u/AsceOmega

I was debating this question earlier today, as I thought back on my own story.

Do you have regular "real world" critters running around alongside magical beast? Or must all animals in your world be unique or differently fantastical to make your world feel like a true fantasy world?

How much whiplash, if any, do you get from seeing there be a regular ass beaver in one scene and then a kind of ermine that absorbs sunlight to flash its prey with stroboscopic lights, at night, to disorient them or paralyse them?

Do you find the need to make all mounts something other than just a horse? Or do your horses have fantastical properties as well?

In certain famous book series, like the Stormlight Archive, great emphasis is placed on the alien nature of the world, compared to that of us, the readers. No recognisable creatures from our world exist, save for a couple where they appear similar but with obvious and sometimes major differences.

Is that something that you require for your own immersion into the fantasy worlds you read? Or what kind of justification would you need for there being normal real world animals in a setting that is not Earth?

More than a request for advice, I'm more interested in your general opinions as both writers and readers.

Without wanting to get bogged down in "All Hail Tolkien", it is famously one of the things that made his books stand apart from other fantasy books of their time, and to a degree even of the current day.

Some books will have a couple of songs per book or per entire series. Kingkiller Chronicles has a couple of those for instance.

How do you approach writing songs? What kind of songs fit into the world better for you, than others? What makes you want to skip reading the lyrics to a song? Does the lack of any music notation rob bother you (having to imagine a melody rather than knowing what the exact melody is)?

Do you pay attention to whether a song might have plot relevance or whether it's simply one that's been sung to pass the time "in-story"?

What are some of the most successful examples of songs you've come across in books, and why do those stand out to you?