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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 595171" data-attributes="member: 177">Hm.  My first thought on thispiece is a bit context-dependant - claims of authority must be supported.  "Mr. Author" spends quite a bit of time using personal authority to get us to bother to read the piece, and as support for his position - "I have been up and down these boards.  I have seen something you're doing wrong.  I would know, because I am an author of speculative fiction.  So listen to me."  The first three paragraphs are loaded with this.  This is a fine and strong position if and only if "Mr. Author" is a well known, respected, and professional author of speculative fiction.  If I've never heard of Mr. Author, it immediately forces me to question every point from then on.  Even worse, f I've heard of Mr. Author, and I think he's a hack writer, it suggests to me that this writing will be no better than the rest, and I'll discard it out of hand.  So, Mr. Author should eliminate most of the first three paragraphs unless he's got a lot of faith in his own reputation.Unfortunately, next I must bring into question a major premise of the piece - that using magic to change the rules of the world against what is currently known will lose your audience.  This is presented as if it were a rule of writing, and woe betide you if you violate it....However, there are a large number of successful, time-weathering stories that stand as examples to the contrary.  Magic is frequently used to specifically break the rules, and to good effect.   Fairy tales are loaded with magical deus ex machina, but they still hold up.  Even the more recent Lord of the Rings has a number of magical breaking of known rules - that dead people stay dead is a major one - apparently Gandalf hadn't read the rulebook <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Better to present this not as a rule, but as a suggestion - don't break the rules, unless it's for a really good reason.  Break the rules if and only if it makes the story better.  Think carefully before you break the rules.</blockquote>

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