Tag: Writing Fantasy

Dwarf Name Generator

Are You Writing a Book About Dwarves?

If you’re writing about Dwarves in your fantasy book this post is for you.

One of my writing projects is a short story about a Dwarf, so I needed a few Dwarf names for the minor characters. My son and I, who also writes fantasy, came up with a short list of names for inspiration but then, bless his creative heart, he decided I needed a name-generator so I could, well – generate names myself. I was so impressed with the results I asked him if I could share the generator with you. That started a frenzy of ideas and here’s the result. Shared with his blessing.

Dwarf Name Generator Sampler – Find Your Dwarf Name

Try it out to find your own Dwarf name. All of this is based on names from Tolkien’s books. My birthday is in February so my Dwarf name could be Flin, Filin or Falin.

Writing Fantasy. Dwarf Name Generator. Fantasy Characters. Dwarves.

Get the Extended Dwarf Name Generator

There’s a longer list of names in my protected Resources. If you don’t mind adding your name to my mailing list, you’ll get the login and a list of free resources. (I only email occasionally with info on new book releases and such).

Have fun creating your Dwarf names!

Extra Fun

“THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE KING” is a Christian faith-based book about setting your goals if you’re a Christian who thinks outside the box, sorta speak. We who are Christians with a slightly different way of viewing the world because we often live in our own.

If you identify with that, I wrote a book about being a fantasy geek and finding our unique path in our faith. You can check it out on Amazon.

Want to know more about the Dwarf Name Generator creator Benjamin T. Collier ?

Til next time, know you are loved by the One who created you in His image.

Lynne

Writing Fantasy || ‘Design Your Own Flag’ by Ann-Margret Hovsepian

 

Design Your Own Flag

I had a lot of fun with The Dwarf Name Generator, how about you? I have names for all the characters in my ebook now!

Ready to have more fun? This week I’m sharing an excerpt from a blog a friend of mine wrote. She’s a talented artist and her heart is to help people discover their creativity. Here’s why I’m sharing this with you; she blogged about creating a personal (or group) flag. I thought, seeing as most of you are writers of fantasy like me, you’d love knowing how to add that creative element to your books. You could even create a flag for your fantasy world and use it on your book cover.

On her blog, Ann-Margret digs deeper and gives you links to resource further. Cool, huh? Here’s part of her blog post:

 

Ann-Margret Hovsepian

Saturday, March 24, 2018 

“This activity is perfect for a family, youth group, classroom or any themed club. It would make a great ice breaker for a big event, too. 

I want you to imagine that you (or your group) are a country. What would your flag look like?

There are endless ways to design a flag because you have these options to consider:

  • Shape (most flags are rectangular but there are a few exceptions)
  • Pattern (stripes, cross, quadrisections, canton, etc.)
  • Colours
  • Symbols

Vexillology

According to the North American Vexillological Association (vexillology is the study of flags), here are five basic principles for designing a flag:

  1. Keep It Simple. The flag should be so simple that a child can draw it from memory…
  2. Use Meaningful Symbolism. The flag’s images, colors, or patterns should relate to what it symbolizes…
  3. Use 2 or 3 Basic Colors. Limit the number of colors on the flag to three which contrast well and come from the standard color set…
  4. No Lettering or Seals. Never use writing on any kind or an organization’s seal…
  5. Be Distinctive or Be Related. Avoid duplicating other flags, but use similarities to show connections…

 

Create your own flag by Ann-Margret Hovsepian

(Ann-Margret adds a link here on her post to a flag creator)

If you want a more old-school approach to designing your flag, you can print out this simple template and then colour it in. (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

flag

 

–Ann-Margret

Follow the rest of Ann-Margret’s post with fun ideas for completing your flag design at    annhovsepian.com  (and PS–she has freebies!)

Til next time, know you are loved by the One who created you in His image.

Lynne

Writing A Short Dwarf Story – Pun Intended!

What I’m Writing Now

I’m slowly writing a speculative fiction novel about lies and deception, but I’m also writing an ebook about a young Dwarf who goes off on an adventure. It’s a story for adults of all ages who love fantasy but I’ll make it a ‘clean read’ so older children can read it too. (It does have some ugly fight scenes and nasty villains so I won’t be releasing it as a children’s book.)

I’m following my Writing Fantasy blog series to keep me focused because I tend to get scatterbrained if I don’t have an outline to follow. Are you like that? I’m definitely a pantser when it comes to writing, but I’ve learned I also need to plot ahead of time to free up my creative brain to just write, write, write, once the outline’s ready.

Here’s my premise:

Ephesians 4:32
“And be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.”

Here’s the logline:

The quiet life of a farmer is about to change for the son of outcast Dwarves whose clans have been warring for many generations. An invading army is descending from the land of the Nords across the sea, slaughtering hundreds of Dwarves and Elves in their path, and the young farmer has been asked to go and warn the very clans who exiled his parents. But when he nears Dwarf Mountain, he’s met by travellers who will change the course of the battle, and the young Dwarf’s life, forever.

Dwarves on Pinterest

Want to see some great Dwarf pins?  Here’s a link to my Dwarf Fantasy Book I’m Writing image board. You’ll find ideas for the main hero, villains, Dwarf battle armour, settings and clothing. I hope some of them will inspire your fantasy work. (I don’t censor pins so click through to other people’s sites cautiously)

 

Dwarf male with spear and axe. Art concept from The Fellowship Of The King book by Lynne Collier.

Are you writing about Dwarves?

Here’s a basic Dwarf Name Generator you can use to find your own Dwarf name and some others for your characters, created by Benjamin T. Collier

 

You can get a full list of prefixes and suffixes for Dwarf names as well as other free resources here.

You can follow my writing progress on Twitter.

Have fun writing your Dwarf story!

Til next time, know you are loved by the One who created you in His image.

Lynne

 

 

Writing Fantasy || Character Casting

If Steven Spielberg called you for advice on casting the main character for your movie, who would you choose?

As I was doing research on creating characters for my stories, I came across an intriguing idea for character profiling. If you think of a famous person and keep them in mind as you write, it helps when you write dialogue and body language. This is actually very helpful when considering how your characters will respond to events with their mannerisms, quirks and personalities. I tried that and it works!

And what if your novel is so epic that a hugely famous producer wants to make it into a movie? Hopefully, some of us will be able to do that one day. How awesome would that be? Have you already been daydreaming about who you’d cast in your movie? Let’s face it, most of us envision our stories on the screen even before we put fingers to keyboard.

Casting characters

Which famous person reminds you of your character?

Is your story a swashbuckling adventure with a shot of rum humour? Maybe Jonny Depp is who you have in mind for your protagonist. Or do you see the dashingly romantic Orlando Bloom as your hero?

Are you writing a sci-fi novel? Do you see Leonard Nimoy as your strange wise man, or perhaps he fits the role of a High-Elf wizard in your fantasy novel?

Who would you love to cast?

Who would be perfect in the role of your main Protagonist?

Your main Antagonist?

Your Protagonist’s Love Interest?

Your Protagonist’s Mentor?

Your Protagonist’s Sidekick?

Your Protagonist’s 4 Main Followers?

Your Antagonist’s Sidekick?

Pinterest For Role Call

By now most of you know how much I love to play around on Pinterest and create boards for my writing projects.  I have boards for my characters, costume ideas, writing tips for the genre I’m currently writing in and so on. I find this casting exercise very helpful and inspiring. There’s freedom in ‘hiring’ professionals to play around in your imagination. And it’s so much fun!

I ‘hired’ a famous actor to play the role of my hero in the Dwarf story I’m currently writing. You can check out my Dwarf storyboard with sections about my protagonists, antagonists, mountains, caves, armour and more here.

If you missed my other blogs on writing characters, you can catch up here:

Character Personalities

Character Races

Character Occupations

Character Names

Character Backstory

I hope you have fun casting famous people in your movie. If you can’t think of a famous person you can always cast someone you know. My advice here would be to not be too obvious!

Til next time, know you are loved by the One who created you in His image.

Lynne

 

Writing Fantasy || Character Personalities

 

How well do you know your characters?

  • Do you know the personalities of these people who live in your head?
  • Have you spent enough time with them to know how they’d feel about what’s going on in their story?
  • Would their reactions to certain events or a flippant statement lead to a fight scene?
  • If they saw a mouse in the kitchen would they scream and jump up on the couch?

Writing Character Personality Types
How would your character react?

 

How to get to know your characters

Knowing your characters well enough to be able to use their personality traits to your advantage as you write your novel will make the writing flow easier and create logical and organic story arcs.

  • For example, who is your protagonist likely to befriend?
  • Who may hate your protagonist?
  • What drives your protagonist’s passion?
  • What may drive a particular character crazy?
  • How would your antagonist behave in an argument?

As I study the next steps in writing my novel, I realize I can’t answer some of the questions I need to ask to plot my story. The reason being, I don’t know what my character would do in any given situation. So, I need to take the time to get to know who these people are and what their responses would be to the events I want in my story. I need to be able to walk through this story with my characters and see, hear, touch, smell and taste what they experience and how they respond to the circumstances I set before them.

 

Personality Types

We need to take time to get to know everyone in our story. It’s fascinating and fruitful. Once we know our main characters well we’ll be better able to write an accurate and believable story. It may come in handy with a few of those friends who’re giving us a hard time. If we understand people better we may just be able to get along better.

 

What’s Your Personality?

How about you? If you’d like to dig a little deeper or find your own personality type, you can check out a blog post I wrote for my mini-course, Your Write Voice For His Kingdom.

Once we know our characters’ personalities we can go on to discovering their backstories and why they responded to events in their past based on those personality traits.

Have fun discovering the ways we were all made so differently by our Heavenly Father.

Til next time, know you are loved by the One who made you in His image.

Lynne

 

Resources for digging deeper:

There are several personality tests online but, in my opinion, these three are the best. Each one brings a different perspective to a developing character.