In all seriousness ...

One of the stories I'm working on right now is Galactic Defenders. The story is about a bunch of aliens on this planet called Thymria who have powers. Although they don't start out as weaklings and basically don't get too much stronger thoughout the course of the story, they get new powers and have a lot of weaknesses.

For example, each character has only one of eight elements: fire, water, lightning, healing, life, purity, nature, and divine. Each have their own weaknesses. Fire is beaten by water, which is beaten by lightning, which is blocked by earth, which is part of nature and so on. Healers and purifiers have almost no offensive powers. Divines' powers depend partly on their personality, which the main divine character needs to work on, and those with the power of life become drained after every attack.

In addition, when these guys come to Earth, their powers are incredibly weakened because Earth is polluted. For example, the water fighter's powers is almost half his original strength and same with the nature fighter.

I think it's how you manipulate the characters that decides whether they're good or not.

Or you could just write realistic stories to avoid all the trouble. But then you get overzealous female writers who make their girl character invincible. Hmm ... there's no getting out of it ...

Mind you, say you had an all-powerful person, wouldn't it be kind-of interesting to see how crazy they become due to no restrictions. Just an idea...

SeromKimwhatever, you might want to consider changing the lightning element to electricity. Making lightning an element is like making 'waterfall' or 'cloud' or 'landslide' or 'cheesecake' an element. Just too narrow, you know? And in your list of 8, you excluded earth, so would that make 9 elements? You idea sounds like it's trying to be a video game. Or a cartoon on toonami where they feature kids with ultra powers flying around in cool poses. Might want to watch that.

It's not like that. I can't describe it clearly and "earth" is "nature," it's not a separate element. I call electricity lightning, so it's just the way I say it. And, uh, it's not really a videogame. You'll have to read it to see what I'm trying to make it about? Besides, these guys are aliens and don't even know what "love" is.

The five elements in Chinese philosophy are Earth, Water, Fire, Metal and Wood.

In Japan there's also Void.

So I don't think that having lightning as an element is that strange. After all, how many people in the average fantasy story are going to even have a concept of electricity? Lightning's the only time they'd see it unless it was a magic user hurling bolts of the stuff at them.

Oh yeah. You can tell it's 8am here. :)

Ambient cheesecake. That would be pretty sweet. Maybe you should ask harry & David if they sell it in gift baskets :)

One of the Greek Philosophers didn't even have those elements. He had three paired categories, under which everything else could fall.

Writing, fantasy especially, is about SETTING limits, not limiting yourself arbitrarily.

I try. *shrug*

In truth I'm just an advocate for GOOD writing. Cliche can be good, too, it's just that you have to really think about it when you engage with a cliche. My own writing has some in them, as I'm sure Llcorp would tell you. I frequently use cliche character types, particularly concerning certain warrior tropes. But I make the CHOICE to do that, knowing that I'm doing it. Fingers crossed I've got what it takes to keep people interested.

You ever read any of my stories, Rose?

Er, i mean, what would you have me read?

Er, i mean, what would you have me read?

Oh, everything!

I'd recommend starting with the short stories, though, since if you don't like them you'll find Twin Moons utterly tedious. The Hunter and the Hunted or Trails of Silt are good places to start. Ideally I'd like you to review Twin Moons, but I never start off with it.

I focus absolutely on my writing. Don't be rude.

As for the /is, I'd have thought it was obvious that was due to some HTML I'd forgotten to remove from the story. What, you think I did it for fun?

You probably just don't like my style, although several people have said that I don't do enough description for the Czerans in Trails. THe problem's finding the balance. Silt came about because I received a lot of crit saying I describe too much, so I tried to go for a somewhat more stripped down character description approach. Twin Moons actually starts pretty much immediately, as does 'The Hunter and the Hunted'. If you don't experiment you never find the right pace.

Personally, I like a reasonably slow start, and I'm working on reconciling that with getting things to happen. In some stories I've spent rather large paragraphs on VERY detailed descriptions of the characters. As I noted in my review of your 'wooden box' your own fast pace style damaged the story for me. It's just different approaches.

I might also point out that I'm not against cliches par se, just that there's often little need for them and unless you know what you're doing you'll inevitably drag your stories down by including them. Good writers use cliches all the time, but they have the imagination and talent to use them in a productive manner instead of just being lazy, which is why most writers use them.

I am a new writer. I have only started writing since this spring, and that was the first time i EVER tried putting my stories into words and got farther than a page. I wrote the Wooden Box in late spring and not only was i just beginning to figure out the basics of writing, but i was rushing and trying to cram my whole story into twenty pages for this writing contest.

I've been writing a lot lately, and have just about finished this story Prejudice of Species which will have eight chapters. And from beginning to end, my writing has improved tremendously (just ask marjorie, my editor person) I know I still have a ways to go and all, but just take into consideration that the Wooden Box was a much earlier peice in my writing journey.

So, if you want to read something of mine, i would greatly appreciate if you read Prejudice of Species.

And i meant focus, not fucos, but i think you figured that out...

I've read your profile; I guessed that you were relatively new.

My review was independent of anything you said about mine. You made mistakes (or things I considered to be mistakes), and I pointed them out. Whether or not you agree is entirely up to you.

I'm not a new writer. I've been writing for ten years and a bit, but I'm FAR from perfect, and I only started taking it really seriously about four years ago. I think that shows in the themes and the characters, but the style is constantly improving. Twin Moons was my big improvement project, and it's the thing I most want critique on, but it's so huge I doubt I'll get that much. We'll see.

------------------I've been writing a lot lately, and have just about finished this story Prejudice of Species which will have eight chapters. And from beginning to end, my writing has improved tremendously

If it didn't you'd have been doing something wrong. Stories/novels/novelettes ALWAYS improve you. It's why they're worth writing.

I might give P & S a look over next weekend or something. If you want to read something of mine that's completely different, try 'Doctor Cerebellum Torture', or have a glance at the opening chapters of 'Twin Moons' and see what you think.

But yeah, i will make an attempt to look at either of those during the week if i have the time/energy

*goes to read twin moons*

'Tunnels' and 'Undercurrents' are both rather different to my usual fare, too. One's a stab (ha ha) at horror, the other's kind of a romance tale. If you can and if you like my style enough, I of course would appreciate looks at all my stuff.

I read the first two chapters of Twin Moons (I'll have to read the rest later) and loved it. I have so many questions, but I either don't feel like typing them all or don't know how to put them into words. Someday soon I'll read the rest of it. That kind of stuff belongs on the shelves in a mass-market hardcover, man.

#7 would be the girl or guy that gets the hottest moron in that world with no explanation (or a horribly shallow one) why that guy or girl loves him/her.

In "Dragon's Gift", my current project, the main character, a homeless girl living in the city Hereff is "kidnapped", in a way, by the dragon Apollo, who places a gift in her heart, literally and figuratively. Mmkay, so then a few chapters later, after she's found out there's an elf with infinately stronger powers than her own (after all, she's only twelve, and she's human, and she doesn't even know yet what the gift was that Apollo gave her) is out to kill her. Then he catches up to her, she's alone, and there's no way she can possibly survive, and she's so panicked that Apollo's gift (the powers of a dragon) "comes to life", if you will, meaning that she's able to use it, not that she knows how, but she's so scared that the gift gets out of control and lights the elf on fire.

So is that way too cliche, or is it alright?

I think what's going to happen is that she thinks she killed him but he's still alive and barely hurt... I dunno, but I definately wasn't going to kill or cripple him, that would be dumb and a good way to kill the story before it's even started. I mean, really, what good is a novel if the antagonist is dead in the fourth or fifth chapter?

I wasn't sure what kind of enemy the elf is. I think your idea as stated is a-okay.

If the elf is not quite so strong, like, downsize power by half or more, and the elf is killed by the fire, starting a war between the elves and the dragons, which the "Greater Evil" uses as a diversion?

Blah. To explain it more, there's sort of a bond between the elves and the dragons, there has been for like, millenia (in my story, at least), and together they banished the "Greater Evil" a long long long time ago, but when the war between them is started, and the bond between them is broken, the "Greater Evil" takes advantage of it and works against both sides.

Would that make sense, and be okay if she did manage to kill him?

Which reminds me, Brianna fits into the 'characters who have no power who later get it' category, but with her it's a long, drawn out process. The focus is on her attempts to deal with it and to reconcile what it means with her beliefs about it. There's no real point where things suddenly change and she's able to do all sorts, she just gains power as the story goes along. But I think she's clearly under threat at every point until about three quarters of the way through, at which point the things that are actually threatening her aren't physical anyway, and so the amount of power she's got is irrelevant.

I think that's an important balancing factor; making sure that what's actually threatening the character isn't something they can bring their power to bear on easily.

But then, look at the plot's of David Eddings' work. He ends up with his characters jobbing Gods in the end, and he's considered one of the best fantasy authors of all time.

The clichees of a person winning by going berserk or the like can still work in stories and be acceptable. For example, if the difference in power were so slight that the adrenaline would make the difference or if said character had a power linked to rage.

I'll agree that it's bad writing when something suddenly happens because the author didn't properly prepare for the scene, but that's still just the implementation that was bad.

One last note (relevant only to a brief comment made by someone earlier in this thread) is that the anime/manga style of storytelling can still work for novels. Just look at Full Metal Panic.

Our world will be saved by humans, technology and people. Not elves and magical forces.

(Note that I am referring to the Icemark series.)

Um... this is really late, and I'm being such a nerd, but Miroku's wind tunnel has serious drawbacks.

1. Every time he uses it, it grows larger, and if it's cut, it can open even faster. When it becomes larger than his hand, it will suck him and all around him into the black hole. Plus the nature of the wind tunnel makes it hard to repair when he gets injured.

2. Poisons taken into the wind tunnel can seriously harm him as well.

Sorry if anyone has already pointed this out, but it's been bothering me. There are reasons to dislike Inuyasha, but Miroku's wind tunnel isn't one of them.

Problem with Miroku's wind tunnel is that no matter how much he uses it, the damn thing never seems to get bigger. Until he is actually killed by it, I'm going to say that it is a drawback of the series.

True, but that's the unfinished anime. The manga actually got him all the way up to the point where one more use would kill him. They spent an entire chapter with most of the characters trying to prevent him from using it. And that's it. I can't really make excuses, the series ended up disappointing on the whole by the end anyway.

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