It won't let me delete the post. As for the climate change it is a direct effect of the fact the world is dying that has messed up the weather in the world. Galiron is a side character as I've stated before. The story is vast and has many more characters than even i;ve mentioned here.
It can be very difficult to save fantasy stories when so much time has been spent on the embellishment at the (probable) expense of the characters. Without critiquing the first chapter (absolutely it would be a good idea to do two critiques on others' work and then post it into the Workshop), the questions I would urge the OP to consider are:- - where is the first place where a character makes a choice that was inconvenient to the writer? It's possible I've missed it, but I think in 5000+ words there isn't one. Which means that by the end of 5k words the reader might not have seen a character. And this is a common problem, there are hundreds of writers a year turning up doing it. There was a part where Galiron(?) nearly shows some free will by not shooting a goblin because it's so weak and defenceless - but his interlocutor swiftly clobbers him over the head with some exposition about how goblins are evil so he has to. Deciding not to shoot a defenceless creature is weak sauce as characterization: worthy of a saturday morning TV show for the under 10s. Quashing that characterization because "goblins are bad" is redundant: readers won't need to have an elf sticking a goblin with arrows justified. - where is the first place where a character speaks in a way that establishes his/her unique voice? This is a much softer question. Characters are mainly defined for readers through the choices they make. But they can also be defined through their voices - a distinct mindset or perspective or choice of words. In an early chapter it's possible to use voices to the total exclusion of choices - but IMO it's artistically demanding. It's more subjective than looking for a choice, so please bear with me, but we would be looking for an extended passage of the character's words, possibly with marked or dialect language, and possibly with a preoccupation, and ideally with some other people around them for contrast. If possible we want the characters to eventually become identifiable by what they say, without needing dialogue tags. Terry Pratchett's Death is helpfully capitalized, but we'd recognize him anyway due to his patricianly, slightly tired tone. Is there a passage like that in the 1st chapter? Or do the two characters together form a single, authorial voice: constantly expositing fantasy-elements for the reader in the hope that something will matter? A name and a backstory isn't a character. The wiki is full of backstories - which for writers trying to advise is peripheral, fine-detail stuff. None of it begins to matter until the character arcs are set. "Character" is a difficult, irreducible term - maybe another way to illustrate it is that the OP could transplant (e.g.) Mr Micawber and Lennie into this scene, and rewrite the dialogue to suit them, and it might end up working better just as a factor of how natural the dialogue can be. "Four goblins and three arrows is the definition of misery!" "-Duh... Willy? I lost count again." I believe that to write effective characters involves realizing that the fantasy elements get in the way, and are something that we hide ourselves behind. The opportunity for the OP is to begin writing characters, and it's more than likely that the absence of or sublation of true characters is what makes the work hard to finish. Looking at these responses:- Who is the main character? Darius > but who is Darius? What does he want to accomplish? Find out how and why a dragon has returned to the world > the dragon might only be a plot device to give him something to accomplish. Is the dragon an allegory for a relatable human experience? And if so is it the best available allegory? What happens that stops him, or that forces him out of his complacent life into one of danger? climate change makes his home uninhabitable, the second home is destroyed by fiends when the dragon appears to save him, > these might only be plot devices to force him out of complacency. And they're somewhat fantastical/unrelatable. Can the inciting incident arise from his or someone else's character? What must he overcome in order to restore normalness to his life? The ever-looming presence of the fiends and the atholian empire, Understand why the dragon is appearing to him. Learn how to break the seal on alchemy using dragonfire. defeat the enemy that killed his great grandfather. > more plot devices (in the absence of characters they are prone to sprout endlessly). Fiends and Empires let the MC's personality be hidden behind daring-do, and mean his internal-true motivations can be hidden by the urgent needs of external-false kingdoms. Could all this be personified into a convincing antagonist character?
(I quoted @evild4ve — but my response is directed to @Colum McClelland ) Luke didn't simply destroy the Empire or the Death Star, his antagonist had a face (though it was hidden) and a personality. Without Darth Vader, Luke would be only fighting against intangibles and abstractions. You need a recognizable antagonist, a person or a monster that represents whatever forces he's up against. Evil must take some form, like Gozur did in Ghostbusters.
To be fair, ima just continuing to write it as I have and then flesh it out on a second draft. Every character I feel has motivations but I agree I could maybe do a better job in the pacing of which the characters grow. Maybe my story is not meant to be a novel at least in the way I can write it but if I have it down perhaps i can convince someone else to write it lol There are other forces at work. King Mateusz most notably has found a way to manipulate the fiends and orchestrated the attack on Darius's home forcing the Snow Elf to flee. Why? Because he understands that to get the dragon out of its slumber that the beast must sense that Darius is in trouble. Mateusz needs to slay the beast and there's a reason for it. The warlock/succubus Lilith also appears to Darius on his journey but shapeshifted into another form on their first encounter so Darius does not yet know who she is and equally, she does not realize who he is but she has a suspicion. Whilst Darius does not reveal his reasoning for his journey to this stranger. He does mention that he wishes the world was rid of the scourge that is the fiends but doesn't know if that too makes him a monster. She asks questions rooted in philosophy whether one genocide would soothe the pain of another hinting that maybe she has doubts over her own actions, after their chat they eventually part ways. This scene takes place on Darius travels when he sees a house that has obviously been attacked by fiends and sees a dead family and a dead child in a crib. the old woman (succubus) is there along with a dead fiend of which can only speculate that the old woman killed the fiend in retaliation for it killing the child. Tho this is never told to Darius and he can only speculate how a frail woman killed a monster. The whole reasoning why the succubus went mad in the first place was because her own children were murdered and whilst she and the fiends are on the same side technically she could not allow such an atrocity to happen in front of her even if she was too late to stop it. This meeting will set up their final encounter when they meet moments before Darius unleashes the seal on alchemy and she appears again and asks him again for the reasoning of his journey. This time the answer Darius gives the answer she needed to hear that and she does not fight him. She accepts that she has gone mad and she stalls the fiends outside to give time to Darius to destroy the seal. this may seem anti-climatic but it is one of two endings as elsewhere Darius father along with the King in the west Tobias have gone to war with Mateusz to ensure that the Atholian forces are distracted whilst Darius travels to the alchemy stone. They are battling to finally contest Mateusz tyranny which has been allowed to go unopposed for decades. At this stage it is not known that the seal can be broken so for the Snow Elves it is a battle to the death. Either they die in battle or they win and get their revenge and thus freeing the eastern world but also knowing that it will be a short-won victory with the world dying. there is a huge powershift during the battle as Tobias and the Snow Elves are losing to insurmountable numbers but the tides turn when alchemy is unleashed and the snow elves get a huge upgrade to their fading fire magic. The biggest morale boost is when Darius flying the dragon enters the battle. The ending then is the brothers sieging the castle and slaying Mateusz in the end and the build-up to that.
Or it might be that Luke is really an 'imperilled family member'-type plot device, whose character arc is vestigial/unsatisfying/tokenistic but serves to underline the real protagonist's relatable moral quandaries: "would I destroy a planet to save my daughter and son from my employer?"; "would I cut off my son's hand to save his life?"; "would I sacrifice my life to save my son?" Darth Vader resembles the Emperor when he takes his mask off because he was the protagonist and his antagonist was himself. (So a bit eastern and Zeami-ish... like the Force) On this reading, there isn't any true character conflict between Luke and Darth Vader. "I want to blow up that planet" versus "I don't want you to" isn't fully explored in their dialogue and if anyone discussed it at length it would quickly become obvious how ridiculous it all is - they don't thrash out their differences as people. The flaw in the Death Star's design that lets the goodies win isn't externalizing a flaw in Darth Vader's character. And conversely Luke trusting in the force to fire the torpedo isn't character development - he's the same wooden and tedious person he was before except that his intellectual stance toward an imaginary thing in a fantasy world has reversed. A better fantasy novel would have been Darth Vader using the "I am your father" scene to express how proud he is of his son, and how much he loves him, and to explain that most of the terrible things he has done were only to protect him... and then Luke (lacking any convincing relationship with Obi Wan Kenobi or Yoda - two space-hoboes he has only spent a few minutes with) going over to the dark side. Just think how many sequels that might have prevented - not to mention the lasting damage the franchise has done to both film history and literature. So that's an outcome - the thread starts with a lull in motivation and now the OP is continuing to write. But that second draft where it starts to structure the story around characters - is the first draft. On the other point, of convincing someone else to write it, it's better if fantasy writers write their own stories and don't have the temptation of cynically charging people. There's never any shortage of fantasy paraphernalia and ideas, the only thing that's in limited supply is execution. So usually writers can start with execution and just select whatever fantasy elements they need from the surrounding culture.
I understand that. Not that it's necessarily the right thing to do, but I definitely understand the motivation. And really you're not wrong. Did you say this is your first story attempt? Yeah, it's probably best just to write, get in a lot of experience, and don't worry about things like plot or character arcs and all that. As I've said eslewhere on the board many times, I wrote for many years (decades actually) before I ever learned what a plot is or a character arc. And I definitely kept improving all that time, just from writing a lot. I think there's a certain amount of growth and learning that has to happen, from that kind of writing, before you're ready to work with plot and all the rest of it. And you won't just instantly understand what plot is because a couple of guys on the intertnet told you about it. It takes time and a good deal of reading about it before it can all sink in and you understand it well enough to be able to use it. In fact, on another forum once (it wasn't specifically about writing, but it had an Artist's Corner), there was a huge thread called something like That One Massive Project That Formed You as a Writer. Apparently everyone has had one, that they worked on for maybe a decade, and that saw them through from being a novice to understanding the underlying structures that go into professionl writing (or beginning to). I had mine—it was called The Dreaming, and I worked on it for over a decade. It was many years after that when I learned that story isn't just a bunch of cool things happening, there needs to be a structure to it. And honestly I'm glad I was able to just develop and grow as a writer, to find my voice and all kinds of other things, for a good long time before I tried to impose learned structure onto it all. I don't think I had a strong enough base to support all that suff until I had done all that writing. But now perhaps D4ve and I have planted the seeds. Maybe in some years they'll have grown into saplings that keep telling you 'Look into story structure!' 'Learn about plot and character arc' etc. And these days of course it's easy to look into—just a Google search away.
Wow D4ve, once again your insights are excellent, but perhaps a bit too advanced when trying to steer a beginner toward the light. My eyes glazed over trying to understand all that, partly due to the compressed nature of the ideas that I think need to be unpacked a bit slower, even for me (not that I'm all that advanced) EDIT—reading over it again it all makes sense, it was just hard to take in so much so fast.
Yea no experience in writing whatsoever. In fact, english literature was perhaps my weakest subject in school. I have the attention span of a goldfish. Instead of starting small, I try and create a Tolkien esque-world. I've only myself to blame lol
You went way beyond just the first movie here though, you're talking about all 3 trilogies. I only discussed the first movie, which is a far sight better than all the rest. And even if there are plot holes (there are) and problems with character arc (possibly?) in just that movie, it still gels as a warm and deeply enjoyable story. Ultimately there's a lot more than just clearly definable plot points and character arcs that go into making a story enjoyable, or even lovable, as Star Wars definitely is to me and millions of others. The story itself doesn't have to be perfect, in fact often the screenplays that look best on paper make for rather bland or uninspiring movies. But I'm not sure this is the place to talk about that, or that I'd really know how to explain it any better.
Followup—yes, in the entire trilogy of trilogies, the 'real protagonist' might be Anakin/Darth, but he was the antagonist in Star Wars (the movie). Lucas just decided to follow that Hollywood trend of making movies to explain the backstory of the villain, which began (in the popular culture anyway) with Wicked!, but that some of us know was actually kick-started by John Gardner with his amazing Grendel, the story of the monster from Beowulf as told by the monster himself. Obviously the real protagonist of Star Wars (the movie, later to be retroactively re-named Episode 4: A New Hope of a Gigantic Franchise) was Luke.
