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Help Wanted!
Topic Started: Sep 23 2010, 12:55 AM (268 Views)
parlezlibrement
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Its only a model
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Hey everyone. Aside from commenting on strips now and then, I've been fairly "busy" being unemployed the last three months. I'm now doing some manual labor helping with the harvest of a local cranberry marsh and in my free time I still play WoW and up until a week ago was heavily obsessed with my on-again/off-again dabblings in my now three and a half year project on writing a fantasy-adventure novel. I feel that I've done enough with mapping out and creating histories for the cities and countries (a.k.a. city-states) and I really want to start writing the actual story again. The characters and conflicts are pretty much in order (mostly), but my problem is that I cannot figure out/decide what the initial start should be. What I mean is: I don't know what causes my main character to leave the city he resides in and flees for the safety of another city (and cause of my tendency to think ahead and some stuff that deals with time-travel and paradoxes I'm also not sure how he gets from the starting city to the this other city). Alright, I think I've said enough, here's my two options and some background info on the character.

The main character is 17 years old. He is an apprentice to a dwarven blacksmith. His mother (regardless of which scenario) dies in the conflict prior to the actual start of the story that sets the main character on the start of his adventure.

Scenario 1: The city is invaded! Invaders from a nearby kingdom to the west wish to conquer and annex the city-state. The main character escapes to another nearby kingdom in the east.

Scenario 2: The city is revolting! The same city in scenario one is not being invaded by a foreign kingdom from the west, but is rebelling against it! The main character flees to the east.

See, my hero in this story arrives in the nearby kingdom to the east and through one way or another joins the local mercenary guild where he meets the rest of the cast of characters for this particular adventure. Of course, I could start there, but the reasons and causes for why the main character arrives at this juncture are quite important (especially down the road). If I can just decide between an Invasion or a Rebellion then I'd feel much more at peace and less like a looney obsessing over every little detail in an attempt to create perfection.

Any constructive help, advice, or suggestions would be most appreciated.
(Feel free to email me as I sometimes do not visit the forum as much as I used to.)
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alphatroll
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The Hairy Blue One
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Consider Quentin Tarantino's justification for breaking up the sequence in Pulp Fiction: they do it all the time in books!

In your case, filling in the earlier events in the form of memory/flashbacks might provide opportunities to tell the parts of the story in a more satisfying way, pacing things so details are revealed when the reader is *ready* for them, rather than sticking to when they *happened*.

And as for the two scenarios, it depends a lot on how you want to portray the "character" of the home city. If it's being invaded, that implies that it's "weak" (or at least the invaders think so); while if they're rebelling, it implies they're *strong* (or at least *think* they are).

One more terminology note, in the form of a quote from Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part 1: "Your Majesty, the people are revolting!" - "Oh, I know, aren't they?" ;)
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parlezlibrement
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Its only a model
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Yeah, that's what another person I know IRL told me in but then again it could imply the opposite for the invading conquerors. If they invade the city, is it because they're stronger or more ambitious? If the city they conquered is rebelling against them, is it because the invaders become soft or less oppressive (or even, more oppressive)? See, the invading kingdom is the main antagonistic power in the story. They've recently had a change in leadership and now they want to expand their influence and domination (i.e. build an empire). Each city-state has a culture centered around a particular (patron) deity; not that each cities do not worship all the gods of this fictional pantheon. The invading kingdom happens to have a war-like culture, like Rome, with a large following to the god of war. The city that's being invaded is a bit of a melting pot of sorts, though they have a significant cultural identification with the god of fate and fortune. The city that the main character flees to has a large following to the goddess of the hearth and is culturally related to another city in the south that worships the goddess of peace and wisdom. Its stuff like that that has kept me busy since really developing the world (or rather the continent) in which this story takes place.

I'm quite political IRL and very much firm on my stance on supporting and defending the U.S. Constitution. I've decided to incorporate a bit of that sort of philosophy into the story but I want to keep it light in importance yet heavy in spirit with regards to the plot. Ya know what I mean? Being invaded does not mean a country is weak, nor is it strong by rebelling against an occupying force. I already have the reason why the invaders conquer the city: the new king is power-hungry (like most in this circumstance); a good example would be Emperor Beld of Marmo from "Record of Lodoss War". I really appreciate your advice and look forward to more from others. Having differing viewpoints and reasoning is great deal of help. Its good to see what others think which allows me to understand their point of view and in turn see what I can do to improve my own. In this case, whether it makes more sense to start the story with an invasion or a rebellion.
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HoodieBoy
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Why not combine scenario 1 and 2? Have it be a massive war where everything has gone insane. That would be a good reason to flee if it were me. Perhaps he is a pacifist and hates fighting, but learns later on that he has no choice but to fight. Just try not to make him too mopey or too angsty if you go that route.
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parlezlibrement
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Its only a model
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The idea of having flashbacks is handy and would prove useful in my situation. However, I'm not good at writing flashbacks and I like keeping things in a chronological order. Through all the development of the background and fictional history for my story I've made it and intend for everything to happen for a reason. Its just been hectic and hard to decide on certain things cause, well, time-travel is involved.
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