z

Young Writers Society


Dragons, anyone?



User avatar
20 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 408
Reviews: 20
Sun May 28, 2017 1:29 am
ShadowPrincess16 says...



Hey all!

So, I've been working on editing Mage Chronicles and have decided to start a second project on the side while I'm editing. It's only in the planning stages but I'm pretty ecstatic about it.

"When their father’s half-brother overthrows him and takes control of the Draconian Kingdom, Crown Princes’ Raziel and Rion are sold into slavery. Two hundred and twenty-nine years later, Raziel is sold to the Captain of the King’s Guard, a man named Altair Dubon. What Raziel doesn’t know is that there is a reason that Altair has purchased the former Prince. Unbeknownst to the King, Altair is the leader of the Draconian Rebel Alliance and has been planning to return the throne to its rightful holders. They’re playing a dangerous game and this is only the start."

My problem is that, in order for you to understand what's happened to the Crown Princes, you have to see what happened to their family. I wrote the prologue and it tales place roughly 230 years before the first chapter. The main characters are Draconians, an immortal race of dragons with a human form so the time is incredibly doable for them. In fact, Raziel and Rion are babies compared to some of their counterparts. But is the time difference between chapters too much? Or would it work?

Thanks!

Shadow
“wanting what you could not have led to misery and madness”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince
  





User avatar
456 Reviews



Gender: Female
Points: 7303
Reviews: 456
Thu Dec 20, 2018 2:10 am
Horisun says...



I think the time difference is fine, as long as you show the characters matured slightly. A prologue is telling the reader something they need to know to understand the stiry, and you're seems pretty important. And it's not that unbelievable that their imortal , so, yeah, time difference? Not a problem.
She/Her
  





User avatar
378 Reviews

Supporter


Gender: Other
Points: 3775
Reviews: 378
Sat Dec 22, 2018 8:34 am
Omni says...



I think the time difference could work (I'll talk about that in a second), but I'm a little hesitant on the part of them being immortal, as that, well, yikes, that adds a lot of stuff to consider about the story in general for a few reasons.

-Being timeless (immortal) distorts time in a different sense than having a longer lifespan.

So, this is a pretty major one, but basically when you have a species that can only die from unnatural reasons, aka immortal, you get into a space of distorted time. 230 years to us would be a very indifferent breath of time for a species that can theoretically last forever. Essentially, nothing matters unless it's life threatening to said species after awhile. Yeah, the first hundreds or thousands of years are fun and everything but after thousands of years nothing would matter unless your life is in danger. For someone with just longer life spans it would still actually matter, just not as much.

Let's say for example, that your characters are Thor and Loki from the MCU. It's said that Thor is 1500 and Loki is around 1000. The average lifetime for an Asgardian is 5000 years, as said in Thor: The Dark World. If we put that in human terms, Thor is around 23 and Loki is around 16. Which would mean that 230 years for them would be around 3/4 years for a human. Which, is a long time and a lot can happen to a kingdom with that kind of time.

-Time becomes meaningless when you're timeless

This is a bit of an extension of the last point, but my main concern is this: If they're immortal, then what "time" in their life would have this happened? How long have they been around? How long have they been ruling? (As a side note, why did their parents not just theoretically live forever?) But, in reality this 230 years doesn't mean too much if your characters are immortal. Especially if they've been around for a long time.


There's always the aspect that you could play into immortal deities just playing around with their subjects, but that completely changes your story!

Now, regarding the time jump itself (I'm sorry about the huge tangent, but it was the first thing my mind saw and it lingered on it xD), I don't think it's that much of a problem. Having a prologue be in the past and present the idea of an overthrow is a safe bet, and can work for you well. The way to work this into the story well is to just jump right into the present without explaining everything that happened in the prologue. You can feed the reader information through flashbacks or exposition or even character thoughts.

What you can also do is skip the prologue entirely but work with two different timelines (if you've ever watched the show Lost, it's done that. Uhhh, a more recent example is Once Upon a Time, it's done that as well. Or, well more specifically in the idea I'm about to talk about, The Last Jedi kinda did it), basically playing the past through multiple different perspectives on what happened that night. Maybe you could start with one brother and feed the reader a bit of information on the beginning of that night, then continue with the present storyline. The next chapter you start with the other brother's perspective on the night and then continue with the present story. You could easily turn it into a mystery about what happened (with everyone having their own ideas about what happened) while still explaining the past story.

If you have any more questions or comments, I love worldbuilding :)
This account proudly supports lgbtq* rights.

sass levels loading




[he/him]
  








cron
We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind