Zkribbler
Deity
Easy. The true nature of the universe is pizza.
No, pizza is the ultimate food not the Ultimate Truth.
BTW: If you ever come to the Philippines, do NOT order a pepperoni pizza. The pepperoni here is vile.
Easy. The true nature of the universe is pizza.
Decreasing the number of chapters from 24 to sixteen really got things moving. New characters are popping into existence; one current character must be renamed to bring her in line with the plot; hot chocolate is now the ubiquitous beverage or my economy won't collapse when I want it to. I have a new city [talked about only]. If I'd have gone the novella route, Mad King Prometheus would have been axed; now he's back. This is like a barrel of monkeys being tipped over with chaos reigning.
I have never read any fantasy stories where orcs were pacifists, other than the Dragonlance short story in which Raistlin has an intimate encounter with a beautiful woman and it turns out that a very long time before the orc race was cursed by the gods, they were incredibly beautiful and peace-loving.I'm now toying with a world creation re orcs. Currently I puzzling why orcs have fighting tusks and protuberant teeth. All the animals I can think of with tusks (boars, elephants) and horns (rams, water buffalo) are herbivores. I can't think of a single predator with tusks or horns. Orcs certainly are pacifists nibbling on cucumber salads, so why the tusks?
I have never read any fantasy stories where orcs were pacifists,
If it's a premise for a story, maybe the story is telling you that you have the wrong premise. Sometimes characters just "walk in and take over" (as MZB used to say in her essays about writing; as a result of listening to what her subconscious was telling her, she created some characters who would have been much less interesting and popular if she'd left them alone). Or some situations keep wanting to go a different way than how you intended them to go.I've rewritten a premise at least seven times by now. Starting to believe I should just skip ahead and ignore it for now. But it's very important. C'est la vie.
I've rewritten a premise at least seven times by now. Starting to believe I should just skip ahead and ignore it for now. But it's very important. C'est la vie.
A premise can be as short as a couple of sentences, so it doesn't need to be that formal.I've never done anything as formal as writing out a premise ahead of time. OTOH, there's no denying you should no where you're going before you start. So, whereas my premise is never finely focused, I have a good idea of the direction I'm going.
I wouldn't mind taking a look at it, if you'd like a fresh opinion. Sometimes a writer gets too close to something and doesn't notice where it might need a little rearranging, or maybe that it really is fine as it is.It's a premise slash prologue. It defines the origin of the protagonist. The way I have it right now is that there was a hero who grew to be idolized, and the story "starts off" with the hero finally bringing peace to the realm. There's a parade, weeks of celebration, etc, but the real story begins when the hero is found dead and the protagonist is shipped off to a prison city due to guilt by proximity.
It just doesn't feel right, though. I have a great deal of the worldbuilding done but the premise and cast is shoddy at best. I could skip ahead but there would naturally be several moments where the protagonist is questioned on where they come from and for that I'd need the premise or I'd need to make liberal use of comment flags for revision.
It's the Star Wars dilemma... A New Hope is actually the middle of the story, and eventually Lucas went back to tell the beginning... and it wasn't as good.When I began my Count of Monte Banco parody, I envisioned it as an epic. I even looked up the attributes of an epic and incorporated them into my story, e.g. I began with an invocation to a muse (epic invocation) and, horrors of horrors, even showed divine intervention in human affairs.
What I could not do at the time was to begin in medias res [in the middle of things] because my grip on the story just wasn't strong enough. I therefore began at the beginning. Tonight though, I took a whack at reorganizing the story. Former Chapters 7 & 8 are now Chapters 1 & 2. This gives my story a much more exciting and unique beginning. I now have to figure our how and when to flashback to the original beginning.
Good point. It helps make those places more real and gives the reader the impression that the immediate setting is part of a vaster whole. My current Kingmaker: Rise to the Throne project is based on a game that takes place in the kingdom of Griffinvale, and there's a mention that 30 years before the game starts, the young Prince (sole heir to the throne) was sent to lead a crusade against... some enemy that isn't named, and we're never told where, exactly, the crusade happened. The game is loosely set in 11th century England (though the surname of the main characters is German).Another characteristic I am missing is "the setting is vast, covering many nations, the world or the universe." I do mention distant lands and show how they are affecting my central nation, but none of my characters actually go there. I think the story would be stronger if some did.
There are some websites that have really good name generators - everything from modern real-world people to names of taverns, cities, and there's no reason why you couldn't flange up or even find a generator for continents. I'm going to have to look them up myself soon.An annoying gnat: I've never been able to come up with a name for any of my three continents that doesn't make me want to barf.