Lots of the information has been updated, so if you have already read through this, it's worth reading again. Thank you. First off, hello to everyone reading this. I am currently working on my major piece for creative writing at school. As mentioned above, i have changed many parts to the information about my story below, so it's worth reading again. I feel that the story is constantly getting better, thanks to all the help i've been getting from everyone on this forum. So far i have this: Elthein is a 16 year old Revant; a human like race, but with wings, living in a comfortable village, 120 kilometers inland from the ocean in the 599th Skoras year, where all races; Revants, Humans and others which i am yet to make up, all live in peace. Elthein is what you could pretty much call average. He is not bad at anything, but not good at anything either, with the exception of his flying skills. He is the quickest flier in the village and can change direction much faster than anyone else, allowing him to be useful in 'wingball'. Wingball is a team game played with a leather ball. At each end, there are three poles, with the middle one being held up by the two outer ones by a horizontal pole, allowing it to swing around (can anyone please help me shorten explaining this?). There is a ball on each end of the middle pole, and they weigh exactly the same. To score, you must throw the ball at one of the balls on each end of the post, and it must do a 180 degree turn, and you get a point. 360 degrees for two points. The tricky part is hitting the ball the on the pole properly so that it actually turns. The ground below is covered in hay, because the game involves mid air tackling and bumping and more, so if you were to fall from the sky, you need something soft to land on. If the ball hits the ground, the other team gets to throw the ball up. If you get past a certain point on the field, chances are that everyone in the defence on the other team is going to go after you, because if you were left open that close, it would be a certain goal. This defensive move is risky, as the player can pass the ball to a team mate. This is highly unlikely though. Just picture it in your mind. You fly past a certain point, and suddenly there are people all around you. Up, down, left, right, straight ahead and behind. It can be pretty tricky trying to find a gap to throw the ball out of. Elthein is also the fastest flier in the village. Here is an illustration (i did it quickly on paint) of the wingball field. I have changed a few things since i drew this though, realizing that physics wouldn't allow what i've described above to happen. The middle pole is now horizonral, and there is only one vertical pole holding it up. There are two poles on each side of the goals. The balls on each end of the horizontal pole must pass these to get a point. In the event that you might hit the balls, but only move it half way, you must hit it again to score. You can hit the balls from either side of the goals, but it still must complete a 180 degree turn for you to gain a point. If you hit it half way one way, then back the other way again, that is not a point. It will simply reset the degrees the balls have to travel before you score a point again. There will be people making sure no illegal points are scores. Someone who isn't playing. Elthein's best friends are Heysel and Karnas. Heysel is friendly and enjoys the company of everyone. Karnas is slightly the opposite. He is mainly friendly to everyone, but has a short temper and can be very cold to anyone who does him any wrong. Karnas is also very athletic, competitive and a star at wingball. Near the beginning of the story, Elthein's village is attacked by a party of Revants, Humans, and others, who take his parents, and many of the other villages and kill most of the younger people including one of his best friends, Karnas. Lord Senderaar is the one who attacked. He wouldn't want a large army fighting against him while trying to gain power of the world. Senderaar has discovered something called the 'Fire of Life'. There are fires like these burning all around the country. They are quite rare, though. It has been said that if one were to step into the fire, they would be burnt, but feel nothing, and die. Their body would turn to ashes, and then the fire would die down. As the fire is dying down, the person is remade, and then the fire is gone. They get up off their own ashes, and are stronger than before. Like a phoenix, in a way. Being born from their ashes. anyone who steps into the fire isn't too much stronger, but if you add up multiple fires, you can get to be pretty powerful! It has also been said that if you throw all the remains of a dead person into one of these rare fires, they will be revived. (you also have to throw some clothes in with them, or they are formed without anything on) Elthein, Heysel, and the few who survived and escaped the attack set out to try and rescue their remaining family. What they do not realize is that the simple attack on their village was much more than a kidnapping of the old, and a killing of the young. They find survivors at nearby villages, and later, they discover the truth of the attack. They are no longer trying to save their family, but are trying to save the world from being ruled by evil. In this part of the story, they don't know of the existence of the fires, but they do know that Senderaar was going to have power over the world. A while later, they take shelter in a cave when one human they had gotten from an attacked village discovered some markings on the wall. He said that he knew what they were, as he had studied markings like that his whole life. The markings led them through an underground mist-filled maze, till they eventually came into a large opening, which had an unusual race living there called the Vaulk. The human who had taken them there said that as long as only a few confronted them, unarmed, they should be harmless. There happened to be a few of that race which spoke human (the language is actually English, but is called human in this story, as it was humans who developed the language, then taught it to other races) and then the race eventually agreed to join them in war. Just in case you were wondering, the 'Skoras' year comes from a Revant, named Skoras who led an attack against the Lorja, a merciless race of deformed creatures, in the 999th common year to save the world from being taken over and destroyed (the Lorja hated everything including life, and they were going to kill everything including themselves in order to rid the world of it). Skoras died 2 days later from wounds he had gotten from the battle. He was a true hero, and people thought that as he had managed to stop the end of the world, they would start a new year, named after him. That was the first Skoras year, and the end of the common year. Elthein's village is built over the tomb of Skoras. Later in the story, when Elthein meets the Vaulk, they tell him of what the Fires of Life can do. This is when Elthein realizes where the Senderaar was getting all his power from. The Vaulk happen to have a Fire of life burning in their cave, but they have kept it until there was a time it was really needed. One fire wouldn't be enough to make someone all powerful, so Elthein brought back the remains of Skoras from his tomb and resurrected him to help them in war. I am still in need of ideas for the other races, and names for them. I also need a new main character name. I would like to make it myself, but it would be helpful to have suggestions of names, because then i can put a few together to make a new one. Apart from that, this book is finally starting to look like it's heading in a good direction. For me anyway. I still need criticism in order to make this book the best it can possibly be. I have decided to name the book 'From the Ashes', as people being revived from their ashes is a big part in the story.
Moved as requested. I think in the same way the story grew from inception, the pieces that fill the gaps will come to you as you continue writing. I wouldn't worry about it. Also, don't fret that it doesn't join smoothly at first - you'll still have revision passes to take care of that.
I hope you don't mind my being critical, but I find your MC's name excrutiatingly too irritating to pronounce.
Okay... I think that truly evil plan needs to come to light. If humans live in peace with these guys, what's the issue? I'd suggest, that these are the early years of living in peace and there are factions that have never taken kindly to the other race, on both sides. That way, you have options for these bad guys. They could be prejudice and hate the reverants, or they could be making it look like an extreme faction is doing the take over while, really they are after something else (the plotline of the original die hard movie, if you will). What do these people want? Uh, money? Power? Influence. I don't know enough about the attackers, but to stage a complete village takeover/kidnapping, you need something beyond... they're just really mean. If for example, the village is at the sight of Skoras's heroic feat and burial, then maybe Skoras has a key to something that happened in the past, or a great treasure. Maybe everyone is being kidnapped to work for them to ... uh.. mine? You've got options. I feel Wingball is too reminiscent of Quidditch in Harry Potter. While, yes, Harry did not have wings, he was unusually good at flying... and that skill made a difference on a lot of his tasks.
I think that the village being at where Skoras lies is a good idea. As for Harry potter, as strange as it may sound, i've never seen any of those movies, so i don't really know what you're talking about.
Well, Harry Potter is too widely known to ignore as something your reader will be familiar with. Watch one of the movies or read one of the first books. In it you will see the sport Quidditch which has to do with flying and catching balls in the sky as a sport.
I asked some of my friends at school about it, and you're right. They're both very similar. I'm going to try to change mine, but still have it involve flying around and something to do with a ball of some sort. As for the rest of the story, i have thought of some brilliant ideas to put into it. I don't have time to update the first post right now, but i will as soon as i get back.
