Not a meme! Also not worldbuilding…
Thanks to Donna for pointing out a really cool tongue-in-cheek fantasy novel survey.
If you are writing a fantasy novel, you might find it fun to at least give it a read through.
(The Filmmaker’s Exam is equally amusing, btw.)
I guess you are supposed to be able to answer ‘No’ to every question, or abandon your project forever. LOL.
One of my nobler goals while deciding on the plot of Five Rings was to avoid or attempt to reinvent most of the common clichés out there, hoping to breathe new life into a largely unoriginal genre.
Let’s see how I did:
1. Does nothing happen in the first fifty pages?
Happliy, no.
2. Is your main character a young farmhand with mysterious parentage?
Nope. And sort of. (LOL! Failed already.)
3. Is your main character the heir to the throne but doesn’t know it?
Definitely not.
4. Is your story about a young character who comes of age, gains great power, and defeats the supreme badguy?
Definitely not.
5. Is your story about a quest for a magical artifact that will save the world?
No magical artifacts.
6. How about one that will destroy it?
No magical artifacts.
7. Does your story revolve around an ancient prophecy about “The One” who will save the world and everybody and all the forces of good?
No prophecies.
8. Does your novel contain a character whose sole purpose is to show up at random plot points and dispense information?
Nope.
9. Does your novel contain a character that is really a god in disguise?
There are multiple characters kind of like that. (that’s two!)
10. Is the evil supreme badguy secretly the father of your main character?
No.
11. Is the king of your world a kindly king duped by an evil magician?
A single king to an entire world? An evil magician advisor? Ummm, no.
12. Does “a forgetful wizard” describe any of the characters in your novel?
Not even close.
13. How about “a powerful but slow and kind-hearted warrior”?
Nope.
14. How about “a wise, mystical sage who refuses to give away plot details for his own personal, mysterious reasons”?
Nope.
15. Do the female characters in your novel spend a lot of time worrying about how they look, especially when the male main character is around?
Nope.
16. Do any of your female characters exist solely to be captured and rescued?
Nope.
17. Do any of your female characters exist solely to embody feminist ideals?
Nope.
18. Would “a clumsy cooking wench more comfortable with a frying pan than a sword” aptly describe any of your female characters?
No.
19. Would “a fearless warrioress more comfortable with a sword than a frying pan” aptly describe any of your female characters?
No.
20. Is any character in your novel best described as “a dour dwarf”?
No dwarves.
21. How about “a half-elf torn between his human and elven heritage”?
No elves.
22. Did you make the elves and the dwarves great friends, just to be different?
No dwarves or elves.
23. Does everybody under four feet tall exist solely for comic relief?
No.
24. Do you think that the only two uses for ships are fishing and piracy?
No.
25. Do you not know when the hay baler was invented?
No. Don’t care when it was invented.
26. Did you draw a map for your novel which includes places named things like “The Blasted Lands” or “The Forest of Fear” or “The Desert of Desolation” or absolutely anything “of Doom”?
Nope.
27. Does your novel contain a prologue that is impossible to understand until you’ve read the entire book, if even then?
Yes indeed. (three!)
28. Is this the first book in a planned trilogy?
Yep. (four!)
29. How about a quintet or a decalogue?
No.
30. Is your novel thicker than a New York City phone book?
Is any? (LOL ~ I guess it depends on which district.)
31. Did absolutely nothing happen in the previous book you wrote, yet you figure you’re still many sequels away from finishing your “story”?
No previous book.
32. Are you writing prequels to your as-yet-unfinished series of books?
No. But I have a definite prequel idea after the trilogy is done. (Somebody’s sour about Jordan’s The New Spring…)
33. Is your name Robert Jordan and you lied like a dog to get this far?
*sigh* Since he recently died of amyloidosis, probably not.
34. Is your novel based on the adventures of your role-playing group?
I don’t have a role-playing group.
35. Does your novel contain characters transported from the real world to a fantasy realm?
No.
36. Do any of your main characters have apostrophes or dashes in their names?
No.
37. Do any of your main characters have names longer than three syllables?
No.
38. Do you see nothing wrong with having two characters from the same small isolated village being named “Tim Umber” and “Belthusalanthalus al’Grinsok”?
Not really… (five!)
39. Does your novel contain orcs, elves, dwarves, or halflings?
No, no, no, and no.
40. How about “orken” or “dwerrows”?
No.
41. Do you have a race prefixed by “half-”?
No.
42. At any point in your novel, do the main characters take a shortcut through ancient dwarven mines?
No dwarves.
43. Do you write your battle scenes by playing them out in your favorite RPG?
No.
44. Have you done up game statistics for all of your main characters in your favorite RPG?
No.
45. Are you writing a work-for-hire for Wizards of the Coast?
No.
46. Do inns in your book exist solely so your main characters can have brawls?
No.
47. Do you think you know how feudalism worked but really don’t?
No.
48. Do your characters spend an inordinate amount of time journeying from place to place?
Yes. (six! ouch…)
49. Could one of your main characters tell the other characters something that would really help them in their quest but refuses to do so just so it won’t break the plot?
That’s arguable. I’ll say yes. (seven!)
50. Do any of the magic users in your novel cast spells easily identifiable as “fireball” or “lightning bolt”?
No.
51. Do you ever use the term “mana” in your novel?
It’s in the realm of possibility to explain anima mundi. (eight!)
52. Do you ever use the term “plate mail” in your novel?
Yes. (nine!)
53. Heaven help you, do you ever use the term “hit points” in your novel?
lol. no.
54. Do you not realize how much gold actually weighs?
Different currency system.
55. Do you think horses can gallop all day long without rest?
I am familiar with horsebreeds’ staminae.
56. Does anybody in your novel fight for two hours straight in full plate armor, then ride a horse for four hours, then delicately make love to a willing barmaid all in the same day?
Unfortunately, no. xD
57. Does your main character have a magic axe, hammer, spear, or other weapon that returns to him when he throws it?
Is this more common than I realise? No.
58. Does anybody in your novel ever stab anybody with a scimitar?
No, but there is some scimitar slashy-ness.
59. Does anybody in your novel stab anybody straight through plate armor?
No.
60. Do you think swords weigh ten pounds or more?
They could. But usually are less than 5 lbs and balanced. (ten! woot!)
61. Does your hero fall in love with an unattainable woman, whom he later attains?
Not hardly.
62. Does a large portion of the humor in your novel consist of puns?
Not bardly.
63. Is your hero able to withstand multiple blows from the fantasy equivalent of a ten pound sledge but is still threatened by a small woman with a dagger?
The MC (hero?) is just as vulnerable to dying as your average peasant.
64. Do you really think it frequently takes more than one arrow in the chest to kill a man?
O_o Depends on what it punctures, I guess. (eleven!)
65. Do you not realize it takes hours to make a good stew, making it a poor choice for an “on the road” meal?
I’m trying to be original with food.
66. Do you have nomadic barbarians living on the tundra and consuming barrels and barrels of mead?
Dear me, no.
67. Do you think that “mead” is just a fancy name for “beer”?
Not sure. But I don’t even know much about modern alcoholic beverages.
68. Does your story involve a number of different races, each of which has exactly one country, one ruler, and one religion?
Noperz.
69. Is the best organized and most numerous group of people in your world the thieves’ guild?
Most numerous? No. Best organized? Yes within my personal notes. No within the scope of the entire world. (twelve!)
70. Does your main villain punish insignificant mistakes with death?
No.
71. Is your story about a crack team of warriors that take along a bard who is useless in a fight, though he plays a mean lute?
No.
72. Is “common” the official language of your world?
No.
73. Is the countryside in your novel littered with tombs and gravesites filled with ancient magical loot that nobody thought to steal centuries before?
Yes. (thirteen!)
74. Is your book basically a rip-off of The Lord of the Rings?
No.
75. Read that question again and answer truthfully.
heh!
Jeez … thirteen. Guess that means I should delete Five Rings ;)
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~ by cirellio on August 14, 2008.
Posted in Cirellio, Five Rings, Peripetia, Web of Hearts, author, book, fantasy, fiction, muse, story, worldbuilding, writer
Hehe, that’s actually quite funny.
Thirteen, that’s not bad. It’s not 50%, nor is it 25% – at least you have a good chunk of originality in your ripped-off world o_O
I jest. Anyway after all these years, it does get more difficult to create really, REALLY new things.
Phew! Doesn’t leave a lot of room for a story, does it?
When I first saw this questionnaire on the net, I thought it a bit unfair. Some I would definitely agree are not good things (the hit points one was hilarious!) to include in your novel. But to a certain extent, if you go way off base with your fantasy, there will be nothing recognizable for fantasy fans to relate to. People who prefer genre fiction generally prefer it because it delivers elements they expect and actually like. There are certain characteristics that define fantasy fiction, and I don’t think that’s all bad.
If your fantasy is TOO far out, people will have a hard with it. I think there’s something to be said for honouring the genre but without being cliché at the same time.
Um, so PS. Don’t delete Five Rings. Thirteen out of seventy-five is really not bad!
Don’t worry – no deleting happening here – this was all just funnery.
I could probably count the number of fantasy novels that don’t use the words ‘plate’ & ‘mail’ on one fingerless hand.
I agree that there is value to sticking with the genre cliches, but there is also ‘evolution’ if we find new interesting ways to pull off the same genre.
A better way to describe my aim: to evolve high fantasy; give people another way to do it, I guess.
Hmm. I got #19 and #37 out of that list.
My Saffira is a very quiet woman who is usually seen playing cards or standing off to the side, but her room is littered with human skulls, and my hero knows for a fact that she’s a cannibal. So yes, better a sword than a frying pan, but either one is fairly twitch-worthy.
And partway through the book, my hero Rylan talks about his past, and mentions that he was originally foreign, and that his full name was Rhyliandanious.
I don’t think they count, exactly.
wow, eliza, just two? And Donna only got one. I totally suck! xD
Cirellio! You do not suck. Your book is so detailed and well thought out, no one will even notice a mere 13 things this one person has deemed cliché and bad.
I suspect you’re being facetious, but anyway. Just in case.
wow. food for thought. most are laughable, but several i’m guilty of. i do agree w/ steph, tho, that there are certain genre expections that must be fulfilled. i’m also thinking that i haven’t read enough of what’s out there because i didn’t realize of of these were so cliche’.
hm. Time to cheat a little! :)
For 2, since my character is NOT a farmhand and only has ONE mysterious parent, I’m going to have to say it’s only worth threes in a repeating-decimalistic fashion.
(+.333 et al) LOL…
For 9, the characters are more like demi-gods. And they are certainly not ‘in disguise’. So ‘No’.
For 27, my prologue isn’t difficult at all to understand after the trilogy is done being read. And technically it’s not impossible to understand it from the get-go if you know a lot about mythology. ‘No’ again.
For 28, there’s no wiggle room here. I get the full point.
(+1.00)
For 38, I misread it! I thought they were talking about the name of the village, not the name of the people. I do actually hate it when fantasy authors name characters stuff like Tim or fsadjf’jslajf. They should have worded it “Do you see
nothinganything wrong with having two charactersfrom the same small isolated village beingnamed “Tim Umber” and “Belthusalanthalus al’Grinsok” from the same isolated village?I mean, c’mon… I should get a free minus one for that. xD
(+0.00)
For 48, again, there’s no wiggle room.
(+1.00)
For 49, I’m going to say ‘No’ now, because if that character were to divulge information too soon, the result would be: the characters would fail. There’s a great plot reason in place why this character would be very interested in withholding important information.
For 51, I haven’t used the term ‘mana’ yet, so I may as well give myself the benefit of the doubt! :P
Another ‘No’.
For 52, Another stinkin’ misread! I didn’t realize they were talking about ‘plate’ and ‘mail’ being together as a single idea. I guess that’s what I get for carelessly taking this survey while I was busy at work. I never use the term ‘platemail’ in my notes or books … or anywhere. So ‘No’.
For 60, since I know the correct weight of swords and have used them before, I’m giving myself the non-point. While most swords weigh 3 to 5 lbs, there are plenty of decorative and two-man swords out there that *do* weigh over 10 lbs. ‘No’ again.
For 64, I’m going to assume we have a competent archer and a clear shot instead of the madness of a battle where an arrow could nick your leg. If that’s the case, the answer is ‘No’.
For 69, since it specifically states ‘in your world’, I can ignore the extensive side-notes I have and get away with saying ‘No’.
For 73, it’s not that nobody thought to take the treasures, it’s that few people actually make it far enough inside of those places before they turn tail and flee. ‘No’!
All right. New grand total: 2.3333333~. Much better !!!
Who’s the man now, dog???!
PS-> And yush, I was being facetious. ^_^;;;
lol, this was great! Since I haven’t started writing my novel yet, I can’t truthfully do this list. But based off notes, the answer’s two.
If were were two do any of the two previous novels I wrote… um… *cough*… never mind. :P
Woo-hoo! Welcome back from the trip, Steph No.1!!! I missed ya a lot.
There’s no shame, here. You could score 100% and I wouldn’t think less of you. I’d easily read a book that had half of these cliches. This list was just pure silliness.
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