing actually is like real life.

oh god the number of puzzles I've had to change in real time cause the instructions just didn't make sense

This isn’t because readers are stupid or lazy, it’s because writers can see the whole picture. They know what a clue leads to so the connection feels obvious. But to readers, the clue is just one among many pieces of info they have to sort through.

It’s interesting to read arguments for “trusting your reader,” aka not worrying about how clear you are in the story, since readers can figure it out. It’s true that no one likes being bludgeoned with info, but our experience is that nothing is ever as obvious to the reader as it is to the writer.

Elf warriors lined up on the Deeping Wall in The Two Towers.

Thank you to Chelsie Elaine, our newest patron! Your support is another elf warrior to help us in this fantasy siege which isn’t realistic but is very exciting. Would you prefer everyone camping out until one side runs out of food? Didn’t think so.

"Now explaining runes 20-26, of 5,000"

Realize I should have specified: this is a thing that we're starting to notice now, not necessarily a thing only new books are doing. We might just have missed it before.

yeah if the romance is mostly what people are there for, it the external plot could certainly suffer. Ideally you'd have both but it doesn't always work out that way

Interesting, I admit I'm not entirely sure what that means 😅

On our end, LotR can be slow at times, but I wouldn't say it suffers from the specific issue I was talking about. We see quite a lot get done over those 480,000 words

Someone's gotta get em but maybe it could just be a side quest?

A new thing we’re noticing is books where way less happens than you’d expect for their length because of worldbuilding info dumps or long scenes of explaining plans. You get through a 100,000 word novel and realize the whole story was spent picking up magic groceries.

556 – Societies That Ban Things No fictional society has banned podcasting. Yet.

"I would have one faction that just won’t shut up about free speech and just screams about it, and every time someone mildly criticizes them they scream about free speech and then when they’re in power they immediately start trying to ban peoples’ speech."

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Three Options for Heroes Who Disobey Orders We can break the rules a little, as a treat.

"I was shocked when a recent Strange New Worlds episode showed Ortegas receiving a stern lecture after she disobeyed orders and nearly got everyone killed. That’s more follow-up than we usually see!"

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Slop Is Sneaking Into Book Covers – but We Can Stop It It's time to get better at crediting artists.

"Before I dig in, I’d better debunk the idea that people have to use AI because real art is just too expensive. Sure, theft will always be cheap and convenient, but it’s hardly the only option."

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The nice thing about Lord of the Rings being so influential in high fantasy is that you can blame it for just about anything that upsets you about the genre. Elves and dwarves are stale? LotR. Everyone’s obsessed with kings? LotR. Didn’t finish your manuscript on time? LotR is once again to blame.

Oh thank god, was worried for a minute