The return of the weekly plot help thread!

[alison-sky.livejournal.com]

Yes, I know you've all been waiting in eager anticipation for this thread to start up, and now you don't have to wait any longer!

So, for the new kids in the community, here's the basic gist:

This post goes up once a week. In here, you can ask for help on your plots. Each week I start a new post. You can keep asking for help each week, but try to ask for something new each time.

Also, if you want to get help, you also have to give it. Which means that you take time when you can to go through the help "requests" and see if there if anything that jumps out at you that you want to toss a suggestion at.

One of the beauties this community has is the willingness to help each other along in our 50k goal. And here is the place to do it.

And of course, that said, here's the BOO part.

With the thread means that these types of posts are no longer allowed to be individual posts in the community. So if you see one go up, feel free to leave them a comment and point them to the current week's help thread and the rules. I'll catch up with them eventually, but that kind of help (which alot of people are already doing for intro posts) is really appreciated!

So that's it. Feel free to start getting plot brainstorming down before NaNo, and help one another out. :)

Comments

[technicolornina.livejournal.com]

Eh . . . hmm. Okay, this is just speaking from personal preference, but there are a LOT of problems with your hypothetical magician. We'll start here:

1) Until Columbus in 1492, people thought the world was flat.

2) People thought Europe was the only land there was until Marco Polo (1200's), and then they knew only about Asia. In fact, one reason Marco Polo traveled over land when water would have been faster was [see #1].

3) Where, exactly, did your magician come by this knowledge? Seeing an empty land in a seeing stone doesn't mean he knows its location, and even being a magician would not tell him that the earth is round.

4) Even granted that he *did* somehow know the world was round, and also that America existed, is he really such a moron that he automatically assumes there are no people in this land who would be able to put Excalibur back together and wield it? Pretty stupid magician, to not think of something like that.


If you want to suspend disbelief, I'd go with something like he knows the world is round, but doesn't know about America, and so he drops it on the other side of the world believing it will go into the sea and be swallowed by a sea serpent or something. The premise as it stands is kind of thin, and suspension-of-disbelief in the real world is a much trickier thing than suspension-of-disbelief in, say, Middle Earth.

I'd think through your basic premise and tweak it before you worry about anything else. I mean, the idea is pretty cool, I just think you need to rethink how you're doing it.

quibbles

[misslucyjane]

1) Educated people believed the world was round long before 1492. As far back as the ancient Greeks scholars tried to estimate the circumference of the Earth.

2) Even the lowliest serf knew about Jerusalem and Israel, even if they didn't know where it was in relation to their village.

4) If the OP is using Merlin as the magician, tradition has it he lived backwards and thus knew the future, because he'd been there.

OP, this entry at Wikipedia should give you a good overview of how the ancients viewed the world and you can extrapolate what you need from that.

Re: quibbles

[technicolornina.livejournal.com]

1) . . . my ancient history teacher sucked, then. Still, though - knowing the world was round doesn't mean you'd know its exact geography.

2) Point. Still and again - doesn't mean they know about this mysterious land around the world.

4) . . . I . . . have never heard this, but I guess that doesn't mean anything, does it? (The way I've always had it is that Merlin could see the future, but that didn't mean he knew everything.)

Re: quibbles

[misslucyjane]

Heh--people don't even know the Earth's exact geography now.

Re: quibbles

[technicolornina.livejournal.com]

Well, you know. They didn't know nearly as much as we do now. I mean, which island was it that wasn't discovered until, like, 1890-something?

Incidentally, your icon = awesome.

Re: quibbles

[misslucyjane]

With any kind of knowledge, though, it's a matter of interest and opportunity. People don't know geography now unless they care to know it, and medieval serfs didn't even know how to sign their names, let alone how many leagues it was to Rome.

That I do not know, but I'm not surprised there were still discoveries to be made at that point. I don't think everywhere has been explored fully yet.

Thanks :). It's by senditover and there's one for every state and a few countries as well.