Hello, fellow young writers.
I am Shell Master Tortwag, and you probably don't know anything about me, considering I'm quite new in the place.
Now, let's talk about my very first writting project!
As my short description implies, I am now going to present my Project Random (currently underway), and explain everything related to it.
To understand this vast and complicated concept of mine, I'll now explain how I got the idea.
I already had many fantasy novel concepts in mind, but I wasn't sure which one I should introduce first. Then, in a French school lesson, I came across a document talking about a "French litterature genius" called Honoré de Balzac (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor%C3%A9_de_Balzac)
Everything started from here.
This person was a passionate writer and reader who had a very weird yet awesome project idea: he wanted to study the different social classes and cathegories of France, the departments, the enviroment, everything related to the country and gather them all into a massive book series that would reflect "all aspects of society".
This huge book series, La Comédie Humaine, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Com%C3%A9die_Humaine) was his greatest achievement, and after reading the whole document I felt like it was the beginning of an awesome inspiration source. Indeed, I learnt a few hours later that he was the one who had the basic concept of the recurring characters concept, one of my favorite so far, starting to use this technique in "Le Père Goriot".
This was really fascinating to me: the way he pictures the society, stories about war, criminals, nobles, lawmen, everything was in it! It really sounded like a brand new world. Or at least I supposed so, because it in fact appears that he never finished it. Either way, this impressive work made me realize something: I wanted, in some way, to make something a bit similar in Fantasy. By that I mean that my first idea was to create a piece of writting about a character, finish it, and then make him a reccuring character in the other projects I had in mind. I wanted him to become a link between all of my stories, all of my worlds, and eventually gather them all into a final story. Why, how, I hadn't made a full decision yet. The only thing my basic idea had in common with Balzac's work is the fact that I wanted to link my different worlds, and thus using Reccuring characters, and one in particular.
And then I had another idea, directly inspired from him.
Balzac wanted to reflect what was realistic, a complete version of the society into a book. It was an experience. What if?... What if I, a Fantasy lover, could actual make a similar experience but in a totally different level: explore many enviroments, from real ones to complete fictional or even possible ones, make my characters evolve into them, and eventually manage to link them? They would evolve in separate places, but they would all belong to the same universe (and by that I mean "place", because "universe" has not the same meaning as "Universe with a capital, you know the thing we leave in thanks to the Big Bang and stuff).
But I was still attached to something from my original plan: a Link. I need a link, a trigger, something that would make them encounter each other, a special reason that would reunite them. And that would be a storyline of its own, having the same role as Le Père Goriot. An introducer to the Project, an origin to everything.
Well that's it. that's my Project Random. That's my plan, my "Master Scheme", maybe my magnum opus, or at least I really want it like this. I don't know if this will become my greatest project, but it is my first one, and I am determined to make you readers like it. I'll certainly have fun writting this, study the enviroments I want, add fictional elements, create my characters, their quests, and ultimatly my final point: a complete collide between their worlds, their evolution.
Next time I'll write here, it'll be to start the Prologue of my Project's trigger, called Gemsworld Quest.
After this we'll start exploring the enviroments and places of my other characters, their story and evolutions across their own adventures.
Get ready folks, because what you will read will be a succession of crazy places and goals, similarities and differences between worlds/characters, Fantasy and, I deeply hope so, pure entertainment.
See you later everyone!
~Shell Master Tortwag~
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140,372 Literary Works • 673,125 Reviews
Hi there, Tort!
I can't wait to read your story! Let me know if I can help you with anything else on this particular post. 
Yes, the Writers Corner is the perfect forum for this! If it bothers you, you can send it to a moderator and ask them to move it. You can then give a link in posts of chapters and such if you want people to have this back story.
I can't really review this as a piece, and Black beat me to most of the things I would have said. I don't know if you want me to critique the actual composition of this post or the ideas within it, so I'm just going to give you some of my thoughts.
The General Idea
I'm very interested in reading this piece once you start posting actual excerpts from it. I'm always fascinated by the different ways story ideas are born. Thank you also for citing your information and references.
Organization and Clarity
I know this was just sort of a stream of consciousness post, but I would urge you to be very clear in your writing, especially once you start composing the piece itself. If you are not clear and organized, the piece may overwhelm the reader and cause him to quit reading and look for something more engaging. This can be helped by extensive planning and prewriting, or by reading things out loud to yourself or to some trusted friends. If any of you find yourselves stumbling over some things or a little confused, consider rewriting some things. Granted, some confusion in the reader is healthy and intriguing, but you tread a very thin line with that. As I said, too much confusion can cause a reader to give up. There are a few special readers out there who like a challenge, but from my experience, not very many. On the other side of that line, you feed your reader too much information. When you don't allow a reader to come to his own conclusions and feel as though he is discovering aspects of your story for himself, his becomes bored and disinterested. So be clear with what you're saying, but be conservative with what you tell. Just some things to consider.
Creation
As Black said, writing is a craft. And I've always thought that fantasy has a few more etches and curves to the pot than most genres. Not only are you creating and introducing your reader to new characters, you are creating an entire world. You have to carefully plan out all of the rules and components of this world so you don't end up double-crossing yourself later on. Nothing frustrates me more in fantasy than to have the author tell me some sort of limitation a character has, only to completely disregard it about halfway through the book. I would suggest using timelines, lists, and character development pages to keep everything straight in you head. However, that doesn't mean that your preliminary decisions have to stay put, of course. You are completely free to change and mold your sculpture as your story progresses. Just be sure that its foundation supports the piece. I hope my ramblings are making sense.
Grammar
Black gave you a very good suggestion to get a spellchecker, but they can't fix everything. You also need to learn how to do it yourself. If you have some extra time, you might go visit some grammar sites and look up the usages of commas. In my opinion, commas are the trickiest little guys in the English grammar. The Purdue Owl site is a pretty reliable one. They're fairly concise, but they have good information. Once you start posting the actual story, I will critique grammar more thoroughly.
Well, that's all the guru knowledge I have to offer.
Good luck, and happy writing!
-Sea-
Hey Tortwag, Black here for a quick review. (Sorry, I don't have a lot of time).
Okay! So this is looking like it's going to be really, really fantastic! From what I read here you're one of those people who aren't really familiar with writing (not the best grammar and spelling), but who really wants to be. You seem like one of those people with a really great idea, but not the direct, over-powering skills needed to completely do everything right!
Okay, so I'm going to give you a bit of quick advise and show you a couple general problems that you have (if you have them here then its safe to assume that you're going to be having them when you write the story itself). From what I see here your strengths are in idea, originality, pure want to get a good job done, and planning support. From what I see you must like planning a lot, and believe me, that's a good thing, you just gotta be careful to actually sit down and do some writing every now and then. Your weaknesses appear to be in lower case things, such as grammar, spelling, pacing, and organization . . .
I'll try to cover each of these problems as best I can, give you a few suggestions, and then peace out, but seeing as this isn't a normal piece of writing I'll have to go differently than usual.
You have a Spelling Problem! First I'm going to show you that you really do have a problem!
'writing' has only one 't', 'environments' has an 'n' before the 'm', and 'ultimately' has an 'e' after the second 't'. Simple problems that would be easily fixed with a spell checker.
'introducer' isn't a word at all, a fact that you would have noticed if you had a spell checker.
'whatyou' should have a space between the two words 'what' and 'you'.
To fix this problem (Mind you I only pointed out a few of your spelling mistakes) I'm going to advise you to get yourself a spell/ grammar checker. I think that you would profit well from one! Really though, if you get one, your spelling and grammar mistakes will pretty much go away, and only your pacing and organization problems will remain.
You have a bit of problem in that you haven't sat down and organized what your going to say. Think about what you want to say, in order, and then write it down properly. Also, I think that you could really use to go to the appropriate forums and post this. It would allow discussion and easier talk outside of reviews. Yeah, there is a forum for posting this kind of thing on YWS!
Okay, enough of that. I advise you now to be careful with your planning. Planning is a great thing, and some people find it very fun to do, but you have to be careful with it or you'll end up planning and planning and planning and never actually writing. If you don't do that then well . . . your planning is negated. For planning it's helpful to sit down and write lists of things that you need to cover in your story.
Fantasy stories usually tend revolve around story world a lot, and you'd do well to sit down and write a massive amount of information about your story's world. An example of another great writer and planner is J. R. Tolkien. He spent years developing his story. Something else you should do is write short stories or full novels on your story world now that you're still young. If you spend the next ten years writing about your story world and characters then by the time you're twenty five you'll be ready to write a GREAT story.
Anyway, I've gotta get going here. Great work though! You really are doing great here, if you take my advise and work on your writing then you'll improve your skills. Be careful with what you're doing! Writing is a craft. And remember: KEEP WRITING – Do that and you WILL improve!
~Black~
Woooooooooooooooooooow. You're better than my teachers when it comes to analyze skills, because you perfectly covered my good/bad points.
Gotta check that now.
I don't know if you've experienced this feeling. What I'm talking about is the feeling of... being speechless when someone totally lecture you in a quite good/near perfect way. I've experienced this feeling quite a few times no, and this review is now added to my collection.
"From what I see you must like planning a lot, and believe me, that's a good thing, you just gotta be careful to actually sit down and do some writing every now and then. Your weaknesses appear to be in lower case things, such as grammar, spelling, pacing, and organization . . . "
...woooooooooooooow. Impressed. SO IMPRESSED. I'm really going to improve a lot here.
I think I get your point. I perfectly get it, first step getting a spell checker, this does sound necessary.
Indeed I didn't. THat is because of my general temper: I was too excited to finally present my Project Random, and in fact I had a little plan on what I was going to talk about here, but... Yeah. No order. nothing in that case.
THERE IS A FORUM FOR THIS?! Perfect for me !
"you'll end up planning and planning and planning and never actually writing. "
... :O That's... that's it. That's my main weakness actually. That's what I've been trying to overcome until now.
"Fantasy stories usually tend revolve around story world a lot, and you'd do well to sit down and write a massive amount of information about your story's world."
Lucky me I actually realized that a few days ago, and that's what I'm doing. That's what I call my "Master Schemes". But I'm so glad of reading this, I'm realizing many many things now thanks you for this!
As for your last example and advice... Well I can't say anything about this, as I said you perfectly lectured me, so I must follow your advices as much as I can. Wow. Keep writting. Just keep doing your stuff. ok. I really think I got it, I deeply thank you for your review Black