The history of medicine, perhaps more than that of any other discipline or skilled occupation, illuminates broad social and cultural patterns of the period.

It seems there are all kinds of characters: developing characters, static characters, round characters, flat characters, cardboard characters (oh, are there cardboard characters!), viewpoint characters, sympathetic characters, unsympathetic characters, stock characters, confidantes, foils, spear-carriers, narrators, protagonists, antagonists. But that's not all; characters can play many roles. There are flat, sympathetic, static confidantes, like the unnamed first person narrator in H.G. Wells "The Time Machine." Or developing, flat, unsympathetic antagonists, like HAL in 2001, A Space Odyssey. Still with me?

The following list of questions is meant to aid authors of fantasy fiction who are seeking to create believable imaginary settings for their stories. While many of these questions may be helpful or crucial to certain stories, they will not all apply to every story. It is not necessary for an author to answer all, or even any, of the questions in order to start writing, (or to finish writing, either). The idea is simply to provoke people into thinking about the ways their settings and backgrounds hang together … or don't. If it's useful, use it. If not, don't.

Some questions apply to more than one topic, and have been duplicated under more than one heading. This should not be considered as an exhaustive and final list, but as a beginning point from which each individual writer can compile a personal list.

Search for ancient gods and goddesses in two ways, by culture or alphabetically, by the name of the specific god or goddess.

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Complete list of generators of all types.

The first step is to write a really good book. The next, equally important, step is attracting the notice of someone in a position to get it into print. Some people do this by networking at conventions, or striking up a relationship with a published author who recommends them to their publisher, both viable routes. For most of us, however, it's a "market by mail" venture. Whether you decide to seek an agent, or go straight to publishers, you need a letter of introduction - the query. Dissected and examined critically, the query letter is an elegantly concise piece of promotional writing. You have exactly one page to introduce yourself and your novel-just four or five clean, tight paragraphs, each with its own specific purpose. That doesn't sound so hard. We are writers, after all, right? But the devil is in the details, especially for a newcomer with no track record or flashy credentials.

The quickest approach to creating a usable fantasy world is to start with the small, local area where the characters’ initial adventures will occur. Some larger issues must still be considered such as how the local area will fit into the culture, terrain and climate of the surrounding area or some broad points about religion or gods that may be important to some characters, but with this approach the time spent on those issues can be minimized.

Kristen Kyle shares one technique for creating characters.

This links to an archived copy on archive.org as the original website has gone missing and no alternative web site has been found.

This article evaluates character archetypes that appear in the Hero's Journey, and looks at how it can applied to characters in your fiction to make them serve more purposes and carry your story forward.