Recent content by AnnaBlixt

I deal with this problem in my current WIP. My order of wizards live in a castle, like an academy. Part of their task is to preserve the magic throughout the ages, depite being few in number due to the high risks of magical pregnancies and the high death rate of, well, 2-year olds who discover...

Some writers just can't rest until they have explored every single village of the entire map. This bugs me. I prefer stories that are centered around a few locations, or follow a fairly straight line of travel. GRRM is pushing it a bit at times. I feel that some of his locations don't contribute...

Short chapters kindof bug me. They tend to make the book feel fragmented. Some events need more space than 3-4 pages. Some need 20-30. I find it exhausting to read short chapters. If I read a long chapter of 20 pages, I will finish it even if I get a bit tired after 10. But if the 20 page...

You can always "start in the middle". I sometimes have trouble starting, but you know - if you just start writing some scenes, you'll probably figure out later how the characters got there. It might help you getting started and producing some text.

Sounds a tad cliché, but it depends on how you use your human/elves/dwarf-setup and what the story is. There are still original stories told about these peoples, but you can go cliché very easily with those ingredients.

I feel that it worked very well in the first part and in the actual hunger games, but that it was less successful in the parts where Katniss is not in danger. Also, the perspective became very limiting in the second part (partly) and in the third part (all the time).

I have read some successful novels in present tense, and some less so. The present tense does suggest urgency "I am reaching for the knife" as in it is happening NOW and you need to FOCUS on this immediate thing that is happening NOW. In my meaning, it is suitable for certain kinds of tales...

You need some kind of supplies, or your guys are going to die. The city can't be totally empty... If you have food for chickens, you'll have eggs. If you have hay for goats, you'll have milk and cheese. Pigs will eat just about anything. If you have some kind of wilderness surrounding the...

True, but Mockingjay does not contain a Hunger Games. I did not mind the pacing of the deaths in the actual Hunger Games - but Mockingjay is about the war for the capitol and no Games is held. I don't want to write spoilers since I bet that many people have not read this novel, but several...

You can't quantify this. I mean, if you take the number of people who die in Lord of the Rings and divide it by the number of chapters, I'm sure that Tolkien kills thousands of people per chapter. But most of the dead are nameless NPCs that we don't give a darn about. Like, I don't care when...

You could make the spells have 2 components. The first component determines the element (fire, water, etc) by a certain mental focus, and the other component could be the form of the spell. For instance Element= Fire + Shape = Round => fireball Element = water + shape = falling => rain

I would not want to set a foot in that place at the time of my stories... hehe... I would soooo end up dead, poisoned, robbed and/or kidnapped.

Yeah... unless you're writing a roleplaying game or a roleplay-based adventure novel, I don't see how it is relevant to quantify the affinity for magic this way. And I really can't figure out how you can make ice one of the basis, and not have steam on the other side. I do think that this...

If you put the compass in the order Water - Earth - Wind - Fire (as in the old game Darkside of Xeen) you would end up with other in between-elements. To me, this is more balanced, since I don't see water and fire as opposites any more than Wind and Earth. Water [mud] Earth [dust] Wind...

What strikes me about your description, is that this world might come off as "constructed" rather than a natural phenomenon. In fantasy, this might be fine - but if so, be aware of it. Is there a god (or demon or something) in this world who created the land this way? If not, you might want to...