The Banner Saga is a truly unique game. It is an intricate, old-style RPG set in Viking-inspired fantasy world, invaded by evil creatures. Startlingly beautiful, with an array of diverse characters it is easy to get lost in this game for hours, however it is the depth that would allow you to that is so clearly left wanting.

The first thing you notice in The Banner Saga is its simplistic but beautiful design. The hand-drawn aesthetic gives this game such a distinct feel, and forgoes reality for a sense of wonderment. There is a deep sense of magic in the world, which works to underscore the magical upheaval at the center of the story. Speaking of underscoring, the music perfectly complemented the design. There were truly spine-tingling moments as an impossibly large structure loomed before you and the music swelled in fashion reminiscent of Lord of the Rings. The interface was simple, but in keeping with design. Everything sensual within The Banner Saga – sights, sounds – was a delight, truly unique and utterly memorable.

The story was unremarkable. The Dredge – an evil, machine-like race – are invading from the north and the world is crumbling. The story of Dragon Age Origins with slightly different combat. The Banner Saga sets itself apart from other games with similar themes with some interesting and engaging mechanics. You play as the leader of a caravan as you slowly (sometimes painfully so) travel across the world. Your caravan consists of clansmen (villagers who you protect), fighters, and Varl (giants, with whom the humans share an uneasy alliance). Leading them becomes a juggling act between keeping morale high, supplies high, and people alive. With every passing day your supplies dwindle, as does your morale. You could choose to rest for a few days in camp to boost morale, but that runs the risk of using all of your supplies, leading to starvation. Each can be bolstered or diminished by the various situations that arise. This makes your decisions much more difficult, and you will find yourself turning abandoning people so that you do not run out of supplies before you reach town, or spending time improving morale to the detriment of your stock. The currency is Renown, which is gained through the defeating of enemies. Renown is used to purchase supplies, purchase equipment for your heroes, and upgrade your heroes once they have killed enough bad guys. It becomes another decision; to upgrade your warrior such that you can cut a swath through your foes, or buy the food to keep your clansmen alive? The story also hinges on decisions. Having only done a single play through, it is difficult to know what was railroaded and what was a result of my decisions, but everything felt like it was in response to something I’d done. You will likely make a decision that inadvertently leads to the death of one of your friends, so be prepared for that. Some decisions were hard, as you would hope, and it truly made you feel as though you were having serious impact on this world.

The combat system was truly enjoyable, but suffered from a lack of depth. The system itself was clever and, once I got a grasp of it, became highly strategic. It is a turn-based grid system, very similar to Final Fantasy Tactics. You have up to six heroes, each with their own particular style and weapon. Each character has two major stats; strength and armour. When attacking, you choose whether to attack the armour, and hence lower their resistance to further attacks, or attack their strength. The cleverness in this system comes in tying attack power and health together in strength, such that you must decide whether it’s worth destroying the armour first to make for an easy kill later or attack the strength with less efficiency to avoid your enemy causing more serious damage. Each character is supplemented by their own unique ability and have a certain number of points to use to make these special attacks, move further squares or cause extra damage. Where this intricate combat system is let down is in the depth. Firstly, there is a severely limited number of enemies. Secondly, the levels are restricted to 5. This never feels too limiting, because you barely have time to get your preferred characters to that limit, but that part of me that loves creating a party of world-beaters by the end of a game was severely let down. There simply wasn’t enough time or space to really hone a party and develop your tactics. There also weren’t different enough scenarios to force me to use different tactics. Characters were never forced to be on opposite sides of the grid, or one was stuck and the others had to rush and save them. There were very few instances of barriers, buildings or holes to create chokeholds, and there was absolutely no use of levels. My go to strategy was to place my large, armored characters at the front and my bowmen behind. Then I’d pick one side of the battlefield and try to knock out the strongest unit there before fanning out. Whether this was the best strategy or not (it worked fairly well), it is a shame I was never forced to have to try anything else.

The Banner Saga’s biggest downside is its story. The characters were interesting enough, and the narrative drive was present and strong, but it is impossible to feel like you’ve experienced a saga in 8 hours. I am not a rusher nor I am not the kind of player who clicks through every conversation, but it felt like I’d accidentally missed a chunk of story somewhere. The pacing was off. Characters you spend time with early in the game do not reappear until very late, and then have no effect. There was enough time and enough gradual introduction of characters that I got to know most of them, but it felt limited by the time. There appear to be characters who are integral to the story and others who join, leave, live or die based on your decisions. This was very engaging and at times upsetting, but the death of a character after 50 hours is far different from the death of one after five. My main criticism is that the story started slowly and then finished very quickly. The first few chapters jump between two different groups until, in chapter four, it finally settles on the character who emerges as the main character. Then a few chapters fly by as you travel, encountering enemies, finding great things, making difficult decisions and killing enemies. Then it finally feels like things are getting serious. I expected to set off on at least one more adventure before I realised I had reached the end. The final battle is hard, but not in any way memorable nor engaging. It just didn’t feel like the end. I wanted to keep traveling, keep levelling. Thankfully, the Banner Saga is intended as a trilogy.

I loved this game. I didn’t want it to end. The replay value is certainly there, and I can’t wait to see who may live and who may die the next time through. I also know that another play though won’t take up too much of my time. I could do it in a day if I chose, quite easily. It is hard not to feel disappointed by the lack of depth, but I have the feeling that I will remember this experience much more vividly and fondly that many of the fantasy RPGs of recent time.

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Everyone is different and every single writer will have their own way of encouraging themselves to put words on paper (or Word document). This is just a list of a few things that I do.

Use stimulus: Every time the cold days of April and May* creep up and I begin to use my small heater for my room, the smell of that heater sparks a deep desire to whip out Skyrim and start a new character. i won't have played Skyrim for months and months and then suddenly its as if I never stopped. Similarly, as soon as Christmas is over, my older brother starts a new save of Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, and has done so for years. My point is that we associate different things based on pleasant experiences. When it comes to writing, I often make myself an instant coffee and - considering I'm mainly a tea drinker - the smell of it and the act of making coffee sets my subconscious into writing mode. So when I decide I need to do some more writing, I just turn on the computer and put on the kettle and that helps get me going.
*I live in Australia, so those months are approaching winter.

Keep Writing: This sounds like a no-brainer, but the times where I have found it most difficult to motivate myself to write is after I've taken a long break on the project. Sometimes, obviously, it's unavoidable and you have no choice but to spend weeks away from your writing, but if you have the chance to continue your work, you should. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but it seems to be the case with my writing anyway, but I'll do a little postulation based on experience. I'm not motivated to write when I feel stuck in a spot, or when I feel that there is a whole mountain to go before I get to the parts I want to write. Even forcing yourself to work for half an hour and do 300-500 words a day, the numbers quickly tick over and, more importantly, so do the scenes. When I am progressing and constantly encountering new ideas and places and characters, I find it much easier to continue writing every day, and then it feeds on and suddenly your project is well underway. It's similar to when you sit at your desk, the hardest words to write are the first fifty. I've spent half an hour on 200 hundred words, feeling like I'm wading through mud, then suddenly after two hours I've written 2000. This is the same sort of thing expanded into weeks rather than hours.
Secondly, if you're anything like me, you suffer from crippling self-doubt. I've found that the longer I leave a project (irrespective of how long I've been working on it) the more I feel that it is awful. I finally finished a book because I actually powered through and finished before this doubt could kick in and I scrapped it like I have so many other stories.

Set goals, give yourself the freedom to fail and give yourself breaks. This may sound conflicting with the above point - and perhaps it is - but I have found it important to schedule time away from my project such that I don't hate it and feel like it is controlling my life. Alongside this, give yourself deadlines and goals and don't be afraid to make them extreme. When I say give yourself the freedom to fail, I don't meant 'don't worry to much about doing work,' I mean set difficult (but not impossible) goals. I did not officially take part in NaNoWriMo, but I did give myself the task to write 50,000 words last November. I finished my assessments on about November 5 and went on holiday about November 27 but I really gunned for that 50,000. I ended writing somewhere around 40,000 and while I didn't actually reach my goal, it was a whole lot more than I would have otherwise completed. I had a deadline and a target and it made me work.

So I hope if you have gone Google searching for some writing tips, this helps you a little. Good luck with your writing.

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My fantasy world is one free from what one would typically call magic. Emora - the land mass upon which my story takes place, but not the only one in my world - is a land of many city states loosely held together by uneasy peace. There is not a major religion, only small sects and the remnants of religious buildings; monasteries, chapels. Emora is a land inhabited by humans for a little over a millenia, while elves lived long prior as nomadic tribes.

This is about the limit of what I knew about my world as I embarked writing my first novel "Acolyte," the only other thing I knew was that there were a group of ancient, immortal beings who watched over the people of Emora and were powerful. I even had several of these 'Acolytes' appear in this story (and played an important part, as you could probably tell by the title.) It was interesting working blind, but the beauty of editing is I can still add anything I discover about these beings to my story.

I am writing this post because after two and a half drafts of "Acolyte" and nearly a year of work on my story and lore, I have finally come to a point where I understand my world and I understand my Acolytes.

I came to this understanding when I was trying to justify how there could be no magic and yet some have powers and stumbled upon the fundamental crux of my lore. Emora and the world around it is an offshoot of an ethereal realm. Imagine a ball of energy like the sun, but it is formless, shapeless and immeasurable. This realm is the infinite universe and everything that exists is within it. Emora, and possible innumerable other worlds, are offshoots of this ethereal place where the energy has manifest itself into a physical world. Basically, Emora is the whim of the universe and is nothing more than a tapestry of woven threads of energy.

This helped me understand my Acolytes; they became flares of this energy, imbued with the power to manipulate it at will but only within their own limitations. Through writing I discovered that each Acolyte has their own stone, a piece of ethereal stuff which focuses the Acolyte's energy into their specific field. One Example is the Greenstone, which allows and assists its Acolyte with the manipulation of nature, mainly through basic communication with animals, controlling them or even seeing through their eyes. Another is the Violetstone, the stone of love whose Acolyte has the ability to shape-shift.

It was intensely joyous to give these people the power they now have, and also to give them interesting limitations, while also thinking about how I can shift my next draft to include these abilities. One thing I must still consider, however, is that I do not want my stories to simply be about cool magic and epic stories. I'd certainly like them to be a part of it, but interweaving that with social and political commentary is important to the way I write and the way I want to write. Fantasy is wonderful for its freedom and I want not to abandon one possibility to the other, especially considering the over-saturation of epic fantasy with little commentary on life.

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I promise I will return to musings directly about fantasy but this is an idea that I've been considering for a while and it might have some resonance considering the social standing of this genre.

Being unpopular - particularly at a young age - might be important for young artists. Now on to the anecdote...

I spent the first nine or so years of schooling as one of the unpopular kids. As soon as children were old enough to separate into groups and decide on a pecking order, I found myself at the bottom. I don't know exactly why but I was quiet, smart, read a lot, liked music and singing, and was terrible at sport.* I quickly accepted my lot, avoided the cool kids and generally had only one or two close friends. What this meant was that I spent my lunch time reading instead of playing tag or picking on the girls, I spent our free time in class drawing or writing rather than chatting and being naughty, and I went straight home from class and played outside by myself as I wielded wooden swords against hordes of imaginary foes and created vast stories as I went. That sounds kind of sad, and to an extent it was, but that was my lot as a kid and, retrospectively, I would not change a thing.
*Well actually I was good at Cricket, but that's Cricket.

 Kids draw a lot when they are younger and every drawing is - let's face it - terrible. I mean they are wonderful and important for expression and development, but kids lack the experience and ability to see and draw the actual shapes and go for generic representations. But these kids all love drawing and are always proud of what they've done, but something happens when they reach about the age of ten; they begin to criticise their own work and many stop drawing. As someone who kept drawing through adolescence and continued to the point where I am looking to sell my artwork, when I hear someone tell me "I wish I could draw like that," I can't help but think maybe if you didn't tell yourself you couldn't... or hadn't stopped when you were younger.
The same goes for singing. Almost everyone can sing (very few people are truly tone deaf) but in this young and malleable stage many children were told or decided that they couldn't sing, and so as the few who believed they could sing progressed and improved, those who believed they couldn't stagnated and remained with untapped potential. It's amazing to think how much un-mined gold can be found within every adult that was simply buried as a child.

This is where I return to the importance of being 'uncool.' You see, when I was in primary school and middle school I wanted to draw, I wanted to sing, I wanted to be in musicals, I wanted to write stories and I was so unpopular that I simply did them instead of conforming to the group consensus, which decided that everything I loved was uncool. I had few friends, but they were valuable and held similar interests. I would make up fantasy stories with them or we'd pretend to battle Uruk-hai  and although I only had one girlfriend before I turned 18 (and she left me because she liked Brad instead) and although I was socially outcast and wanted more friends, I propagated my art and now I am reaping the benefits.

Eventually, around year nine, apparently it became cool to sing Thirsty Mirc and do Monty Python skits, so I rode a wave to popularity from obscurity, and for the rest of my schooling the jocks left me alone because the girls thought I was cute when I sang soppy Coldplay songs, but by that time I was deeply jaded by popularity and I knew where my interests lay. I finally had friends, but it's highly telling that those friends I made after becoming 'cool' I do not count nearly as closely as those I made before it.

Now I write fantasy, almost impervious to the criticism of it being an invalid literary genre, because those who champion such ideas are just the same as the bullies who picked on me in grade three. I was never forced into giving up the art I loved so that I could have friends, because thankfully no-one liked me. I am in no way condoning bullying, but offering the silver lining that I found in retrospect.

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There is an idea championed by dramatist Anne Bogart, that directing a piece of theatre is an act of violence. When you make a decision, or decide that an actor should "keep" something, you are effectively destroying all other possibilities. Beyond that, the changing of a scene or alternative direction of an actor is an act of violence when it comes before. Now these directors are often working with scripts that they have not written, and therefore it is easier to make harsh decisions, but sometimes editing your own work can feel like cutting a nose off your baby.

Directors can remain distanced from a work, while writers - by the nature of the work - cannot. You can take time and you can learn to look objectively, but taking that red pen to the page often feels like a scalpel.

So how do you get over this fear? We all know that the first draft is always bad. I think it was C.S.Lewis who said that, but there is a fear of making things worse, of cutting things you should cut or adding things which aren't up to scratch. You fear that you lack objectivity and any work on it will be pointless.
It's important to note that publishers now expect a much higher quality of manuscript on their desk, and any immediate or troublesome issue will cause them to reject you, no matter how promising your writing or story is. I will discuss a few ways in which I got over the inherent fear of editing.

First, I learned what I just mentioned; that publishers expect polished manuscripts. Sure, if they suggest a character change or a cutting of flashbacks or whatever, they will help improve your book, but only if they already know that you are not just some hack writer who would have their three hundred pages filled with issues that you may not even realise are issues. This leads me to my next point...

I read books about editing and publishers and learned what makes writing poor and how to avoid it. I am reading a book now called 'Self-Editing for Fiction Writers" by Renni Browne and Dave King, which has been greatly informative, but boiled down to a couple of points; show don't tell and avoid the hallmarks of hack writers because it will make good writing look bad. Now obviously it is slightly more complex than that, but they talk through things to look out for while editing and accepted that even the best writers do this during their first drafts. Once I knew some things to look out for, I was far less afraid to attack my manuscript. I also read a book named '77 Reasons Why Your Book Was Rejected' so that I understood what the publishers were looking for.

Once I had an idea how to approach it, I began editing. Once I made a drastic change I had experienced what it was like to violently edit my work, and I knew it improved it. I was no longer afraid of this type of editing. I still have no idea about editing much broader things, like changing characters and such, but I'm sure I'll force myself to cross that bridge.

I'd like to add a side note about self-editing; it is free. Now Ryan (still my only follower, hooray) has recently experienced the benefit of a useful freelance editor who - for a significant but not overly expensive fee - has given him very good feedback about improving the causality and consistency of his piece, encouraged him to promote a character to a main part and given pointers on the character's voice. Ryan's book will be better for having that external eye, but freelance editors can be hit-or-miss for one reason; they aren't invested in the outcome of your novel. You've already paid them. If your book is self published and does well, then they've got their 'thank you' in the acknowledgements, but if you sell nothing, they've still got their four hundred bucks.
(Sorry, Ryan, to keep talking about you) but the first editor he hired for his first book, Aundes Aura, was cheaper than the one who worked on his most recent work. This editor did nothing other than a line edit and failed to pick up even the most basic issues with the text. They were issues all novelist might have, but ones all editors should fix. Whether she was rushed, inept, or simply disinterested, Ryan would have done a better job reading a book on editing and doing it himself.

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This is not a new idea and this is not a particularly original post, but I am editing my story focusing on the old "show don't tell" mantra. I will do a post a bit later on the 'violence' of editing, but I'd just like to share an example from the first lines of the current chapter I am working on.

It started like this:

"The two men who Eric and Enrende had beaten, bound and gagged seemed to have no idea as to why they had been captured. They protested that they had nothing of value beyond their lives, but Enrende had simply laughed and continued punching them into submission, for it was not their intention to rob these men of their gold, but their clothes."

And became this:

"Enrende grasped the man by the scruff of his neck and punched him in the mouth. The man stumbled and fell against the wall. He was not unconscious but startled enough that Enrende had enough time to pounce and bind this man’s hands and feet. 

“Why are you doing this?” The man protested. He was answered by a short burst of laughter and a swift elbow to the jaw, before he slumped into unconsciousness. 

Enrende began removing the man’s boots and witnessed Eric’s struggle beside him. Eric - a smaller man than Enrende – held his knee into the back of another man, while holding him in an arm lock. Eric maintained dominance, but it was a stalemate for the loosening of the grip to reach for the rope, would render Eric powerless against his foe's struggles to free himself. 

“I have no coins,” pleaded the man. “I carry nothing of value.” 

Enrende stood over his opponent, moved towards Eric’s man and delivered a kick to the face. Finally all was silent."

The scene immediately comes to life and does more than just progress the story. It's a really important thing to consider.

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I know this is contentious issue, and I plan to do other posts getting more into the nitty gritty of this issue, but I am becoming increasingly frustrated by the lack of female representation in the fantasy I have read, both in terms of authors and characters.

While I make the concession, and do not doubt, that this genre appears to be geared towards men because men write it far more often, I feel this falls frustratingly flat. I also tend to see more women writing young adult fantasy in the vein of Twilight, writing speculative fiction and writing sci-fi than we do writing high fantasy (and if you can prove me wrong then please comment below, because I dearly need to read more female high fantasy writers).

In terms of narratives I'm going to discuss some of the more widely read fantasies and examine their female characters. And also I'd like to point out that I do not think this is a deliberate ploy by these writers to cast women from fantasy, but simply the paradigm that was set in place by Tolkein that seems to have seeped into the mainstream fantasy. I have had this thought for this blog because last night I was helping a friend with revisions for his story and his editor mentioned that the severe lack of strong female characters bordered on misogyny. Now he's not a misogynist, but it simply never occurred to him to include any reasonable female characters; his three main characters were dudes and the thieves were all guys and yet when I considered it, the complete lack of women was completely unrealistic and unnecessary and I began thinking about other fantasy texts and their use of women.

There are many strong women in fantasy that I have read, even if women are rare, but they often are not characters who push the plot forward and are frequently (as in, ridiculously so) beautiful.

I will start with Lord of the Rings. It is basically the father of high fantasy and it is well documented that in the entirety of the expanse of middle earth, there are three women; Arwen, Eowyn and Galadrial. Two are princesses (yes technically Eowyn is Theodin's niece but don't nit pick) and one is a queen. Sure, these women are in power positions, and Eowyn even goes all bad ass and kills some orcs and faces the Witch King, but the fate of middle earth does not rest within these women. Arwen is little more than a distant love interest for Aragorn and only influences the main plot thrust when she delivers Frodo to Rivendel. Galadrial only appears in Lothlorien to give the travelers some gifts, impart some wisdom and be freaking beautiful. And Eowyn manages to be in a love triangle with the only man in the entirety of middle earth in a romantic relationship (except Celeborn). Theodin has no wife, Denethor has no wife, Elrond has no wife (who appears) Eomer, Faramir, Frodo, Bilbo, no one is even connected to a woman. While sure, it would be wrong to simply include female characters to be the male's companions, their lack of presence is startling to considers, and this is a text which has formed the framework for modern fantasy.

I recently finished Magician by Raymond E. Feist and I noticed a few more interesting female characters, but I was similarly disappointed by them. The notable female characters were; Carline, Aglaranna, Anita, and Katala. They all had one thing in common; they were beautiful. So far - of the seven characters we've considered - not one has been plain. I haven't considered much of why, but it is interesting nonetheless. Three are royal, one is a slave. All are strong willed but none of them are capable of driving the narrative*. The issue lies with the power they have, and I do not deny that the medieval society that Feist based Mikemia upon would have cast women into these more subjected roles, but the idea of Fantasy is to create your own society and rules. I'm also adding that I'm aware of Mara in the trilogy of the empire, so I'm certainly not critical of Raymond, but I will continue with my analysis of his first book.
*Now I am aware that I am drifting somewhat into feminism territory, but I do not identify as such. I am a humanist and seek equality for all and do not subscribe to an ideology even I agree with facets of it. This post is simply observational.

Katala is a slave and there is little she can do other than be saved by Pug. She is strong willed and stoic in the face of difficulty, but she also could be taken out of the plot without changing it at all. Only Pug's return to Carline would really be different, and perhaps his change would be less clear, but plot-wise she is not useful at all.
Anita also is another needless character for plot reasons, as Arutha would have escaped Krondor whether he found her or not. She is utterly helpless and fits the mold of meek fantasy princess nicely.
Carline is another princess, but she is strong willed, has complex romantic emotions and is never truly dependent on anyone else, but she also get left behind in the war, both by her family and by the writer. At the beginning she felt as though she would be an important character, but ends up highly peripheral and feels like simply a plot device to increase Pug's standing with the duke, which led to the rest of the story taking place.
Aglaranna is where I really took issue. The other's fill fairly well considered tropes of fantasy women, but the elf queen is the leader of a realm. She is powerful and wise and great and... falls in love with Tomas and basically loses her rationality when he is around. Sure she retains her throne at the end, but the entire war is fought by Tomas, not her, as she fawns over him and worries about her emotions.

Maybe the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by Tolkein's contemporary, C. S. Lewis, is a great example of females driving plot; particularly Lucy and The White Witch. I'd love to be proved wrong, but there is a dearth of females in this genre, or at least the most popular books in it. Eragon tries to save Arya but there are otherwise few females beyond the dragon in his book. Again George R. R. Martin breaks the conventions, but still consider how many of his ladies are beautiful.
This is why I take deliberate steps to give my female characters more room in my fantasy writing. It feels more natural to have a troop of men, but I ask myself why, in this world which I have created, aren't women capable of saving the world... so I make them do it. It's fun, but for some reason, still considered somewhat unnatural.

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