Boarders Writing a Novel: Take 8

[Riptide]

Double post.

[First of My Name]

Littlefinger Baelish, I have to say that it sounds promising. In fact, you encouraged me to post my own plot.

So, here's the plot of Ensekyrai, please give your opinion, whether positive or negative.

The story spans about 300 years and is set on a continent on the fictional world of Ensekyrai. This planet was colonized by humans long ago and they nearly exterminated all the aboriginal species during a long war. The humans chose a king to lead them. For a couple hundred years kings were elected to rule, until one day, after the death of King Dayeras Frodon, a family with no claim usurped the throne in the capital Achairis.

Ten minutes later:

I tried to write a plot summary but it's impossile as each of the stories is standalone yet builds on the others.

[Frank Fitzpatrick]

I'm writing a science-fiction/fantasy genre novel series at present called Technology vs Beast. The name is subject to change. I wanted to share the plot with the community in order to get opinions, criticisms and advice in the field of writing. Any contributions to this thread are muh appreciated.

Five hundred years before the start of the story, a group of religious scientists came together in the city of New Hope, the spiritual capital of the world. As far as the public knew, their aim was to come to an understanding on their differing beliefs in order to promote tolerance and enlightenment. But their actual goal was quite different.

Their actual plan was to create a God with their own hands. They thought that humanity needed this in order for all people to come together. The details of how to do it were unable to be agreed upon by the men, and they resolved to allow their creation to make that decision.

Secretly using government funding, they began to build a mechanized deity. The result of their labor was the super mech (or gundam if you will) Adrastos. Adrastos was instilled with a technology that allowed it to have the knowledge of everything that happened in the world up to the time it was created and every thing that would happen up until the time it would awaken.

The scientists programmed him to slumber for one hundred years and awaken in the future on the anniversary of its creation. On that day, it would decide the fate of all the worlds inhabitants. Shipped off into The Worlds Above ( story version of outer space), the scientists masked their work by introducing an army of mechs that were provided to any military willing to pay for them.

In the fifty years after the creation of Adrastos, mechs became so common to the point that there were theme parks where people could fight mechs for recreation and even sports leagues.

Eventually, the time came for Adrastos to awaken and so it did. Having slumbered for one hundred years, all knowledge happening on the Inhabited Spectrum was downloaded into it systems. It began to immediately undertake its purpose.

Adrastos resolved that the best thing it could do to lead humanity was to destroy it and repopulate Inhabited Spectrum with existences like itself, that all creation would be as God. A crystallized orb meant for serving its purposes was removed from its chest panel. It used those to create twelve powerful but lesser beings that were equal to each other and less than Adrastos.

Their purpose was to slumber until such time that twelve denizens on Inhabited Spectrum of pure heart, whether it be good or evil, came to exist. They would bond with those twelve chosen until such time that the bond was powerful enough to allow them to absorb them.

When all twelves bonds were realized, the bonded would come together and form one super weapon that Adrastos would use to destroy everyone and reanimate them as a mechanized Demi God.

Four hundred years after the awakening of Adrastos, a group referring to themselves as Acolytes arrived on Inhabited Spectrum from another world. They claim to have come because their world was no longer inhabitable. The Acolytes claimed they only wanted peace.

The Enlightened Brigade, a government organization that saw over all major world affairs, presented the Acolytes with two options: leave in peace or face mass extermination. The God of the Acolytes, Gerphalt, resolved to declare war on The Enlightened Brigade and liberate both Acolytes and Inhabitants from their influence.

Having come to know of the Acolytes arrival and the war on Inhabited Spectrum, Adrastos decided to use this to further his plans. This was made possible when the first of his twelve creations came into contact with its chosen one.

Adrastos began to search out the chosen ones remaining in order to bring them together with his creations, dubbed the Holy Flashes. If successful, Adrastos will use the war to bring about the end of all life as Inhabitants and Acolytes know it and usher in a new age.

So, I noticed you have quite a lot of backstory here. Now, is this going to upfront, common knowledge type of thing, are you going to have it slowly revealed to the characters, or is your prolouge going to cover it? Are the characters going to know all of it, or just the reader? I would suggest have the characters know it eventually, but have the readers know first. I say this because it is interesting to see characters react to events and revealations, and there is suspense for when characters will figure it out.

I'd recommend avoiding using the prologue to basically outline the back history, it always feels too thick and dense and in my experience somewhat off putting.

What I would do personally, and that by no means insinuates that mine is the right way, but, I would use a short POV of one of the men who created the Deity to tell the story of it's creation. Then slowly reveal the rest of the back story about the choice of destruction and the invasion throughout the rest of the book to unravel what would be a very interesting plot.

Hope my input helps in some manner and doesn't seem like a lecture. :P

[deleted01]

Picking up on the mention of prologues, how do you do them? Generally when reading I love prologues that gives a hint of both what's happened and what might come, perhaps leaving the character(s) unknown and not giving too much away. I think one of the hardest things about writing, for me, is starting the story off strong enough to hook a reader, while staying with the themes outlined above and keeping an air of mystery.

[First of My Name]

I agree with Frank on the prologue

@Dracarya, almost each story I write opens with a momentous yet accessible event that gets the story going. (For example, a murder or two). But the function of your prologue depends on the sort of novel, I guess. If its first person, it needs to set up the story that is carried by themain character. If it's sprawling with multiple POVs, the prologue an be GRRM-style, namely introducing characters or ideas. If it's omniscient, you can hint at important things to come.

[Frank Fitzpatrick]

Picking up on the mention of prologues, how do you do them? Generally when reading I love prologues that gives a hint of both what's happened and what might come, perhaps leaving the character(s) unknown and not giving too much away. I think one of the hardest things about writing, for me, is starting the story off strong enough to hook a reader, while staying with the themes outlined above and keeping an air of mystery.

@Dracarya, almost each story I write opens with a momentous yet accessible event that gets the story going. (For example, a murder or two). But the function of your prologue depends on the sort of novel, I guess. If its first person, it needs to set up the story that is carried by themain character. If it's sprawling with multiple POVs, the prologue an be GRRM-style, namely introducing characters or ideas. If it's omniscient, you can hint at important things to come.

Pretty much this.

I'm currently writing an Action/ Thriller, and coincidentally, I'm just about to start writing the prologue for it (despite being 43,000 words in), and what I'm aiming to do is write a small chapter of 4-5 pages which will set up the theme of the book. So, my novel is about characters trying to unravel murders and disappearances, with a "ghost" reportedly being the culprit (it isn't a ghost by the way...). Therefore, my prologue will be a POV of someone that, in the last paragraph, is murdered by the hands of a "ghost".

:)

[Cornishman]

I for one am greatly enjoying seeing some of the work that members of this community are putting forward.

[deleted01]

Excellent, thanks for the advice :) I'm going for GRRM-style POVs, and my (very, very rough) prologue is one the POV characters, but he isn't outright identified. I'm making an attempt (whether it works or not remains to be seen :P ) at dropping in hints as to who he is during the chapter, and it will be revealed during his own later chapters. It's important because in the prologue he finds a child, who will turn out to be the main protagonist, and is a central point to her story.

[Littlefingers In The Air]

First of all, this sounds really awesome. Seriously, write it.

I'm writing a novel myself, but I don't know if I'm fit to give you advice...

Ah, what the hell. I will anyway. Sorry if I sound condescending or anything. I don't mean too...

So, I noticed you have quite a lot of backstory here. Now, is this going to upfront, common knowledge type of thing, are you going to have it slowly revealed to the characters, or is your prolouge going to cover it? Are the characters going to know all of it, or just the reader? I would suggest have the characters know it eventually, but have the readers know first. I say this because it is interesting to see characters react to events and revelations, and there is suspense for when characters will figure it out.

Secondly, since this is a sci-fi novel, you need to make sure to build your world/universe well, but not too well, not unrealisticlly. By that, I mean don't have your characters know basically every about this universe, whether its at the start, or at the end. Leave some mysteries. And make sure to balance world building and character development, as both are equally important.

I'm sorry if I gave useless advice ( and for my spelling and grammar). It's three o'clock in the morning here, and I really need to get to sleep soon...

your advice was far from useless and it is well noted. To answer your question, the characters would not know it all immediately. I'm hashing out the details in my mind but they're going to slowly come across this information. The only given thing they know of is the mechs, which I haven't decided on a name for. They don't know of the mechs true purpose, Adrastos or anything else outside of what is common knowledge.

[Littlefingers In The Air]

Littlefinger Baelish, I have to say that it sounds promising. In fact, you encouraged me to post my own plot.

So, here's the plot of Ensekyrai, please give your opinion, whether positive or negative.

The story spans about 300 years and is set on a continent on the fictional world of Ensekyrai. This planet was colonized by humans long ago and they nearly exterminated all the aboriginal species during a long war. The humans chose a king to lead them. For a couple hundred years kings were elected to rule, until one day, after the death of King Dayeras Frodon, a family with no claim usurped the throne in the capital Achairis.

Ten minutes later:

I tried to write a plot summary but it's impossile as each of the stories is standalone yet builds on the others.

I'll definitely be paying attention as you post more about the story and present details.

[Littlefingers In The Air]

I'd recommend avoiding using the prologue to basically outline the back history, it always feels too thick and dense and in my experience somewhat off putting.

What I would do personally, and that by no means insinuates that mine is the right way, but, I would use a short POV of one of the men who created the Deity to tell the story of it's creation. Then slowly reveal the rest of the back story about the choice of destruction and the invasion throughout the rest of the book to unravel what would be a very interesting plot.

Hope my input helps in some manner and doesn't seem like a lecture. :P

I like your idea. Alternatively, the idea I had was to open the story with a prologue from a newscaster who had covered one of the battles between Inhabitants and Acolytes. I was gonna use him to tell of the kind of destruction the war might cause as well begin to shed some light on what the Acolytes can do.

The second part of this plan would be to have it so that the scientists had left behind reports of the building of the mechs as well as secret documentation, to be discovered throughout the story, that slowly unravels the dark purpose behind their endeavor and its consequences. I was thinking of possibly making it the classic case of information by dream sequence, if I decided to only do one POV from the newscaster. What are your thoughts on this?

[Frank Fitzpatrick]

I like your idea. Alternatively, the idea I had was to open the story with a prologue from a newscaster who had covered one of the battles between Inhabitants and Acolytes. I was gonna use him to tell of the kind of destruction the war might cause as well begin to shed some light on what the Acolytes can do.

The second part of this plan would be to have it so that the scientists had left behind reports of the building of the mechs as well as secret documentation, to be discovered throughout the story, that slowly unravels the dark purpose behind their endeavor and its consequences. I was thinking of possibly making it the classic case of information by dream sequence, if I decided to only do one POV from the newscaster. What are your thoughts on this?

I think the newscaster idea could definitely work, yes.

Personally, I'm not a fan of dream sequences, I'd uses that as a last resort because it is quite cliched and in my opinion, and I don't mean to offend, but they are usually info-drops/ lazy solutions. But then, I'm not writing it so I don't know what you have planned for those scenes.

The most important thing is that you write it whichever way satisfies you most. You could try every possible angle, but it could turn out that a dream sequence IS the only way it works, so it is basically trial and error.

[Littlefingers In The Air]

Snip

all well said. The real problem is that I want to do multiple POVs for the story and it's kind of hard to imagine doing that without creating as many characters as GRRM did. The story is derived from a Roleplay some friends and me started around 5 years ago. It went on for 2 1/2 years before it folded and around 30-40 characters were featured.

In that RP, the story took place in an alternate reality of the real world, set in the year 3000. So there are major changes between that and building a world from scratch. Some fundamental rules still have to apply, such as the laws of gravity and Newtons Laws. It isn't even difficult to build the world up. What is difficult is to account for the scale that you're adjusting to.

In an RP, the sessions end at a time chosen as the events play out and the next RP picks up right where the last RP left off. You can't do that in a novel without running into some serious pacing issues and of course, you have to be a lot more detail oriented than you would be in an RP setting where you're among a group you're discussing the plot with every day.

[Howdyphillip]

This is the third day of sitting down and actually being creative. Today has been fun and challenging at the same time as I have decided that I am going to spend the day in character creation. I am enjoying it as it is allowing my imagination to run wild, but it is also a considerable effort because my story requires a cast of about 50 characters and it is a little overwhelming. Only five or six of my protagonists and three or four of my antagonists will be essential, but I would like to flesh out everyone appearing in the story. My question is this, How much time and effort do you use to develop secondary characters?

I also still only have the theme of the story firmly in my mind and very little details laid out. Creating the characters has given me ideas how I want the story to go, but I still have a lot of work with plot,

[Frank Fitzpatrick]

all well said. The real problem is that I want to do multiple POVs for the story and it's kind of hard to imagine doing that without creating as many characters as GRRM did. The story is derived from a Roleplay some friends and me started around 5 years ago. It went on for 2 1/2 years before it folded and around 30-40 characters were featured.

In that RP, the story took place in an alternate reality of the real world, set in the year 3000. So there are major changes between that and building a world from scratch. Some fundamental rules still have to apply, such as the laws of gravity and Newtons Laws. It isn't even difficult to build the world up. What is difficult is to account for the scale that you're adjusting to.

In an RP, the sessions end at a time chosen as the events play out and the next RP picks up right where the last RP left off. You can't do that in a novel without running into some serious pacing issues and of course, you have to be a lot more detail oriented than you would be in an RP setting where you're among a group you're discussing the plot with every day.

I know exactly what you mean. I was writing a Fantasy book for roughly two years (which I gave up last September), and it just grew and grew, to a point I had five main character POV's with several minor character POV's mixed in just for fun. It drove me nuts in the end because it got TOO big for me. But I'll tell you what, it helped my writing incredibly and was an important learning curve.

[Jaime's Wench]

I know exactly what you mean. I was writing a Fantasy book for roughly two years (which I gave up last September), and it just grew and grew, to a point I had five main character POV's with several minor character POV's mixed in just for fun. It drove me nuts in the end because it got TOO big for me. But I'll tell you what, it helped my writing incredibly and was an important learning curve.

That's such an awesome attitude to have.

[Frank Fitzpatrick]

That's such an awesome attitude to have.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I can assure you, I never felt like that at the time. :P

[Littlefingers In The Air]

Anyone got good advice about world building?

[Frank Fitzpatrick]

Anyone got good advice about world building?

Basis it on a civilization from the past, even if you're writing 2,000 years in the future. By that I mean adapt the language, money, government and society to suit your own. That being said, don't feel the need to detail absolutely everything to the audience, allow the reader to build their own interpretation. I think Joe Abercrombie does this extremely well. But, and most importantly, don't let it consume you. :P

[Littlefingers In The Air]

Basis it on a civilization from the past, even if you're writing 2,000 years in the future. By that I mean adapt the language, money, government and society to suit your own. That being said, don't feel the need to detail absolutely everything to the audience, allow the reader to build their own interpretation. I think Joe Abercrombie does this extremely well. But, and most importantly, don't let it consume you. :P

I appreciate this, thank you. Now I just have to get started. I have no idea where to begin though.