Young Writers Society

Right then.

I see that this is an event to create ideas, and that I'm to put down a rough idea of a story plot. So, in order of how much I like the idea, here's three.

I Am A Steelwarden (working title)- Prologue has been posted here. Fantastical and most likely very cliched. But hey, I have fun describing very strange stuff. Comprises of magic, elves, a big bad warlock, and adventurers. Essentially a one-player D&D thing.

(Unnamed- accepting suggestions)- A man finds himself reliving corrupted and warped past experiences. This is a dramatic one, so most likely won't be finished.

(Also unnamed)- A prisoner wakes up in his cell to find that everything about the prison has changed... Horror thing, I guess.

And now, to the first challenge!

Graph!

Challenge One

Challenge Two

Challenge Three

Challenge ... etc

Profiles!

Name: Luthus Wrey

Age: 35

Sex: Male

Eye Color: Green

Hair Color: Black

Skin Color: Light Tan

Height: 1.75 metres

Weight: 83 kg

Memorable Features: Tattoo of snake on leg

Race: Rethiiric (Human)

Ethnicity: Descended from the Deep Blood (also known as Deepblood)

Faults: Incredibly cynical, and very bad in a team

Talents: Able to walk silently, and very sly with his wording.

Family: Parents - father was an Amberguard Sargent, mother was a runic professor-and sister, who chucked him into the Lysturgum Academy, essentially abandoning him in the process.

Childhood: Normal, if slightly abusive, until the age of fourteen, when he was beaten into shape by the Academy, to teach him how to become a serpent sword.

Source of Income: A sleeper in Eoira, posing as a blacksmith, which he does reasonably well.

Hobbies: Exploring, forging, alchemy, invention

Patience Breaking Point: Very easily broken (e.g incorrect answer, a flawed action)

Status in Society: Respected blacksmith, especially by the Amberguard.

Biography: Currently trains two apprentices, and goes to the pub every other night. Placed as a sleeper agent by the Lysturgum Academy in Eoira, where he bought a corner shop and renovated the rooms to fit his needs. Gets a few customers, and does contracts for the Amberguard, such as armour and repairs. Has a close group of friends, but does not tell them his background, saying it's more fun to 'let you guess'. Apart from the pub, he is rather reclusive and is not in a relationship.

Another two profiles!

Name: Elquina Deyn Falendr

Age: 33

Sex: Female

Eye Color: No iris, but the white part is tinted sea blue

Hair Color: Black

Skin Color: Very lightly tinted with sea blue

Height: 1.63 metres

Weight: 77 kg

Memorable Features: Born with a deformed arm

Race: Arisian (Elven)

Ethnicity: Proudly Arisian, dating back a thousand years.

Faults: Sluggish movement with left hand, incredibly gossip-y

Talents: Crack shot with a bow, fluent in every language

Family: Single father, a mayor of a city, who died when rebels in the city attacked the mayor's home. Also had an older sister, who protected her until she died of infection.

Childhood: Very luxurious, she got whatever she wanted, but she was about 15 in human years when the rebels attacked.

Source of Income: None.

Hobbies: Archery, animals, woodwork

Patience Breaking Point: Jeers over her family really set her off, but usually you can't even get close, if a person is trying. Situations are completely different, she'll panic if she has the chance.

Status in Society: None, just a beggar on the road.

Biography: After the rebels attacked Thinyas, she fled with her sister to the village of Tomarros, where her sister died of an infected wound. Elquina then went on the road, trying to escape the country. She has nothing apart from a wooden spear-very ornate and sharp- and her clothes. Is one of those wanderers that have no purpose. Also, her and her family were Irrelthanis, people who disowned all forms of magic.



Name: Darna Rulda

Age: 41

Sex: Male

Eye Color: Blue

Hair Color: Blonde

Skin Color: Pale

Height: 1.88 metres

Weight: 79 kg

Memorable Features: Large blond beard, and gold loop ear piercings.

Race: Arca (Human)

Ethnicity: Originally from Garrentorn, his family moved to Arcadia after the Retaking of the Marsh started.

Faults: Arrogant, often inaccurate with jokes and answers.

Talents: Exceptional at runic magic, good at making journals

Family: Two parents, only child. Both parents are still alive and keep in regular contact with Darna. Currently in a relationship, but it's not going well.

Childhood: Nice, but rather sporadic with the family's final living area. First Garrentorn, then a city, then a village, and finally the capital, City of Gold.

Source of Income: Teaches runic magic, both Rune Script and Body Script.

Hobbies: Devising new runes, enchanting, writing.

Patience Breaking Point: Abosolute stupidity that does nothing to progress the situation, beig told what to do.

Status in Society: Respected teacher, mage and writer

Biography: The family moved to Arcadia after the Retaking of the Marsh, a brutal conflict that divided Garrentorn. After a couple of fruitless residencies, they moved to the capital, where Darna became interested in magic. After going to the library every day, Darna worked hard on both novels and magic, and he graduated from the Gold Dome University quite early, at the age of 20. He then began researching and teaching magic, and was quickly given the rank of High Tutor at the university, where he continues to ponder magic, and how to write a good novel.

Right then, as I have now progressed to the Third Challenge, I must now peruse the random generators and give a conclusion.

ChaoticShiny is my favourite sites for generators, simply because of the amount of detail. Lemme take the civilisation tab. Most places would give you a name, and maybe a couple of things about it. But no, this goes to the moon and back:

Time Period: Ancient
Shaping Force: Technology
Population: Mainly nonhuman races

Politics
Political Structure: oligarchy - theocracy
Strong Influence: guilds/syndicates
Popular Issue: ethics
Stability: stable

Personal Freedoms: almost nonexistant
Scandals: common
Foreign Relations: failing rapidly

Economy
Main Export: textiles
Main Import: food animals
Main Resource: food - fish/meat
Trade: imports and exports equal

Strength: somewhat weak and declining
Wealth: spread throughout upper and middle classes

Ecology
Main Climate: tropical
Ocean: none
Mountains: a few
Frequent Trouble: vermin

Wilderness: 61%
Wild Animals: very common
Natural Resources: scarce

Culture
Highly Values: physical strength
Known For: sculpture
Popular Entertainment: celebrity antics
Respected Profession: historian

Discrimination: vs foreigners
Major Taboo: physical contact
Major Social Ill: gambling

Military
Strength: strong
Focus: land
Main Unit: berserkers

Soldiers: hired mercenaries
Main Use: exploration
Rank: via family ties

Magic
Occurence: widespread
Source: granted by spirits
Major Use: war

Viewed: as ordinary
Enchanted Items: very common

Religion
Type: polytheism
Focus: harmony with nature
Worship: joyous public sacrifices by all

Associated Artform: sculpture
Prevalence: believed by a few
Holidays: often

Population
Urban: 5%
Rural: 95%
Literacy Rate: 16%

Gender Ratio: 0.74 male(s)/female
Fertility Rate: 3.7 children/family
Life Expectancy: 47.3 years

Yeah. Pretty ridiculous. Then there's ones for cities, factions, places, people, opinions, laws...

There are also others though, so I'll have a look through those.

Now, I can see the generators from Mistress Chibi, especially the first few words generator, would be really helpful. Shame it's deprecated now, because it looks like a good site, but it was last updated in 2011, which means the Internet has now put a tag on its toe and given it to the morgue.

But yes, here's some things the generators got me.

It disturbed me, ...
The angels were...
I was told...
It smelled dead... (probably going to use this one)

And so on. Imma rattle few a selection of these:

RanGen, Fantasy Race Gen-
The appearance of this race is based on Heaven.
They are a Primitive race.
Their social structure is influenced by Class.
The culture is inspired by the Skater subculture.
They are generally Materialistic, Responsible and Feel Inferior to other races.
They are generally very Attractive.

Tiamat is an RPG tiled dungeon builder, something I feel I'll be doing a lot of. Linked to this is something called OpenRPG and by extension, Traipse. Imma get this. Like right now.

I'm going to bypass the world builders, except for a couple.

I don't like the donjon world generator. It's just making a low-res blob of colours that doesn't really help. You just change some variables, and...


Which does look ok until you realise that's it.

And then there's pyromancers map generator, which I do like the look of. It's certainly very detailed, and I might take a further look at it.

But yes. This post has gone on long enough and I'm going to wrap it up now. Certainly, it's given me ideas, but maybe my head is better at constructing worlds than a set of variables and an algorithm.

There and Back Again Challenge

Seriously shoulda thought of that one...

That's what this challenge, at least in my mind, shall be called. I am to place down two markers, like finding directions on Google maps, and say what's at the beginning and at the end. Righty ho.

The Beginning

This is for the thing I've posted the prologue to (which over time, like usual, I dislike more and more) so I'll begin from the first chapter (which I always dislike instantly).

So, the various main characters are introduced. There is:

• Luthus Wrey
• Elquina Deyn Falendr
• Darna Rulda
• Ahlas Mzu'hadr
• Robert and Dania Harrell

Luthus will start off in a blacksmith, annoyed with a couple of inept apprentices. Elquina will start off in her garden before the manor is burnt to the ground by rebels. Darna will be lecturing a class on the basis on runes before being pulled out for a talk by the Mage Pinnacle. Ahlas will be on the lip of a dungeon, mentally preparing himself before going in. And, finally, the Harrell twins will be in a market before being mugged, rather unsuccessfully I might add.

The End

Without giving enough context to spoil the plot, there's a big bad warlock guy who must be defeated before... [insert uncliched bad scenario here]. Then everyone goes back to normal, the Steelwardens are disbanded, and there's high-fives all round.


The entire plot does revolve around a recruitment of a deadly group of warriors to hunt down aforementioned big bad warlock guy.


Challenge ... Four!

Hello.

Challenge One

You have issues. Namely, the fact your tension does a 7 point drop after the prologue and doesn't come close to matching the level of your prologue until near the very end of the story, and you never maximize tension.

Stories live on tension. Your climax should basically maximize tension, meaning you should be somewhere around 19. If you keep tension low, like you have right now, it means you're probably not exploiting pain, loss, and real, honest risk. Maximizing these mean your story actually makes people feel things. Don't shy away from moments things can go absolutely terrible. Commit to them, then get the characters out of it (or not. Have them slide off another cliff to make it even worse). Let people get maimed. Let people get killed. Let people get traumatized.

You also take five chapters to introduce everyone and ten chapters to gather everyone together. To put it bluntly: why? Why are you taking so long to get everyone together? A third of the book is dedicated to establishing character with no major event to keep us going. To give you an idea what's possible in terms of introducing characters, 14 characters in two scenes (totalling about 7,000 words) is more than possible. During all these introductions, a massive war and picking a husband for an arranged marriage plot is introduced, along with the fight that reveals the war.

Even if the chapters are short, that's way too long. You're not mentioning anything else in the story, plot-wise, except that. Beginnings need a certain level of interest to them, and if you don't grab the reader in the actual story's plot within a few pages, then you've lost readers because there's nothing interesting going on. This goes for both the prologue and chapter one. Chapter 1 actually has to be just as interesting and a comparable tension level to the prologue, simply because the prologue is an introduction to a grander plot and chapter 1 is an introduction to the book's plot.

Relying on the prologue to keep tension is a mistake. People want stuff to be happening basically all the time, and they want hints something's wrong and different. Even stories that get away with slow starts usually have the tension quite a bit higher than "normal". It's not normal, but it's got enough weirdness going on that you wonder what in the world is going on. I'd call that about a four or five, right at the tipping point between "normal" and "tense".

If it wasn't extremely obvious, your tension is far too low and far too slow to build up. Compress all the boring stuff like character introductions and mix them in with trial by fire. Introducing a character in their normal setting is all well and good, but you find out so much more about them when they're in an unnatural setting. The best introductions have "normal" last all of five paragraphs before something blows up, literally or figuratively.

Have something interesting going on, something to keep tension up, and just make it the story has a reason to drag you along. Character introductions and getting groups together are plain old boring if there's nothing else to do.

Also, 30 chapters and only 7 plot points? That's way too low, and if you want to have any sort of story that can last 30 chapters, you need to have way more plot points than that. My 100k, 10 chapter fantasy story had in the realm of 20, and the number's just going up in the rewrite because there wasn't enough going on.

Challenge Two

You have more issues. Let's take these in list form.

Luthus Wrey
- The memorable feature is a physical item that isn't always going to be exposed unless he always wears shorts. People interacting with him won't remember that tattoo unless they take a good look at his legs, and even then if they're interacting with him, they'd likely come away with something about his personality instead of his skin. What about his personality is memorable?
- "Rethiiric" and "Deepblood" tell us nothing at all about this guy or his heritage. They seem like super special fancy names for things that have no rhyme or reason for existing except that fantasy worlds have fancy names for things because otherwise it's not fantasy (hint: it's still fantasy even if humans are called humans)
- The talents and faults are not exactly what I'd call the strongest out there. Somebody bad in a team can be an amazing scout or spy because they work better alone, and they can go against the group think that tends to happen. Somebody sly with wording can be seen as incredibly mistrust worthy because they have the potential to manipulate in a very destructive way. "Good" traits have bad sides and "bad" traits have good sides. It's best to just see the person as a person and know their full potential instead of saying "this helps my character" and "this hurts my character". That will never hold true over time.
- The family section is highly confusing. How old is his sister, for her to be able to put him in the Academy? What is Amberguard and why is it important we find that out instead of the fact he was just in the guard.
- Any and all abuse needs expanding upon because abuse plays a massive impact in how a kid grows up. Not to mention, you're writing a fantasy world. Describing anything in terms of "normal" isn't relevant, because we have no idea what "normal" is. For me "normal childhood" is doing crafts all day and going to the mall to ride the glass elevator. That is unlikely his idea of a normal childhood. What is normal?
- Is his main source of income being a sleeper agent, or a blacksmith?
- How does his patience break? What's his reaction to those breaking points? Does he have different reactions to different types of breaking points?
-What does "respected" mean? Is he a low class person who just so happens to be the one everybody goes to so he makes a decent amount of money, or is his skill good enough that he's actually moved up in society to middle class? Is upper class possible, in the sense his clients are royals and he's the guy all nobility goes to?
- Your definition of "reclusive" isn't exactly what I'd call reclusive, considering going out every other night is more than some social butterflies go to. You can get quite a good group of friends, multiple groups, even, by going out as regularly as he does.

Elquina Deyn Falendr
- Again with the physical features as memorable. First off, "deformed" isn't exactly what you'd call exact, and it can mean every type of deformity under the sun from atrophied to bent to tied in a pretzel. You don't tell us. Second off, unless people are really paying attention to the arm and disabilities are very heavily discriminated against in this world, to the point you'd not pay any attention to the personality because you can't stop noticing/thinking about the arm, the memorable feature is likely going to be something else.
- Again with the faults/traits being one sided. Sluggish hand movement can mean adapting strategies, gossip means she's connected to every story and knows exactly what's going on (not to mention... isn't it a little sexist to have the woman's fault be gossip?), being a good shot with a boy is useless in close combat fights because other things are faster.
- If she's fluent in every language, I pity the linguistic diversity of your world. Europe alone has 200 languages, and it's the least linguistically diverse continent. Asia, Africa, and the Americas each have thousands of languages, and they used to have more. The world record for most number of languages fluent in is around 60, with knowledge of around 110, and even with an Elvish brain, there is only so much language storage you can allocate before other functions start being far lesser. If the linguistic diversity for the whole continent is anywhere close to realistic, it’d be physically impossible for somebody to be fluent in that many languages.
- How did she get along with her family?
- The fact you say "in human years" tells me elves have a different aging scale, yet you do not provide any relative basis for what her age would be in elven years.
- If she's a beggar, her source of income is begging or theft. Not "none".
- What do you mean by "person can't even get close?" Her patience breaking point really doesn't have any solid reactions for how her patience breaks, or any situations that she panics in. Specifics are important, because even highly anxious people can have situations where they're not anxious at all (for example, somebody can be terrified of school but not have an ounce of stage fright)
- The biography doesn't tell me anything about her personality, how she feels about the loss of her family, the rebellion, traveling through magical areas of the country. Nor does it tell me how she reacts to others, how her luxurious upbringing collides with her suddenly having nothing and fighting to survive, basically. Those two worlds are polar opposites and there is nothing about how she's reacted to the sudden loss of class.
- Nothing really seems to fit because somebody who panics at every opportunity isn't really going to have the mental energy to be resourceful, while she seems to be doing just fine on the streets despite that requiring her to be resourceful. If she's a good shot with a bow why does she have a spear, instead? Fluent in every language yet she only had a few years to study them properly before her education was limited to those around her and what resources she could find for free, when building any large amount of language fluency requires practice and time. It's a general list of contradictions that make the character impossible to peg down.

Darna Rulda
- What have I said repeatedly about memorable features being physical things instead of personality?
- So he's human. And his race is named something different from the other human, whom he seems to have no biological difference from him. So why are they named different things? To denote heritage? Magic use? One being born from an Ancient Capitalized Bloodline Of Plot Importance and one not? If yes, then don't call them human. Describe what they are and what makes them different. If they're biologically identical (skin colour doesn't count— you have more genetic variation between two black guys or two white guys from the same village than between a black guy and a white guy from opposite ends of the world) then cut the multiple names for humans unless you come up with a very good in world reason for people who look and behave basically the same to be different races.
- Arrogance as a fault gets its own point, because arrogance as a general trait is neutral or even positive. Arrogance allows a person to go after what they think they deserve, and what can be called arrogance by some is often a healthy and objective self esteem based on the person knowing what they can do (and what their faults are). Excess arrogance is the problem, because it causes a person to be oblivious to their faults and refuse any critique. Even then, somebody who goes off and does things helps people learn what to do and what not to do, and over stretching can get you to learn a lot. "Excess" is also relative, because what appears to be unbearable arrogance to some can be confidence and drive to others.
- What does "making journals" entail?
- [insert general ramble on traits having multiple sides and don't make each trait "good" or "bad" because all traits should help or hinder and all traits are neutral it just depends on situation whether or not they help or hinder]
- Relationship with a girl? A guy? A non binary person? Also, the guy's 41 with what apparently appears to be a traditional life. If this is anywhere close to medieval time period, people usually get married in the realm of age 16 to 20, maybe 23 if they were really late. Most people would be widowed by 41 and working on their second relationship, if they had a second relationship at all (they'd also have kids by this point, unless the woman died in childbirth for the first child, the person had 0 affairs, and 0 other relationships... which is statistically possible, but rare). You could also build this off a time when monogamy wasn't exactly common, but that'd likely mean he has kids somewhere unless he's abstained for his whole life. The social acceptance of that depends on how much people are expected to have kids/relationships in society.
- How did moving around affect him? What's "nice"? You're using vague words to describe experiences that shape people deeply and expecting that to describe your character in a satisfactory way. It's not satisfactory.
- Again, "respected" doesn't tell me much. Professors don't actually make a lot of money on earth (they could in your world, who knows), and it doesn't say where professors are in terms of social class in comparison to other people. Is professor higher class than blacksmith? Or less? It could legitimately be less because a culture's priorities can result in way different things being considered valuable in a fantasy setting. You can't just rely on Earth standards.

Challenge Three

The whole "construct" button is important to click in the donjon generator. That's when you get an actual large map with tiles, mountains, deserts, forests, cities, citadels, and water all pre-made. That globe you showed an image of is not "it", and once you click the "construct" button you end up with something much more detailed and extremely useful.

Challenge Four

Congratulations on reading the above. Here's your last ramble.

I most certainly hope that everybody is from different regions, because you have names from all over the place in terms of naming structure. Fantasy names need a certain amount of internal consistency, and you should have people from the same area have the same types of names. The fact you have everything from "Ahlas" to "Robert" indicates you probably haven't thought much about consistency and instead just picked whatever sounds fantasy and whatever sounds cool. I'd suggest you stop the practice of going for "cool" and start thinking about what makes sense.

Your beginning doesn't exactly tell me about the states of the people. What do they have to learn? How do they feel about their lives?

The fact you say "everything goes back to normal" is an indication of a problem I pointed out before: you're not maximizing tension and showing true loss or character change. Think about it. This group has just gone off on a huge adventure, learned to trust each other, probably lost some things, learned things they could only learn facing life threatening challenges... and they return to normal.

Have you ever heard a soldier, especially one who's been deployed, talk about adjusting back into civilian life? How hard it is, how they have to find their purpose again, how they can be traumatized and feel like they never left the war, how they don't know how to be a parent, a spouse, a child, a sibling again? How people around them have to get used to them being around, how lives adjusted for them gone and now have to readjust to have them back?

It's hard. Extremely hard. Some soldiers end up with massive PTSD that requires bucket loads of treatment. Some get discharged before they feel like they're ready. Some leave because they lose taste for the military, but they don't really know how to be anything else. Some search for a purpose and find it again, others don't. Some find that their old purposes don't fill them up the way it used to, and have to start all over again.

Some have it easy and slip right back into civilian life like it's changing clothes. Others look for their civilian life and find it's been cleared out, replaced, or doesn't fit anymore; they have to start all over again.

And if you have a truly epic quest, with loss and life and the highest highs and the lowest lows, then some people will never quite be able to return to their old lives. Some will love returning home, some will despise returning, and some will want to but be unable to reach for truly normal life.

It's not so easy. Don't treat going to war as something you can return from unchanged. Because it's impossible to go through trials by fire and come out the same person on the other side.

Do better.

First off, thanks Rosey Unicorn.

Ok, taking everything into account, I don't think I'm ready for writing anything like a full book, maybe even a good short story. That means there's no need for this journal, and therefore this is defunct. I've had enough with writing for the moment.

Hey MarbleToast, I'm sorry you feel like you've had enough writing for the moment.

However, I'd like to encourage you. The prewriting journals are just that, prewriting, so whether you're ready to sit down and churn out a 50k word story, or a 100 word snap fiction, it's something you can use to get ready to write. These challenges are designed to help reveal flaws we have so that we can work on them and fix them before we start writing, or before we get too far.

It's like designing a house, first you need the blueprints, then you need the rest of it. Just because you feel like you're not ready to write right now doesn't mean this journal cannot produce something for when you are ready to write again.

Please consider this and continue to read the challenges and pick those which you wish to do. For instance, right now one of the challenges can have nothing to do with writing your story at all, it's just about getting comfortable with tense. These things can improve your writing and give you a chance to explore without the pressure of fixing it early.

Best of luck.

Here's the secret:

Nobody is ever ready to write anything.

Bolded because it's important.

See, writers start off as beginners. Beginners by their very nature are bad at things. That's kinda the prerequisite to being a beginner. You don't expect yourself to pick up a violin and play beautifully, do you? There is absolutely no such thing as ready in the first place. It's a myth.

All that stuff I wrote? Those are places you can improve. When I started writing, I made profiles that looked exactly the same. I learned over time. I had people give me reviews just as harsh as I gave you, and I wanted to quit more than anything. Then I started seeing how to fix my writing, started asking them how I could fix my writing, and I got better.

You have exactly the same potential I did, exactly the same potential Stephen King did, exactly the same potential George R. R. Martin and Tolkien and J. K. Rowling and every single writer, famous or not, had.

They got their skills by practicing. They got their skill by getting rejected, getting critiqued, and getting ripped to shreds. Very, very few writers ever start off good, and those that start off good only get better. That's the thing about writing: you can always, always, always improve. You never stop learning.

You learn how to do big epic fantasy novels by writing big epic fantasy novels. They will start off terrible. Pretty much guaranteed. That's why drafts exist, and that's why editing exists. You will then get critiques, edit, rewrite, and write new big epic fantasy novels. These will be better than the last one you wrote. Wash, rinse, repeat. Eventually, after working for long enough, you'll get good at writing big epic fantasy novels. It takes practice, but practice makes for great work.

Then you work on the next project and find it's not quite the same, so you have more to learn, more to work on, more to edit, repeat the process of write-critique-rewrite, and you get good at whatever that project was.

So what you're a bad writer? That's a good thing.

It means you have room to grow.