Every Literary Genre Summed Up In A Single Sentence

Every Literary Genre Summed Up in a Single Sentence

An angel disguised as a demon and a demon disguised as an angel

Concept: fantasy world where dragons are A Thing™ but instead of them being these rare, semi-legendary creatures who exist solely to terrorise and wreak havoc and mayhem and burn inconveniences to a crisp they’re like… dogs… vaguely domesticated cats…

They come in loads of sizes and it’s a common thing to hear them scritching across your roof or rummaging in your garbage. You pass by like four every time you go to the market.

There’s even some snoozing at market stalls and strays playing with children and stealing scraps of food that fall in the street, with mottled scales and mixed textures of feathers and mismatched jewel colours.

Your favourite baker has three tiny western diamondtips who are in charge of keeping the ovens fired up and don’t always eat all of the bread. Sometimes.

Linda Bagshot on the corner has a ground rooster who can’t fly but always reaches up and stretches her neck out as far as she can to try and scrounge pets as you pass her garden wall.

A local inn is named after its summer aura who is the length of the room, all careful length and soft scales, with breath perfumed like spring breeze and scales that emanate just enough warmth to comfort, just enough that you won’t fall asleep, just enough that it’s tempting nonetheless.

The school you went to has a forest guardian older than the town itself who spends all his time slowly ambling down the corridors, and his favourites are the kids learning their first letters who like to read to him, sound out letters and marks that don’t have any correlation just yet, and you know that nobody has conclusively proven that dragons understand human tongues but you also know that if anyone understands, it’s him.

There’s a festival of dragons, a public holiday where banners are strewn and candles glow even into the wee hours and rainbow confetti and paint clogs the streets and maybe some overexcited babies set things alight but that’s ok, the town prepared better this year, far fewer people will lose their gardens and eyebrows this time, they promise.

And yes ok, there are big dragons. Ferocious dragons. Dragons that only come out once every ten years to feed and pillage. Dragons who rule the seas and shake mountains, who take flight and block out the stars. There are reasons you don’t go into the woods at night, reasons some wells are avoided, reasons entire villages up and vanished without a trace.

But there are also dragons who curl up with your children to rock them to sleep, and ward off nightmares. There are dragons who open doors and fetch supplies and guide those without sight. There are dragons who mimic words and whistles and delight in your joy when they get them just right.

There are dragons who adopt orphaned piglets, kittens, lambs, calves, puppies, ducklings. There are dragons who sunbathe and dragons who need kept on ice and dragons who climb atop weather vanes in storms to conduct electricity. Dragons who sparkle like jewels in the light and dragons who glow in the dark and dragons with flora creeping in and around their scales and dragons who sound like windchimes when they fold their wings.

Concept: there are dragons.

There are so many dragons.

Every version of dwarves has them being almost constantly armoured, and living in huge fortresses and underground tunnels, usually with some super-dramatic main gate that’s twenty feet high and about three feet thick.

What if there’s a reason for that? Like, they weren’t always a race of warriors and miners who almost never showed themselves above ground?

What if they’re the fantasy equivalent of those survivalists who turn their basement into a bomb shelter and fill the place with guns and canned food because they’re totally convinced The End Is Nigh?

What about a setting where the dwarves used to be perfectly happy above ground, growing flowers and getting a tan, until some huge disaster happened, and they all went Fuck This. So they dug down and hid away until the zombie horde or magical plague or the horde of rabid squirrels or whatever had passed, but they never forgot, and now their entire species is like “Constant Vigilance!”

There might even be some dwarf cities buried so deep they never heard the disaster ended. A whole city-fortress of paranoid, armed to the teeth dwarves, ready to kick the shit out of anything that isn’t a dwarf.

Cheat Sheets for Writing Body Language

We are always told to use body language in our writing. Sometimes, it’s easier said than written. I decided to create these cheat sheets to help you show a character’s state of mind. Obviously, a character may exhibit a number of these behaviours. For example, he may be shocked and angry, or shocked and happy. Use these combinations as needed.

by Amanda Patterson

Myths, Creatures, and Folklore

Want to create a religion for your fictional world? Here are some references and resources!

General:

General Folklore

Various Folktales

Heroes

Weather Folklore

Trees in Mythology

Animals in Mythology

Birds in Mythology

Flowers in Mythology

Fruit in Mythology

Plants in Mythology

Folktales from Around the World

Africa:

Egyptian Mythology

African Mythology

More African Mythology

Egyptian Gods and Goddesses

The Gods of Africa

Even More African Mythology

West African Mythology

All About African Mythology

African Mythical Creatures

Gods and Goddesses

The Americas:

Aztec Mythology

Haitian Mythology

Inca Mythology

Maya Mythology

Native American Mythology

More Inca Mythology

More Native American Mythology

South American Mythical Creatures

North American Mythical Creatures

Aztec Gods and Goddesses

Asia:

Chinese Mythology

Hindu Mythology

Japanese Mythology

Korean Mythology

More Japanese Mythology

Chinese and Japanese Mythical Creatures

Indian Mythical Creatures

Chinese Gods and Goddesses

Hindu Gods and Goddesses

Korean Gods and Goddesses

Europe:

Basque Mythology

Celtic Mythology

Etruscan Mythology

Greek Mythology

Latvian Mythology

Norse Mythology

Roman Mythology

Arthurian Legends

Bestiary

Celtic Gods and Goddesses

Gods and Goddesses of the Celtic Lands

Finnish Mythology

Celtic Mythical Creatures

Gods and Goddesses

Middle East:

Islamic Mythology

Judaic Mythology

Mesopotamian Mythology

Persian Mythology

Middle Eastern Mythical Creatures

Oceania:

Aboriginal Mythology

Polynesian Mythology

More Polynesian Mythology

Mythology of the Polynesian Islands

Melanesian Mythology

Massive Polynesian Mythology Post

Maori Mythical Creatures

Hawaiian Gods and Goddesses

Hawaiian Goddesses

Gods and Goddesses

Creating a Fantasy Religion:

Creating Part 1

Creating Part 2

Creating Part 3

Creating Part 4

Fantasy Religion Design Guide

Using Religion in Fantasy

Religion in Fantasy

Creating Fantasy Worlds

Beliefs in Fantasy

Some superstitions:

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