Calmseer

Hello, friends. I recently discovered Writing Excuses and I have been using their writing prompts to try and improve my writing overall. I was hoping some of you could give me feedback on what I can improve or what I did well. Writing Prompt: Write about something unusual that stops a novelist from writing their book Douglas McDougal knew that he was destined to write the most ingenious novel that had ever graced the World’s populace. The prophecy had first been spoken to him one Thursday evening at the Great Geauga County Fair. He was 12 at the time, and had chosen to spend his hard earned lemonade money on a fortune teller rather than the balloon pop games that his mother had suggested. Douglas was now in his early twenties and could still remember the exact wording of the fortune teller’s prophecy. At this point in life he was also fairly sure that the haze in her tent was not from the incense she was burning. Her words were these: Your story will be stellar, and the Earth will stir when it is told. The 22 year old success in the making was finally ready to tell that story. He tirelessly worked through months of research and prewriting, and he finally felt that he was prepared enough to dive into the opening chapters of his bestselling debut novel. Douglas “Dougie Fresh” McDougal sat down at his desk, turned on his computer, opened up Microsoft Word, and was about to write the opening scenes when a loud boom of thunder startled him out of his focus. He immediately felt foolish for jumping at a silly storm, and was glad he lived alone so no one was around to see him. Back at it, Doug. He renewed his determination, put butt to chair, and hands to keyboard, and wrote the first few pages. They were great, flawless, no one would be able to find fault with anything he had written so far. He read back through it and was assured that the fortune teller was right, he was going to be a star. A crash of thunder sounded again. It shook Douglas’ house and his attic office was filled with the blinding white of lighting. … Except it was not lightning. The white light did not flash, it was persistent, and Doug could not see anything at all. His jaw went slack and his body began to quiver. He could feel his body begin to life off the ground as if gravity no longer worked for him. His down became up and he crashed into what he could only assume to be his ceiling. Once he got his bearings and got ahold of his wits, Doug tried to stand up. It was an effort just to get onto all fours, the slant of his roof and painfully intense light working against him. He strained multiple times to get himself on two feet. He would place his hands onto his knees and struggled to push himself upright. Each time, he was forced back onto the ceiling. After the fourth attempt he was finally able to stand straight for a split second before whatever was pulling him upward pulled even harder and he collapsed. The ceiling began to creak and moan, and Doug cried out from the pain of being crushed into the wood paneling. His screams got louder and more agonized, and when he thought he couldn't take it anymore, the roofing gave way and Doug burst into the open air. Higher and higher he rose, but not a single thought passed through his mind. There was only the pain and the fear. The radiance of white finally ceased, and Doug felt the coolness of metal on his skin. He opened his eyes, blurry from tears, to see the vague outlines of gray. They spoke in a language he could not understand. It seemed that they were asking him questions, but he could not muster the strength to respond, let alone run away. He shifted his focus, and took notice of where he was. The room was perfectly round, and composed of a shiny metal. There was a single window that wrapped around the vessel. Through it Doug could see the clear night sky, with its spread of twinkling stars. It was in that moment that he realized the truth of the fortune tellers prophecy. His story was stellar in deed.

I am thinking that they will on the surface appear to clash but will actually be two sides of the same coin.

Without revealing too much, I need help brainstorming a magic system that would focus on the idea of "natural vs mechanical or technological." Just give me some ideas to get the creative juices flowing, please and thank you!

That is exactly the kind of thing I need to better improve my writing. Is there a process to join?

You may want to look up some native american traditions regarding face painting. There is some great symbolism for the colors used and the symbols painted. I was actually considereing a system similar to this myself. I was going to go more towards the war paint aspect and face painting than actual make up.

I would definitely be interested in joining a writing group. However, what exactly does your group do?

If I set it in a steam punk setting I could have mechanize moonshard "guns". Closer to a crossbow I would think, though. While I am on the topic of steampunk. I think this could be an interesting way to incorporate aether into the novel more than making an aether mage an Avatar. The aether could be the source for the steampunk technology, although I guess the genre would become aetherpunk lol.

I really like that!!! An excellent way for nonmages to combat mages. There could be shard weapons and shard armor. Although, I would have to come up with a different name or run this risk of copying Sanderson's shardplate and shardblade concepts.

Yeah I was thinking about that. That way there wouldn't be any earth mages trying to manipulate the moonshards of other mages.

Also, I had a thought that to add a little something, my mages would have the moonshards embedded into their bodies. Also, I think in order to allow for more magic usage that the sun will be able to charge all shards. This way if there is a fight during the day its not a complete one-off burst of magic and then that's it. Essentially, I foresee a fight starting off with long ranged magic throwing and blocking and then once the shards are depleted the fight would become a close combat situation. At night, however, when the appropriate moons are out it would be a free-for-all of magic slinging.

I think it is extremely helpful for you all to keep posting possible abuses of my magic system. I am okay with a metal mage being able to take advantage of the metal on a persons' body. I think this is something that is unavoidable when dealing with someone that can manipulate metal. I don't think the watermelon seeds one would work. For a mage to take advantage of something they need to have either vision of what they are manipulating or an acute knowledge of what will happen (in the case of air since it cannot actually be seen). This is because the magic is performed through mental will, and in order for the magic to actually take effect a proper mental image must be achieved. I don't think a mage would be able to have acute knowledge of exactly where the watermelon seeds were in a persons body and so they would not be able to act on them. On a side note, I think for my fire mages I want them to manipulate Heat instead of actual fire. They can still create fire, however, by focusing an amount of heat onto the magic source energy. This would not be true fire, but instead something called magefire. Fire mages would still be able to manipulate normal fire since it is heat. I think the type of mages that use magefire would be really advanced in their abilities; I would also allow advanced water mages to pull moisture out of the air. As far as the poison gas goes, I think I would allow this just because it has some pretty neat implications for a sect of air mage assassins. I was actually intending to have an air mage assassin already, so this would be a cool ability for him.

I think I need to clarify something. My original intention was to divide the 6 elements into constructive and destructive categories. The constructive elements are metal, wood and earth. This is because they are used constructively they are primarily used to sprout up walls and perhaps as armors. Basically they are defensive elements. This does not mean that they cannot also be thrown, its just that they are not typically used in this way. The destructive elements are fire, water and air. They are used primarily to be blasted at the enemy. Now the candle issue. I think for wood I want to have the mage be able to have seeds that they can sprout into vines to form walls and also to entangle the enemy with. So I think it would only be natural for a fire mage to be able to sprout fire from a small source as well.

I think this is gold for another (separate) novel. The idea of paying a cost to attain a magic of equal proportion is brilliant. Sorta like the game Soul Sacrifice for PS Vita.

I was thinking something on the lines of that too! And yeah, wood is definitely hard to come up with :/ Do youhave any suggestions to better distinguish water and air, and also metal, wood, and earth? Also, what exactly would boundless energy do to a person? Like infinite running? No enhancements to physical capabilities, you can just do them for longer?

I like the potential of this. Theoretically the aether mages would be really rare and therefore wouldn't completely unbalance the system. As a point of clarification, are you saying that the aether mage would create "aether" which would stimulate the element and allow the mage to manipulate as they please? What exactly do you picture the aether mage being able to do that the normal mage cannot? My head is spinning trying to sort all of this out lol.