Here I don't' mean between white and black or anything that far concerned with humans. What I mean to say is, I'm writing this story where I plan to have th elves, dwarves, humans and draconians live in one united city. This so they can hold off an attack against orcs who are more powerful than them. Now what I want to ask here is, should I implement this complete truce between the four races? In most books(almost all) the races have always been rivals and sometimes bitter enemies. S is it alright for me to suddenly show them in such a buddy-buddy manner? would it be violating the established norms? should i go ahead with it? Please comment
Established norms are nice guides, but- you aren't writing another norm are you? Put your spin on the whole situation, as long as you do it efectively, nobody's going riot your truce. And if they do, you didn't put a book to their head and demand they read it. Does that help in any way?
It's your story and you can write it however you want. I actually think it's a cool idea. What you could do is have it be a sort of uneasy truce, or maybe one that is faltering or hanging by a thread do to cultural political or class differences. Maybe the Draconians think the others are unfair to them because more Draconians die in battling the orcs than any of the other races, and maybe the dwarfs don't like being worked in the mines all day. When you put different groups together fireworks will fly even if they are united against a common enemy. It's the nature of societies. Even if they all banded together to fight the Orcs, surely there will still be some racial tension among the four groups being different but also living in close proximity to one another. Just because they're allies doesn't mean they get along like BFF's. That's an idea you could play around with in all kinds of ways.
I would personally not use elves dwarvs and humans in your book or orcs for that matter they have all been done before unless you are planning on completly changing their charasterics and as far as living under one city. You should probally give some sort of reason or history of when this peace occured and why
It's your story. You can do whatever you want with it. D&D guidebooks say that green dragons are evil and stuff like that but that would never stop me from writing a good green dragon guy, because I'm not following D&D guidelines. It didn't stop the people who wrote the Puff The Magic Dragon stories or anything. Honestly I didn't even know until reading this that elves and such were supposed to be enemies. Then again I don't read much high fantasy, especially not of the "These are the rules so we MUST STICK TO THEM!" type. Such stories get dull after a while. Whatever floats your boat or works for your story.
I just want to say that, if you want, do use orcs, elves and dwarves. Everything has been done before at the surface level, it's the actual writing that matters.
I guess a good reason for an uneasy truce (as mentioned by Lord of Hats) is that it gives you more room for written conflict. If the entire society has become an egalitarian Utopia for this melange of beings (other than Orcs, of course) then you are going to have trouble finding the why for mentioning each type of being. Some level of conflict between them gives you cause to make mention of their differences which can then be used as plot tools. Lot's of plot tools, given the number of beings you have aggregated into this society.
I'd suggest having it only if there is a good reason. In mass effect there were these dragon people and these cyborg people made it impossible for them to mate and stuff.
Ok I like your story idea and disagree with others who say do not do that. Who cares what the norms are you do your thing and do it to the best of your ability. Elves by any other name is still an elf. I would like to read the story you write when you finish
It's not really an issue to use elves and dwarves and orcs if you want to, but you might want to watch out with the Draconians, as the most known use is of a concept from Dragonlance, and they are not natural folkloric creatures.
"Elves have been done before" is certainly not a reason to avoid using elves. If we tried to do something totally new that contains little or nothing that people have seen, we would have something that makes no sense at all. Every story contains something familiar, whether it's obvious or not. What matters is making it your own. If you don't think there should be a rivalry, don't have one. No need to even have a reason why there is none. You're not writing a rehashing of Middle Earth (so I'd suggest calling them goblins or something from actual fairylore and not the name that Tolkien invented). This is your own otherworld that you're creating. Make it yours.
