Paranoia, paranoia
You know what I don't want to do? Write cliches. You know why? Because it's such an easy dig against a fantasy work. I'm of the personal belief that many of the so-called cliches of fantasy (or other fiction) aren't too serious of a transgression because it's all in the execution, and some of the cliches are impossible to avoid if you're writing epic fantasy. However, I do believe in originality - the simple belief that given infinite time, a thousand monkeys with typewriters will reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare is pretty offensive to me. It's just that the first criticism of any fantasy novel always seems to be that it's full of fantasy cliches. So I feel like I need to make sure that I have like, no cliches in Ilium. Sadly enough, I don't pass any of the anti-cliche tests. God crap it all. And now I can expect to be accused of ripping off all the majors in the genre.
Here's The Fantasy Novelist's exam, and my answers:
Here's The Fantasy Novelist's exam, and my answers:
- Does nothing happen in the first fifty pages? Hopefully this is not the case.
- Is your main character a young farmhand with mysterious parentage? Mysterious parentage - sort of, but only that they don't know the names of his daimon parents. He's not a young farmhand, though.
- Is your main character the heir to the throne but doesn't know it? Nope.
- Is your story about a young character who comes of age, gains great power, and defeats the supreme badguy? No.
- Is your story about a quest for a magical artifact that will save the world? No.
- How about one that will destroy it? Sort of. Does the Drakon count as an artifact?
- Does your story revolve around an ancient prophecy about "The One" who will save the world and everybody and all the forces of good? Yes, but the prophecy turns out to be bullshit.
- Does your novel contain a character whose sole purpose is to show up at random plot points and dispense information? I don't think so, but I don't know exactly how active of a role Abathur will play.
- Does your novel contain a character that is really a god in disguise? No.
- Is the evil supreme badguy secretly the father of your main character? No... thank god.
- Is the king of your world a kindly king duped by an evil magician? Well, I'm uncertain about this one. Nephrit is influenced a little too much by Feretius, but is Nephrit really all that "kindly" on his own? Is Feretius "evil", much less a magician? He'd object to that wording.
- Does "a forgetful wizard" describe any of the characters in your novel? No.
- How about "a powerful but slow and kind-hearted warrior"? What, like Boxer the horse in Animal Farm? No.
- How about "a wise, mystical sage who refuses to give away plot details for his own personal, mysterious reasons"? I know this is a common gripe, and I am glad to say that I don't think I use this. My sages don't really reveal anything that's too much of a plot detail, whether now or at a strategic future moment.
- 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? No. Andromeda (Mead) and Phaedra are the most appearance-obsessed. The other women have much bigger problems.
- Do any of your female characters exist solely to be captured and rescued? No.
- Do any of your female characters exist solely to embody feminist ideals? No.
- Would "a clumsy cooking wench more comfortable with a frying pan than a sword" aptly describe any of your female characters? what the hell's a "cooking wench"? It sounds like some kind of garage toolshed item. No, I don't think so.
- Would "a fearless warrioress more comfortable with a sword than a frying pan" aptly describe any of your female characters? Well, I suppose Skaoi is more comfortable with a sword than a frying pan, but that's because she's a robot, and doesn't eat, cook, or use frying pans.
- Is any character in your novel best described as "a dour dwarf"? No dwarves.
- How about "a half-elf torn between his human and elven heritage"? No elves.
- Did you make the elves and the dwarves great friends, just to be different? No dwarves, no elves!
- Does everybody under four feet tall exist solely for comic relief? I don't know - this is possible - but I'm not going to have a whole lot of funny moments in here (read: no funny moments), so I don't know how much relief they're going to bring.
- Do you think that the only two uses for ships are fishing and piracy? No...? I don't have ships.
- Do you not know when the hay baler was invented? Yes, that's true, I don't know.
- 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. Ironic that Tolkien did, though, huh? I mean did Sauron himself choose the name "Mt. Doom"? Did the dwarves realize they were naming their bridge Khazad-Dum?
- Does your novel contain a prologue that is impossible to understand until you've read the entire book, if even then? God, so far, it contains nothing.
- Is this the first book in a planned trilogy? Yes... sigh.
- How about a quintet or a decalogue? No.
- Is your novel thicker than a New York City phone book? It might end up being.
- Did absolutely nothing happen in the previous book you wrote, yet you figure you're still many sequels away from finishing your "story"? N/A.
- Are you writing prequels to your as-yet-unfinished series of books? Ilium was already part of a series, meaning there were no prequels or sequels.
- Is your name Robert Jordan and you lied like a dog to get this far? No.
- Is your novel based on the adventures of your role-playing group? Ha ha ha, no.
- Does your novel contain characters transported from the real world to a fantasy realm? No.
- Do any of your main characters have apostrophes or dashes in their names? No apostrophes, but some dashes for the daimones.
- Do any of your main characters have names longer than three syllables? Yes... An-dro-ma-che.
- Do you see nothing wrong with having two characters from the same small isolated village being named "Tim Umber" and "Belthusalanthalus al'Grinsok"? No, there's definitely a lot wrong there.
- Does your novel contain orcs, elves, dwarves, or halflings? No, none of those.
- How about "orken" or "dwerrows"? No.
- Do you have a race prefixed by "half-"? No.
- At any point in your novel, do the main characters take a shortcut through ancient dwarven mines? Dude, no!
- Do you write your battle scenes by playing them out in your favorite RPG? Don't have or play an RPG... I must be the only one.
- Have you done up game statistics for all of your main characters in your favorite RPG? No (although I can imagine the temptation would be too great if I did RPGs).
- Are you writing a work-for-hire for Wizards of the Coast? Huh? No.
- Do inns in your book exist solely so your main characters can have brawls? No.
- Do you think you know how feudalism worked but really don't? Oh, probably, yes. I don't think I need to know feudalism to write Ilium, though.
- Do your characters spend an inordinate amount of time journeying from place to place? Well, it takes a long time to journey as far as they do!
- 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? No, again, I don't think I would have this happen.
- Do any of the magic users in your novel cast spells easily identifiable as "fireball" or "lightning bolt"? Maybe... I haven't planned that yet.
- Do you ever use the term "mana" in your novel? No.
- Do you ever use the term "plate mail" in your novel? No.
- Heaven help you, do you ever use the term "hit points" in your novel? No.
- Do you not realize how much gold actually weighs? Not precisely, but I know it's heavy.
- Do you think horses can gallop all day long without rest? No.
- 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? No.
- Does your main character have a magic axe, hammer, spear, or other weapon that returns to him when he throws it? No.
- Does anybody in your novel ever stab anybody with a scimitar? Wha-? I don't know! But I'll remember to tell them not to if I come to the possibility of this scene later.
- Does anybody in your novel stab anybody straight through plate armor? No.
- Do you think swords weigh ten pounds or more? [info] No.
- Does your hero fall in love with an unattainable woman, whom he later attains? Nope. Almost the other way around.
- Does a large portion of the humor in your novel consist of puns? No, no puns, puns are evil. Too many during Thanksgiving.
- 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? No... Acmon's not threatened or scared of anything, he's a perfect soldier.
- Do you really think it frequently takes more than one arrow in the chest to kill a man? No.
- Do you not realize it takes hours to make a good stew, making it a poor choice for an "on the road" meal? No, I raelize this.
- Do you have nomadic barbarians living on the tundra and consuming barrels and barrels of mead? No nomadic barbarians, and those who go across the tundra, the metaljin, don't eat.
- Do you think that "mead" is just a fancy name for "beer"? Uh.... I don't even know what mead is.
- Does your story involve a number of different races, each of which has exactly one country, one ruler, and one religion? This is an interesting question whose answer I don't know. I never really thought of the wind and water and fire elementals belonging to any kind of religion, per se.
- Is the best organized and most numerous group of people in your world the thieves' guild? There is no thieves' guild. No one cares about thieves.
- Does your main villain punish insignificant mistakes with death? He punishes with death, but the mistakes, like Skaoi's betrayal, are not insignificant.
- 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? I don't have any musicians. I find it hard to write about music, so I just leave it sitting in the background.
- Is "common" the official language of your world? I'm afraid of the language issue. I think that humans will somehow be able to communicate with the animae because they were born after the last Drakon sank back into the earth. I don't know how they communicate with Europe, however.
- Is the countryside in your novel littered with tombs and gravesites filled with ancient magical loot that nobody thought to steal centuries before? I'm safely confident that our story contains none of these.
- Is your book basically a rip-off of The Lord of the Rings? You tell me.
- Read that question again and answer truthfully.