How I Write Fantasy...

I'm going to be writing up some posts in the next several weeks in regards to my views of writing fantasy and more importantly how I write fantasy. Things I have worked on, things that took me a long freakin' time to create. Now, this may or may not help you if you are a fantasy writer, time will only tell. Most fantasy writers take so long in writing their work because of all the world building they have to do. Others just wing it.

So what, first of all, does world building include? Well, that depends on how far you want to get into it. Here is what my world building included:

* Magic

*Kingdoms

*Laws

*Creatures

*Characters

*Money

*Gods and Goddesses

These are just the main things. In each of those categories, there are numerous sub-categories. I had to make lots of decisions regarding the list above.

In making decisions on my world, in general, I had to start out with some pretty mundane stuff regarding the sun, moon, stars and so on.

Might sound silly to you, but in writing fantasy, you're here to think outside of the box. I literally came up with several choices on those basic things and rolled the dice. Not kidding! I used to play Dungeons and Dragons, so I pulled out all my dice. Six sided, four sided, twenty sided and I rolled, baby!

My world has two suns. If you think this might be a hot climate, it isn't really. The second sun is really, really tiny when you look at it up in the sky of my world.

I have one moon in my night sky and of course, my stars make up their own constellations which had to be written down in folklore and the like. I even have a story about the moon. I'm still working on the constellations and the stories associated with them.

So, over the next several weeks, I'll be posting things about my world and choosing from those categories above. Bear with me, as I worked on this world for well over ten years and it still isn't done or is it perfect. I'm constantly adding to it and changing things, but most of what I have is set in stone and is here to stay. So I hope you enjoy what I have to share!

Character Names...

And how the heck to come up with them!

Laura over at Writing Unleashed left a comment for me the other day. She wanted to know how I come up with fresh names in fantasy and story ideas.

Well. Let me tell you! ::Rubs her hands together gleefully::

I have a couple of name generators I go to. Seventh Sanctum, Rink Works, Serendipity, etc. They're all very good, but Seventh Sanctum is my fave by far. But half the time a name in their list sort of works for me. Others are perfect. But even if I use a generator, I still want to make my names unique. So when I saw 'Bassin', I thought... ooh! Alabassin. He's my young prince and Kayta's love interest.

Speaking of Kayta, she was my original Dungeons and Dragons character. When coming up with her name, I used my middle name, Kay, and added the 'ta'. She's been around since I was 19.

Nightshadow was a character in Cosrin, the online role playing game, and she was an assassin there as well. I just figured she was good at hiding in the shadows and wore clothes black as night.

When trying to rename some of the characters from Cosrin for my books, lots of names just came off the top of my head. Like Talaver (Tale uh ver), Farrehn (Far ehn) and Vendras (Vehn drahs). I just plucked those out of the ether. Same with Senweis (Sehn ways).

Now that list I showed the other day of what not to do when writing fantasy, I said a couple of them applied to me. One was "don't use an apostrophe in a name". Well, bugger that, I have a couple of names like the world itself is named Eir du'Brusai (Air do brew sigh). Kayta's last name is Ni'adzul (Knee add zool) and Alabassin's is Li'endrin (Lee en drin). I also have a continent named Istlandu'us (Ist land us). Those sort of came off the top of my head as well.

Now Nightshadow is an assassin and part of the D'raetus Pastiniir (There's that apostrophe again) and it is pronounced 'dee ray tus past ih near'. They are the elite of the elite as far as assassins go. I got that name mixing Latin and Drow, a form of Tolkien's Elvish language. I have translator sites for those. There are lots of things I used Latin and Drow for. Some names I don't want to use the traditional and go for the mix. When I wanted to call my wizards something else, I thought of the Magi and decided to spell it 'Mahjii'.

A friend of mine came up with the name Kefferlings (kehf er lings) for my elf cat race. My husband came up with Dargorians (Dar gore ee ehns) for my humanoid dragon race. I think I got Firlochians (Fur low key ehns) off of a generator. I didn't think Firlochian sounded much like a name and more like a race.

As for story ideas? I'm going for a somewhat generic plot with this trilogy. Tyrannical king wants to gain more power and is trying to wipe out the only force that can stop him, which happens to be Kayta and her family and armies. An arranged marriage where the intended groom would rather be married to another and a few more twists and turns I won't mention because it will spoil it. I also have another book in the works that will focus on Black Rose. He was my husband's character from Dungeons and Dragons and we've made him a champion of a deity. He'll be fighting an Elemental, in this case an Earth Elemental, that accidentally stepped into the summoning circle of a Mahjii and got possessed by a powerful demon. You'll have to ask my husband how he came up with that one.

Okay, so sorry to ramble on! But hope that answers some questions.