Wednesday, April 7, 2010

[Blog Spot] Arin i Asolde

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It's Wednesday. The week reaches it's second busiest height for me, so I am going to spare my profound* thoughts on all that is writing, publishing and artsy. Instead, every Wednesday I will showcase** one blog, dedicated to making your journey as an under-appreciated starving artist*** a touch more sensible and comfortable. First stop in this sparkling, citrus fresh feature is:


This is a fairly obscure blog. The owner does not do much to spread the word. At least I have not encountered her attempts to put the blog out there. I am not sure how I stumbled across this one, but this is a keeper. The archives go back to 2003 with several posts a day and almost complete calender. Whatever thinking outside the box, attention to detail, worldbuilding and skill involved in creating a work I have, I owe it to reading Limyaael's**** fantasy rants.

You want characterization? Perhaps not making a cookie cutter character? Perhaps giving your villain a motivation apart from being 'evil' for evil's sake? Characters clashing? No, problem. Her rants will give you a brand new perspective. Maybe, you are having trouble with the world. You want a rocking new race? Nonhumans? A culture, which is dazzling? No worries, it's all there and you will learn to question whether our given set of constants [seasons, 24 hour day, expressions] applies and whether you need to tweak it.

History, magic and its application outside cool battles, dynamics, culture, politics, long winded series, gender, protagonists, secondary characters, empathy, subgenres and rants on people, who do it wrong and examples of people, who do it right. It's almost like attending writing classes and if you really want to write fantasy, the this is the way to go. Also, it pretty much applies to other subgenres such as steampunk, urban fantasy and science fiction, where aliens and world traveling comes in the picture.

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* - I wish, but let's pretend I am a well of Wisdom
** - In a short and composed manner
*** - Which abbreviated oddly spells USA {weird, much?}
**** - For the record, she is an English graduate student [possibly with a Ph.D by now] and she has written an impressive amounts of books, though I am not sure whether she is published or not. The woman is a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, encased in a Rubic's Cube.

2 comments:

André Rocha said...

I personally didn't enjoy the design of the blog, but wow, she gives some really good advice. Going explore it more later on :D Thanks !

Harry Markov said...

The packaging is not important, but the content is royalty on that site and it is thorough and thought provoking.