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What Donald Duck Taught Me About Fiction

November 7, 2022

I might have mentioned it before: I owe a lot of whatever I know about writing fiction to… Donald Duck. Reading Donald Duck taught me a lot about reading, writing, and writing fiction. Indeed, I learned to read and write before I went to school, thanks to Donald Duck.

My folks got bored of reading stories to me, so I had to figure it out myself. Then later, when I was maybe seven (memory is very thin ice when it comes to factual accuracy), I wrote my first fiction thanks to Donald Duck. You’ve likely read the story on the main Home for Fiction site:

One day, when I was perhaps seven years old, I read a Donald Duck mystery which was divided into two parts. The first one ended in a cliffhanger, and I sadly had no access to the second part. That was seriously devastating. I solved the problem the only way I could: I took pen and paper and wrote the ending the way I imagined it to be. Those three paragraphs were my first work of fiction.

Years passed. I’ve written a lot, I’ve read a lot, I’ve spent twelve years at the university studying and teaching literature, and overall I have a professional, high-level engagement with fiction.

Imagine my surprise when I realized Donald Duck had more to teach me about literature!

Donald Duck taught me about fiction
Donald Duck has taught me a lot about fiction. And there’s more to learn, still!
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Fantasy Language Generator: Create a Language in Seconds

October 10, 2022

Yboa Haeinaeiki Igiovalu. This means Fantasy Language Generator in… Sicrespind – a fantasy language I created with the help of my academic background, my creativity, and some JavaScript. If you’re a fantasy fiction author – or simply someone interested in a program that creates an entire language in a matter of seconds – this post is for you!

Fantasy Language Generator generates made-up words corresponding to the 30,000 most common English words, at the same time creating its own linguistic patterns – for instance, its own set of suffixes, prefixes, tense and noun markers, among others. I’ll show you more examples in this post.

All this can be extremely useful to fantasy fiction authors interested in creating a coherent, consistent fantasy language.

fantasy language generator
Fantasy Language generator comes with a detailed “How to Use” page
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Planet Generator: A Tool for SciFi and Fantasy Authors

May 16, 2022

Astronomy is one of my hobbies, and I’m particularly intrigued by exoplanets – planets beyond our solar system. Combining this interest with my coding and writing experience, I thought to make this JavaScript Planet Generator program. Not only does it create graphical representations of such fascinating worlds, it also generates random civilizational data that might be helpful for science fiction and fantasy authors.

In other words, whether you’re a scifi/fantasy author looking for worldbuilding prompts, a programmer looking for inspiration and/or tips, or simply someone interested in the universe, there’s definitely something in Planet Generator that will interest you.

planet generator
Here’s how the results page of Planet Generator looks like
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