[Attn: Writers who wanna write for Eberron] Plot workshopping?
- Thread starter RangerWickett
- Start date
RangerWickett
Legend
I was kinda hoping people would post more in the way of full plot synopses, so that we could actually offer some suggestions to improve the submissions. Think of it as a competitive writers workshop.
Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
RangerWickett said:
I desperately would like to, but I am afraid to do anything to jeopardize my already infinitessimal chances.
RangerWickett
Legend
Bah! WotC, if they do read this thread, will know we're doing this in good faith, with the intention of providing the best stories possible for them. They won't throw a fit. It's not like anyone can steal these story ideas. They use WotC IP.
RangerWickett
Legend
Or we could do it via email.
your father is
First Post
Keeping in mind that my opinion is basically worthless, here are my thoughts, Wickett.
This is fine for you to use as a guide, but I wouldn't include it on the actual 1-pager. Also, although it can be done, it's dangerous to start a story with characters feeling purposeless. Make sure you give your characters a problem to solve right away.
My feeling is that this is where the story should start, with background filled in only as neccessary.
This seems much more readable than the early stuff. Remember, you only have about 90,000 words.
If this is the ending (and I'm not sure that it is), it needs to be stronger and more decisive.
These seem like good scenes.
I think you've got a good hook with the teleportation and the visiting lots of kingdoms, since WotC asks you to be specific about geography. My sense is that you wouldn't want more than two main characters -- and both of those should have a strong sense of purpose.
I hope some of my comments are useful. Good luck!
RangerWickett said:
This is fine for you to use as a guide, but I wouldn't include it on the actual 1-pager. Also, although it can be done, it's dangerous to start a story with characters feeling purposeless. Make sure you give your characters a problem to solve right away.
My feeling is that this is where the story should start, with background filled in only as neccessary.
This seems much more readable than the early stuff. Remember, you only have about 90,000 words.
If this is the ending (and I'm not sure that it is), it needs to be stronger and more decisive.
These seem like good scenes.
I think you've got a good hook with the teleportation and the visiting lots of kingdoms, since WotC asks you to be specific about geography. My sense is that you wouldn't want more than two main characters -- and both of those should have a strong sense of purpose.
I hope some of my comments are useful. Good luck!
RangerWickett
Legend
Useful they are. Thank you. I've been thinking a bit more, revising things. I'll post my clarified ideas later tonight.
your father is
First Post
Here is the first line from my writing sample. I think it conveys the tone of what I went for pretty well:
RangerWickett
Legend
Introduction: We meet our three main characters.
Hawkins d’Orien speaks with an old associate, Parison d’Jorasco, a halfling librarian who helps Hawkins keep tabs on people who are looking for him. Hawkins has been having a hard time since the war ended, and he is now using his dragonmark powers of teleportation to earn a living as a thief. We learn that Hawkins abandoned his position in House Orien after his wife and son were killed, near the end of the war. But Hawkins is cocky, saying that no one will ever catch him, and if they did, secrets he knows would destroy some of the houses.
Labeth Porter is in New Cyre – a humid, idle town in east Breland that looks like it never intends to recover from the Last War, like something out of rural Louisiana in the 1880s. Labeth hires a diviner to tell her where she’ll be able to make the most money in a robbery. The diviner also warns her that the treasure she seeks will be passing out of her reach soon. Labeth is a thug, and after getting her information, she mugs the diviner to take back her money (casting doubt upon how good a diviner he is if he didn’t see that coming).
Alloy stalks an infernal goatbeast through the edge of the Mournland, muttering to himself to show that he’s conflicted, and basically does what people tell him to do. The last time he really made a choice for himself, it was to leave Cyre (just in time to avoid the devestation that created the Mournland), and now he’s back here anyway. He fights the monster in the first fight of the book, and then has a vision of boy standing among a field of treasures. On the boy’s face, he recognizes a dragonmark.
Hawkins links up with Labeth when he gets caught in a botched robbery. Hawkins stays behind to taunt the townsfolk, intending to teleport away before they hang him, but during the hanging, Labeth reaches him through the crowd and curses him for stealing what she was going to steal. They teleport away together, and we find out they knew each other during the war. Hawkins was friends with Labeth’s late husband. Despite their differences, Hawkins agrees to work with her, secretly feeling obligated toward her.
They head into Sharn looking for work as bounty-hunters. Looking for the Jungle Boys, Hawkins and Labeth attend a decadent little party with various house nobles in attendance, showcasing how rich they are compared to the poor folks. Alloy is also in attendance, trying to arrange access to some sort of library so he can identify something he saw in the Mournland. As a poor traveler from the wilderness, Alloy would normally be out of luck, but he manages to insult Hawkins’ father, Ghen, which wins points in Hawkins’ book. Hawkins agrees to help Alloy if the warforged assists them in their bounty hunt. As Labeth spies on nobles, she learns a clue to the Jungle Boys’ location, and also hears that Ghen is planning to ‘recover the cached treasure during the transit.’
The capture of their bounty is ridiculously easy thanks to teleportation, and the only hitch is when a person they saw at the party the night before tries to kill Labeth, but dies before he can be interrogated. Afterward Labeth asks about the cache. You see, at the end of the war, Hawkins was part of a secret group of House Orien couriers who went about stealing hundreds of magical treasures, art objects, and dragonshards, depositing them in a location they knew only by teleportation, not geographically. Additionally, a little checking reveals that the person Alloy saw in the Mournland was Hawkins’ son, Kev, who died two years ago.
The group decides they must find out what’s going on. Hawkins for the sake of his son, Labeth because of all the treasure involved, and Alloy because he wants to help.
The ensuing travels take the group on several adventures of investigation and treasure-hunting. They go back to Parison d’Jorasco once or twice for news, visit Aundair to steal records of what House Orien was up to at the end of the war, and start checking for possible places the treasure could be. Of course they suspect the real location is actually in the Mournland, but because going in there is dangerous for anyone other than a warforged, Hawkins insists on checking other places first. They run afoul of another group of treasure hunters, this one funded secretly by Hawkins’ father, Ghen, but both groups leave with no casualties. The trio visits sites in Aundair, Breland, the Talenta Plains, Thrane, and Karrnath. One key place in Thrane is the battleground where Labeth’s husband died.
Labeth has contacts among those who believe in conspiracies, and by speaking with them, the group gets in touch with the people who were trying to kill Labeth. They believe she’s working with the Dreaming Dark (Inspired bad guys who tap the dream monsters of Dal Quor), who are supposedly working with Ghen, but she tries to clear up the mistake. Visiting a planar observatory in the Eldeen Reaches, the group learns that a rare transit of two orbitting planes is about to take place.
Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead, will be eclipsed for a day by Shavarath, the Battleground. This worries Labeth, because her husband died in a great battle, and lore says that when a plane crosses the Realm of the Dead like this, those who died in a matter appropriate to the plane (in this case, war) will be pulled beyond the reach of resurrection. All of what Labeth has done for the past two years has been in a hope of bringing her husband back from the dead. In fact, I ought to have several people thinking the same thing; I mean, if you could bring back a dead loved one with enough money, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t a lot of people want to do this after a great war?
A few more clues let the group know clearly that they need to get to the place known as the Glowing Chasm, in the Mournland. And in order to get there without being killed along the way by monsters or crazed warforged who work for the Lord of Blades, they hijack a lightning rail train, which Hawkins can handily control thanks to his dragonmark. Along the way, ghosts intermittently appear on the train, all seeming to go about the business of war, as if they’re riding the train to a great mission. Unfortunately, when the trio is almost to their destination, they’re ambushed. The other group of treasure hunters (the ones who work for Ghen) teleport onto the train and wrest away control, and then Ghen and his allies from the dreaming dark arrive. With Hawkins, Labeth, and Alloy as prisoners, they leave the train and go to the Glowing Chasm, for the climax.
Unfortunately, it’s 4am, so the climax will have to wait ‘til tomorrow. But does it sound better now?
Hawkins d’Orien speaks with an old associate, Parison d’Jorasco, a halfling librarian who helps Hawkins keep tabs on people who are looking for him. Hawkins has been having a hard time since the war ended, and he is now using his dragonmark powers of teleportation to earn a living as a thief. We learn that Hawkins abandoned his position in House Orien after his wife and son were killed, near the end of the war. But Hawkins is cocky, saying that no one will ever catch him, and if they did, secrets he knows would destroy some of the houses.
Labeth Porter is in New Cyre – a humid, idle town in east Breland that looks like it never intends to recover from the Last War, like something out of rural Louisiana in the 1880s. Labeth hires a diviner to tell her where she’ll be able to make the most money in a robbery. The diviner also warns her that the treasure she seeks will be passing out of her reach soon. Labeth is a thug, and after getting her information, she mugs the diviner to take back her money (casting doubt upon how good a diviner he is if he didn’t see that coming).
Alloy stalks an infernal goatbeast through the edge of the Mournland, muttering to himself to show that he’s conflicted, and basically does what people tell him to do. The last time he really made a choice for himself, it was to leave Cyre (just in time to avoid the devestation that created the Mournland), and now he’s back here anyway. He fights the monster in the first fight of the book, and then has a vision of boy standing among a field of treasures. On the boy’s face, he recognizes a dragonmark.
Hawkins links up with Labeth when he gets caught in a botched robbery. Hawkins stays behind to taunt the townsfolk, intending to teleport away before they hang him, but during the hanging, Labeth reaches him through the crowd and curses him for stealing what she was going to steal. They teleport away together, and we find out they knew each other during the war. Hawkins was friends with Labeth’s late husband. Despite their differences, Hawkins agrees to work with her, secretly feeling obligated toward her.
They head into Sharn looking for work as bounty-hunters. Looking for the Jungle Boys, Hawkins and Labeth attend a decadent little party with various house nobles in attendance, showcasing how rich they are compared to the poor folks. Alloy is also in attendance, trying to arrange access to some sort of library so he can identify something he saw in the Mournland. As a poor traveler from the wilderness, Alloy would normally be out of luck, but he manages to insult Hawkins’ father, Ghen, which wins points in Hawkins’ book. Hawkins agrees to help Alloy if the warforged assists them in their bounty hunt. As Labeth spies on nobles, she learns a clue to the Jungle Boys’ location, and also hears that Ghen is planning to ‘recover the cached treasure during the transit.’
The capture of their bounty is ridiculously easy thanks to teleportation, and the only hitch is when a person they saw at the party the night before tries to kill Labeth, but dies before he can be interrogated. Afterward Labeth asks about the cache. You see, at the end of the war, Hawkins was part of a secret group of House Orien couriers who went about stealing hundreds of magical treasures, art objects, and dragonshards, depositing them in a location they knew only by teleportation, not geographically. Additionally, a little checking reveals that the person Alloy saw in the Mournland was Hawkins’ son, Kev, who died two years ago.
The group decides they must find out what’s going on. Hawkins for the sake of his son, Labeth because of all the treasure involved, and Alloy because he wants to help.
The ensuing travels take the group on several adventures of investigation and treasure-hunting. They go back to Parison d’Jorasco once or twice for news, visit Aundair to steal records of what House Orien was up to at the end of the war, and start checking for possible places the treasure could be. Of course they suspect the real location is actually in the Mournland, but because going in there is dangerous for anyone other than a warforged, Hawkins insists on checking other places first. They run afoul of another group of treasure hunters, this one funded secretly by Hawkins’ father, Ghen, but both groups leave with no casualties. The trio visits sites in Aundair, Breland, the Talenta Plains, Thrane, and Karrnath. One key place in Thrane is the battleground where Labeth’s husband died.
Labeth has contacts among those who believe in conspiracies, and by speaking with them, the group gets in touch with the people who were trying to kill Labeth. They believe she’s working with the Dreaming Dark (Inspired bad guys who tap the dream monsters of Dal Quor), who are supposedly working with Ghen, but she tries to clear up the mistake. Visiting a planar observatory in the Eldeen Reaches, the group learns that a rare transit of two orbitting planes is about to take place.
Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead, will be eclipsed for a day by Shavarath, the Battleground. This worries Labeth, because her husband died in a great battle, and lore says that when a plane crosses the Realm of the Dead like this, those who died in a matter appropriate to the plane (in this case, war) will be pulled beyond the reach of resurrection. All of what Labeth has done for the past two years has been in a hope of bringing her husband back from the dead. In fact, I ought to have several people thinking the same thing; I mean, if you could bring back a dead loved one with enough money, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t a lot of people want to do this after a great war?
A few more clues let the group know clearly that they need to get to the place known as the Glowing Chasm, in the Mournland. And in order to get there without being killed along the way by monsters or crazed warforged who work for the Lord of Blades, they hijack a lightning rail train, which Hawkins can handily control thanks to his dragonmark. Along the way, ghosts intermittently appear on the train, all seeming to go about the business of war, as if they’re riding the train to a great mission. Unfortunately, when the trio is almost to their destination, they’re ambushed. The other group of treasure hunters (the ones who work for Ghen) teleport onto the train and wrest away control, and then Ghen and his allies from the dreaming dark arrive. With Hawkins, Labeth, and Alloy as prisoners, they leave the train and go to the Glowing Chasm, for the climax.
Unfortunately, it’s 4am, so the climax will have to wait ‘til tomorrow. But does it sound better now?
Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
I have a quick question for you, Ryan, and others:
Do you think it's an advantage, or disadvantage, to have lots of "blooded" protagonists/antagonists?
I'm wary of having too many characters with d' or ir'. I don't have a good read on the verisimilitude of having lots of blooded folks running around.
Truth is, I'm not even sure I want my protagonist to be a member of any dragonmarked House at all.
Wulf
Do you think it's an advantage, or disadvantage, to have lots of "blooded" protagonists/antagonists?
I'm wary of having too many characters with d' or ir'. I don't have a good read on the verisimilitude of having lots of blooded folks running around.
Truth is, I'm not even sure I want my protagonist to be a member of any dragonmarked House at all.
Wulf
