Writing a fantasy book series

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Try writing some short story before you commit to some huge project. Just to see if your writing is good enough.
 
Try writing some short story before you commit to some huge project. Just to see if your writing is good enough.

The rap against short stories is they don't sell anymore. But I agree with you: that's no reason not to write them. You have to master small, single compositions before taking on a complex project with multiple threads like a novel. Unless you're J. K. Rowling, and a whole seven-volume epic just writes itself in your head. None of us is J. K. Rowling.
 
Ugh, why does all come down to money? Short stories are way better place to start as a writer that a big novel. Craftsmanship first, and perhaps a hobby can someday become a profession.

Admittedly there are lots of writers that earn shitload of money despite the fact they don't know a thing about writing...
 
Ugh, why does all come down to money? Short stories are way better place to start as a writer that a big novel. Craftsmanship first, and perhaps a hobby can someday become a profession.

Admittedly there are lots of writers that earn shitload of money despite the fact they don't know a thing about writing...

Did i say i was doing this for money? if i did then it was by accident, i just take this as a hobby, and to put my ideas on paper is what i like to do.
To tell the truth, i started the whole writing thing because i love to RP, every day i imagine a story. And after few years of RP it just crossed my mind why not trying to write it down, maybe people would love it, maybe someone would like to evolve it to the next level, unlike me who just takes his day with imagining things alone in the living room, which suddenly becomes a whole new world.

Maybe a short story is a good idea to start with, but i don't know, usually my imaginations somehow connected to one.

Oh and forgot to mention one youtuber wanted to be in my book after i spreaded the idea around she wanted to be a character there, i know that information seems to be irrelevant, but the idea of the whole book became really popular all the sudden. And i have to say i love reading each replay here, you are helping me so much.

*if you are interested to know about who i was talking about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoaOs-b5sx4
 
Did i say i was doing this for money? if i did then it was by accident, i just take this as a hobby, and to put my ideas on paper is what i like to do.
That's how I understood your situation, I was just surprised guys began to think in financial terms.
 
I'm not a writer. But I think there are a lot of very bad and very popular authors out there like Guy just pointed out. So don't try to be like them.

One aspect I personally value from good literature is the ability to convey or describe complex situations with elaborate ramifications in only the sufficient and necessary words to do so. Don't go overboard and don't add filling just to make your work longer. Don't ramble, make every word count. The ramifications will unleash in the reader's mind as a result of good writing.

A master of this is Jorge Luis Borges (also a master of many other things). A 15 pages long short story by Borges is longer, wider, deeper and more transcendental than anything most writers out there could achieve in 100 pages. Authors master, bend and dominate language in absurdly powerful ways. Of course you can't be Borges and should not try, but learn from him.

I was surprised to hear you say there's no word for honor in your language (no idea which it is) but all languages are equipotent: they all can potentially represent the same concepts. So if there's not one word, use two. Or use another one. Or introduce a character with the traits of honor you like and name honor after him. Some authors are notorious for introducing their own words... And it works! You don't always have to be obvious, make the reader think a little.

I'm a reader though, not a writer. But I thought I'd share part of what I think makes an author worth reading.
 
@eliharel

I'll take the easy one first. Even if Tolkien were not a genius, he devoted his life as totally as anyone ever could to the study of languages and early English literature. He wrote with a high purpose and great plan. Learn from him, then do not imitate him. If you are not the next Tolkien, attempting to write like he did will merely show that you are not.

OK, my opinion of G. R. R. Martin is controversial and probably not welcome here. But my opinion is that he is not merely not a good writer; he is a truly bad one. He embarked on A Song of Ice and Fire without any idea how to sustain a work of significant scope and length. He has no ability to work with editors or edit his own work. His work has no foundation in any theory of dramatic literature, nor does he write to make any kind of point. Criticisms that he makes a fetish of violence and violent sex are misplaced: the truth is he has no ability to do that well enough to be criticized for it; he has no real ability to characterize or portray the thoughts or passions of real people. They are only little clockworks, like the intro to HBO's Game of Thrones. There is nothing about his work that anybody should seek to read with the intention of learning from or following.

All this is by now far off topic, except as it may serve as advice not to start one's literary career by attempting to compose an epic. There is much of the writer's craft and trade to learn before doing so.

Finally, I found someone else who doesn't much care for Game of Thrones. I forced myself through the first and second season of the show without much care and I read half of the first book before giving up and deciding to read the Witcher books instead. Say what you will of the english translations for those, I enjoyed them much more.

OT: I am actually a GM for a RP group myself and can relate to wanting to tell your story. I can't really offer any advice as it is not my forte but I wish you the best of luck @TheWhiteBleidd
 
I'm not a writer. But I think there are a lot of very bad and very popular authors out there like Guy just pointed out. So don't try to be like them.

One aspect I personally value from good literature is the ability to convey or describe complex situations with elaborate ramifications in only the sufficient and necessary words to do so. Don't go overboard and don't add filling just to make your work longer. Don't ramble, make every word count. The ramifications will unleash in the reader's mind as a result of good writing.

A master of this is Jorge Luis Borges (also a master of many other things). A 15 pages long short story by Borges is longer, wider, deeper and more transcendental than anything most writers out there could achieve in 100 pages. Authors master, bend and dominate language in absurdly powerful ways. Of course you can't be Borges and should not try, but learn from him.

I was surprised to hear you say there's no word for honor in your language (no idea which it is) but all languages are equipotent: they all can potentially represent the same concepts. So if there's not one word, use two. Or use another one. Or introduce a character with the traits of honor you like and name honor after him. Some authors are notorious for introducing their own words... And it works! You don't always have to be obvious, make the reader think a little.

I'm a reader though, not a writer. But I thought I'd share part of what I think makes an author worth reading.

I do write notes from time to time in my native language (I can't really tell where i from for security sake) so it could be easier to remember, and then transform the notes into one chapter.
I'm trying not to copy anyone, but i do wish to learn from people, i'm trying my best so i decided to make few short stories that are supposed to represent the origin story of few characters from the book itself.
That way, i'm also practicing my writing skills through short stories and also progressing the book itself.

OT: I am actually a GM for a RP group myself and can relate to wanting to tell your story. I can't really offer any advice as it is not my forte but I wish you the best of luck @TheWhiteBleidd

Well first of all, thank you
Second, what means OT?



Now unrelated question, because it may seem to be really awkward: Is it worth reading the witcher series? because i never got the chance to do so...

Oh one last thing, i may put the short stories afterwards here, and could criticize me later on, if you want of course...
 
Well first of all, thank you
Second, what means OT?



Now unrelated question, because it may seem to be really awkward: Is it worth reading the witcher series? because i never got the chance to do so...

Oh one last thing, i may put the short stories afterwards here, and could criticize me later on, if you want of course...

It means "on topic."

As for the Witcher books I recommend them as a fan of the series. The English translations gets a bit of beef around here but I find them enjoyable.
 
@TheWhiteBleidd

The witcher saga is good, period. But the English translation is so bland you would be missing a huge portion of it, based on subtle language inflections.

Since the events themselves are interesting, I suppose for that reason alone it does not matter what translation you read. But a good translation really shows Sapkowski's writing skills, which I suppose is something you'd be interested in.

@vincentdante

I think OT actually means "Off-Topic".
 
@TheWhiteBleidd

The witcher saga is good, period. But the English translation is so bland you would be missing a huge portion of it, based on subtle language inflections.

Since the events themselves are interesting, I suppose for that reason alone it does not matter what translation you read. But a good translation really shows Sapkowski's writing skills, which I suppose is something you'd be interested in.

What about Russian translation? (Just one of the languages i know) any opinion about that?
 
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Hello, so i guess the title says it all...you probably not interested because i'm not a professional write like the witcher series writer, but i found it interesting to try, i already had several ideas, which is why i said "series" on the title, currently i have planned a trilogy, but i probably will have more later on in the progress, anyway already begun writing it all, trying to put mature, choices in it, consequences etc...
I already made a huge progress and i boosted it so i could finish the first one before the end of the summer.

I'm probably boring you all, and you're not interested in the whole written above. :sad:

The community here is huge i must say, and i wanted to share this for a bit, maybe someone will be interested in this. :hmm:

Just a little note, i don't know why i'm writing this right now, i posted a thread about this on AJSA, some people seemed to be thrilled with my ideas and the whole book thing, the idea became a little popular and they wanted to help me, which is why i'm able now to boost this book so quick that after few full days i may even finish it, or at least the draft version of it.
I hope the community is approving this whole thread, because it doesn't really relate to the witcher although it inspired me a bit, but i hope the community is very welcoming.
Thank you for reading and your time, if you have any questions about this project, let me know, and i'll do my best to answer them.

You seem to be in love with the book you're writing and with your projects. Keep going and if you want to share anything, I'd be glad to read and give you my humble feedback.
By the way: have you heard about this site:

http://authonomy.com/

Maybe it's the right thing for you.
Warm regards!
 
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Sorry, I had to write another post. It's just that it has nothing to do with the last one. Not repeating this.

When I was a teenager I used to write. Then I became and adult and when I turned 20, all matured and wise, I decided to stop writing.

But now after finishing TW 2 for the second time and not wanting to play anything else (nothing seems worthy, but maybe I'll give Kotor a try), I just felt this urge to write again. I put my son to sleep and I try to write. It's probably just a 'fever' and I hope it will pass soon but... well, at least I'm having fun.

So. Can anyone read the paragraphs below and tell me if they're any good? I did my best to translate them into English.
It's the opening of the third chapter of this 'something' I'm writing in my native language. It's a little bit inspired in a short story by Jorge Luis Borges and a little bit inspired in that scene from the Cyberpunk 2077's trailer (you know, the woman calmly waiting to be shot, as if she were in a trance).

I hope I'm not being inappropriate, but I'd like to share it with someone. I don't dream to become a writer or anything. But any feedback would be nice. Even English corrections would be nice, really. I know this is not Lang 8,but that's the last time I ask something like this, promise.
 
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@tiadelamare
Good start :)

I'll take the liberty of pulling apart one of your sentences, just to show what Volsung meant about saying more with fewer words.

"An eagle seemed to be cutting the gray sky, in which there were red fissures that sometimes would hid behind dark and heavy clouds."

Great image. Now see what it looks like, if we cut the count in half or so. I'm going to think out loud for a while. Skip ahead to the end if you want to see what came of doing so.

"Seemed to" is good if you are in the way of setting up something that could be an illusion, and the question "is it an illusion?" is an important one. But I don't think that's what you're after. You're after an image that is as real as can be, at the time your character sees it. If you cut the "seemed to", you get a twofer: you can get rid of the progressive verb "be cutting". Maybe some writers can use progressive verbs with power. I can't, I hate them, I avoid them at all costs. (You notice, I also don't give a damn for the rule that says "no comma splices".)

Change that first phrase to "An eagle cut the gray sky", then see what that's done for us. Read it out loud. Good writing sounds good when you speak it and hear it. "An EA-gle CUT/the GRAY SKY". It's a start, anyway. It flows, the accents fall on the power words, but you can tell there's a hard break with spit coming out at "cut the". Maybe we want that; it makes "cut" strong. Or maybe we can do something different.

This is what a "thesaurus" is for. English is a hybrid tongue, and it has many words that mean almost the same thing. Shakespeare exploited the hell out of this. There's a good thesaurus for American online at http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/ Look up "cut", and select "cut (verb)". The first definition is the sense we want.
to penetrate with a sharp edge (as a knife) <I cut my hand on a piece of broken glass>
Synonyms gash, incise, rip, shear, slash, slice, slit
Related Words crosscut, hacksaw, saw, scissor; cleave, rive, split; pierce, stab; bruise, butcher, hack, haggle, lacerate, mangle; rend, tear; carve, chip, chisel, notch; anatomize, dissect, section; chop, dice, mince; amputate, cut off, sever
Seeing these, I realize that I'd better look closely at just how that eagle is flying. Gash, incise, rip? I don't think so. Shear? Maybe. Let's hold on to "sheared". Slash? No, the way a falcon flies would slash the sky. But not an eagle. Slice? That's what I was thinking when I started, but "sliced", which ends in a hard "d", almost a "t", scans more poorly than "cut": too long, same break, but the stretched-out word before the break is now weaker. Slit, saw, cleave, rive, now we're getting silly. But "sheared" is not a bad start. Now we have "An eagle cut the sky" and "an eagle sheared the sky". Keep them both; see how they fit with the rest of the sentence.

"In which there were red fissures". Six words, four of them are glue. The "red fissures" are important. The rest of them make the sentence well constructed -- if you're writing a business letter or a technical brief -- but you're not. Let's see if we can glue the red fissures to the eagle's sky with one word. English does this with relative pronouns: who, that, which, when, where (there are others; don't ask me if I care, because I don't). So "where red fissures". Not bad; the word count is down to three, and it has two more "r" sounds echoing the crucial "r" of "red".

Here's a point where you have to observe grammar, or you'll confuse your reader. A relative pronoun like "where" introduces a dependent clause, and dependent clauses can be "restrictive" or not. This is not restrictive: we're describing a sky that is all red fissures hiding behind clouds, that an eagle shears with its wings. A comma indicates that the dependent clause is not restrictive. "An eagle sheared the sky, where red fissures..." As a bonus, we can now make a decision between "cut" and "sheared". "Where red fissures" has many "r" and "sh" sounds, as does "sheared". So we'll go with "sheared", unless something else tells us not to.

The red fissures are hidden behind clouds. "Sometimes would hide" is awkward, though. It's a verb phrase in the conditional tense: while not so helplessly weak as the progressive, it still expresses no immediacy. This is a vivid scene that impresses itself immediately on the reader's eye; there's no room for a conditional, or a word "sometimes" that's as long as any two other words in the sentence. Here we are going to have to look further for a different way to convey that image. But in so doing, we don't want to lose "sheared the sky, where red fissures".

A simple answer is, go back to the "cut" metaphor from the start of the sentence. The eagle's wings "cut" the sky; the red fissures "cut" the clouds, and if you look ahead toward the end of the narrative, there's a "cut" coming up. And we have a supply of synonyms for "cut" on hand. How about "slashed"? Maybe we're about to overdo the alliteration, but we have another "sh", and an "sl" to go with the "cl" of "clouds". "Where red fissures slashed (the something) clouds".

How shall we describe the clouds? "Dark" and "gray" are very descriptive of clouds. But unless they're fluffy My Little Pony cumulus clouds or wispy up where the spy planes fly cirrus clouds, clouds are mostly dark and gray already. If this is an "apocalyptic" sky, it's going to be around sunset or sunrise, and it's going to look something like this:



Those clouds are, well, black, and they're also (big word ahead) portentous. Your description should create an image that stays with the reader all the way to your climax. I've got patience for just one stab at this, so I'm going to say night is coming, and when night comes poetically, it "falls". "Black clouds of night". "Black clouds of falling night." "Black clouds of fast-falling night", if we want to go full Homeric mode. "Black clouds of the night to come". Too many words, my dear Guy, too many words. If it's night, of course they're black.

Now put the whole thing together, run it up the flagpole, and see if anybody salutes.

"An eagle sheared the sky, where red fissures slashed the clouds of falling night."

Cut the word count from 24 to 14, cut the syllable count from 30 to 17, cut the glue words from at least 11 to 5. Almost every word is alliterative and at least somewhat suitable, and it reads without bouncing like a Jeep on a washed-out road. It should at least win a Bulwer-Lytton prize for worst opening sentence of a novel :)

Keep writing. Don't let my nitpicking or bad example discourage you.
 
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nor does he [G. R. R. Martin] write to make any kind of point

That's my feeling exactly. I don't understand what his point is really. May be because he has none? He probably attempts to belong to the fantasy realism genre (rather than high fantasy one), but somehow he fails with that, but I can't exactly formulate how.
 
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That's my feeling exactly. I don't understand what his point is really. May be because he has none? He probably attempts to belong to the fantasy realism genre (rather than high fantasy one), but somehow he fails with that, but I can't exactly formulate how.

He has said he was inspired by the Wars of the Roses and The Accursed Kings (which tells of the French houses of Capet and Valois). These may be good history, but the task of making drama of the often-pointless cruelty of the Wars of the Roses has defeated far better writers than he.
 
@TheWhiteBleidd
But a good translation really shows Sapkowski's writing skills, which I suppose is something you'd be interested in.
I agree with you, of course, but i have something to add: good writing skills does not only mean the way the writer express something. It's the plot too, the way he builds up the story. And this can't be ruined by the translation.

She was walking through an endless, desert plain. An eagle seemed to be cutting the gray sky, in which there were red fissures that sometimes would hid behind dark and heavy clouds. That was an apocalyptic sky, something that frightened and fascinated humans for generations. The eagle could see her walking slowly - her long white dress stirred by the cold wind. Far away, miles from where she was, there was a magnificent building. It was the Parthenon - untouched by the time and atop a high hill. She knew she had to get there and it was a long walk - miles of dark land and icy wind. But three steps later she was already inside the building, which now was not the Parthenon anymore, but a maze made of big gray stones with endless corridors, galleries and courtyards. She knew where she was now and she walked for a long time within those corridors until she found the creature. She wasn't afraid - or at least the fear inside her seemed paralyzed.

"Asterion", she babbled . He turned to her and stared at her eyes; he was there to free her from all evil. He slowly approached her, beating his hooves against the cold floor in a slow and heavy rhythm. He raised his ax with both hands. She was calm. She saw the iron shining against the moonlight and found it beautiful. She closed her eyes, waiting.

She woke up. She looked at Mateo and he was watching her.
“You were dreaming , weren't you”?, he asked.
“I've just died in a dream”.
“How is it to die in a dream?”


I can't express myself well in English, but i 'll try:

You make me see every image while i read this, which is what counts in such a small piece. At the first paragraph though, i think you were a bit hasty. Too many images in a few seconds. The mind doesn't have the time to adjust, your text does not have the space to breath.
Here "She knew where she was now and she walked for a long time within those corridors until she found the creature." you gave us your best card too soon, too easy. Let us walk a bit longer in the labyrinth, let us feel her fear or amazement. Not in too many words, just a line or two

The next paragraph is way better. You 're not hasty there, you *are* in the scene. I, as a reader, am too. I see his eyes, his axe, i can hear the sound his hooves make... Her feelings are strange, i thought "she is calm?", which is a good thing for what you were doing there. Well done

Don't stop writing. I once read a full-time writer's article (some can be very helpful). She was saying "write; write for your life". I understand that. If i stop writing for very long (a month is very long time) i start feeling worse and worse. When i write i am well. It's so simple.
 
@tiadelamare: That is indeed a very short fragment, too short to say anything noteworthy, at least for me :) I won't even try to discuss English stuff, I don't know or feel the language like a literary man. Guy seems like the right guy (yup :p) for that. And I agree with what he posted, although cutting down the number of words or just simplifying your sentences might not be desirable in all situations. It all depends on the effect you want to achieve. How your sentences are constructed impacts the flow of the narrative; it takes experience to manipulate it the way you want it. But usually it's a good idea to be economic with your words.

I also want to point out and stress what Guy has mentioned: try to read what you've written aloud, or better yet have someone else do it for you. That's actually one of neat little tricks writers use to verify their work. The sentences should flow smoothly and have a distinct rhythm. If you stumble, if two words are hard to pronounce when next to each other, if you break the rhythm - you'd best rewrite the sentence. The same goes to whole paragraphs. All has to flow naturally.

The rhythm is very important when telling a story, and a thing that's often omitted, But it's one of main reasons why in some books you read and re-read whole sections just to understand what the author has written.
 
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