Mythcreants
@mythcreants.bsky.social
An online publication for speculative fiction storytellers. To better understand and tell the stories we love, we analyze popular works, theorize on storytelling craft, and explore the technical aspects of writing.
"A well-constructed arc should draw audiences in and then leave them feeling satisfied once the arc has concluded." mythcreants.com/blog/underst...
Tension & Conflict: What Every Writer Should Know
Why do we plot? What makes a plot work? The answers are here.
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Legend of Korra’s fourth season makes the wise choice to cut some of the less important characters, but it is a little awkward to still see Bumi hanging around and never saying anything. Also, the fourth Pema/Tenzin child seems to have vanished.
The special feeling of outrage when you set all of a game’s difficulty sliders to maximum and the game is in fact difficult.
Another interesting aspect of older books: the unremarked upon practice of not naming infants. Anyway, vaccines are awesome.
Another interesting aspect of older books: the unremarked upon practice of not naming infants. Anyway, vaccines are awesome.
"This guy, he’s fighting somebody, and it’s something, and it’s called a Flat Head or a Shanka. Are those the same thing? Who knows! It mentions the Dog Man." mythcreants.com/blog/podcast...
603 – Common Beginning Mistakes
Hit the ground running, but not too fast!
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"That’s a strong endorsement from me, in case I was being too subtle." mythcreants.com/blog/five-se...
Five Sequels Better Than Their Predecessor
Sometimes we *can* have nice things.
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"Just to confuse things, the word “epithet” is significantly broader than what’s actually under discussion." mythcreants.com/blog/are-epi...
Are Epithets a Bane on Narration?
Should your POV character call their lover "the other man" during sex? The answer may surprise you.
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Mystery writers, please: we want to know who the killer is. That reveal will be cool and good. But also for tension’s sake please include some stakes for what will happen if the killer isn’t caught! We need more than “detective will be mad.”
Interesting to read old books and wonder which parts are actually unclear and which are just missing context. Would an 1869 reader have immediately known that Marmee gets her children bibles for Christmas in Little Women, or would they also have been confused by the references to a “guidebook?”
If a story says “our heroes gotta do X or else a bad thing will happen,” and then the bad thing happens, doing X is no longer nearly so compelling. The ship has sailed, and it took the stakes with it.
Some people seem to think that the "is romantasy part of fantasy" question is a matter of prestige, which is very strange. A lot of fantasy is aggressively terrible. Why would sharing a genre with Eregon make romantasy look better? (Romantasy *is* fantasy, but not for that reason)
"this is just the books that people worship, right?" mythcreants.com/blog/podcast...
602 – Does Speculative Fiction Have a Canon?
Anyone beside Tolkien invited?
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'So when Buffy quips, “Dawn’s in trouble, must be Tuesday,” in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she is breaking the fourth wall by referencing the weeknight that the show’s episodes play on.' mythcreants.com/blog/why-we-...
Why We Use the Fourth Wall, and Why We Break It
Belief is such a slippery beast.
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it's very strange to see people debating Bluesky(annoying) vs Twitter(fascist) as if there is no option to simply not microblog for a while.
Our TTRPG hot take is that most players will go with whatever system the GM puts in front of them, as long as it’s made easy. What players typically don’t want to do is read a 200 page rulebook for a system they might only play once.
Fascinating that the “but it’s popular!” defense has all but disappeared from our comments section, at the same time that romantasy has visibly become super popular. We wonder what factors might have motivated people to understand that popular works can also be terrible? A real mystery.
Sometimes all your library books are “available soon” which could mean today or in two weeks and at that point time has no meaning, you are but a spec in the non-Euclidean labyrinth of having nothing to read
Wow. Supergirl (2026) really dives headfirst into “should superheroes kill people” discourse with the most incoherent take we’ve seen for a while. If we were trying to come up with the most nonsense way to address the topic, it might have looked something like this.
"While it’s still puzzling that Aang regains the Avatar State through getting hit with a rock, any use of it would be equally disappointing." mythcreants.com/blog/five-wo...
Five Worldbuilding Elements That Clashed With the Story
But why did they add this bit?
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"Above his sunken, skeletal cheeks, his yellow eyes narrowed, as though his gaze pierced through me to test the strength of my soul." mythcreants.com/blog/how-muc...
How Much Emotion Should a Scene Have?
Betwixt mundanity and melodrama awaits a great scene.
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The special feeling of horror as you realize this isn’t just a brief cutaway for the villain to give an evil laugh, it’s starting a whole new subplot about the villain trying to get their lawn ornaments approved by the HOA and you won’t see the hero again for 10 chapters.
Telling Sherlock nerds that the "Watsonian perspective" refers to the views of Emma Watson, just to feel something.
So much discourse about how to keep your pace in a book: fold the page corner, use a book mark, write down the page number, etc. Real pros put a piece of cheese in there so now there’s a time limit to go back and keep reading.
'We don’t say “100%” nearly enough to be a modern podcast. We have completely lost the lingo.' mythcreants.com/blog/podcast...
600 – Crafting a Long Series
Planning less optional this time.
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The Stormlight Archives is still going, Sanderson is famously prolific, what is any of this?
Adrian 'buy HAIR SHIRT' Sobol@yoadrianididit.bsky.social · 4w agoEXCUSE ME?
"Now think about how much blood it would take to fill a river. A river that continues to flow, requiring yet more blood." mythcreants.com/blog/lessons...
Lessons From the Rambling of Assistant to the Villain
Romantasy that doesn't take itself seriously? Impossible.
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On the one hand, it would be nice to have another mega popular SFF book that everyone has read, so we have a source of widely understood examples. On the other hand, of the two books to have reached such statuses, one of the authors turned out to be a mega-bigot. Don’t love 50% odds.
It’s very weird when a story describes someone as blunt or lacking social awareness, then writes them as deliberately mean. Those are different things! A character can be both but you gotta be specific.