Simple plots

If epic fantasy is often about coming of age… In order to do/get the thing, the character has to pretend to be someone they’re not. Sometimes that character isn’t willing to do so, and gets beaten down until they must fulfill that role. Either they discover they’re not really faking it, OR they discover that no, […]

Okay, grimdark seems to love this plot like I love butter. The thing must be accomplished at all costs, because reasons. Hahahaha, reason. Using methods the character never would have considered at the outset (and they considered more than a few things), the thing is accomplished! And now they don’t want it, because the cost

The characters have to do the thing.  Just one tiny little thing.  Uh-oh.  Remember the last time we had to do just a tiny little thing? It didn’t go well. The characters have to do the thing, which is usually identified as being super-easy.  (Usually, there’s more than one character, although one of them is

As far as I can tell, there are three main areas of contemporary fantasy that are so separated from each other that it’s pointless to try to lump them together. Epic/high fantasy. Urban fantasy. Everything else. Tropes and fans can and do cross over, but trying to figure out what’s going on seems to require

A door opened, and an apocalypse stepped in. It wasn’t something that could be helped, really.  I mean, it might have escaped from a government lab, but it was a perfect storm, a once in a million years incident of bad luck. Only, something decided to exploit that bad luck.  It went beyond chance or an

Cozies are a subset of the mystery genre in which the author distracts the reader from the PTSD areas of their lives.  They’re the gentle hugs of stories, and yet they revolve around some crime, because nothing is as entertaining as gossip. </snark> Cozies actually: Feature a main character you wouldn’t mind going on vacation

I’ve been studying The Turn of the Screw lately. A group of people are sitting around the fire telling Christmas ghost stories, as you do (this is a Victorian UK thing). Storyteller (Douglas) claims that the story he’s about to tell comes from his sister’s governess, who has been dead 20 years. He sends away for

There’s always some sucker willing to bumble into the wrong part of town…or some small town willing to host something it shouldn’t. Something’s looking for trouble. Surprise, surprise, our characters are just the suckers needed–wrong place, wrong time, and distracted. Technically, the characters didn’t ask for it, although maaaaybe they tried to get a little something

The first signs of trouble were small.  So small that we ignored them.  Ditto the second, third, fourth, fifth… There’s a relatively minor problem. Everyone blows it off (although there might be one person who panics about the situation in an obviously useless, “it’s all in your head” fashion). Until it’s too late to do anything

The main character has a dilemma.  It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation–but there’s damnation, and then there’s damnation. The character has a problem, or is called in to deal with a problem. The character has to choose between a couple of craptastic options. They try to avoid choosing. But eventually, they