Helpful Hints

Grammar and Punctuation Tips: Modifying Phrases

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Without modifying phrases, our writing would be very sparse – possibly bland.  Modifying phrases are those parts of a sentence that ‘modify’ or describe the basic sense.  Pretty much everybody uses them.  But how to convey them on paper with the appropriate punctuation?

Two common mistakes are made with modifying phrases:

  1. A full-stop is used instead of a comma
  2. A semi-colon is used instead of a comma

In other words, modifying phrases need commas!  They need to be closely attached to the main part of the sentence they are modifying.

Here are some examples of mistakes with modifying phrases:

  1. Scruffy was the best dog in the neighbourhood, with his black and white fur.  His pink tongue and wagging tail.
  2. The house was tidy; its carpets regularly cleaned and toys carefully put away.

Remember the rules for full-stops and semi-colons?

A sentence following a full-stop or a semi-colon has to make sense by itself – it has to have a verb.

  1. ‘His pink tongue and wagging tail’ doesn’t tell us anything – we have to ask what about these things?  A verb for sense is missing (don’t be confused by the presence of ‘wagging’!  Yes, it’s a ‘doing word’ and tells us what his tail is doing but it doesn’t create sense for the combined subject of tongue and tail).
  2. In the second sentence, ‘its carpets regularly cleaned and toys carefully put away’ also lacks any sense – because this is a modifying phrase:  it’s meant to modify the subject, verb and object ‘the house was tidy’.  Without this statement in front of it, the phrase about carpets and toys makes no sense.  Therefore it doesn’t stand alone and it can’t follow a semi-colon.

Properly written, modifying phrases are always attached by commas to the sense they are modifying:

  1. Scruffy was the best dog in the neighbourhood, with his black and white fur, his pink tongue and wagging tail. [This sentence has two modifying phrases, both modifying the statement ‘Scruffy was the best dog in the neighbourhood’]
  2. The house was tidy, its carpets regularly cleaned and toys carefully put away. [The modifying phrase in this sentence modifies the statement ‘the house was tidy’.]

Do you think you’ve got the hang of modifying phrases?  Post a question if you’re not sure!

The Misunderstood Semi-Colon

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The semi-colon stakes a claim as the most misunderstood punctuation mark in the English language.  That’s probably because it is the one that people see the least.  And when they do see it, it’s often not being used correctly.

What to know about the semi-colon:

1. It looks like a comma and so is often mistakenly used to fill in for one.  Part of the problem is that semi-colons can actually be used to fill in for commas – but only in a list.

2. The rest of the time, semi-colons are more closely related to colons:  ‘semi’ apparently comes from the Latin term ‘half’, and means ‘partially’, ‘somewhat’, or ‘having some of the characteristics of’ whatever it is referring to.  So the semi-colon is a little bit like a colon.  Keep this in mind and you might have some luck with it – if you’re not writing a list, a semi-colon cannot be used an alternative to a comma.

The semi-colon is rare because there are only two circumstances in which it should be used:

1. When you are joining two independent sentences.

The semi-colon is not like a comma because commas are never used for joining independent sentences.  If they are, what is created is called a ‘run-on sentence’ or ‘comma splice’.

Independent sentences (clauses that make sense by themselves and contain a subject and verb) should be separated with a full-stop or joined with a conjunction.  However, sometimes you can join them with a semi-colon instead of a full-stop.  The time to do that is when the sentences are linked by their content in some close way.  This is how the semi-colon acts as a sort of colon – if the first sentence was followed by a colon, the second sentence would explain the first in some way.  With a semi-colon between them, two sentences are also closely linked contextually, but not at that specific explanatory level.

Here are some examples:

  • I walk to the park every Sunday morning; the gates open at ten.
  • She looked at me as though I was a monster; I felt my stomach sink.

The test for using a semi-colon in sentence structure is – could you replace it with a full-stop?  If the answer is yes, then it is ok to use it.  If the answer is no, then please don’t use it!

2. When you are listing something

I think most people know that when you are about to list a whole bunch of stuff, you signal that with a colon.  Normally, things in a list are separated by commas.  But, sometimes, it is appropriate to use semi-colons instead.  This is the only time when a semi-colon can stand in for a comma.  And it is only used this way when the items in the list could become confused (or confusing) due to the use of commas for additional phrases.  For example:

  • She gave me her shopping list: apples, pears, bread, milk, chocolate, and biscuits. [commas are fine; a semi-colon isn’t needed!]
  • She gave me her shopping list: apples to give to Joseph and make pies for Saturday; pears for Aunty Flo and the baking contest; bread for sandwiches for the picnic; milk, even though she knows Toby can’t drink it and Stephanie doesn’t like it; chocolate for me, because she knows I can’t live without it, although she’s been trying to get me to stop eating it for several weeks; and biscuits, which we have to stock up on, because when Nana visits she goes ballistic if she can’t have something to dunk in her tea. [without the semi-colons to separate list items, the reader could easily become confused]

Feeling more confident about semi-colons now?  Want a second opinion about some sentences you have in mind?  Don’t hesitate to post here for some help!

Grammar and Punctuation Tips: Writing Dialogue

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Having dialogue in a story is great.  Dialogue allows characters to speak in their own voices and can quicken the story’s pace.  To some of you, the following tips will seem obvious, but to others they may be something you need to remind yourself of when you proofread your work:

1) Each new speaker needs to start on a new line.  For example:

“Where did you leave it?” John asked.

“In the shed.”

“Did anyone see you?”

2) Use double OR single quotation marks.  When writing for yourself, doing one or the other is simply about consistency.  Using one type allows you to reserve the other type for internal quotation marks (see below).  However, different publishers may prefer you to use a particular type of quotation mark – check what they want before sending anything off.

3) Put all sentence punctuation (commas, periods, question marks, exclamation marks)inside the quotation marks:

“I don’t think so,” Mary whispered.

“What do you mean, ‘you don’t think so’?”

“I couldn’t be sure.”

4) If you are adding a descriptor after the quotation marks, the final punctuation mark can never be a period, semi-colon or colon.  This is because what comes after the quotation marks should be considered part of the overall sentence (unless you are starting a new sentence).

A good practice is to read it out loud to yourself.  There shouldn’t be a long pause if you are describing what was said; a long pause only comes into play if you have started a new sentence (which is a sentence that, if you isolated it, doesn’t beg you to answer what?):

“What do you mean?!” he repeated.

“There was a man walking his dog, but I don’t know…” She swallowed.  “He might have seen me, but-” She cut herself off.

John picked up his keys.

“I’m going to collect it now then,” he said.

Here, ‘he repeated’ and ‘he said’ make you wonder – what did he repeat?  He said what?  Both are descriptors, not new sentences.  In comparison, ‘She swallowed’ and ‘She cut herself off’ make sense by themselves.  These are new sentences so require capitalisation and can come after a dash, an ellipsis – or a full stop.

Do you have any pesky questions about dialogue you’d like some advice on?  Please post them here as comments – just paste in your sentence and question and we’d be happy to give advice!

Tips: Grammar and Punctuation

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We’ve all heard it said that what agents and publishers really want is someone who can write a good story.  It’s the story that matters, the story that will make or break a publishing deal.  And I’ve no doubt that is true.

But I’m sure we’ve also all heard it said that first impressions count.  And, while it might be nice to think that we can just leave all that grammar and punctuation stuff to some future editor, it pays to make as positive an impression as possible to make sure that future editor will one day be secured.  For sloppy grammar and punctuation is often a red flag for sloppy writing.  And when you’ve only got a short space in which to convince a potential agent or publisher to continue reading your work, why not make the best impression you can?

For those of us raised in a school system that didn’t teach more than the basics of grammar and punctuation, the whole concept of getting good at it seems daunting.  Many New Zealand English speakers don’t start to get a feeling for the grammar of their own language (let alone an adequate vocabulary to discuss it) until they start learning another.  So most of us simply write as we speak – instinctively.  But there are some useful tips we can learn to polish our grammar and punctuation skills.  Which is lucky for us – because if we want to catch that agent/publisher’s eye, we want our writing to shine brighter than a rough diamond.

First tip coming up!

Try something different

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One of our Guild members – Rachel – asked me recently for help with inspiration, prompted I think by Tammie’s comment that she’d caught her recent writing bug from me. Fran in turn suggested I blog up here about the crazy few weeks I’ve had writing, by hand, around 200-300 pages of my second book.

For the last year and a half, since I published book one, I have been trying to make progress on book two. When someone hasn’t seen me in a while, they often ask me ‘How’s the writing going?’ or if they enjoyed the Silver Hawk, ‘When is the next one out, I can’t wait.’

While I am so grateful to everyone for their genuine interest and support, it is a very new experience, trying to produce a story when people are waiting for it and their good opinion of you as a writer rides on whether you can pull it all off a second time.

Unsurprisingly, until the beginning of this year, my actual words-on-a-page count was pretty abysmal by my standards. I spent most of ‘writing’ time talking to people, drawing maps, planning intricate details about Houses and characters you may or may not ever meet… I was getting into obsessive levels of detail because every time I sat down to write, my brain kept saying ‘You don’t know enough yet.’

I felt like, somehow, getting to know every single character in every House… mapping the streets and writing over a thousand years of history would give me the words I was looking for. The only problem was I totally overloaded myself with information and couldn’t work out how to tie it all together.

Then the holiday break happened. I went on a road trip around the North Island and didn’t even think about Tyria or book two while I was away. Coming back, I sat at the computer thinking, “I should try and write something…” and I couldn’t. All I wanted to do was get away from the screen and hide somewhere with a pen and paper.

So I did.

I printed out everything I already had, grabbed a ring binder and started cutting and pasting whole sections as I read back through. I added bits and threw other things out. Then I got to the end of the seventeen mini scenes I’d written over the last year and a half and picked up my pen.

For three weeks, you couldn’t get me away from that folder. I took it everywhere with me, separating sections as I wrote with tiny post its and sometimes writing for hours on end until I had a sore wrist (mother and boyfriend gave me the concerned raised eyebrow for that).

Then I ran out of things to say. I got to a place where ‘I didn’t know’ anymore. I stopped and had to go back to the drawing board.

After a huge conversation with my boyfriend last night, I’ve worked out the major kinks and I’m back on track, but I think the point is sometimes inspiration strikes and when it does, grab it with both hands. The rest of the time, don’t beat yourself up. I never stopped working. I know I couldn’t have written so much if not for the year and a half of hard work I put in designing the world and social context… but I also know I wouldn’t have managed to have this breakthrough if I wasn’t willing to try something different.

I’ve never written so much by hand before, but for me, it was exactly what I needed. It could be something totally different for you. Listen to what that little voice is saying. If you feel like writing diaries from the POVs of totally insignificant characters, go with it. Maybe you’ll find something magic when you let yourself stray from the path of convention.

Good luck and lots of love,


Beaulah's epic folder
My epic folder

World Building: Random Generators

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The final post for our World building series is on the use of random generators.

There are tonnes of random generator sites out there, my favourite is

Generators are amazing tools for world building, in many different ways.

Way number One
This is to use random generators is to generate a result and stick with it, finding explanations for why it works.

For example:
I want a regional drink to spice up an area so I use the Fancy Drink Generator (
I get: “Light yellow-green with silver sparkles and a slice of a strange fruit on the edge of the glass. The drink smells like fresh dirt and tastes like pea soup. It often inspires the drinker to dance.”

Okay, so first the colour, why is the drink yellow-green? Is this because of an ingredient or the combination of both? If it is a regional drink is this some sort of national colour?
The silver sparkles, are they decorative? Or do they change the flavour?
The strange fruit, how is it strange? What does it taste like?
The smell… how does a drink smell like fresh dirt? Do I actually want to know…?
Tasing like pea-soup makes a lot of sense if peas are still green in your world – but what if they aren’t?
Oh and how on earth does a drink tasing of pea-soup inspire dance? Is it a specific dance? Is it the regional dance?

Clearly that single drink has given us a lot of questions that we now get to have fun answering.

Way number Two
This is to use the random generator to generate multiple answers and use one or a combination to best fit the information you already know.

For example: say I was using the same problem as above, but I know that where I am focusing this drink is a small village that primarily makes glass items for the city just up the road.

I generate five results:
1. Clear as glass with brown swirls and a stick of cinnamon in the mug. The drink smells sour and tastes spoiled. It burns going down.
2. Bright yellow with pale pink swirls and served in a plain glass. The drink smells like perfume and tastes like blueberries. The locals consider it offensive not to accept a drink of it if offered.
3. Pale yellow with small pieces of candy and served in a champagne glass. The drink smells like cinnamon and tastes strange. It causes mild paranoia.
4. Light red with lots of bubbles and served in a plain glass. The drink smells like chocolate and tastes like licorice. It causes the drinker to temporarily lose their sense of taste.
5. Smokey grey with silvery swirls and a lemon slice on the edge of the glass. The drink smells like fresh dirt and tastes metallic.

So I have some interesting results here, some would be brilliant as practical jokes, like the chocolate that causes temporary loss of taste. For a regional drink though not so much (unless there was a strong practical joke custom!) One thing I really like for my regional drink is that the locals consider it offensive not to accept a drink if offered. Now as the area makes glass I also quite like the idea that their regional drink is clear as glass so I’ll stick with the Clear as glass with brown swirls and a stick of cinnamon in the mug” Now smell and taste, if it is a regional drink then it is going to taste good, and is probably this village will drink it cool. Smelling of cinnamon makes sense if there is a stick of it in there but “strange” isn’t much of a taste description so at random I choose blueberries. I may also make it alcoholic so it’s a blueberry flavoured drink with a stick of cinnamon? Maybe the region has a lot of cinnamon, or there is some health benefit attributed to cinnamon?

So I still have some unanswered questions to sort through and make up the answers to.

Way number three
This basically involves regenerating answers until one fits.
I do this more than I like to admit because it feels like cheating but it is a really good way for you to learn what you do and do not actually want. If you don’t really care what type of answer you have then the previous ways work. If you do but still don’t know what it is you want exactly then you use the results generated to rule out something.

So back to my example:
I want a regional drink that my village of glass-makers drink regularly. So these are craftsmen and craftswomen who have a very dangerous job. They are not going to get drunk. So do I want this to be a drink they drink on special occasions or everyday? Everyday. So it will be cool, as they work in a hot environment.

First generation:
1. Very pale brown with semi-transparent swirls and sugar on the rim of the glass. The drink smells like arsenic and tastes like cherries. It is a great thirst-quencher.
2. Sea green with gold flecks and served in a small cup. The drink smells like lime and tastes like lemon. It is served steaming hot.
3. Sapphire with yellow-orange swirls and served in a mug with runes carved on the side. The drink smells like arsenic and tastes like medicine. It is served lukewarm.
4. Copper with lots of foam and served in a shot glass. The drink smells like rusty metal and tastes like the sea. It goes flat if not drunk within ten minutes.
5. Amethyst with yellow swirls and served in a mug with runes carved on the side. The drink smells like lemon and tastes spoiled. 

The only thing I like in these is the thirst-quencher of the first one. I do not want a drink that smells of arsenic. Some of these I could make work but none of them feel like what I am looking for, so I generate again.

6. Solid black with red flecks and a shot of another drink mixed in. The drink smells like fish and tastes like fish. The locals like to drink it on hot days.
7. Mint green with silvery swirls and a stick of cinnamon in the mug. The drink smells like ambrosia and tastes somewhat like coffee. It will melt any material it is spilled on, but is safe to drink.
8. Aquamarine with small pieces of candy and served in a carved wooden mug. The drink smells like chocolate and tastes somewhat like champagne. It often makes the drinker jumpy.
9. Amethyst with bubbles and served in a dirty glass. The drink smells strongly of nuts and tastes like oranges. Sphinx tears are rumoured to be a key ingredient.
10. Dark brown with multicolored bubbles and chunks of meat floating in it. The drink smells like cave rock and tastes like chicken soup. It is served freezing.

Again none of them feel right…
Eventually I find this one:
Blue-green with lots of foam and a sprig of mint in the mug. The drink smells like strawberries and tastes excellent. It is highly caffinated.

This could work. Eventually you will probably pull out bits you like from the results you are given to mash up to what you want.

Finally there is a completely different way to use random generators
This is my favourite way to get past writers block.
Many random generator sites have a “random generator” button. This button randomly sends you to a generator. This one feels more like a flow-chart type approach to me…

1. Random Generator
2. get a few results
3. does any of it feel like it could be worked into your world?
If Yes – Write it!
If No – Go back to 1.

For example
I have no idea what to write
Random Generator: D&D character…
Hmm, I don’t really have any need for new characters my worlds have enough of those…

Random Generator: Flag generator
Hmmm That Kingdom over there could do with a flag… or each of those noble houses could have one….
Now I get to write about the various flags and why the houses chose them. Was there a huge debate over neighboring houses wanting the same design? or too similar a design? Did one of those houses split in the past – how did that impact on the flag?

World Building: Lots of Little Stories

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World Building: The People

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When creating your world your focus will probably be on the people your story is about. Even the most extreme sci-fi and fantasy stories have some form of humanoid creature as the dominant characters, or, if they’re not humanoid, they will to acquire human traits; the reason for this is simply because it’s going to be humans reading your story, and your reader needs to be able to relate to your characters. For that reason I’m going to focus on humans, though the same general rules will apply whether you’re writing elves or aliens. (Both mainstream fiction and historical fiction are set in real world locations with real world demographics, so there’s no space for creativity in this area, but even if you write these genres, knowing a bit about world-building might help you understand your people better).

Survival and Growth

Humanity needs some basic things for survival. Oxygen and gravity will likely be provided directly by the planet unless you’re writing sci-fi in which case, experiment, but don’t leave the people floating around because the planet you just created doesn’t have gravity.
Fresh drinking water is essential as is food. These will generally come from the surroundings of your people. How technologically advanced the population is will determine how these resources are acquired. History is the perfect place to find examples of how these can be attained and the effects that this has on settlements.
Hunters and gatherers tend to be nomadic, following herds or visiting known crop sites with the seasons. While a single centre may form, this will only occur if there is surplus food to support those that are not supporting themselves. They may have little in the way of minerals and technology, as ore cannot be mined by a nomadic people. While the need to mine may force people to settle and be supported by others, or people may trade for metals, it’s possible they live without metal, and spend time collecting flint, etc. from known sites when the seasons allow it.
Agriculturalists will settle on fertile land, inevitably near water, and may fell forests for more farmland depending on their location, needs and beliefs. It allows less work for more yield, and people could begin to find other pass-times, such as thinking (philosophy) and experimenting (science).
Nearby rivers provide the best early form of transportation. Villages and towns situated on river banks can trade with each other and eventually grow into towns or even cities as they trade for things that they can’t provide for themselves. As the population grows, more people are able to turn their skills to things that nomads may not have had time for, such as fashion and art.
As time progresses, your people will find other ways to provide drinkable water, such as wells, rain water tanks, condensation collection, or even salt to fresh water treatment plants, allowing towns to exist away from rivers and in less accessible or hospitable locations. However, out of the way towns are likely to remain small, while those that lie on trade routes or better yet at junctions will flourish.
Food will also eventually start being grown or made in the most appropriate areas for it and then traded across the world as it is today, allowing entire regions to specialise in a certain thing and relying on the rest of the world for everything else.

People will naturally go to the easiest places to survive, but it these areas are full or not appropriate for some reason, they may go elsewhere and develop ways to survive. Humans are the most adaptable creatures ever, so if you your setting is a swampy land with nothing but huge trees (the bark/leaves of which happen to be life-sustaining, or are able to be traded for food) then people would likely build tree-houses and swing bridges and live in this environment. If you want to see ways in which people adapt to different environments, then all you have to do is have a look around Earth. From Inuits to tribes in Africa, there are examples of people adapting to life in the extremes.


As the number of settled people grow, two things are likely to happen.

Belief in ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ will develop, and laws will have to be created to protect those that act ‘right’ and punish those that act ‘wrong’. Laws suggest a kind of government body to make the laws and a kind of police force to uphold the law. Even with the laws there will be inner conflict. What kinds of conflict, and how that is resolved will help show what your people value.
Not all laws make sense. Not all punishments make sense. One of the most basic beliefs is ‘an eye for an eye’. You kill, you will be killed. A common one (I think it’s shown in Aladdin), is losing your hand when you steal. It’s a good arena to explore your own attitude to things like capital punishment, or how to handle overflowing prisons.
Laws may be in place that are ignored. Some laws may get followed rigidly. And sometimes laws get used to exact some kind of personal revenge or to frame people (I’m thinking witch-hunts and the Salem Witch Trials in particular here).
Some laws aren’t so much ‘laws’ but more traditions that you have to respect, such as not interrupting your elders, or taking your shoes off inside, and often come from a place of reason.

Spiritual beliefs will also come into being, with people needing something to place hope in, and something to blame for the bad times.
No matter what your personal views on religion are, at some point as your society grows people will start questioning humanity’s place in the world. There are two sides to this: what is real, and what people believe to be real. What is real, and how it interacts with the people, may influence what people believe to be real, but you don’t have to look far to find real life examples that people will believe anything. The point here is, your people’s religious beliefs don’t have to be the truth, but they will believe something. Religion plays an important role in society. The type of ‘gods’ the people will come to believe in will depend on what is important to the people. If agriculture is the centre of their lives, they will come to have gods, or spirits, or energies, that control or influence the seasons or rain or fertility of the land.
People’s beliefs will affect their relationship with the natural world. If there is a great respect for forests, or a particular forest, there won’t be mass clearing of forest to make farmland. If people rely on swampland, or have some spiritual relationship with it, they won’t drain the swamps. Etc. People may avoid settling in a place that’s considered haunted or tapu. Places that are sacred may be settled by some kind of priests, or may be avoided and feared. While it’s easy to create a people who have no respect for anything other than themselves, often the culture will be more interesting if they hold extreme respect for certain things or places. And keep in mind, people’s relationship with the natural world will affect where towns appear.
Sometimes those that rule over religion also rule over the people, so laws are the laws of the ‘gods’.

Multiple Cultures

The more time that passes, so the more people their are, the higher the chance of their being clashes of cultural beliefs. Differences between cultures can vary greatly. It may be that only the gods they believe in are different, or they may completely different races with a different language as well as different beliefs. In sci-fi it would be possible to write so far in the future that all cultures have amalgamated into one, but how long this would take (and if it’s possible) would be debatable. Even if there was only one human culture, there would still be different dialects and beliefs in different regions, and these semi-cultures would be sure to interact and, at times, clash. What conflicts occur, and how they are resolved, will depend on, and affect, the peoples’ perspective on the world and those that exist in it.
Wars are all too common, and even if you are not writing about a war, it’s likely that there would have been wars in the past. In this case, there’s likely to be some kind of town fortifications or army, and even if peace is now achieved there may be some bad blood between cultures.

Language become an issue when there are more than one of them (you can delve into this area when you only have one culture, but it can be tricky to show in the story). If you’re going to start creating a language, have fun, but do some linguistics research first. I think it’s worthy of a blog post of its own so maybe I’ll do that another day. What I do suggest is if you’re going to have more than one language, then read how other authors have handled it. Misinterpretation (and mis-translation) can be fun to write, it can start wars and feuds than go on for hundreds of years, or could just provide some nice awkward moments. One fascinating thing I love about languages is that there will be words in one language that other cultures just doesn’t have an equal for (such as mana). You can try explain it or understand it, but often true understanding can only be found by native speakers.

Generally readers assume things are the same as their own world, and will continue in that belief unless you give them a reason not to, so if they know of a habitat similar to the one in their story they will probably assume the people there live in a similar way. To make your job as a writer easier, you may not want to turn your world on its head. If having something drastically different is relevant to the story, such as coastal towns that don’t fish as all the fish they catch are poisonous, and your story is set in one of these coastal towns, then have fun, but make sure you consider the impact of the change. If coastal towns don’t live off fish, then how do they survive? If the fish were always poisonous why are their coastal towns at all? It would make sense if this were the situation that the coastal towns would not be as well off as the coastal towns in our own world are. There’s always an impact, even if it seems like a small change.

Two things to keep in mind: you don’t have to know everything about your world, and you don’t have to put everything you do know into the story.

World Development: Ecology (part 2 – Fauna)

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All animals living in the same habitat must interact in some way or another and will come into conflict with one another. This could be in a predator/prey relationship or clashing over a limited resource, such as food or denning space. There are various ways to control conflict – sometimes when two animals both share the same diet and niche, they will have different active times, ie: one is nocturnal, the other diurnal (for example, tarsiers, lorises and bushbabies are all nocturnal, which stops them being in conflict with the dangerous, but diurnal, monkeys); in other cases the conflicts and clashes will be violent (lions vs hyenas). In most terrestrial environments, there will be more “prey” species (deer, rabbits and other herbivores) than predators. So, although lions and tigers and wolves and the like may seem far more interesting, they do need to be able to have enough food to feed them.
Big predators hunt big prey. So if you have giant wolves or massive lions, you will need large mammals too.
Essentially, you need to create a food chain for your fauna.
Herbivores: Eat plant matter (rabbits, ungulates, geese etc) 
  • Low energy food, need to browse (eat leaves) or graze (eat grass).
  • Often are prey species
  • Often live in groups (more eyes to watch for predators)
  • In mammals, eyes are located more centrally along the side of the head, allowing them greater peripheral vision.
  • Not generally nocturnal.
 Fructivores: Eat fruits and nectar (many birds, lemurs, fruit bats etc)
  • High energy food, important in seed dispersal/pollination.
  • Birds have a high metabolism and thus need to eat high energy food regularly.
  • Arborel (tree living) mammals have their eyes located at the front of their head, allowing them better spatial judgement.
  • Birds are diurnal.
 Carnivores: Eat the flesh of vertebrates (felines, canines, seals, mustelids, raptors etc)
  • – High energy food, requires effort to obtain, one large meal can sustain a carnivore for several days.
  • Some species live in groups – packs/prides – and hunt cooperatively for larger prey.
  • In mammals, eyes usually positioned towards front of face, allowing better spatial judgement and thus better control over catching their prey.
  • Many diurnal, but some nocturnal.
 Insectivores: Eat invertebrates (hedgehogs, moles, aardwolf, mongoose, some birds etc)
  • High energy but need to eat a lot to sustain the animal.
  • Many insectivores also occasionally eat meat or fruit.
  • Generally solitary or live in pairs (especially if nocturnal as well).
  • Many are nocturnal, but not all. Depends on other factors – like predators and active behaviour of the insect food sources.
  • Birds are diurnal (mostly)
Omnivores: Eat anything (pigs, weka, rats etc)
  •  The best generalists, because they can adapt to survive in most situations.
  •  Highly destructive when introduced into new ecosystems. 
  •  Some are social, others solitary or live in pairs.
  •  Some are nocturnal, some are diurnal.
  •  Can be  a predator, but can also be prey.

 Scavengers: Eat dead things (vultures, blowflies etc)

  •  Work as nature’s “clean up” crew by eating things already dead – including stuff well past its expiration date.
  • A very important part of the ecosystem, even if they are kinda dirty and “gross”.
  • Vultures have naked heads so that they can stick their heads into the carcass without getting their feathers matted with blood – this could lead to problems with the “waterproof” qualities of their feathers and lead to them dying. They also do not have very strong talons.
  • Some scavenger species are actually very effecient hunters (ie: the spotted hyena). Just as some predators rely on scavenging or stealing their kills from other hunters.

Now, how about making up your own species? Sounds like fun?
It sure is!

Here are some ways you can make your native wildlife distinctively different from those on Earth:

1. Focus on birds, reptiles or invertebrates rather than mammals

Consider a world like ours in which there are no mammals – what habitats are there for the reptiles (or birds) to fill? How might they evolve to better exploit these habitats. It might help to study island ecology – looking at places like New Zealand and Hawaii where native mammals were never prevalent. Consider changes the birds might make to fit in here – losing their ability to fly, growing bigger, living in burrows, behaving more like monkeys… etc. Another thing to consider is that mammals hunt by scent (and many have poor colour vision), whereas birds and lizards both have colour vision – so what role might this play in how the native wildlife looks? New Zealand birds are generally drab in colour – which allows them camouflage and protects them from avian predators. This defence proved ineffective when mammals were introduced, and annihilated them.

2. All vertebates on Earth have four limbs – so why not give yours six?

This is where gryphons and the typical “Western” dragon fit in, any animal that has four feet and wings is a hexapod. I once made an ecology up for a world in which everything had three pairs of limbs. It was not nearly as impressive as that found in “Avatar”. If you do this, try and use it consistently, it perplexed me rather that whilst all the non-sentient life forms on Pandora had three pairs of limbs, the dominant sentient race (the Na’avi) did not, leading me to speculate that the blue cat-people were in fact aliens themselves that had invaded the land on an earlier occasion and modified the animals to their own purpose. This was never clearly answered.
3. Hybridise Earth animals – combine random species to create Chimeras
See also TV tropes: Mix and Match critters
This also explains gryphons and their ilk.
Chimeras don’t make scientific sense, since different species cannot interbreed. Although, some realworld species are bloody strange – anyone looking at a platypus might consider it a duckmole (that’s what I imagined Tamora Pierce was doing in her “Immortals” series). But hey, it’s your world, so it doesn’t really matter if it’s not entirely scientifically sound. Maybe there’s a mad scientist on the lose, or maybe the rules of genetics are different.
Making up names for chimerical critters is always fun. When naming hybrid real-world animals, half of the father’s species is taken first, and connected with the second half of the mother’s species. Hence a Liger is the result of a male lion and a female tiger. It looks quite different from a Tiglon, which has the opposite parentage. Generally, I just go with what works best – or start with the head and work my way back. Or you can just join the two names together, as they do in the “Avatar: The Last Airbender” tv series. I snorted with laughter when Ang declared “someone’s getting attacked by a platypus bear”.
Hybridising in this sort of way does, however, cause complications – because no two animals will ever look the same, or even necessarily be the same species – if any animal species can produce viable offspring with any other species, then what happens when two hybrid animals breed together? Will everything just end up looking really weird, or will they eventually converge to a sort of homogenised point?However, you can use this method to make some really original looking critters that might not *actually* be caused by the two species breeding together.
 Weedy Seadragon/Peacock = Weedy Seacock?

4. Take Real World animals and alter them to fill different niches

This is particularly fun for Post-Apocalyptic variants of our own world. Okay, assuming the world faces a nuclear holocaust, or climate change or whatever it is that entirely reshapes the face of the world as we know it – what animals will survive?

Probably the hardy generalists and omnivores. The rats, the pigs, the foxes and maybe the cats. Animals such as lemurs, aardvarks and anything with a highly specialised diet or life cycle will be doomed. So, with those animals gone, and the world reverted to its wild self, how might the surviving species change to fill the niches that are left?

Speculative Zoology is fun and challenging. There are several online sites I have found, so here are a couple of links:
Neocene Project

Also worth looking into is Douglas Dixon’s “After Man” – published in 1981, so maybe a bit hard to get nowadays. I picked mine up second hand.

And you don’t *need* to have a Post Apocalyptic setting to make this work – sometimes it is just interesting to think – how would a rabbit look were it arboreal? Or could sparrows live underground?

From Budgerigar to Budgieraptor!

5. Take real world animals and give them elemental powers

However, they might be mistaken for Pokemon. One thing that puzzled me with Pokemon (in the early days) was – what do they eat? Other pokemon? Later development answered this with a “yes”.

 Meet Makilumi!
6. Dragons  
Dragons are something I often have trouble with in fantasy novels. Ignoring the fact that they’re not really mammals, birds or even reptiles,  they are, for the most part, massive carnivores. And something that massive is going to need a LOT of food to fuel it. It might not need to eat frequently, but it will need large meals on a semi-regular basis. So if you have a situation where you have a world with large amounts of massive dragons, you better have enormous herds of some sort of herbivore for them to eat. Of course, you could also make them herbivorous.

Since dragons are a mythological species with no basis on any particular real animal, authors (and artists) have had a lot of fun developing them in a variety of ways. The typical Western dragon is reptilian, huge and scaly – often with wings – and this seems to have perpetuated throughout many fantasy novels – although sometimes they have three pairs of limbs (four legs, two wings) and other times two (2 wings + 2 legs). Often they also have elemental powers.

My two favourite Western-ish dragons in literature are Patrick Rothfuss’ in “Name of the Wind” and Robin Hobb’s dragon ecology in her “Liveship Traders” series.

In most novels, when a human bonds with a dragon, the two are able to communicate either via telepathy or verbally. This was nicely avoided in the movie of “How to Train your Dragon” which is one of the many things that made that movie original and wonderful.

I personally have several dragon characters, none of which resemble this phenotype:

Rhapsody the Sea Dragon (top)
Pippit the Rainforest Dragon (bottom)

There are NUMEROUS tropes used in fantasy for designing new species, I have engaged in intensive research at tvtropes to bring you a summary of some of their most relevant ones:

Call a Rabbit a “Smerp”:  Which refers to taking standard critters and giving them unusual and original names. This can be especially effective if the Writer wishes to convey an otherworldlyness to their story, or set the culture of the protagonists separate from the typical one. I, for example, generally have used the Malagasy names for the variety of lemur species featuring in my stories, as I feel this adds to the authenticity – as the Malagasy people were there first (likewise, I always list the Maori names on my NZ animal illustrations, when I can find them). It can give the ordinary a somewhat fantastical feel.

Call a “Smerp” a Rabbit: Which refers to having bizarre a variations on the typical – such as giant riding lizards or small wild birds but referring to them as their Earth equivalent – leading to confusion and disorientation on the part of the Reader. If your “cows” are really stocky dragons that eat grass, it might be best to find another name for them. If you do wish to go this route, make it very clear from the start that your cows are not like our cows! This is found in reality too, when early explorers named everything based on what they previously knew – hence the presence of “robins” and “wrens” in New Zealand, despite the fact that they are not closely related to the European birds by the same name.

For more tropes (and before I get off topic) – visit this page here.

World Development: Ecology (part one – habitat)

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Designing a Convincing Ecology for your Fantastical World

Firstly: What is Ecology?







  • Cold, barren.
  • Either frozen or wet, depending on season.
  • Few animal species.


  • Cold and relatively dry, except during the wet seasons.

Alpine Tundra (High Altitude scrubland):

  • Harsh, windy conditions.
  • Does not support much tree growth.
  • Trees stunted and windswept.


Temperate Forest:

  • Wet and cool.
  • Range of different animal species.
  • Two layers – overstory and understory.


Dry Woodland

  • Warm and dry summers.
  • Wet winters.
  • Diverse range of plants and species.

Tropical Rainforest:

  • Wet and warm.
  • Diverse range of different animal species.

Savannah (grasslands and shrublands):

  • Dry and warm.
  • Predominent vegetation is grass or small shrubs, occasional trees.


  • Hot, barren, dry.
  • Not many plants.
  • Few animal species, most of which are nocturnal.
  • Lots of rocks.


  • Wet.
  • Warm or cool, depending on latitude.
  • Considered the most biologically diverse ecostystem.

Other environmental effects that may affect your environment:



Earthquakes: The moving of tectonic plates shapes mountains.





