Recent content by Ermol

The Academy is content to keep the royal court in check by controlling certain people in it, but not so overtly that an actual rebellion might occur. Centuries ago the group that founded the Academy was in a bit of a bind, and so they helped create a kingdom as a means to protect themselves...

I initially tried to incorporate all of aristotlean (is that right?) elements like Earth and Fire, but that only worked so far. In my head, the system has to be incredibly rigorous, magic being a very vital component of the society. I have a loose scientific background, therefore I tried to...

So I struggled to make up a magic system, and this is what I got so far. Talents are born across my human & elf kingdom. Each one of them has an affinity for one or more of the three recognised magic schools: Life, light and nature. I tried to impose certain quasi-scientific rules on this...

Yeah, I agree. To be fair, my observations were more based how I felt about the characters in the books that I've read.

In addition to the usual procrastination issues and echoing, the biggie is to start a paragraph on the character thinking about his dead father and end up spending hours thinking about and writing out the backstory, setting, all in horrendous and extreme exposition style, usually on page 1 of...

Well I agree that the "grey" is now a trope, or perhaps not so much as a trope but a more common theme. The morally ambiguous or "grey" characters are pervasive these days because they may be potentially more interesting and more "realistic". It's much the same movement that gave us "grim &...

So all I'm doing right now is some brainstorming and plotting. I have a few characters with 4 primary interwoven storylines, and I'm having some issues with 2 of them. All of them, really, but two of them in particular. One of them details an unplanned journey of one of my MC's into the...

Mate, love, pet, used interchangeably depending on where you are geographically. After learning English from textbooks and Hollywood films, I was really confused when I moved to England 10 years ago, Greater Manchester to be specific (NOT pacific!!!!). This thread would have been very useful...

Well, the distinction between Menzoberranzan and you may largely depend on the numbers. Now as I recall there the numbers reached 50's or beyond, so a smaller number gives you a very different story. If there are just 8, then knocking one of the ladder isn't going to replace it with a newcomer...

My original idea was to write a fairly substantial chaptrr 1 with one particular character, planting some seeds, introducing the city through his eyes. I was to flesh him out, as well as the noble family he serves (the MC's), and then kill him off in a plot-related burglary at the end of chapter...

How many houses are you envisaging?

You need to address the most important question of them all - do female dwarves have beards? Are there other species in the world and do they view the all the subspecies of dwarves as one or separate, have they even encountered them? Also, are the different dwarves on different levels of...

I read somewhere that George Martin ends each char's chapter on a sort of a cliffhanger, TV style (i.e. keep ppl tuning in next week). That's one way?

Typing in "Can fish smell?" in Google.

Cool stuff. First off, I did mean different species, that was my bad, and the distinction is something definitely to note for future. The Veks are incredibly fanatical in their religious belief and for centuries they have been protecting a McGuffin (let's call it that, although mine actually...