Has this been done?

[Dragon_gal]

Tara and Jeremy are two very different children. Jeremy lives in a place called Zimbliloo where the snow is purple and the lava is green. one day someone goes bursting thro his door (literally!) with a scroll from the king. and so he goes of on his gallant quest meeting friends along the way to find the last dragon on mount fogbreath. Back on humble old earth Tara, an orphan, finds a dragon egg after the school bully dumps her and her bike in the lake. Tara and her friend Eve with newly hatched Glib run away to find a safe home for the dragon.

so how is it?

[Mercy]

Um...sounds okay, I guess. It sounds a bit cliche and a little disconnected/odd due to the mixture of realism and fantasy.

[Nyx]

It would be hard to pull off since orphans and dragons are a red alarm for cliche in Fantasy, but if you pull off the connection with Earth and somewhere else it could be good ^^

[Dragon_gal]

i know but my friend instied o the orphan thing and it meant she could run away easier.

[Mercy]

True, but there could be other ways. Parents that neglect her or that have to constantly work, etc.

[Carraka]

This hasn't specifically done before, but everything from dragons to orphans screams to me that it has. That does not help you, when it comes to people like me. But it might help you when it comes to people that don't care as much. -points at Shaun-

That being said, don't just do the orphan thing because it's easier. If you give her parents (and make them not total benevolent/cruel idiots), you can add a level of depth that most people don't expect in these stories. Look at the challenges that come from leaving family, people you know, etc. They might not be perfect parents, but you could give them defected personalities that stem from love.

And challenge yourself as a writer to come up with ways for her to run away. Don't rely on contrived plot to solve all your problems.

[Dragon_gal]

what about Jeremy's part?

[Dragon_gal]

thanks for the advice!

[Imelda]

Ok, don't have Jeremy come from a farm. :p Have him come from somewhere interesting, probably somewhere he really doesn't want to leave, just to add a bit of conflict. Also give him a really good reason for the king's scroll being given to him--but don't make it a prophecy.

I'd steer away from the 'last dragon'--make the dragon important in some other way. Not sure why. Ummm Naomi Novik had her special dragon be a special breed that's only supposed to belong to emperors, so when a Royal Navy captain gets hold of the egg they want it back because the captain isn't special enough. You see the kind of thing I mean. Put a different slant on it.

I'm liking that the dragon egg is on earth--transdimensional stuff is always fun. I'd REALLY avoid Tara being an orphan. Unless she's an orphan with like, a really awesome foster family like Teddy Lupin. :p Orphans are often enough to make people stop reading straight away, as are dragons and prophecy. We fantasy writers have a hard life.

Glib is an awesome name for a dragon.

Of course, if you and your friend are just writing this for fun, then write your story exactly how you want. If you have some higher aim for this, or want say, people online to read it and not rip new holes in your body, then I'd consider adjusting things to make it less cliche. Your story, as far as I'm aware, hasn't been done exactly, but it's chopped up bits of many fantasy novels. Whatever you do, HAVE FUN writing it.

[Syd Skydreamer]

Here's a better idea:
Karina and Shin are siblings growing up in the household of the noble Kaen family. Karina plans on becoming a powerful archmage, whiles Shin intends on being a Knight. However for some mysterious reason, Shin slays Karina and goes on to become a Knight Captain. Karina is ressurected by her need for vengeance and comes back in the form of the necromancer Sasira, who leads an army of undead to destroy the world. Now Shin has to confront Sasira because he is the only one who can, but how is he going to do so knowing it is his dead sister's spirit he has to face?

[Dragon_gal]

hmm... she must then be a foster child... and wait- when did i say jeremy lived at a farm? and he doesn't want to leave any way, not with snow colder then the Arctic ocean.

[Syd Skydreamer]

Snow colder than an Artic ocean? That must be tough...
Why not a desert whiles you're at it?

[Dragon_gal]

there is one already... and a river of lava Zimbliloo is vast

[Dragon_gal]

oh, and the coldest mountain in zimbliloo next to the desert. now it only needs a sea

[Syd Skydreamer]

The Sea of Tranquility?

[Majyk]

I agree with what Imelda and Carr said.
Totally don't do the "last dragon" bit. Maybe it could be that the dragons are hiding from the humans or something, so when they realize that an egg has been found by Tara, that causes a lot of commotion.

Or something better that would take more than two minutes to think of :p


I love dragons, so if you could pull off a story with them that wasn't cliché, that'd be awesome. My plots with dragons have yet to work xD

[Dragon_gal]

Ok... how about the last dragon of the palace died and it is the one who lights the fires and the king is to lazy to get another one himself so he sends jeremy to get one, not knowing the risk

[Dragon_gal]

oh, and the sea will not come in until possibly a sequel.

[Majyk]

I suppose... Although if there were a more important reason, that might be better. Like... I don't know. Just something along with lighting the fire, you know?

[And try not to double post. Use the handy EDIT button instead ^.^ ]

[Lykaios]

If you find dragons too hard you could always use another mythical creature?

*Roughts around brain* Ahah!

Griffins are cool?

But yeah, this story sound fun and different.

I like the randomness element with the green lava etc. :D

Are you going to post some here when you write it?

[Imelda]

OI I GOT GRIFFINS FIRST.

:p

And I was just saying, don't have him from a farm. :p

Syd, you're weird ...

[Dragon_gal]

no, must be dragons! and will post some

[blue phoenix]

My view:
Don't make the girl and orphan. Maybe the boy should be a servant of the king, if you use the whole light fires thing. There aren't enough problems in the story, I think you should make a bad guy, how about the king? And if you pull it off and it's written well, it will be just as good as any other published story :D.

[Dragon_gal]

bad guys-
Squire- try's to complete quest before jeremy to get powers for less the good deeds
Sister Judy- Currently runs orphanage, knows about Zimbliloo and how to get there from earth. (if tara isent an orphan in book Judy will be someone hired by her obnoxious parents to take care of her.)

[phobophile]

everything involving fantasy novels is cliche'. the basic archetype is good prevailing over evil. kill off your hero and really piss off everyone. that sounds great. anybody can write fantasy.

[Danny]

everything involving fantasy novels is cliche'. the basic archetype is good prevailing over evil. kill off your hero and really piss off everyone. that sounds great. anybody can write fantasy.

Not tue at all, It takes a very calculated person to write Fantasy as there can be many twists and plots.
Not all Fantasy is cliche.

Danny

[phobophile]

anyone can come up with twists and plots. doesnt take a good writer to do that.

[Danny]

anyone can come up with twists and plots. doesnt take a good writer to do that.

No, but It does take a good writer to turn those twists and plots Into something that captivates reader's.

Danny

[phobophile]

No, but It does take a good writer to turn those twists and plots Into something that captivates reader's.

Danny

yes, but all the twists and plots in fantasy novels have been based around the same archetypes.

[Imelda]

Phobo, you do realise there are only seven plots, and a finite number of archetypes, don't you? After the s+s glut a couple of decades ago, fantasy just became more of a target for yelling about it than any other genre.

[phobophile]

what are those plot "types?" all seven please. their being an infinite number of archetypes has nothing to do with my statement. i said that they use the same archetypes. i should have put it in a more simple way i suppose. maybe their is a reason that fantasy became a perfect target for harassment..

[Imelda]

Ok, first: don't insult me. I understand what you said, probably more than you do yourself, since your last post was littered with spelling mistakes, inaccuracies, and contradictions.

I don't know the seven plot types offhand, but there's a book called 'The Seven Plots' or something. It's very famous. It's also very big. It also covers the archetypes. You'd probably do well to read it and educate yourself.

[Shadow]

Fantasy is steadily becoming more cliche and yes, it's because people generally use the same plot twists etc. But not all of it is, though. However, I find myself incapable of writing a fantasy that isn't cliche, so I gave in.

[Imelda]

Fantasy is steadily becoming more cliche

Do you actually have any evidence for that? In the last year or so I've actually seen an explosion of 'different' fantasy. The Lies Of Locke Lamora defies catergorisation. Garth Nix's Keys to the Kingdom series concerns an ordinary boy raised to something he's not too keen about, but what he's raised to is something completely outside what previous fantasy's done. Neil Gaiman, of course, is churning out stuff that in no way can be described as cliche, and he's only gathering more fans with time.

In fact, the only 'cliche' things that are on the rise right now are Eragon and Twilight, and I don't see them lasting at all.

[Shadow]

First: I go to the Waterstones and see loads of stuff like farmboys suddenly becoming more powerful, Tolkien-elves and so on and so forth. If you read back, you'll notice I said not all new books are cliche, just that many of them are.

Secondly, the thing is that Eragon and Twilight ARE lasting. If you ask someone in a local bookstore, many of them will have heard of Eragon and Twilight (and/or they're authors) but nothing of Gaiman or Nyx (Nyx is quite popular, but he's not mainstream like Eragon and Twilight).

[Andy]

Secondly, the thing is that Eragon and Twilight ARE lasting. If you ask someone in a local bookstore, many of them will have heard of Eragon and Twilight
I think she meant in the long run. As in, in 30 years, will people still know about it and will it be popular? Is it a fad?

LOTR is lasting. 1984 is lasting. Since there's nothing really profound about Eragon that sets it apart from other books in this period, I don't think it will last. Nothing makes it stand out in the pile.

[Shadow]

Ah, in the long-run, no it won't. There'll be so many similar to it in ten years. Even Tolkien may not be as renowned in say ten years.

[Andy]

He will, because even if others write similar stories, he was the first. :)

[phobophile]

I think she meant in the long run. As in, in 30 years, will people still know about it and will it be popular? Is it a fad?

LOTR is lasting. 1984 is lasting. Since there's nothing really profound about Eragon that sets it apart from other books in this period, I don't think it will last. Nothing makes it stand out in the pile.

you wont hear this much...i agree. pretty much all fantasies will not be remembered other than by the select few that read them. post script- im ashamed that my state had the author of eragon come out of it. i assure you, most dont like him around here.

[Shadow]

He will, because even if others write similar stories, he was the first. :)

True, he pioneered a new version of Fantasy, but what I'm saying is someone else could pioneer it within the next few years. For example, they could bring back gnomes, but have them tall, like what Tolkien did to elves. GRRM tried (and failed) to do a copy of Tolkien's style but with a political side to it, rather than a massive war like with almost all other fantasy books. Same with Tom Lloyd, but I don't think anyone's heard of him besides me on this site.

[Carraka]

I disagree with you, Shadow.

GRRM has zero similarities with Tolkien. They both wrote fantasy, and that's about it. I'd ask you to name one similarity, but one similarity does not make him a Tolkien-copier. But let me ask you anyway: What made you think GRRM was even remotely connected with Tolkien, given you read less than twenty pages?

I entirely encourage you to respond, because I'm also curious. When I worship something, I also try to be as informed about it as possible.

[Shadow]

Already reponded to this and you and Imelda are going to deny this again, but oh well: GRRM is a Tolkien-wannabe. He tries to write in the same style as Tolkien (overload it with descriptions and an extensive vocabulary) but whereas Tolkien made it flow and still made you still want to read on, GRRM makes it dull and boring and drags on too much (as I said before, Tolkien flowed whereas GRRM dragged). I wasn't drawn into the storyline at all. The first part of A Game of Thrones was promising to me, but it just ended up being the same thing cliche authors start with these days: important people being attacked by some evil force. Then I just lost it with all the information he was trying to shove down our throats in the next say 15-20 pages.

[Carraka]

... it isn't about important people being attacked by an evil force. That's only one storyline, and it is prominent in the prologue, but almost nowhere else in the entire book. If you are unamused by icy zombies ... (actually, I'm not amused with them either,) then there's plenty else to amuse you like, I dunno, the main story? I'm actually a bit confused about your description, because it seems to me that if you only read the beginning part, you would think it was all about icy zombies, but if you read further and further, it would become more and more obvious that it is not about icy zombies at all.

Royce and folk in the prologue aren't really important, but sure. They were characters. I guess that makes them important people being attacked by an evil force.

Now, just because I have zero time to do this and therefore am committing myself to staying up late into the morning, I shall now scan the entire prologue of Game of Thrones for descriptions and extensive vocabulary, whatever that may mean:

hackles
implacable
supple
vocation
sable
mulled
nicked
acquiescence
vantage
sentinel
vaulting
translucent

I'm pretty confident that you would know all of these words, but I suppose someone who doesn't would be checking the dictionary a lot. I admit that would be distracting, although not as distracting as the books that actually use words like "chthonic" in a throw-away fashion.

I'll do the first eleven pages of Fellowship now:

unobtrusive
inimitable
estrangement
genealogical
ere
reckoning
moors
ravening
doughty
abode
ramifying
immemorial
imbibed
antiquity
pre-eminent
muster and moot
nominal
portended

I understood less of the Fellowship, but I will attribute that to the fact that I have not read the beginning chapters seven times, and that the book comes from a different country and different era. To me, neither were overkill on the vocabulary, and although Fellowship would be slightly more distracting, I have this handy (or not) habit of skipping words I don't know without even realizing it.

Concerning description: If we define description as paragraphs where there are no character interaction (with environment or another character), then within these eleven pages, GRRM has, at most, a page of description, and Tolkien has, within these eleven pages, all eleven pages. Similar? Is someone imitating Tolkien? No.

But we do differ on whether GRRM's one page of "description" can hold your attention, and apparently it cannot. However, GRRM and Tolkien are still different. GRRM's one page of description concerned: Will's level of experience with rangings, premonitions with the forest, Royce's backstory/personality/appearance.

Tolkien, on the other hand ... well, you can read it for yourself, really. Hobbits and pipeweed, yes? It is interesting, though less relevant.

So we differ on what holds attention, but I also want to point out that these two styles seem to be in no way similar. GRRM does not talk about the origin of the Night's Watch, accompanying traditions, and how it is viewed by society. Tolkien does not have dialogue or bloodshed and does not write from the point of view of one character. GRRM does not reference observations kept in the family of Butterbur, or at all really talk about the seven or eight greater Houses of Westeros. Tolkien does not use fragments, or the word "tit". Even as I fail to see how one book is less entertaining than the other, I also fail to see any similarities in their writing style that make one an imitation of the other. Both would imitate each other very poorly indeed.

--

The one point I grant you is that the beginning introduction of characters is very confusing, mostly because I remember being confused also. I also remember reading far enough to finally get hooked, then get addicted, destroyed, built up again, ripped apart, and converted. I don't know if Tolkien also introduces twenty important characters of the story in the first thirty pages, though. It's possible that's another similarity. -sigh- ... right.

In conclusion, I still hate you, and you've made one legitimate point, which possibly could be overcome if you just kept reading, but then again ... I've read the reviews on Amazon, and there are some people who gave it one-star because they just weren't interested. There wasn't a proper reason, but something didn't click. Maybe you are one of those people, in which case I weep for you (literally -- actually, it should be wept -- about fifteen minutes after you first told me GRRM sucked, I left the house to go to lunch with my parents. In the middle of the restaurant, I broke out in tears. I feel a bit foolish telling you about that, but this is a true story, so I meant it literally,) in which case I weep for you, will ask you to make another attempt in several years, when it's possible that your outlook/view/tastes whatever have changed enough to allow to understand that GRRM is so far from Tolkien that it is inconceivable that they could be in the same sentence ... except they just were, and that GRRM represents an entirely different type of fantasy that should be read by anyone with any interest in fantasy. But I won't press you to love GRRM anymore. I don't think I ever did, but if I ever did, I'll stop doing it.

If you don't want to read a Tolkien imitation, don't read The Sword of Shannara. I won't talk about this other book that we rip at often for being similar to Tolkien, mostly because that book is less of a rip-off than this book.

[Shadow]

I know you're gonna now yell at me, "Ha, can't come up with an argument, I win!" but I can't be bothered to read through all that. Sufficed to say, I didn't enjoy the book, I almost fell asleep whilst reading it, whereas with Tolkien I wanted to keep on reading. However, I'm not saying I like Tolkien's writings. I thought they were good, but I don't particularly like them, as they pioneered fantasy to be what it is today and I think pre-Tolkien fantasy is better than modern fantasy. My favourite author is Terry Pratchett and that's all I'll say on the matter. You read your books, I read mine, I can't change that, not going to try.

[Carraka]

... I'd like someone else to pipe up now and say they read the whole thing, because I sacrificed sleep and today's school day to make it. I guess I was writing more for myself than for you, but hopefully a few other people read it and aren't misled into thinking that GRRM is supposed to be like Tolkien.

I like Pratchett.

EDIT: Thank you, Imelda. I hope I convinced you that Tolkien and GRRM are two sides of two different coins from two different countries from two different centuries from two different universes!

Okay, maybe they can be from the same universe.

[phobophile]

Ok, first: don't insult me. I understand what you said, probably more than you do yourself, since your last post was littered with spelling mistakes, inaccuracies, and contradictions.

I don't know the seven plot types offhand, but there's a book called 'The Seven Plots' or something. It's very famous. It's also very big. It also covers the archetypes. You'd probably do well to read it and educate yourself.

dont be pretentious. i didnt think you knew them. i figured it was for show. you would probably do well to not be a pretentious fog-breather. Lastly: dont insult me.