The Origins of Barric the Barbarian When people hear the words barbarian and fantasy , they tend to imagine the same character. Towering muscles. A gigantic axe. Very little conversation. And, if we’re being honest, not an enormous amount of thinking. I wondered what would happen if I kept the muscles… …but changed almost everything else. The First Thing I Knew About Barric Before I knew what Barric looked like, I knew what he was doing. He wasn’t fighting. He was reading. The image made me laugh. A mountain of a man quietly absorbed in a book while everyone around him prepared for battle. The axe could wait. He hadn’t finished the chapter. From that moment, Barric’s personality almost wrote itself. Strength Doesn’t Have to Be Loud Fantasy often equates strength with aggression. I’ve never believed that. The strongest people I’ve known have usually been the calmest. They don’t need to prove themselves. Barric became an exploration of t...
Writing Humour in Fantasy Without Breaking the Story Fantasy and humour have enjoyed a long partnership. From Terry Pratchett’s wonderfully absurd Discworld to the dry wit found throughout modern fantasy, laughter has become as much a part of the genre as dragons, wizards and magical swords. Yet humour is surprisingly difficult to write. Not because jokes are hard. Because stories are. The moment readers stop believing in your world, the joke has gone too far. So how do you make readers laugh without breaking the story? The World Must Take Itself Seriously One of the biggest misconceptions about humorous fantasy is that the world itself should be ridiculous. I disagree. The world should remain believable. The characters should take their jobs seriously. The knight genuinely believes honour matters. The mage genuinely believes this spell will work. The priest sincerely believes the gods are watching. If everyone knows they’re in a comedy, the il...