Channelknight Fadran

"I'm thinking not."

"...Apparently."

Ooh, self-descriptions? I'm just under 5'8 (I'll be there soon, though), short brown hair (in the back it comes down to that first vertebrae in the neck, and in the front it can come down to my eyes, but I keep it out of my face), eyes are the same color (very same color). If you ever needed to spot me out in a crowd, I'll either be lost in thought and tripping over things, or doing one of my tics, including (but not limited to): whistling, shifting my jaw, cracking my knuckles (individually or otherwise), snapping my finger with the wrong hand (I can snap my finger with the wrong hand! It's awesome!), popping my neck (that one probably isn't healthy), or tapping my feet together.

"Give me a moment to commune with my allies?" Fadran asks. "If it's potentially to the death, then I would like to say a few words. If you could summon Eric for this as well, that would be appreciated." @DramaQueen @Spren of Kindness @Enter a username @Mist @Vapor @Condensation @Nathrangking @AonEne @The_Truthwatcher @Hentient @Negative_Null

"I see. And who am I facing?"

"What are the terms of this contest?" "I... don't. Yet."

"A contest of champions?" Fadran thinks back to the strange feeling from earlier. "Give me some context; what exactly is going on?"

"In that case, you name what I have to do."

Are you metagaming? Icona asks Fadran. Fadran shrugs. Not intentionally. Alright, then. Lemme just... Time reverses. "We have... y'know, treasure and stuff."

Channelknight eyes Baahlan, who is sitting on a throne beside Aridith. "Why do I get the feeling you two already made a deal? @Nathrangking

"Well, one of our friends has been arrested and enthralled. If you would kindly comply, we would like him back, and then we'll be on our way."

Fadran can tell something just happened, but he has no clue what it is.

No. Way. Which one's your favorite?

"Rad" ... "Now that is a word I have not heard for a long time." Also, just outta curiosity, is your profile prounounced "kill" by any chance?

... *Sigh* Why do I always make this mistake?

Rev...elryinheart. Rev! It's what we call her!

Awww, . We love you too, Rev.

This is advice for book writing, yeah. Specifically fantasy. Also, welcome to the Shard! I just checked out your profile and you're evidently pretty new, so I'm glad that you've popped on over here! Also, if you ever need to delete a post, you hit a little three-circle button at the top of your post and click the "Hide" option.

Did anybody look at you funny?

"No! We killed you! We killed you!" - Odium Satisfaction

I'll be getting into Realism after Character and Plot Development, which is happening... now. Come one! Come all! Come see, Character and Plot Development in worldbuillding! Not to be confused with good 'ol fashioned character and plot development; that's completely different. Therefore, without further ado... LESSON NUMBER which one am I on? Three? Five? Oh, four. FOUR. Lesson 4: Character and Plot Development in Worldbuilding --or-- Worldbuilding in Character and Plot Development So we've made worlds. We've developed a cool factor. Now we need to know how that fits into the story as a whole. Particularly, we want to how and why it affects our characters, and how and why it affects our plot. I'm going to start with plot affection, then move onto characters, because characters are cooler and plots are meh. It's important to note that almost every single fantasy story to ever permeate the earth has been a save the world story. Good versus evil, final battle, that sort of thing. And there is nothing wrong with that. I'm writing a save-the-world, you guys are probably writing a save-the-world, all of the Cosmere has been save-the-world at this point (except White Sand, but that's a graphic novel so I DON'T CARE), which means what I'm going to be discussing is a save-the-world story! I might discuss other forms of writing in a fantasy later, such as heist fantasy (like in Six of Crows which I haven't read so I might be totally wrong and it also might be save-the-world), or *gags* romance fantasy (like Twilight, which I haven't read and never plan to). So, save-the-world stories! The good guy's gotta kill the bad guy so the bad guy doesn't kill all the good guys. Sometimes they win, and sometimes their books never hit the shelves (I.E. they always win). Now, designing a plot is something we've been doing since middle school. First, you got the exposition, right? And then rising action, climax, then falling action, and resolution. Right? Right? WRONG! It is so much more complicated than that! People always think it looks like this (spoiled for size): But it actually looks more like this: I may or may not have just borrowed a stock market image for this, but it is pretty accurate. I'll be referring back to it now and again, so keeping it open might be a good idea. So here you have a nice plot outline. Exposition at the start (that flat part of the blue line at the beginning), and then things start ramping up. You hit that first hump, go back down, hit the climax, and then plummet. Well, yeah, Fadran! I hear you think (yes, I can hear your thoughts). That's how plotline works. Where does worldbuilding and magic come in? Shh, my little minions. All will be explained in time. Three seconds of time, actually, because I'm talking about that... now. I'm going to refer to our good friend Brandon Sanderson and his lovely Laws of Magic Systems, because they don't just affect magic systems; they affect worlds, as well. I'm going to pull on his first law, which is "An author's ability to solve conflict with magic Worldbuilding is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic World." I'm also going to tear it up for scraps and build something new. Behold, everyone! Fadran's First Law of Worldbuilding! "An author's ability to create conflict with Worldbuilding is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said Worldbuilding." To return to the stock market plot outline, I'm going to refer to that first big hump. That first big hump is important. Sometime around then, you need things to go downhill. Sometime around then, the characters have to fail at something big. Because we're talking under the context of save-the-world stories, then it's probably something to do with the big bad guy being prepared for the characters and screwing them over. Take The Last Airbender chapter 3, for example (spoilers, btw). That first hump would be the invasion of the Fire Nation capital. Azula was ready for them, she stalled for time, the Fire Lord stayed alive, literally everyone except the main protagonists and a few unimportant side characters were captured--in other words, a failed false climax. However, as you might've noticed, that wasn't exactly worldbuilding-based. This failed false climax isn't just an inciting incident for the characters--it's also the point at which the reader needs to understand your world. They don't need to understand all of it; in fact, they don't need to know any of it. When I say that a reader's understanding of your world is proportional to how well you can create conflict with it, I mean that a reader's understanding of the characters' understanding of the world is proportional to how well you can create conflict with it. Mystery is very important to a story, so you can actually introduce new worldbuilding elements in this failed false climax (I'm calling it an FFC from now on) to intrigue your readers. Nobody knew what Hemalurgy was or did back in the first Mistborn book, but that didn't mean that Brandon couldn't create conflict with it--that meant that Brandon was basically obligated to create conflict with it, because it was a mystery to characters and readers both why you couldn't kill the inquisitors. So I guess I'll go back and revise my First Law of Worldbuilding. It is now "An author's ability to create conflict with Worldbuilding is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well a reader understands a character's knowledge (or lack of) of said World." Boom. It's there. Feel free to quote me on it, it is a thing! Oh dear... this is already a really long post. Okay, this is lesson 4/1, and I'll cover characters in the next one (hopefully it won't take me too long to post that). Don't die! ~ Fadran.

HOLY STORMS HECK YES.

Well scud.