Fear

Fear is the reason that people fail to excel. Fear is to be overwhelmed by doubt that you cannot be good enough. As Franklin Delano Roosevelt said: "There's nothing to fear but fear itself." Fear is the only thing that stops people from achieving their potential for greatness, and it convinces men that they are not what they are meant to become. All men and women deserve excellence, but fear persuades men to think that only some people are good enough to change the world.

Courage

What is courage? Courage is the ability to stand up and keep going, even when you know that you've failed in the past. Courage is the strength to keep going, even when it seems like all hope is lost and you don't think you can continue. Courage is hope in the face of overwhelming adversity and crushing despair. Courage is motivation and the willpower to stand firm in your beliefs, even when they are tested to their limit. Courage is knowing when to be flexible and objective and when to be stubborn and refuse to give in.

The Hero's Second Journey: An Introduction

While the Hero's Journey is much discussed, today I will be beginning a 5 or 6 part series discussing something only attempted in Hollywood: the Hero's SECOND Journey.
The Hero's Second Journey is like David Eddings' Malloreon series, the sequel to his bestselling Belgariad. In The Malloreon, the main prophesied hero of destiny has been king of his little island nation, and had ten years of peace. He has a child, who is immediately kidnapped by the Child of Darkness, the second villain. After finding out about the kidnapping, Belgarion gets back in the ring for round two. There are several particularly good examples of the Second Journey in Film especially: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and The Bourne Legacy, just to name a few.
For those of you that have seen the movies, you can see why Second Journeys are generally avoided by authors who don't care about making money. Sequel series that retain the original main characters are particularly hard to write for several reasons:
1. You have to find a really good reason to drag the Hero out of his comfy little mansion that he got at the end of Trilogy #1 and throw him back onto the ring to fight again.
2. You have to come up with a completely new villain that manages to have his own reasons and motives without being a carbon copy of the original. Many authors, like Rick Riordan in his Heroes of Olympus series solve this problem by making the new guy even bigger and badder then the first dude. If they don't take the bigger, badder route then they probably take the servant of the Dark Lord who now wants revenge/his own chance at glory and destruction route, like Morgoth in Tolkien's Silmarillion and Sauron in the Lord of the Rings.
3. Character development for a character whose story arc is supposed to be finished already is very difficult, because the Hero now has to have a SECOND huge obstacle to overcome. This is obviously very hard to pull off, as there are very few authors who've managed to do it. Christopher Nolan tried to make a second rise-fall-redemption cycle for The Dark Knight Rises, and he did a spectacular job at that, but it is an incredibly tough feat.
In conclusion, if you're an author/screenwriter, a Second Hero Journey is usually only a task undertaken for the purpose of making money off of an already popular franchise. If a writer wants to try their hand at it then fine, but it should be undertaken with great caution.
COMING NEXT: The Hero's Second Cycle

Writing: "Blind Wielder" Chapter One

This is also in great need of replotting, so I'd appreciate a little input.

               One

   Stars streaked across the darkness of the night sky.

There were many visible from the city of Rafeda, many more than the northern parts of Civilization. Rafeda was the closest city to the Wasteland, being only twenty miles away from the corrupted land. Jariel looked up briefly before returning to work, oblivious of the stars that were hurtling through the sky. He returned his focus to the task at hand, not seeing the people crowding the streets around him.

He was blind. Few blind people had survived as long as Jarien had, but of course it helped that he had once been a member of the city’s aristocracy. But his noble house had gone bankrupt, forcing his own family to abandon him and leave him crippled in the slums of the city. He was lucky to lucky to have a job, lucky to have somewhere to live, lucky even to have food.

Blind people were generally left to die on the streets, but Titriel had taken him in when no one else would. She had found him freezing in the alley near her manor one winter, and nursed him back to health. She had a soft spot for blind people, especially after her blind mother had been killed by a passing rider that had not seen her in time to stop. She had died almost instantly under the horse’s hooves.

            After nursing him back to health Titriel had been ready to send him to one of her friends who needed a hand in his inn. He was offered a job that could be done by a blind person, but he had begged Titriel to let him stay in her house. Living on the street for four years had forced him to move nomadically from place to place, begging people for food or money. He had grown skeptical, slow to trust others. But the year he had spent recovering at Titriel’s home had shattered the wall he had initially tried to set between them. He had even come to love her, he was afraid to make his feelings known. She had grown fond of him, but would never be able to see past his blindness.

            He walked through the city, ignoring the sounds of the beggars lined up at the sides of the street. Most of them were crippled in some way, unable to work for food. He shivered as he thought about his time as a beggar, unpleasant memories surfacing to the forefront of his mind. He could not remember how he had gone blind; he could only remember that he had not been blind before he woke up one morning in an abandoned farmhouse. He had been blind since then, never recovering his eyesight.

            He had wandered after that, not remembering who he had been before the blindness until his cousin Hieren had found him several weeks later. He had been second in line to the succession of the Iurian family, until that day. He had spent the better part of a year recovering, quickly learning how to find his way as a blind man, but his family went bankrupt, losing everything to a revolution in a city more than a thousand miles away.

He came to Althus Street and turned left, passing several shops before entering one of the many smithies in the city. This one in particular had a sign with a man subduing a gargoyle, holding a sword over the creature. Jariel could no longer see the sign, but could remember it well from the days before he had been blind. He had passed the shop many times but had never actually gone into it. He put a hand out in front of him as he entered the smithy, feeling his way around the interior of the building.

            “Ah, Jariel. I expected you to be here earlier.” Ieren was both a scholar and a smith, an odd combination of jobs. He spent half the day making weapons for soldiers and the other half cataloguing books for the noble houses that had supported the revolution. The books in the Arch’s manor had spent years gathering dust the underground rooms of the house until the revolutionaries had found the collection while ransacking the house.

            “Did you bring what I asked for?” Ieren asked him. He had asked Titriel to let him examine a very rare piece of jewelry that had been passed down her family line for seventeen generations; a relic Titriel had said came from the Wars of Stone.

            “I have it, blacksmith.” Jariel growled. He took his shirt off and took it out of a hidden pocket on the interior of the clothing. Even after being persuaded by Titriel’s niece Giara, she had still insisted that it be carefully hidden so that no one could see it even if Jariel was attacked en route. He examined it for a minute and grudgingly extended his arm. Ieren took it from his hand and walked over to his desk, Jariel’s sensitive ears picking up the sound of his light footsteps.

            Even after knowing him for the better part of a year, Jariel still didn’t completely trust him. The man was too strange to be what he said he was. A Blacksmith and a practicing scholar that had extensive knowledge of the wars between man and gargoyle and believed that gargoyles were actually created by the stars as punishment for an unknown sin committed thousands of years ago. He was light on his feet, and according to Giara he always carried weapons on his person.

Four years on the streets had convinced him that Ieren was not what he seemed to be, and he had a hard time trusting the man with anything. He was still good company, in spite of all this. He amused most of his customers with his jack-of-all-trades personality and his strange beliefs, and he could be funny at times.

Jariel heard the sounds of pen scratching on paper. He was writing, but what Jariel did not know. Knowing Ieren, he was probably taking notes on the ring, maybe drawing a rough sketch of it so he could look at it after he had returned the jewelry.

“I’m making notes of my observations, so I can look at them later and maybe figure out what this used to be” Ieren said. The two knew each other well enough that they could predict what the other was going to do despite Jariel’s blindness.

“What do you mean?” Jariel asked him. The last part of what he had said perplexed him. A ring is a ring, isn’t it?

“I have looked at many pieces of jewelry, and this did not used to be a ring. The scratches on the stone indicate that it was taken out of one item and put into the ring. What it could have been a part of, I do not know. There isn’t any way for me to tell.” He began to grow exited, as if he had found a lost toy. “This might date back even further than the Wars of Living Stone!” he exclaimed. “This might have once been a part of a belt or sheath, or even a Celestial Blade!” He was giddy with excitement. He jumped into the air and landed with a loud thump, unable to contain his excitement any longer.

Jariel was skeptical. “Why would that help you?” He asked.

Ieren calmed down quickly and sat down in his chair before explaining to Jariel. “Gemstones from Celestial Blades are made of a rock unseen on this planet, commonly known as Starstone but referred to by scholars as Qaldane. This is the same substance that gargoyles are made from, and if I am right, than it could give me a clue to the making of Celestial Blades.”

“But the making of Celestial Blades was lost hundreds of years ago.” Jariel said.

“That is why I’m so excited!” Ieren exclaimed. “This gemstone might give me a clue to their appearance and making.”

“But it wouldn’t help you make one.” Jariel said. If he couldn’t possibly figure out how to make them, than why was he so excited?

“I am predominantly a scholar, Jariel. I’m not trying to figure out how a Celestial Blade is forged so I can make them myself. I am doing it for the sake of history, so that I can better understand the Wars of Living Stone and Ralien Salakar. I’m doing it so I can better understand the world.”

The chair creaked as Ieren stood up. “Well, here is the ring. Thank Titriel for me.” Jariel put his arm out in front of him, and felt the ring land on his palm. He closed his hand and put the ring in his pocket, than turned and left the building. He began walking down the street and was passing what sounded like an inn when he heard someone talking loudly.

“I hear that he’s coming to Rafeda later this month before heading into the Wasteland.”

“That’s not what I heard. I heard that he’s coming to rule over the city in the absence of the Warlords, and to bring the city stability.”

Jariel, his interest sparked by the conversation, walked over to the source of the noise. “Who’s coming?” He asked.

“Zalqir, the new Valelord.” The person said to him. “Rumor has it that he fell from the sky like some hero out of legend.” After telling him this they began talking amongst themselves, ignoring him.

Later he returned to Titriel’s home. As he entered the house, he called for Giara and sat on the chair next to the hearth. The arrangement of the house had never been changed, so after two years of living there Jariel could get around the house without bumping into anything. This was a welcome change to Ieren’s smithy, where the arrangement of the room was changed constantly.

He heard the sound of Giara’s feet as they stepped softly across the wooden floor. He had not known Titriel or any of the rest of her family before his blindness, so he didn’t know what they looked like.

“You called, Jariel?” She asked.

Jariel turned his head in the direction of her voice. He found that if he didn’t act like he still had his sight than people would grow uncomfortable in his presence. He reached into his pocket and took out the ring.

“Ieren took a look at the ring and gave it back.” He said as he opened his hand. She took it and left the room, shouting for someone. He heard Giara and the person she had been calling talk briefly; she would not expect him to be able to eavesdrop, but his other senses had been heightened in the absence of sight. She came back into the room with Titriel, who Jariel could recognize by the sound of her voice. They came close to the chair he was sitting in, and stopped.

“Ieren looked at the ring?” Titriel asked.

“Yes, he did.” Jariel responded. “He spent several minutes drawing it, and then he gave it back.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that the gemstone is scratched in a way that indicates that perhaps it might have been taken out of another object before being set into the ring you hold now.”

“And of course he is convinced now that this gemstone was once part of a Celestial Blade.” Titriel said fondly. She was amused by the man’s peculiar interest in relics of the ancient wars with gargoyles.

“That’s what he thought when I left.” Jariel said.

Titriel laughed. “Thank you for bringing it to him.” She sat down in the chair next to him. “Jariel, I have to go to Lurian Manor to negotiate a potential marriage.” She was managing the affairs of her house currently, but a man would be needed soon if the house was to continue prospering. Jariel could almost feel himself blush; Titriel knew he still loved her, but she dismissed it.

“I’m going to be back in several hours, but until then, I’m leaving Giara to manage affairs here at the mansion.” Titriel said. “I don’t want you to leave unless you tell Giara where you are going.” It infuriated him when she treated him like a child. Just because he was blind didn’t mean he couldn’t take care of himself! Had she forgotten that he had taken care of himself on the streets for three years before she had taken him in?

He struggled with his resentment and anger at his blindness for a minute before getting it back under control. “I will.” He said. She got up then, her chair creaking as she stood. She walked out without saying another word to him, and Giara soon followed suit. He sat in his chair for a while, thinking while he listened to the soothing sound of the fire crackling in the hearth. He meant to get up, but he was tired. He kept trying to get up, but the thought of sleep was too appealing to him. Before he knew it, he had fallen asleep in the chair beside the hearth.

He woke up abruptly, the sound of horns ringing out outside. The noise was accompanied by yelling and the sound of soldiers running through the streets, their armor clinking as they ran. He shouted for Giara, trying to be heard over the noise, but his voice was drowned out by the chaos outside. He got up and went upstairs, looking for her, but she was nowhere to be found. He went outside, trying to find someone to ask what all the noise was for.

This task was almost impossible with his lack of sight and the volume of the noise. Finally he just gave up and walked several streets over to The Wandering Star, an inn he visited when he wanted a drink and an occasional game of dice. He had stopped playing dice quickly when he realized that his opponents were taking advantage of his blindness to cheat. He came in and walked toward the bar, the door slamming shut behind him. He tried to avoid bumping into tables, but he failed. He sat on one of the stools lined up at the bar and called for the bartender. The man came to where Jariel was sitting, his enormous weight shaking the ground as he walked.

“What do you want, Jariel.” The man’s voice boomed out.

“Do you know what’s going on outside?” Jariel asked.

“You mean the noise that just started up a few minutes ago? I don’t know. I sent out several of my stableboys to investigate, but none of them have yet returned.”

Jariel nodded and left the inn to find someone who could tell him what was wrong. If Giara had found out that he had left without telling her, than she would be worried. As he turned the corner to the street where Titriel resided, a soldier collided with him, knocking them both to the ground. The soldier cursed Jariel, not noticing the man’s blindness.

“Watch where you’re going, civilian.” The soldier snarled. It seemed he had already been knocked down in a similar situation earlier that day.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m blind.” The man stuttered an apology when he said this, but Jariel cut him off. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

“You mean you don’t know what those horns mean? I guess that’s understandable, considering we haven’t had a direct attack in more than thirty years.”

Jariel was shocked. “An attack? By who?”

The soldier’s voice was grim. “I’d recommend going inside for you. You won’t be safe from them if they get into the city.”

“Who are we being attacked by!”  Javan said, frustrated that the soldier was dodging his question.

The soldier paused for a moment before saying, “We’re being attacked by gargoyles from the Wasteland.”

Writing: "Blind Wielder" Prologue

      

           Prologue

            Stars streaked across the darkness of the night sky.

Several of them bounced off the atmosphere before continuing their orbit, some being pulled in by gravity and burning up from the heat of the furious speeds they fell at. This phenomenon almost always happened over the southern skies of the Wasteland, seen only by its harsh occupants. This particular event was being watched from a large group of sheer cliffs that dropped almost two hundred feet.

            One of the observers crouched, still as stone, watching the sky and the land below it. Almost nothing grew in the Wasteland-nothing but the toughest plants and animals could survive. The observer noticed a sand tornado somewhere far to his right, but quickly dismissed it. Nothing would interfere with the events that would happen tonight.

            The cliffs themselves spread for hundreds of miles at a time, an ancient remnant of the War of the Wall, when fights between man and its hereditary enemy reached their final climax before ending with the Battle of Regala and the completion of the Wall. The wars had gone on and off for as long as anyone could remember, all the way back to the falling of the first star.

            The gargoyle moved from its position on the edge of the cliff, noticing several large clouds coming from the east. He poised as if to jump off the cliff, and was stopped by another gargoyle that got up when it saw Grath’ren move from his position. The other gargoyle raised its hand as if to stop him, and began to speak.

            “There are no cliffs there, Grath’ren.” The other one said. Nhorma was the leader of the Configuration that Grath’ren was also a member of. “Brathom has already taken his Configuration to take care of anything that might be a threat.” Although he had asked several times, Grath’ren still didn’t know how the Configuration leaders communicated quickly across long distances. Nhorma’s Configuration had left them several days ago, and the groups were now more than a hundred miles away.

            Grath’ren nodded and got back into his original crouching position once more, watching the sky attentively. The other members of the Configuration saw the exchange out of the corners of their eyes, but said nothing and did not move. They continued to watch the sky, hoping that they would be lucky enough to witness a special event. The Configuration was divided into groups; some watching the sky and some watching the land.

            Grath’ren briefly looked over the infinite landscape sprawling into the distance before returning his observant gaze back to the sky. He carefully examined the constellations that had been charted by the gargoyles over the last thousand years, looking for stars that were missing from their original positions. He looked over the western portion of the sky, noticing that one of the stars in Islin the Hellsmith was missing.

            “Nhorma!” He exclaimed quietly, trying not to be too loud. Nhorma was examining the clouds of dust rising from the area that Brathom was in charge of when Grath’ren called out to him. He walked over to Grath’ren, pausing briefly to say something to Klardea, another member of the Configuration. He reached Grath’ren, inclining his head as if asking a question.

            “Nhorma, I think I’ve found something. Rethger is missing from the head of the Hellsmith.”

            “Rethger has been missing since the solstice at the end of last year, Grath’ren,” Nhorma said impatiently, “Next time you summon me, try not to waste my time.” He walked away and began talking to Klardea again. Grath’ren noticed a star streaking toward the northern horizon. Chances were that the star wouldn’t survive when it hit the ground, but sometimes it happened. Most of the stars that had survived the massive impact they caused when they hit the ground in the northern half of the world were hailed by men as heroes.

            Grath’ren’s attention on the sky shifted as he thought about this in great detail. The last star that had survived the impact in the Northern Hemisphere had discovered the making of Lunestial blades, driving the gargoyles back with the fury of the swords of the Moon. If the star that was hurtling toward the northern horizon made it through the atmosphere and survived the crash, then another major war between gargoyles and men would soon begin. He sincerely hoped that there would not be another war, at least not if the humans had a fallen star fighting for their cause.

            He was struck on the side of his head by a large hand. The sound of stone hitting stone rang out. “I thought you were assigned to watch the skies, Grath’ren, not sit idly and think.” Grath’ren looked down, noticing that he had moved into a sitting position while he was thinking. He moved back to his original position and once again watched the skies, looking for a star that could be missing from the heavens. Nhorma nodded in satisfaction and began patrolling the perimeter of the cliff. No human would attack this far into the wasteland, but there were several groups of fallen stars that had survived their fall to the planet Rashelm and killed the gargoyle Watchmen. Together these survivors had formed a group that attacked gargoyle strongholds occasionally.

            He had been given the task of watching the sky several days ago by Wrathik, Nhorma’s Underling. Stargazing was used during starfalls to spot missing stars that could possibly be hurtling toward the Wasteland. The profession had been developed soon after the birth of the gargoyles. It had grown more and more necessary after the Year of Falling Suns and the expansion of their race due to the high number of stars that fell that year. The gargoyles were born out of the fire of the stars that hit the ground, melting the earth and making gargoyles out of earth and bloodfire.

            Suddenly Grath’ren noticed something. There was a black space where the star Uriel was! Uriel was one of the fainter stars in the Daligrath, the Great Mountain of the sky. He almost jumped up in excitement, but thought better of it and remained in the same position, checking over his apparently out-of-date mental list of missing stars and the new constellations that were made as a result. Confident this time that the star really was missing, he got up and ran to where Nhorma was silently watching the horizon.

            “I’ve found a missing star, Nhorma.” He said, trying to conceal his glee.

            Nhorma’s face went hard. “Are you sure this one is really missing?”

            “I’m sure, Nhorma.”

            “Which one?” Nhorma asked, still unsure that Grath’ren had really found one this time.

            “Uriel is not in its position in the Greatspere.”

Nhorma looked in the general area of Dalingrath. After several seconds of inspection, his eyes went wide. “I will alert the other Configuration Heads.” He walked to a more solitary spot and stood there for several minutes. Even if Uriel had fallen, there was no way to tell when it would land or where it would land. Methods of starfall prediction were beginning to surface, but they were still unreliable.

Nhorma returned. “I talked to Brathom. He said-

His words were cut off abruptly by the sound of something streaking toward the cliff at incalculable speeds, even faster than the shooting stars they had been watching earlier. There was an explosion, enormous shards of rock from the cliff flying from the center of the collision. Fire flew from the impact area, making the rock red-hot. The entire Configuration felt the recoil of the impact, and several of them were thrown from the cliff. Grath’ren was thrown several feet from where he had been standing. He got up and brushed himself off, looking for the site of the explosion.

He traced the smoke trailing into the sky to its source and noticed that the explosion must have been over twenty miles away to have had such a small effect on the Configuration. They were lucky not to have been hit directly. He joined the rest of his Configuration, and together they set out for the crater that was doubtlessly forming.

They reached the site after two hours of walking. Most of the Configuration, Grath’ren included, pulled their swords from the sheaths strapped to their backs. Only a couple of gargoyles in this Configuration had seen a fallen star up close. Grath’ren paused briefly, examining the area before continuing to walk toward it. The part of the cliff that had been hit by the star had been leveled. He began to run, reaching the center of the crater. There was a figure at the center of the explosion, its skin glowing. It was not as bright as it normally should have been; stars could control their heat and illumination.

“Surround the star. We must kill it quickly before it wakes up, or else it will kill us all and join the other survivors.” Nhorma said. The Configuration formed a circle around Uriel, waiting for the Head to issue a command. But before any commands could be given, the stars eyes snapped open.

Suddenly the land was bright, almost as bright as the sun itself. The ground burned with the heat of the light, and several of the Configuration who were standing too close were consumed by fire and glowed red before melting, their faces contorted in agony. Uriel directed a blast of fire at Nhorma, who was thrown back from the force of the blast. It was then that Grath’ren stopped suppressing survival instincts and ran.

The Head was sprawled on the ground. His arm was completely shattered, as were both of his legs. They would be fairly easy to heal, with all of the newly formed bloodfire nearby. Most of the shattered remnants were large pieces of the broken whole of his limbs, so they would be almost as strong as they were when they had been whole. But the large cracks running down his chest would be a different matter. They were hard to heal without threatening his life, and there would definitely be scars.

Nhorma regained consciousness and screamed from the pain of the wounds. Because of these wounds, he would probably lose his position as head and become one of the lower ranking members. He would lose everything he had fought for as head. The weight of this was probably the other reason for his screaming, the fact that he would lose everything and likely be killed by his successor.

Uriel walked toward Klardea, who still held his ground. He came to his senses when Uriel got closer to him and ran, but was killed by another blast of fire from the fallen star. Uriel began to walk toward Grath’ren and Nhorma then, and Grath’ren got up quickly. He was about to run when the star’s voice rang out like fire itself.

“Stay where you are, underling. I have no desire to stand here and slay your comrades. I wish to join your ranks.” Thoughts raced through Grath’ren’s head. The star could not be offering to join them. Not once in history had a star requested to join the gargoyles in their attempts to destroy humanity. The stars thought themselves better than that. “I wish to be the leader of your race, and lead you to victory against your eternal enemies.” Uriel said.

“Why?” one of the other Configuration members asked him. Uriel turned to him, flame lighting his eyes as he walked toward the gargoyle and grabbed it by the throat. He grew bright then, and the rest of the group turned away. He was not even close to his regular temperature that he had always been at while in space, if he were than Rashelm would be destroyed in a second. Grath’ren turned back, noticing the gargoyle’s dismembered head sitting several feet from his body. Bloodfire leaked out of the head and what was left of the upper torso, starting several small fires in the underbrush. They went unnoticed as Uriel turned toward Nhorma and began talking. 

            “Forget your leader now, and come with me.” His tone was cold, and he looked down at Nhorma in contempt. “He’s no longer important.”

            Together they left Nhorma to die. They found the other gargoyles that had been separated from the main group after the explosion, and Grath’ren explained Uriel’s plan. The other gargoyles were doubtful, and some of them began to leave when Nhorma pushed Grath’ren out of the way and began speaking himself.

            “With me at your head your race will flock to our banner, eager to join the army of victory. We will destroy mankind, and gargoyles will become the masters of the earth as they were meant to be.” Uriel told them. Several of them were still reluctant, but Uriel reminded the entire group that he could kill them all and find another group to take leadership of.

Soon after the Configuration had been reorganized with Uriel at its head and Brathom had been contacted and summoned. Several gargoyles from his Configuration fought, but they were effortlessly destroyed by the fallen star’s awesome power. The others who were reluctant to join were forced by more threats from Uriel and other members of the Configuration who had already joined him.

            After the two Configurations had been joined, they made camp. Since gargoyles don’t need sleep, they sat around the fire they had built, talking for the remainder of the night. Uriel had outlined a plan to launch an offensive against humankind. Gargoyles, the fallen star had said, had done nothing in the past hundred and twenty years except for the occasional border raid. The Configurations had agreed, and were to prepare for march the next day.

 Sometime later, Grath’ren looked up at the sky, his eyes drifting again over Dalingrath. His heart began to speed up again when he noticed another gap in the night sky, right next to Uriel. He ran through his mental list for a moment before realizing that Zeclyptus was missing from Kasheren, the great sea beast next to Dalingrath. He thought for a minute before the connections were made in his mind, thoughts racing through his mind. He reached conclusions quickly, assuming that Zeclyptus was the star he had seen streaking toward the northern horizon.

The next day, after being equipped for battle, he told Uriel what he had seen and his conclusions. Uriel merely nodded his head, taking in the gargoyle’s words.

“Doubtless it is one of my brethren, rushing to prevent their destruction once again. We must move more quickly, now. We march to the southern reaches of the Wasteland tomorrow.”

Several gargoyles complained, but they marched anyway, fearing punishment from Uriel. Over the next several months, Uriel’s Configuration grew in size until they were ready to begin their first assaults on humanity. They left soon after final preparations were made, hungry for the taste of battle and the deaths of their enemies.

The Importance of Writing Groups

I know this goes without saying, but lately I've realized just how important it is to have a writing group. The consequences of not having one can be really bad, especially for an inexperienced writer like me.
Writing groups do two MAJOR things for its members.
1) Members of a writing group can bounce ideas around and come up with new or better ones. I can reach a conclusion that takes an hour by myself in ten or twenty minutes with a couple of creative people in the room. Not only do they help come up with new ideas, but they can improve an idea that an individual has already come up with. When I need help with an idea, its best to have a few people that read or write a lot.
By improving the ideas that you have, the writing group can also come up with new ones that stem out of the old lame ideas you had in the first place.
2) Members of a writing group can raise you up or tear you down, depending on your need.
If you've just finished a huge chunk of writing and you're feeling proud of himself, that hubris can get to your head pretty quick. A writing group can help with that by offering constructive criticism. If you're feeling down because the members of your group pointed out a bunch of flaws in some writing you had, don't. That's what a writing group is for. They want you to do well, and sometimes that means letting you fall down and get scraped up a little bit.
The other thing they can do is raise you up when you're feeling down. If you're depressed because you have to rewrite an entire short story because there were some characterization issues, your writing group can help by offering some ideas and suggestions that might help get you back on the road.

I know it's common sense for a writer to have a group or two, but after being on my own for a long time I've realized how important it can be to SHARE your ideas once and a while. Even if you don't have a formal group, you can still talk to friends who read a lot or who might even be aspiring writers themselves.

Characters vs. Plot

In Orson Scott Card's book Characters and Viewpoint, there's a part where he mentions that a lot of books either focus on the plotline or on the characters. He is 100% right.
Take, for example, The Lord of the Rings. Sure, the characterization is good, but is that really what people think of when they read the books? They're not thinking of the characters, they're thinking of the massive worldbuilding that went into the trilogy. When the fantasy genre exploded in the 70's and 80's, most new authors tried to put an equal amount of worldbuilding into their books. Fantasy geeks like me will recognize the names Terry Brooks, Raymond E. Feist, or Robert Jordan. They all try to pull a J.R.R. Tolkien, with mixed success.
That all changed with the publication of Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. There was some good worldbuilding, but it took a backseat to main character Thomas Covenant and his leprosy. Donaldson changed the face of the fantasy genre, but that change is only really beginning to be huge in the fantasy market today, with authors like David Farland, Orson Scott Card, and Brandon Sanderson. Card became a huge success with the publication of his 1985 novel Ender's Game, a book that focused primarily on the development of Ender. The plotline revolved completely around his growth and development.
While fantasy in the 70's, 80's, and 90's focused primarily on plot and worldbuilding, fantasy took a turn right around 2000 toward having stronger characters. Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn Trilogy, for example, has a very cliche plot, but is supported by incredibly well-done characters and development of those characters. David Farland's Runelords have a strong plotline, but the focus on the main characters and their struggles with honor and leadership are very obvious.
This sudden change in focus also happened in the younger fantasy novels at about the same time. Characters are a huge part of blockbuster book series such as Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Harry Potter, or Artemis Fowl. The audience demand for strong, believable characters has grown much larger in the past ten years than it had previously. This demand has even started to expand into science fiction, but not at such a rapid rate. You can see it with Ender's Game in particular. But this change isn't as evident, as the main interest in science fiction has always been more in plot and idea. Sci-fi is more plot driven than its relative fantasy.
So the question is: do you make your book plot-driven, or character-driven? My answer is that more success will be found in someone that can not only write a book with excellent characterization, but also with an original and well-done plotline. If you can pull off doing both, then fantastic. If you can't, then write what you're strongest in. If you can do plots better than characters, or vice versa, then go for it. But the current trend in epic and YA fantasy is that the characters need to be very well done with an interesting but not necessarily original storyline. I am one of those aspiring authors that eventually is going to try doing both.