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ON SOME REMARKABLE ANIMAL FORMS. THE reasoning upon the question whether dragons, winged snakes, sea-serpents, unicorns, and other so-called fabulous monsters have in reality existed, and at dates coeval with man, diverges in several independent directions. We have to consider:— 1.—Whether the characters attributed to these creatures are or are not so abnormal in comparison with those of known types, as to render a belief in their existence impossible or the reverse. 2.—Whether it is rational to suppose that creatures so formidable, and apparently so capable of self-protection, should disappear entirely, while much more defenceless species continue to survive them. 3.—The myths, traditions, and historical allusions from which their reality may be inferred require to be classified and annotated, and full weight given to the evidence which has accumulated of the presence of man upon the earth during ages long prior to the historic period, and which may have been ages of slowly prog...

MYTHICAL MONSTERS. INTRODUCTION. IT would have been a bold step indeed for anyone, some thirty years ago, to have thought of treating the public to a collection of stories ordinarily reputed fabulous, and of claiming for them the consideration due to genuine realities, or to have advocated tales, time-honoured as fictions, as actual facts; and those of the nursery as being, in many instances, legends, more or less distorted, descriptive of real beings or events. Now-a-days it is a less hazardous proceeding. The great era of advanced opinion, initiated by Darwin, which has seen, in the course of a few years, a larger progress in knowledge in all departments of science than decades of centuries preceding it, has, among other changes, worked a complete revolution in the estimation of the value of folk-lore; and speculations on it, which in the days of our boyhood would have been considered as puerile, are now admitted to be not merely interesting but necessary to those who endeavour ...

I’ll just answer the first half of this ask for today, and I’ll probably come back to the second half of your question later. :) Building suspense is a key component to any work of fiction, without suspense the antagonist would appear to be useless to the reader as there is no sense of immediate threat. Be open to the idea of the fate of your protagonist (and possibly your antagonist) hanging in the balance, only for one-minute detail which had been forgotten about at a much earlier stage in the novel to suddenly tip the scales and cause all chaos to break loose.  Here are some elements that you can use in your writing  Cross the Line Be Open to Multiple Endings Hiding Information and Mastering the Betrayal Raising the Stakes 1. Cross the Line By this point, you must be pretty sure about who your villain is and how your villain behaves around your protagonist. As the writer, you must know every convoluted detail and reasoning behind your antagonist’s acti...