How to Write Your Unicorn

I’ll be honest, now that I’m trying to post here with some sort of regularity again, I sometimes have trouble figuring out what to write about. So occasionally I’ll look back through past posts for inspiration. Considering I’ve got about ten years of backlog (wait, what?!), there’s plenty to choose from. (Actually, the ten year anniversary of my first post here is tomorrow, which is CRAZY!)

In 2015, I wrote a pair of posts that I vaguely remember wanting to turn into a series. I couldn’t tell you why I never followed through on that, but here I am almost eight years later finally continuing on. The premise was taking a look at well-known magical and mythical creatures, exploring some of their history, and providing ideas for customizing the creatures for your own use in storytelling. So, welcome back to the How to Write Your . . . series! Today’s topic: unicorns.

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Fairy Tale Facts: East of the Sun and West of the Moon

I was shocked to realize that I haven’t yet covered this story in my Fairy Tale Facts series. After all, it’s one of my favorite stories and partly the inspiration for the novel I’m writing! So let’s get to it!

East of the Sun and West of the Moon is a Norwegian fairy tale, first collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe and later included in Andrew Lang’s 1890 The Blue Fairy Book. It has similar themes and plot points to Beauty and the Beast and the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche.

Photo by Benjamin Voros on Unsplash
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7 Favorite Fictional Weapons

As promised, I’m back with part two of my favorite fictional weapons! Before we jump in, let’s go over the rules.

To be considered for this list, the item in question must be a weapon. As I was looking at other lists of fictional weapons for inspiration, I was confused by some of them, because they chose to include things like the One Ring or the Deathly Hallows. Those aren’t weapons, those are just magic items. But if you’re interested in seeing a list along those lines from me, let me know! I’d be happy to make a part three.

In addition to being a weapon, I’m looking for an added effect of some sort (usually magical, sometimes symbolic) to set it apart from others like it.

Finally, I’m only choosing one weapon of each type. No swords on this list, either, as I covered them extensively in part one of this series.

This list, more than the first one I made, pulls more from mythology and legend than fiction, though I’ve tried to make it a more even spread. But I’ve found that most fantasy stories (which is both my primary genre of choice and also where we see a wider spread of weapons) favor swords, especially when it comes to weapon enchantments and enhancements. And, like the other list, these are in no particular order.

Photo by Jansen Yang on Unsplash
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5 Favorite Fictional Swords

I sat down this weekend to write a blog post listing my favorite weapons from fiction (mostly fantasy). And while that list will happen at some point, I ran into a bit of a snag. I was trying to pick entries from different weapon types, but there are too many swords to just pick one. So swords are getting their own list.

To make things slightly easier, I’m only picking . . . let’s call them swords with effects. For the most part, that means some sort of magical enhancements or abilities. Any sword that goes above and beyond “sharp metal bar” has it’s metaphorical hat in the ring. But I am trying to limit it to one sword per source/franchise. Also, while I’m listing them, the order in which I’m listing them does not indicate my ranking of them. I had a hard enough time narrowing this list down to five – I didn’t even attempt to figure out which was my absolute favorite.

So let’s get into it!

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Fairy Tale Facts: The Princess Who Never Smiled

For today’s installment of Fairy Tale Facts, we’re headed for a different part of the world. Specifically, Russia. Between 1855 and 1863, Russian writer Alexander Afanasyev collected and published over 600 Russian fairy tales and folk tales. This is tale number 297, and if you’re interested, you can read the whole thing here.

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