Chris Winkle
Chris is the founder and editor-in-chief of Mythcreants. On the side she also designs, codes, and writes stories. When she manages to escape from chronic workaholism, she likes to drink tea, wear funny hats, pet kitties, and crush her enemies at the game table.
Podcast
Werewolves with smartphones, vampires on motorcycles, mages with school in the morning, and nightclubs. So many nightclubs! We’re discussing urban fantasy today, revisiting a topic we first talked about way back in the olden days. We look at what makes urban fantasy so beloved, what … read more »
Storytelling
Stories come in a wide spectrum of tones, from light whimsy to gritty nihilism. When tone problems occur, it’s rarely because the tone itself is invalid. Instead, tone issues are usually caused by story elements that clash with each other. Let’s look at why these … read more »
Comics: Once Upon a Trope
There’s more than one way to use a superpower. Read more »
Podcast
Prejudice and bigotry are inescapable aspects of real life, but they don’t have to be in stories. While it’s tempting to believe that by including prejudice, we’re making some kind of bold and progressive statement, more often than not, we’re simply reinforcing harmful norms. This … read more »
Analysis
Many storytellers like to comment on storytelling in their stories. That alone isn’t a terrible thing, except so much of this commentary is pompous, harmful to storytellers, completely wrong, or all of the above. These meta messages say a lot about fiction-writing culture, and most … read more »
Comics: Once Upon a Trope
How to spice up your next court scene. Read more »
Storytelling
While stories use multiple methods of engaging audiences, conflict and tension are probably the most essential for longer stories. What we call pace is the timing and intensity of that conflict and tension throughout. A pace that’s too low will put an audience to sleep, … read more »
Podcast
Things are heating up this week on the Mythcreant Podcast, because we’re talking about monsters of fire and flame! From dragons to salamanders, from phoenixes to… actually, there don’t seem to be that many classic fire monsters. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of … read more »
Storytelling
In 2014, I wrote a primer on the basics of conflict, with a few notes on tension thrown in. Whereas conflict is easy to spot and a central topic of most writing advice, tension is subtle and rarely defined even when it is mentioned. Given … read more »