: Re: Out of this world... Giving it time? I am starting to write a fantasy story. For the first time, i am using computer software to help organize my story. The program confronted me with a question.

If you look to Tolkien, you see no time. Everything is long ago, far away, in the past, whatever. I am a dork of the numeric kind, so I'm forever trying to squash my tendency to use "real" numbers, because I think it's mostly unnecessary, limiting, and a little jarring...When you speak, you never use exact time. The closest you're going to get is "a few days/months/years ago" and after that it's just "a long time ago".

So I never use exact time, for that reason.

However if you really read Tolkien, all the way down to the indexes, you'll find that he has detailed...to the year...chronologies. Very specific. And I think this is a good thing. Peg your world on a detailed chronology, so you know who could have known who, when, and don't get messed up. Very easy to get confused if you hold your timeline in your head.

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: What helpful writing exercises do you use? The two I do most are dialog and description related. When I meet a person or I'm just sitting people watching, I try to write their description

@Yeniel532

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: Deep, convincing characters always work. Others have suggested that a comedic approach might work best. It does not have to be broad comedy. The darkness of your fantasy can remain pretty

@Yeniel532

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: Short, forceful, sentences are clear and pleasant to read. Long sentences (full of description and unnecessary circumlocution), while capable of containing more information than a much shorter

: Re: Out of this world... Giving it time? I am starting to write a fantasy story. For the first time, i am using computer software to help organize my story. The program confronted me with a question.

More posts by @Yeniel532

: What helpful writing exercises do you use? The two I do most are dialog and description related. When I meet a person or I'm just sitting people watching, I try to write their description

: Deep, convincing characters always work. Others have suggested that a comedic approach might work best. It does not have to be broad comedy. The darkness of your fantasy can remain pretty

: Short, forceful, sentences are clear and pleasant to read. Long sentences (full of description and unnecessary circumlocution), while capable of containing more information than a much shorter

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