Recent content by Spacebar

Real espionage is probably like real computer hacking: far less esoteric than it is often portrayed. A lot of hacking is not so much about knowing 14 computer languages and being able to use two keyboards at once, as it is about calling a place, posing as John Smith who works there, and asking...

For how there is water, just have it rain a lot. It's not as if water that flows off the edge has to disappear, since it's on a gas giant and not just flowing into space. A water cycle is reasonable to expect. Your inhabitants will certainly have dammed and controlled the flow of water, as...

You could realistically emphasize how hot a ball of fire actually is. For example, in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the actor Rick Dalton uses a flame thrower for a role and complains about how hot it is to the prop guy, who responds, "It's a flamethrower." Fire is hot. A ball of fire close...

I thought the drums would be an extension of their perfect timing, meaning that they also have perfect rhythm. Maybe they're also tone-deaf, so their only music would be percussion.

Where does magic come from (favor of the gods, in the air like oxygen, generated by living things, accessed from another dimension)? How does magic behave (like electricity, blows like wind, flows like water or blood)? How do people control magic (intelligence and study, instinct, emotion...

Maybe it takes a long time to do the initial transformation, but the effects are permanent, so they can create items that are otherwise impossible to craft. Moreover, an item that the transmuter has transformed themselves can then quickly change between forms that it has been made into. So in...

Depends on what you do with it. It'd be interesting to see as a replacement for traditional magic in a fantasy setting.

The way you describe it, your earth and water mages are only manipulating their elements, not conjuring them. If your water mage can't summon water in their hand, then there's no inconsistency when your fire mage can't conjure fire in their palm. You might not like your fire mages being...

Assuming that by "forced" you mean something akin to being coerced with a hostage, it would help if you had an idea of how you want your MC to be able to fight back. How can the ritual be made to fail in a sneaky way? If he adds the "tongue of a liar", can he cause it to turn against its...

Normally, it's impossible to overuse your brain to the point that you damage it. However, you can lose touch with reality by focusing on the wrong things. What if as your mentalists delve deeper into their mental worlds, they get further from reality? So instead of breaking their brain, they...

Your elemental magic centers around an external focus, so maybe you could use that as a unifying principle. For example, maybe you could do Beast magic, where a specially prepared part of a magical beast (the heart is popular) is used to invoke its power and assume some of its strengths and...

If you're going to be referencing real cases, then I'm going to assume that your story is going to be set in the real world. If you want to make this feel truly credible, I'd suggest trying to keep one of your MC's feet in the non-magical world, doing normal law practice. For counterexample, as...

I like to do contrasting characters. For example, if I have a male character, now I'll make a female character. If one is brave, the other will be cowardly. If one is noble, the other will be degenerate. If one is old, the other will be young. Now have these contrasting characters interact...

Not all deformities are genetic. Some are developmental. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, for example, is caused by a pregnant woman consuming alcohol during gestation, and results in both physical deformities and mental impairment. A perfect example for your case would be Autism, where one identical...

That would fit your theme nicely. Maybe he fails to allow his son to make a lesser sacrifice earlier on, failing to trust his son to assess the costs and benefits of his choices, which is how he ends up costing them both much more later.