Fiction Craft Blog

It's very common for newer fantasy writers to focus heavily on worldbuilding and much less on developing their characters. After all, worldbuilding is the main draw of fantasy and speculative fiction more widely, and novels in all genres have characters. Older fantasy novels often had quite flat, undeveloped characters. The current Anglo-American market for fantasy fiction has moved on, though. The popularity of Romantasy links to the increased importance of strong emotional

This trope often appears in film, and in popular culture and novels too. It features a woman who has typically experienced some kind of trauma, is quirky with a different appearance (e.g. colored hair) to “normal” women, and who jolts a male protagonist into recognising a deeper life purpose. The character often later needs "rescuing" and the male protag plays a heroic role in doing so. This character is rooted in misogynistic representations of women. The trope is comparable