I Actually Just Wrote A Legend Today! Its Written Like A Parent Reading Their Kid A Bedtime Story, Because

I actually just wrote a legend today! It’s written like a parent reading their kid a bedtime story, because I enjoy seeing how different people react to the same thing.

Writing Legend and Folklore

                Unlike mythology, legends are more rooted in historical events and may even have recorded, proven details. Your legend will likely feature real humans as characters experiencing something that happened in a real place in your world. The fun things about legends is that often the truth of the past has been twisted and changed over time. While it’s important for you as the writer to know the absolute truth about your history, your characters may never learn the truth behind the legend, or may trade slightly different alternate stories.

                Legends reflect the values or fears of a society. Much of Folklore comes from parents intending to shield their children from danger—whether going out at night and getting snatched by the boogeyman, or wandering too close to the rapids and being dragged in by a dangerous Kelpie. So start with a real value or danger, and begin to embellish.

                Maybe in your world society really values compassion. A tale may start out with someone hoarding resources and ignoring those in need which then manifests a shadow monster that gobbles both them and their riches right up! Name the monster, and you have a campfire-worthy folk tale for your characters to tell late into the night.

                Or, if your legend has no moral or lesson, it may feature something unexplainable that happened to real people. Stories you hear of disappearing cities or villages come from this place—people witnessing something or experiencing something they can’t explain, and creating a story to explain it anyway.

                The original teller of this story, or the original source, should be difficult if not impossible to track down, to make sure it remains shrouded in mystery.

                Does your world feature any legends or folktales? Let me know!

Hey everyone! I’ve got this assignment for school, and for one of the parts I need to get some statistics. 

It’s about character building, and if any writers seeing this could fill out this form, I would very much appreciate it. It shouldn’t take too long.

If you’re not a writer, please don’t fill this out.

And like with polls, please share for a bigger sample size.

Alterra Update!

Deities;

Whenever a new galaxy is formed, it’s creation brings forth a new set of gods. The number of gods created in one galaxy is between 120 - 140, and each one is comprised entirely out of a separate element. The gods sustain themselves off of a few specific types of antimatter, thus ensuring their respective galaxies don’t fizzle out.

These gods are still bound by the laws of physics, and cannot create new matter from nothing, however, they can reshape it. They seek for planets that are capable of sustaining life, and create various microorganisms on them. They watch as these creatures evolve into complex life, looking on from afar in the form of great nebulae. Occasionally, a sentient species evolves, capable of self-awareness and learning the ways of science. If they gods enjoy watching the lives of a species, they may wish to ensure it’s survival. If this is the case, the gods work together to create a fully evolved species, each with an innate ability unachievable through natural evolution, these are called divine beings.

100 000 years before the events of the book, a great war took place between all the millions of gods from every galaxy, and an unknown enemy. Nowadays, divine beings are seldom ever encountered, and the gods are all dead. All but one that is.

There exists one final god, one who managed to avoid the slaughter, the god of death. This god is rarely in the same place for longer than a few units of planck time, as it is constantly teleporting between the dead. Every time a creature dies, it has 1 minute to return the creature’s energy to the universe, or the creature’s “soul” will deteriorate. If a soul deteriorates, it will be susceptible to reacting with a type of antimatter that can’t be consumed by gods, nor can it be detected by conventional means. If a soul reacts, it could set off a chain reaction that erases all energy in the universe. And so the god of death must live in constant dark, moving too fast to process light, sound, or the outside world. The god of death’s afterimage does remain for a fraction of a second, leading to the near universal depiction of death being a tall dark wraith or dark hooded man.

Despite the gods being dead, holy magic still functions just fine. This is because, while the gods might be dead, the elements that they were made of still exist. So it’s not the name of the deity that’s being called upon, but the element in the deity’s language.

Writing With Folklore Blog Directory

Looking for something specific? This list is updated periodically with every post I’ve ever made! Start here if you’re looking for…

Characterization/Development

2 Alternate Character Creation Techniques

Character Creation with Tarot

Character is Plot

Characters Contradict

Creating and Using a Logline

Subtext: What We’re Not Saying

The Past, Present, and Future of Your Character (Tarot)

There’s no Such Thing as Fluff

Troubleshooting Your Dialogue

Voice is What They Say, Not How they Say It

Why is Your Antagonist the Antagonist

You Only Get One Character Introduction

Plotting

Finish Your Drafts

Motifs and Throughlines

Should I Edit or Rewrite?

Stick to your Twist

The Last Chapter

Troubleshooting your Plot

Your Plot will Always have Holes

Outlining

Finding your Title

Master Planning Checklist  

My Favourite Chapter Titles from my Projects

Outlining Part 1

Outlining Part 2

Outlining the Short Story

Theme is not a Question

What Happens Next

You Don’t Need to Write Chronologically

Worldbuilding

10 Questions to Ask About your World

Building your World

Throw Out your Details

Writing Prophesy

Theory

Beginner’s Luck (The illusion of a perfect first draft)

Camera as Narrator

Expanding on the Narrator

Experiencing and Writing

How to Sentence Structure

Maintaining a Writing Schedule

Read it Out loud!             

When Writing Needs Therapy  

Why Screenwriting is a Good Model for Novel Writing    

Writing is Feeling            

Writing Requires Fuel    

Zoom in               

Misc. Writing Advice

Don’t Write What You Know, Write Genuinely

Forget Clarity of Description

Grave Tending  

Keeping Secrets is Risky Business

Movement Kills Pacing

Nailing Your Pacing and Rhythm

Passage of Time

Sentence Structure Ask

Suspension of Disbelief

Trust your Readers

Writing about Sensitive Subjects

Writing about the Holidays

Writing a Universal Story

Writing with Intention

Prompts

Character, Prop, Situation

Exploring Humanity

Musical Writing

Now They Meet

Secrets

Sparking an Idea

There’s Magic in Cities Too

Write Without your Vices

Folklore

Banshee

Bigfoot

Doppelganger

Fairy Tale: The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood

Gargoyles

Gnomes

Goatman

Golem

Griffin

Kelpie

Krampus

Leprechaun

Loch Ness Monster

Mothman

Phoenix

The Bray Road Beast

The Headless Templar

The Jersey Devil

Will-o’-the-Wisp

NaNoWriMo

Developing your Nano Protagonist

Finding Your Nano Idea

Outlining your Nano Project

Setting a Custom Nanowrimo Goal

Inspiration

Alienation and Creating

Art Requires Vulnerability

Carry a Journal

Discovering Your Weird Brain

Do you Diary

Facing the Blank Page

Happy New Years! (eve)

I’m Still Writing Despite Everything

Is your Idea Original?     

Looking Forward to Looking Forward

Mental Illness and Creating

What Makes you Wonderful?

Why I write

Ahem, *smacks lips*

Yoink!

Feelings Wheel

This is the feelings wheel by Geoffrey Roberts, shown to me by my therapist. My initial thought was, "what amazing synonyms to use for diverse emotional vocabulary!"

More than that, this wheel is great for understanding your characters inner motivations and reactions to situations. For example, if a character constantly feels helpless, then their overarching characteristics will be that they are fearful.

Characters who are less emotionally aware may use words and act in the inner most circle. Those much more aware of their emotions may describe themselves or express and use words from the outer most circle.

Hopefully you guys find this as helpful as I did! Let me know down in the comments.

Happy Writing!

Alterra Update!

“Do you wish to hear a story, little one? Alright, but just one, and then off to bed with you. How about a tale of hope, justice, and honor? A tale of a man who stood alone against the forces of evil, and made evil flinch. Let me tell you the story of the greatest bounty hunter in the world, Val Faeir,”

Over a hundred years before the rise of the accursed lord, a young orphan came to a town called Blackwood. Blackwood was once the bounty hunting capital of the whole world, and masters of trade. Hunters from all over the world came here for the best gear, rewards, and talk of bounties collected. With nothing but his clothes and a leather tunic, he walked into the hunter’s tavern, Blade & Honor, and simply asked how he could be a bounty hunter. They all laughed at him, not taking him seriously at all, but he was not willing to give up that easily. The innkeeper offered him a challenge, win a “fair” fight against one of the patrons in the inn, and they would give him an easy bounty no one wanted. Not one to back down from a challenge, he agreed.

His opponent, the strongest man in the bar, Dredgur. Dredgur was a giant, being well over 7 feet tall, and being part golem. Despite appearing to be outmatched, Val stood there calmly, unfazed. It is said that when Dredgur landed his one and only hit on Val, he broke his hand, and Val then knocked him out in a single punch. And you can bet the dragons’ return that the other hunted respected him after that.

He turned in bounty after bounty, each one he turned in raised more questions. Rumors about him were everywhere, whether or not they were true was impossible to decipher. Some say their blades broke against him skin, others said he didn’t eat, and on and on and on, until one day, he saved a wizard. Unbeknownst to him, the wizard had granted him everlasting youth, and a short time after, he became known to all as the ageless hunt.

There wasn’t a single being in the criminal underworld who wasn’t afraid of him now, and anyone who said otherwise was lying. In the cities, he was a celebrity. His success inspired countless others, and ballads of his most famous hunts were taught at schools and preformed in theaters. Everyone saw him as a hero, and you want to know why? Because not once did he ever actually kill anyone. For all of his powerful weapons, like his two legendary swords, “Cleansing flame” and “Impending Justice,” they were never stained with blood. But then, like most heroes back then, he died when the Accursed Lord came into power. No one saw him die, but he was rumored to have been in Blackwood when IT burned the city to char. Some say he fled to Hell or the stars, many still hold hope he’ll come back to save us.

“Alright, now off to bed with you!”

“Do you think he’s still alive, dad?”

“Who knows? But if he is, it could very well lead to,”

Alterra: The Fall of Lord Valthoraxe