Tag: Fantasy

Thoughts on the Iron Pen Experience and What I Learned From It

~ Jason Liegois ~ 1 Comment

[PHOTO NOTE: This is what came up when I did a free photo search for “Iron Pen.”]

On a quick note, I’d like to apologize for my “A Week in the Writing Life” post for coming out today on WordPress rather than yesterday as I anticipated. That was a glitch in scheduling on my end.

I briefly talked about my having entered the Midwest Writing Center (MWC)’s annual Iron Pen competition for the first time. Just to recap, they give you a writing prompt at about 5 p.m. on a Friday (in this case, the Friday of two weeks past), and then you have 24 hours to put together a work of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry and submit it for consideration. Fiction and nonfiction submissions have to be less than 2,000 words, but poetry submissions have no word limit. This year’s prompt was the following:

Between the ocean and the mountains is a wild forest. That is where I want to make my home.

I was really happy to participate this year, and it was a great experience no matter whether I win anything or not. Here’s a few observations I had about it.

At This Point, Creativity is not an Issue for Me

I was not really worried at any point that I wasn’t going to be able to have something to say using the prompt. I had the basic idea for my response in my head and ready to go within about five minutes. It took me about three more hours of pondering exactly how I would execute it on the page, and the plot line for the story, but the basic premise I had locked down in five minutes.

Most of the things that I’ve been trying to educate myself on having to do with writing involve what I call “publishing” issues – how to get my projects into people’s hands to read, for example – and marketing tips. Coming up with ideas is the least of my problems.

Writing Short Stories is a Challenge for Me

In my recent experiences with fan fiction, I can write as many words as I need to tell a story and not have to worry about how many words I have to use.

That is not the case when you only have 2,000 words to tell a story and some of the chapters I have put in my recent fan fiction might easily be five times that length. It should be a writing rule of thumb that the fewer words you have to work with to tell a story, the more weight and the more work those individual words have to carry. That’s one of the reasons why poets are very particular about the types of words they use and their various meanings and implications.

I have to say that I was surprised that I was able to tell the story that I was eventually able to tell with close to 200 words to spare. If I were to redo it again, I’d like to take a look at some of the descriptive words that I used and see if I could not have come up with something more vivid. I think I did just enough to tell the story and show the basic parts of the world that I made, but I could have done perhaps a bit more to build my characters, especially the main one. That could have also helped to make the description of the world a bit more vivid. Then again, I only had 24 hours to write this story and I ended up using only one-fourth of that time because I was going to be on the road much of that time.

Fantasy is Where my Head is Going to be at for the Foreseeable Future

It was not too much of a surprise that the minute that I started to look at the Iron Pen prompt that the story I was going to write was going to head to a fantasy story.

Fantasy has been the focus of the fan fiction that I’ve been writing off and on for the past few years. Although my first published book (and soon enough, my second book) are set in contemporary settings, I’ve been much more interested, from a reader’s perspective and a writer’s perspective, in the fantasy genre.

The exact reasons for why my attention has been turned to fantasy is probably worth its own post, but it certainly is the case. Although there was no sign of magic in this story, or knights and dragons, it did take place in a fictional land that could have been anywhere from the ancient to the Middle Ages era. More importantly, the story that it led to spoke more to me than maybe a regular story from the modern area would.

So, the fact that my imagination immediately leapt to a fantasy style when I had to be creative gives me the feeling that I’ve got something I want to express there. And, I am wanting to get started on it soon – how soon, I’m not sure.

I’m going to find out Wednesday who won the contest. There will be a ceremony for the winners this coming Saturday. Since they’re allowing all the participants to read their work, I might actually go down there. It’s been a while since I’ve had a public reading of any of my stuff.

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“Work” Writing Vs. “Fun” Writing: A Reflection (Part 2/?)

~ Jason Liegois ~ 8 Comments

It all started with a television show.

The time was spring 2019. I had just become a published author for the first time ever, but I was having difficulty getting things off the ground. 

There were the usual difficulties with being a first-time author, of course, but I had many other things going against me other than the typical stuff. First, in a business where you want to be well-known in the region that you live in, I was less than a year away from moving to a totally different section of the state, far away from my home base of 40 years. In the middle of me doing that, trying to hustle for a side gig was the last thing on my mind. 

Looming in the distance, although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, was COVID, which would keep me away from doing anything in-person for a long time to come. That would eventually halt most of the momentum that I had, and the fact that the publisher I worked with on my book was not accepting any new fiction work stopped my progress on that front, as well.

I was in a weird middle place, which I haven’t totally escaped from yet, where I was in-between projects. I have (still do have) some fiction that I had been working on, and the idea of trying to get back into the grind of trying to find a new publisher or agent was something that I was dreading. I was anticipating a years-long process behind that, because that was how it had gone previously for me. And there was no guarantee that I would have what I wanted in the end.

It was then that I got… a bit distracted by a shiny object – that television show.

Back in 2019, Game of Thrones was king. While I am not an HBO subscriber, I had been following the progress of the television show by other means. I am a big fan of fantasy fiction, and this interest had only grown since I was in my pre-teens.

The show was in its final season and I know there were plenty of people online anticipating the ending of the show. Many were anticipating it so much, even, that they were starting to come up with their own endings for the show. Even more, I was beginning to read them and watch them online.

I’d never had a totally favorable opinion of fan fiction by this time of my life. I had heard the old stories about how Star Trek had gotten that and “slash” romance fiction (such as Kirk/Spock). It seemed like people just trying to write their weirdest fantasies and throw it out into the ether of the Internet.

I started, in an ever so gradual manner, to read some of this work. Some of it I found on Reddit; some I discovered lurking around on other sites. I even saw a table read of a Game of Thrones play covering the final season on YouTube. There was a lot of speculation on YouTube regarding how this was going to shake out.

So, as I began to read and watch that material, in waiting for that final season to drop, I came upon something of a revelation for myself. I started to realize, some of these authors are good.

When I say that, I’m not talking about writers who were basically literate. I’m talking guys (and ladies) who were really good storytellers. I was getting as much enjoyment out those stories online as I had ever gotten out of anything I’d bought from a bookstore or Amazon’s Kindle store. They had everything – compelling, real-to-life characters with compelling relationships, great descriptions, plots that drove the story and that made sense based on a clear understanding of human nature and logical thought.

Because there wasn’t a lot of that – especially good plots – on TV screens right around spring 2019. Specifically, on any screens showing Game of Thrones.

If you haven’t heard, there were a whole bunch of people not happy with the ending of Game of Thrones. In fact, it was a debacle that eventually ended up killing a lot of the rewatch potential for the series. Somehow, it has managed to not destroy interest in the A Song of Ice and Fire universe (as the George RR Martin series is called), based on the reaction to the new House of the Dragon series (essentially a prequel to Game of Thrones).

I had been through bad endings of television series before, many many times. Anyone who grew up with any memory of 1970’s television (and reruns of 1950’s-1960’s television) would be able to recall bad series endings. Especially in those early days, there was no sense among television executives that series could come to a clear ending. They’d usually run those series until the wheels came off, when the ratings kept dropping even when cute kids were introduced in a desperate effort to keep eyeballs on cathode ray tubes. 

Eventually, those producers and show-runners got more sophisticated and realized that series needed a decent ending so that you could have satisfying series-long story arcs. Of course, show runners still got things wrong when it came to final seasons and endings. I had already suffered through Rosanne, Dexter, Lost, and, most horrifically, Battlestar Galactica (1-2).

But this ending – the ending to Game of Thrones – that threw me more than nearly any other ending of a show or a movie ever had. And as I was stewing over the many flaws of not only the ending but the entire final season of the show, one thought kept nagging at me: I could do this better than the 2Ds (3).

So, I started writing, pouring all of that frustration and a desire for a great story out onto the computer screen. Within a few weeks, I had a 40,000-word story set after the events of the series. It was a wild little tale that was never going to earn me a single dime. I wound up posting it in full on FanFiction.Net. 

People started posting comments on it and saying it was good. It… was a bit of a rush, to be honest. I mean, I’ve had people compliment my work before (more than a few of them family), but this was some random strangers giving them out. 

Then I decided to post it on a site called Archive Of Our Own (AO3), a virtual warehouse of fanfiction content. I met several cool authors there who put out some really ambitious work. There was one younger writer out there who essentially did an entire rewrite and reimagining of the entire ASOIAF series (4). There was plenty of great writing out there… and the craziest idea popped into my head.

“I should do a rewrite of Season 8.”

Part of me thought it would be too much work to do for a “fun” project, something that had no commercial potential whatsoever. But the other part was drawn to the challenge. I’d seen too much cringe moments in that season that I knew I could have done a better job of it than they could. I’d had that feeling reading plenty of paperbacks over the years, but I hadn’t gotten the idea to actually redo a book. Until now. 

I ended up with about half a million words. 

It’s now a series. 

I’ve had more than 1,000 people give “kudos” (AO3-speak for likes). 

I’m not sure how much more of it I’m going to write. If I wanted to be a “serious” writer, I should just try and come up with an idea about a new OC dark fantasy series. 

But, it turns out it’s one of the most fun things that I’ve ever experienced as a writer. 

And because of it, I think I fell back in love with just writing for writing’s sake. And I’m so thankful for it.

And yes, there will be more to this in a later post. Maybe you’ll see it next weekend? And maybe you’ll see it with some other stuff.

Footnotes:

1. The one that started in 2003, not the one in 1978. You’d never expect a science fiction series to last long in the 1970’s.

2. The four best ever endings in TV history so far are, of course, The Shield, The Wire, Six Feet Under, and The Sopranos.

3. The Showrunners Who Will Not Be Named.

4. He’s since started at least three other series reimagining that universe. He’s a very ambitious and creative young man.

Writing Journal 10.6.2019: Keeping busy just a little more than before, and that’s OK

~ Jason Liegois ~ Leave a comment

This is going to be a pretty brief entry.

There’s not too many writing updates from last week. I think I was writing steadily this week, just a few fewer words than the previous week, but except for one day that I just took off, there was some good work in there.

No special reports on projects, although I did do a bit of planning on Project F (my original fantasy project) using Wonderdraft. I have to admit that I have not read a lot of sci-fi/fantasy-specific advice about writing, even though these genres have been part of my reading life ever since the beginning. One of my personal observations is that once you create a world and can see it, certain things can suggest themselves to you, like how people live, what political structures might exist, and so on. I keep saying that I need to do a review of Wonderdraft and I’m getting closer to actually doing it. It’s a fantastic tool that I think I will keep using for planning purposes, especially any other sci-fi and-or fantasy projects I tackle.

OK, the stats are below. Have a good writing week, everyone.

+8,210 words written.

Days writing: 6 of 7.

Days revising/planning: 2 of 7 for 150 total minutes.

Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

 

On Game of Thrones

~ Jason Liegois ~ 6 Comments

OK, that was a ride, wasn’t it?

It’s been a couple of weeks since Game Of Thrones ended and I’m still not really over it. There have been arguments all across the Internets about whether the entire series is a failure or success based on the final season (or, in the case of some viewers, seasons 6-8 when the D&D team (I’m too fracking lazy to look up the full names of the Game Of Thrones showrunners) ran out of sweet sweet George R.R. Martin material to adapt).

In reviewing their concerns, they have laid their complaints squarely at the feet of the writing of D&D, and not anyone else involved with the production. There are at least a few brave souls online (mostly in the r/gameofthrones section of Reddit) that are attempting a straight-faced defense of Season 8 as a massive success in closing out one of the best series in TV history. And, there are a few people who are just online for the memes and fun (the r/freefolk section of Reddit).

For a couple of weeks, I’ve been trying to wrestle with how I feel about the series as a whole and Season 8 in particular. I’m in the (not surprising) position of wanting to argue a point but not to the degree that I have to put a massive amount of effort and research into the piece. (I’m just here to talk fantasy and writing, tbh, I’m not trying to put together the ultimate think-piece on GOT. If someone wants that, they can easily go to The Onion A.V. Club or i09 or Tor or wherever else they geek out about fantasy.)

What I am here to do is to talk about writing, which I personally agree with most of the commentators was the main problem with Season 8. However, if I’m going to label this series anything, the two words I would use to describe it would be: Flawed Masterpiece.

There’s so many aspects of this series that worked superbly throughout its entire run. The production design for GOT was never less than stellar. It always created a specific sense of place and culture, no matter where the action was. It did a great job of suggesting distinct cultures that were inspired by real-life culture but never exact copies of them – in fact, most of the time they would up being glorious remixes. The same goes for the costume, prop, and makeup departments.

The direction and cinematography of the series (notwithstanding Season 8 Episode 3’s darkness) were always top-notch. I loved how the action sequences were framed up and constructed from the beginning of the series to the end. Also, any stunt crew that can set records for longest combat action sequence on film and the most people on fire in a single shot are top of the line in my eyes.

Then there was the acting. Holy buckets, the acting was aces from the very first episode to the last. There were many different actors that had been there and done that (Sean Benn, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage) and some veteran actors I’d never heard of (Iain Glenn, Charles Dance). Everyone proved why they were top of the line. There was great young talent (Kit Harrington, Emilia Clarke, Alfie Allen, Richard Madden) that the producers took a chance on and they carried the show on their backs. (I have no idea how this season would have gone if Emilia hadn’t leveled up on her acting skills and sold her entire arc.) Then there were the kids, Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner chief among them, who grew up on set and I know are going to be the next biggest actors to have both superb child and adult acting careers (Roddy McDowell, Elizabeth Taylor, Mickey Rooney, Kurt Russell, Jodie Foster, Drew Barrymore, and Ethan Hawke* among many others).

No, for me, if there were flaws in this series, it came down to the writing. And trust me, I know about flaws in writing. I make enough of them to be sure.

I don’t want to speculate about the reasons for the abbreviated seasons. People say D&D wanted to get it over with so they could start working on the Star Wars franchise, not that I’m probably going to watch anything regarding that except for maybe Episode IX. To be honest, I think the cast and crew could have easily been the ones saying they wanted to wrap it up after all that time on the job. The impression I got from the actor interviews was of a cast that both didn’t want to end things and yet felt it was getting to be time for the end.

So, let’s get into each of the episodes. I’ll spend more time on some than the others, but there’ll be something about them all and some side conversations as well.

  • S8E1 – I thought this was an acceptable intro to the rest of the season. It effectively showed the tensions between the Dragon Queen and her army and her new northern allies. Plenty of good reunions all around (especially those involving Arya), and the scene at Last Hearth was spooky as hell.
    The thing that bothered me on the rewatch – I got the sense that with the dragons flying over Winterfell for the first time, that Dany’s prideful reaction is intended to show how she seems to be overly enamored of showing her strength and just expecting people to follow her.
    Unlike many people, I was not opposed to the Mad Queen scenario. I could absolutely see Dany feeling entitled to wear the crown of Westeros because it was her destiny to do that, it was her destiny to free all of the peoples of the world. But they needed to do better planning for that. Yeah, I saw the hints looking back at the different instances where she was a cold-blooded killer. But they needed to do better prep for that, man. At minimum, they needed to tell Emilia what was up long before the final season. She did everything she could to sell this last season, and I honestly think she grew several levels as an actor as a result of that, but it would have been so much better to let her in on the action when you know it’s happening, you know that it’s going to be part of GRRM’s endgame.
    Just compare springing this on Emilia to what happened with Alan Rickman and the Harry Potter series. They let him in on what was happening from the beginning and it informed his performance throughout the entire series; it added so much weight to what eventually happened.
    (OK, I had to take a break and watch the “Always” scene in the Deathly Hallows 2 film and start crying at the heaviness of all of it. I DON’T CARE. There, now.)
  • S8E2: easily among the top five episodes in the series, bar none. Where do I even start? The home truths between Jaime and Bran, Jaime and Tyrion, Jaime and Brianne? Gendrya happening in a way that felt right? Everyone contemplating death? And the big reveal between Jon and Dany? Absolutely perfect.
  • S8E3: OK, not too much to pick apart here. I can see the Dothraki making a suicidal charge into the Army of the Dead. It doesn’t make sense for the soldiers to be in front of the barricades keeping the wights out of Winterfell. Also, I have no idea why the catapults were stationed outside the castle rather than inside. (My father has no military experience whatsoever, but even he wondered what the hell was going on.) And honestly, it would have made sense for the NK to take down Rhaegal during this episode rather than having some random Ironborn scorpions do the job (see S8E4).
    The rest of it, however, made sense, and I will always be a fan of Arya being the one that kills the Night King and passing into legend.
    I admit Jon screaming at the dragon was pretty silly.
  • S8E4: This is a contradiction of an episode. It is both possibly the worst episode of the series, and yet contains some of the best scenes.
    Good parts: The opening sequence of the funeral for all of the dead. Man, Kit killed that speech at the beginning, didn’t he? The reactions of all of the actors was spot on. Also, the feast that night was the bomb, wasn’t it? I didn’t realize how much Northerners of all types loved drinking and cutting loose.
    Bad Parts: Where do I fracking start?

    • The whole reveal of Jon’s identity with his family. Yeah, I get that you didn’t want him to repeat his story a half dozen times, but don’t you think how his sisters and brother take this is important in establishing his relations with them going forward? At the bare minimum?
    • The Arya brushoff was handled totally wrong. I think I should be able to correct that in my epilogue for the series, and I am going to consider that cannon from here on out; no one else is going to consider that otherwise.
    • Rhaegal’s death from random scorpion fire (see S8E3).
    • The Jaime/Brianne brushoff. I can perfectly see why Jaime would want to do this, and I’m not of the opinion that his decision “ruined his redemption arc.” I’ve heard enough stories about addicts to know that not every one of them redeems themselves. In the end, Jaime was a flawed man who could rise to the occasion when absolutely necessary but in the end fell into his old addiction (in his case, Cersei). Just a few additional lines of dialogue would have been sufficient to show the conflict Jaime had between his love for two different women.
  • S8E5: I loved the action in this episode and it worked out far better than what I feared it was going to be. (Full disclosure: I was pouring over spoilers for this series from the beginning. Some people hate spoilers with the power of a thousand suns; I am all for them.) My complaints for this episode:
    • Again, the problem with the Mad Queen situation. I am OK with what happened, but they needed to make it slightly clearer that they were going this route from the beginning of the series, at least more clear than they did before. (See the S8E1 complaints.) Despite everything, Clarke totally sold this transformation and I think it will help her grow as an actor.
    • The Jaime/Euron meeting was trash. (Also, D&D really junked Euron’s character; I felt so bad for the actor playing him.) I think a fight could have taken place, but not the way it did. I could picture Jaime and Euron clashing after they both sneaked into the Red Keep trying to find Cersei.
    • The rest of it, I didn’t have a problem with.
  • S8E6: The ending worked better than I expected. Kit and Emilia really pulled off her death scene well. I thought the fates of the other characters made sense. I had no problem with Bran becoming king – again, this should have been developed more (along with his powers and what he was doing as the 3ER, as well). There were some hints about this in the series, but the idea wasn’t developed as much as it could have been.
    (For those who are hoping that GRRM’s books will change the characters’ fates significantly, bury those thoughts in your backyard or garden. D&D are working from Martin’s outline and his desired ending. Hopefully he’ll develop those plots more thoroughly.)
  • The things that didn’t work for me:
    • I’m fine with Arya going exploring, but it doesn’t make sense for someone who believes in family so much to act like she’s never going to see her family again. Just adding something like “I’ll see you once I find out what’s west of Westeros” would have done the trick. Sansa agreeing to help her out (with a ship) would have filled in a couple of gaps.
    • The ever changing size of the Unsullied and the Dothraki drove me up the fracking wall. Did they all get killed off or NOT? If this would have stayed consistent, it would have solved one of the biggest plot holes in the entire episode – why the Unsullied and Dothraki were so willing to go along with the decision of the Westerosi council.
    • How it should have gone would be like this: The Battle of the Long Night reduces the effective force of Dany’s army severely. Let’s say there were less than 500 Unsullied left and maybe 1-2,000 Dothraki around. (Of course there might be more Dothraki left in Essos, but they wouldn’t come into play). If this force is surrounded by, say, a 30,000-50,000 person army of bannermen from throughout Westeros, the threat of destruction becomes very real. Now, the Dothraki might still want to take everyone on due to their blood oaths to their queen, but I can easily see Grey Worm stopping them because he wants to at least survive and keep his promise to protect Narth. This scenario would have made much more sense.
    • I personally believe that Sansa, Tyrion, and all of the Westerosi lords were gaslighting GW by saying Jon was going to the Night’s Watch when he was really going to go beyond the wall. This need to be made clear because the way it was laid out in the episode was the height of stupidity.
      Why does Westeros still need a NW when there’s no more Night King and the North are friends with the Freefolk? If it’s more of a general force to serve the whole realm (such as the French Foreign Legion), wouldn’t they have NW garrisons throughout Westeros (except for those sentenced to the NW; they could be sent to the Wall).
      Once this was clear, all they would have to do would be to slip in another statement or two during Season 8 from Jon along the lines of “Oh, in many ways I wish I was north of the wall instead of here; things were so much simpler then.” Then, during Tyrion’s last conversation with Jon, after he discussed sending him to the Night’s Watch, he could have added, “…so that’s what’s going to happen to you as far as everyone’s concerned. But we’ve got another plan instead…”
    • Not even giving the Dorne guy a name? Seriously?
    • Not even a look between Arya and Gendry in that last episode when they were on the same platform?
    • Queen Yara needed to remind Bran of the promise Dany had made to her that the Iron Islands would be independent. He could still do that and claim to be ruler of the Six Kingdoms. Come on, a promise is a promise.

In the end, I think the screenwriters/showrunners collided with some Writing Fiction 101 no-nos that could have been easily avoided. They include:

  • If your plot only works because your characters are too stupid to figure out better plans or courses of action, then your story is going to run off the rails and destroy any suspension of belief that you might have. It’s OK for some characters to be that stupid, but it’s infuriating for an audience to see characters of reasonable intelligence or even high intelligence wind up doing dumb and dumber things. This is related to the next problem.
  • You need to have characters take actions and demonstrate behaviors that are consistent with who they are. It takes time and craftsmanship to create those characters and their identities. You can’t have characters suddenly take actions that don’t make sense to them. That kills off the ability for readers or viewers to believe in the action, and it’s an insult to characters that they have invested themselves in.

So, that was my very basic, bare-bones assessment of Game Of Thrones. I have no idea whether I will watch any of the prequels/sequels that will come out, but I will always recommend the series to others, I will root for the GOT actors in all of their future endeavors, and I will always appreciate it for reaffirming my love for fantasy writing.

*Ethan Hawke is the greatest actor of my generation (Generation X). Try and prove me wrong (protip: you can’t).

So I Want To Be A Fantasy Writer…

~ Jason Liegois ~ 17 Comments

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: Yeah, I know I said I was going to write this in the middle of the week. Blame the end of the school year craziness for that. But, as it turns out, I’ve long had a theme on my Facebook writing page of #SciFiSaturday (or, as I should say now, #SciFiFantasySaturday). So, maybe it was for the best that I saved this for now. Anyway, here’s the post.]

Genre fiction was my thing growing up. (Maybe I should have made this into one of my Writer’s Biography pieces. Oh, well, maybe another time.) Science Fiction I was into for a long time – I was a Star Wars and Star Trek kid and loved the classic scifi of the 20th century (Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, etc.)

Fantasy, however… it wasn’t unknown to me, but it wasn’t something that was near and dear to my heart. At least, it wasn’t at the same level as the science fiction was. But it always was there, lurking around the margins. When I was either in elementary or middle school, I discovered Lloyd Alexander and his series The Chronicles of Prydain. I remember The High King making a massive impression on me, the epicness of it, how Taran was forced quickly to become a man and the choices he had to face. I loved that book.

There were other fantasy things that fascinated me, both growing up and in recent years. The film Conan The Barbarian came out when I was in elementary school, and I dug that character so much. I saw The Dark Crystal in the theater, watched the animated series Dungeons and Dragons and even played the game it was based on once or twice. (I spent more time reading the dungeon master’s manual than playing it, however.) I never have read The Lord of the Rings series, although I’ve now seen all three movies.

And finally, I have seen a good portion of the series Game of Thrones, and have read the first book in the series A Song of Ice and Fire. I keep promising that I’m going to give a quick review of the TV series (maybe this coming week?). There have been many think pieces written about the final season, and the series as a whole, but I would describe the series as follows: a flawed masterpiece.

What I will say is that all of the comments about the series and the inadequacies of it’s writing (which can certainly be argued) didn’t depress me, and the fact that the series didn’t end exactly the way I wanted it to didn’t depress me. No, what it did do was inspire me. It was the same thing that has always inspired me, looking at something in a book or online or on the screen that immediately made me think “I can do that better.”

So, I started thinking of a scenario, of a new fantasy world, where civilizations representing the concepts of magic, chivalry, and science and progress would clash and face each other. It’s been a theme that maybe my mind has been… playing with for a while, taking the concept out for a test drive. The more that I’ve watched Game of Thrones and what they’ve done right and wrong, the more this idea of writing fantasy intrigues me. Now I’m starting to look over fantasy map building sites and thinking about what these civilizations would be like.

Yeah, it looks like I want this to happen. I’ll let you know more about it later.