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Would this truly be a mystic place?

One of the reasons I came to this forum was the idea of being folks involved in fantasy. While I'm not your fairy, zombie, or quest kind of guy, I am writing about a place few have been.

Most of my story takes place in Purgatory, but not exactly as you might think of it as an adjunct to religious thought. From the POV of my lead character, he lives in a world of "familiar yet different," as they have cities, vehicles, wars and rumors of war all within a crazy quilt of a 20th century feudal oligarchy. Notice I said 20th century. It's a world more familiar to me, than to you.

In a nutshell, he's there to fix a rip in time, and as a twist he is both the cause and the answer. To accomplish this he meets many standard characters in literature, like guardian angels, the fallen, people he might of known on earth and old lovers. No sorcery, amulets or voodoo dolls, but there are ethereal themes and images. And he's one of the themes, much to his surprise. He's also a bit player in his own story.

Now, my purpose. I have been sorely disappointed with many creative writing forums. In fact, I'm in the process of extricating myself from one now. I have either met people more concerned about talking about writing rather than actually writing, or one trick ponies who think they have a new concept because they spell the lead woman's name "Catniss."

Even fantasies must have mores, logical cause-and-effect principles, laws of gravity, governments, etc. There's the rub. I refer to their money as ducats because I couldn't think of anything else. Much of the time I feel as if I'm breaking every rule in the book to write a book.

This is where I need some guidance. Does this issue arise here? If so, how can derive answers from the members here to avoid the obvious pitfalls?
 
Hi,

First I'm not quite sure what you're asking, but welcome. You'll find a lot of people here who can help you with most stuff related to fantasy writing.

Now reading your post I'm guessing that you want to know what we think about the elements of your story. My thought is that it sounds interesting but also complicated. However in fantasy there are few rules to break - it's fantasy after all - you make the rules. The most important thing is to be consistent. Make up your own world and its rules and stick to them like glue for the book. One of my pet peeves when it comes to fantasy is sometimes when an author writes a book and you follow the plot for ninety percent of the way things seems perfectly straight forward. Then at the last second he allows his MC or his villain to break the rules so he can have a particular ending.

Hope that helps, but if you could frame the question a little more clearly, that would help. Also do try science fiction and fantasy chronicles and creative writers. I'm on both and find the members there good value.

Cheers, Greg.
 
Thanks for the response. I think I can clear up my focus.

For example, my character faces a sifting and winnowing process as a twisted mentor breeds an elitist army under false pretenses.

Frankly I'm a bit tired of only "red shirts" dying when the lead characters never get a hangnail. But if my MC has to survive while scores die, how can I make it sound reasonable? Let's face it, if he dies we have no story. I settled on banging him up so bad he had to spend a few weeks in a hospital.

Another issue, my lead is to appear in his early twenties. However, my personal knowledge of the edged tools and engines he uses was compiled over several decades. How can I make him look accomplished without falling into the cookie-cutter know-it-all depiction?

Most of my life I've felt a tad clueless, out of the social loop, never at the seat of power but I'm not sure I know how to convey that without sounding like my guy is the 'every man.' Let's face it, I was socialized in a motorcycle club. A little problem with the write what you know concept, further stilted by that background amid the Vietnam War era. I'm fortunate to use multisyllable words periodically!

The story is good, I like the twists, but if someone asked me about my writing problems, I'd answer, "My brain when thinking and my hands when typing."
 
Frankly I'm a bit tired of only "red shirts" dying when the lead characters never get a hangnail. But if my MC has to survive while scores die, how can I make it sound reasonable?

All Quiet on the Western Front outlines a reasonable model of this. In a nutshell, German army training at the time was completely irrelevant to the realities of trench warfare, so soldiers started out with no knowledge of how to keep themselves alive. By sheer chance, a few of them lasted long enough to figure out survival strategies, and they formed a core of experienced fighters, constantly supplemented with short-lived new recruits. (For instance, soldiers were trained to use their bayonets in melee, but survivors learned that bayonets were practically useless, and defended themselves with sharpened shovel-blades.)
 
Very similar to the "sifting" aspect of my story.

The "mentor" wants solid followers, with borderline instinctual reactions for a Ragnarøkkr upheaval. His process is to organize a column of savvy, ruthless survivors. In effect, all of the 'red shirts' die, all of the 'Klingons' live, and that's his end game.

My lead is just one of the clueless fodder.
 

Holoman

Troubadour
I can relate to what you say about not wanting the MC to survive impossible odds in an unbelievable way, but at the same time he has to come up against tough challenges or the story isn't as interesting.

My solution to this has been to make the MC part of a core group of 'heroes', hopefully making the story more believable that a group of people can achieve far more than a single character and come up against great foes with more believable chances of success, even if it seems impossible. It also allows me to kill off other parts of this core group while still keeping the MC alive.
 
Hi,

The survival is easy enough to explain - don't make him a hero. In battle hero's run forwards and get mown down first. Make him a tad more self interested, so that he knows enough to stay in the middle of the pack. It's a simple, inglorious strategy, but it'll work unless the entire pack is wiped out. And yes, let him get wounded as well. It adds to the realism.

As for his knowledge, why should that be a problem. His favourite uncle (?) was an expert in all these things and taught him everything he needed to know.

Cheers, Greg.
 
The survival is easy enough to explain - don't make him a hero..

Funny you should mention that, because that's what I did.

First, he knew it was coming and he didn't have to be there, he almost left. When confronted by another plebe, they discuss which is worse, staying and taking life, or not being there to let his comrades be one short, possibly causing their deaths. There's a "goal" they must achieve, and he's not the one who ultimately succeeds, but he tosses a plebe forward because that boy's strength is ebbing. Later, he is castigated for it.

LOL. He does have an uncle! His father feels he's an unhealthy influence on his son!
 
All Quiet on the Western Front outlines a reasonable model of this. In a nutshell, German army training at the time was completely irrelevant to the realities of trench warfare, so soldiers started out with no knowledge of how to keep themselves alive. By sheer chance, a few of them lasted long enough to figure out survival strategies, and they formed a core of experienced fighters, constantly supplemented with short-lived new recruits. (For instance, soldiers were trained to use their bayonets in melee, but survivors learned that bayonets were practically useless, and defended themselves with sharpened shovel-blades.)

This is also true with American soldiers in Vietnam. The "veteran" soldier is usually mostly lucky with some small scrap of ability, but just luckily surviving ends up granting large amounts of experience and greatly expands the chance of surviving in the future. If you're in any sort of modern war though, you just have to be aware that luck is a major component within a battle over who dies and lives even if everything is done right. The problem is that when everything is not done right, you usually die much faster.

You might be able to drive this home in a variety of ways. You can have supervisors/captains commenting on the senselessness of who survived, you can have the MC be slightly shell-shocked--questioning why others died and not him and realizing that there is no reason that he lived (and the reader hopefully realizes that you could have started writing about one of the people that died but the book would have ended pretty quickly, so it is a survivor story)--and you can even have that the only reason he lived was because of the direct action of another. Maybe a grenade landed in front of the person in front of him: the person in front died, but his body caused the MC to only be severely damaged/knocked unconscious.
 

Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Even fantasies must have mores, logical cause-and-effect principles, laws of gravity, governments, etc. There's the rub. I refer to their money as ducats because I couldn't think of anything else. Much of the time I feel as if I'm breaking every rule in the book to write a book.

Rule number one about writing, there are no rules. There are lots of useful guidelines, but there's nothing you can't do if you do it well. I think you have it right in that common sense and logic still have to be in effect. That isn't to say there isn't room for the "because it's cool" sort of element in the story, but that element can't be a cheat. If pigs can fly in your world then great, but don't all of a sudden have on that can't fly because it's too fat.


Frankly I'm a bit tired of only "red shirts" dying when the lead characters never get a hangnail. But if my MC has to survive while scores die, how can I make it sound reasonable? Let's face it, if he dies we have no story. I settled on banging him up so bad he had to spend a few weeks in a hospital.

There are other ways to hurt a character other than physically. Emotional wounds can be felt more deeply than physical ones to a reader and can be worse. Imagine eating dinner with his buddies on the battlefield, laughing, and then, after he takes a moment to go take a piss, coming back to find all of this buddies dead? To me that's worse than getting shot or stabbed.

Another issue, my lead is to appear in his early twenties. However, my personal knowledge of the edged tools and engines he uses was compiled over several decades. How can I make him look accomplished without falling into the cookie-cutter know-it-all depiction?

Simply show him applying his knowledge. For example, if they're an expert mechanic, then just have them fix a car, and have their internal monologue and dialogue display their knowledge a matter-of-factly without being a braggart or a know-it-all. For me, they key to something like this don't try to make someone look competent by having someone else be incompetent.

Most of my life I've felt a tad clueless, out of the social loop, never at the seat of power but I'm not sure I know how to convey that without sounding like my guy is the 'every man.' Let's face it, I was socialized in a motorcycle club. A little problem with the write what you know concept, further stilted by that background amid the Vietnam War era. I'm fortunate to use multisyllable words periodically!

My interpretation of the "write what you know" school of thought is don't take it literally. To me it means draw from your own experiences and try to apply them to your story, whether it's a epic fantasy or a contemporary story.

You may not know what it's like to ride on the back of a dragon, but maybe it's like riding a motorcycle down the highway at a 150 clicks. Apply that real world experience to the fictional world.

And finally, maybe stop worrying about the rules and what you shouldn't do or even about originality and just start writing. You'd be surprised at how many of the problems you think you had disappear after you start writing.

From personal experience, the more you try to be 100% original and avoid a well trodden path, the more likely it is you never write word one. Nothing is original. Everything is like something else. The originality comes in the presentation and angle you take on a concept. How many times has Romeo and Juliet been told and retold?
 
One of the issues that I think all of you have touched on is to open the thing up a bit. I was discussing this thing the other day and referred to this story as my baby. If it ever gets to the point where I'm productive and doing a book per year, I suppose I'll approach it like sharpening. ("Oh, yeah, his Buck 110 needs a touch up, I'll do it before lunch...")

I am good at writing fluid speech between characters. Heck, most of those lines were already said by friends and brothers, I can almost hear them as I type. Speech by female characters comes with difficulty.

But lots of necessary background and description, since no one has been to Purgatory, comes very slow, and sounds clunky when I re-read it the next day. Hardware is my strong suit. However, some readers get bored with talk of "numbers."

Then we sew it all together, and it reads like a trainwreck. Many times I get an idea and regurgitate it on the page--misspellings, syntax errors, etc. Then I'll shut off the computer and fix it the next day. Sometimes that helps.
 
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