In rewriting my first fantasy series from my teens, for example, I have gone in more of a political intrigue direction than a war/battle direction, and that's definitely to my benefit.
3/3
Not only that, but battles don't excite me to write unless I can really truly ground them in the emotions and motivations of the characters. So I shy away from writing too many battle scenes these days.
2/3
#pretendpanel
As I mentioned yesterday in my reading answer, I was heavily inspired by Tolkien. Like many young fantasy writers, I tried to include a lot of battles in my first forays into speculative fiction. The thing is though... I know nothing of war.
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#pretendpanel a daily prompt tag hosted by @hiriadunning.com April 18th: What place does war have in your writing life? Please support your fellow #pretentpanel posters with replies, likes and reposts New #pretendpanel questions every Friday and Saturday. Hop in any time!
Perhaps you read more than you write it; perhaps you avoid it on both fronts; perhaps it's all you read and write. Tell me, #pretendpanel...
April 18th: What place does war have in your writing life?
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but then I found Pat Barker's Women of Troy series and as gruelling as that is, I found that not only are there places for literary merit to shine on the subject of war, but there are also angles more diverse than just 'glory' and 'manly pursuits'.
2/2
#pretendpanel
I was heavily inspired by Tolkien's depictions of war and suffering within fantasy, as I suspect many fantasy writers were.
For years I shied away from depictions of war in fictions as something 'for boys', >>>
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#pretendpanel a daily prompt tag hosted by @hiriadunning.com April 17th: What place does war have in your reading life? Please support your fellow #pretentpanel posters with replies, likes and reposts New #pretendpanel questions every Friday and Saturday. Hop in any time!
Soon it will be ANZAC Day here in NZ, a day to remember the soldiers sent to the World Wars. It's a worrying topic with what's going on in the world right now, but tell me #pretendpanel
April 17th: What place does war have in your reading life?
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I've been on a similar trajectory with my romance pseudonym 🫂
We read about it for research purposes, of course, but I also like seeing it played with in fiction. Stories that play with myth, folklore, and religion fascinate me, because they reveal so much about the place and people they're tied to
#PretendPanel
#PretendPanel 4/11:
Despite being raised Christian, I live a pretty secular lifestyle with ill-defined spiritual beliefs (I have no idea what I'd label myself), so I don't usually think about religion except in the context of other social factors. In my stories, use of religion varies widely. (1/5)
#pretendpanel April 11: religion in your writing life?
A character announces their spirituality gradually and all life skills and philosophies.
As first person writer it's my job to research faithfully...before throwing my spanners in the works.
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Oh wow, I hadn't heard of St Anthony before. Patron of lost and stolen articles!
Totally understandable 🫂
I'm sorry for all you're going through 🫂
Ain't that the truth ☝️
As an ex-Catholic who studied art history, 🤝
I do love me some Saint lore (in case it wasn't obvious 😅)
#PretendPanel April 10
A pretty big place... I tend to read a lot of books these days that are about people leaving Christian nationalism, deconstructing it, or exploring the history of it. I might have some trauma 🥲
But I also LOVE books with positive religious themes & characters, though I
1/2
This might be my favourite answer 😂💜
*stares at doorstop novel which is my life’s work about the Christian Jesus but what if he’s a trans man and a deconstructed Holy Trinity and an Empire that perverts his teachings and a priestess who becomes a humanist after seeing how religion is used in abuse*
“Idk maybe an impact”
#pretendpanel
Loved that film. (And I'm all for name dropping any sort of text, doesn't need to be a book)
🙏💜
It's funnt you should say that about having to look things up. I feel even though I was raised Catholic and dipped my toes into coming back in my early 20s and even studied a bunch, there's still heaps I have to look up even if the religion in the fiction is Catholicism 😂
Arcane much?
😂💀
"Australian church Santa gifted me a cricket bat" is going to live rent free in my head for a while 😂
A favourite theme of mine is self-matyrdom within a religious schema. Once I get back to my OG series, Corangelus, y'all will see what I mean.
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#pretendpanel
Ask a younger me and I'd say omg, no, I don't want to write about religion. But it keeps coming up again and again, probably because of the whole ex-Catholic thing. I can't help but tackle the idea of religious trauma twisting people away from their true selves.
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#pretendpanel a daily prompt tag hosted by @hiriadunning.com April 11th: What place does religion have in your writing life? Please support your fellow #pretentpanel posters with replies, likes and reposts New #pretendpanel questions every Friday and Saturday. Hop in any time!
After yesterday's question, I wonder how you feel about this one, #pretendpanel...
April 11th: What place does religion have in your writing life?
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Ask me what genre I like to write? No questions, instant block. Get a real job, bots.