Fantasy Novel Exam

[kippurbird]

According to the site, if you get one yes then you should ditch the novel, however some of the questions I think are just silly in regards to that. (Like the planed series ones)

The Exam

1. Does nothing happen in the first fifty pages? No.
2. Is your main character a young farmhand with mysterious parentage? Alec is a young noble with known parentage and so is everyone else.
3. Is your main character the heir to the throne but doesn't know it? Nope. No kings for the wizards.
4. Is your story about a young character who comes of age, gains great power, and defeats the supreme badguy? That requires a supreme bad guy, doesn't it?

5. Is your story about a quest for a magical artifact that will save the world? Nope.
6. How about one that will destroy it? Nope.
7. Does your story revolve around an ancient prophecy about "The One" who will save the world and everybody and all the forces of good? BWAHHAAHAA... nope.
8. Does your novel contain a character whose sole purpose is to show up at random plot points and dispense information? Nope. They do research though.
9. Does your novel contain a character that is really a god in disguise? Nope. Unless you count Lorac... but he isn't really a god, people just think he is.
10. Is the evil supreme badguy secretly the father of your main character? Nope. Alec's parents are perfectly normal. No supreme bad guys either.
11. Is the king of your world a kindly king duped by an evil magician? Nope. Not even the one king I know of.
12. Does "a forgetful wizard" describe any of the characters in your novel? Well, Greywolf is absent minded in the extremely focused way.
13. How about "a powerful but slow and kind-hearted warrior"? No.
14. How about "a wise, mystical sage who refuses to give away plot details for his own personal, mysterious reasons"? Nope. Kratz is masterminding things, but he doesn't refuse to give away plot details because that would destroy his master plan.
15. 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? Laruna likes to look nice, but she doesn't excessively worry about it when she's around Alec who is her brother cause that would just be ew.
16. Do any of your female characters exist solely to be captured and rescued? Nope.
17. Do any of your female characters exist solely to embody feminist ideals? I don't believe so.
18. Would "a clumsy cooking wench more comfortable with a frying pan than a sword" aptly describe any of your female characters? I'd have to say that most of my female characters grew up in households with servants so I suppose that could apply. But I don't think in the way the test meant.
19. Would "a fearless warrioress more comfortable with a sword than a frying pan" aptly describe any of your female characters? Again, refer to the previous statement. However Laruna doesn't know how to use any sort of weapons -unless you count her magic as a weapon- but she's not a fighter.
20. Is any character in your novel best described as "a dour dwarf"? No dwarves.
21. How about "a half-elf torn between his human and elven heritage"? No half elves.
22. Did you make the elves and the dwarves great friends, just to be different? No dwarves.
23. Does everybody under four feet tall exist solely for comic relief?... no real short people.
24. Do you think that the only two uses for ships are fishing and piracy? Nope.
25. Do you not know when the hay baler was invented? I don't know when it was invented but I don't really see much hay.
26. 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"? Mmm... nope.
27. Does your novel contain a prologue that is impossible to understand until you've read the entire book, if even then? Mmmm... nope.
28. Is this the first book in a planned trilogy? Nope.
29. How about a quintet or a decalogue? Planned series of stories in one world. But why is that bad?
30. Is your novel thicker than a New York City phone book? Nope.
31. Did absolutely nothing happen in the previous book you wrote, yet you figure you're still many sequels away from finishing your "story"? Nope. Each series will have a beginning and middle and end with in their lot of books.
32. Are you writing prequels to your as-yet-unfinished series of books? Not yet.
33. Is your name Robert Jordan and you lied like a dog to get this far? Seeing as how I am biologically a female and still alive... nope.
34. Is your novel based on the adventures of your role-playing group? Nope.
35. Does your novel contain characters transported from the real world to a fantasy realm? Nope.
36. Do any of your main characters have apostrophes or dashes in their names? Nope
37. Do any of your main characters have names longer than three syllables? Alexander?
38. Do you see nothing wrong with having two characters from the same small isolated village being named "Tim Umber" and "Belthusalanthalus al'Grinsok"? No
39. Does your novel contain orcs, elves, dwarves, or halflings? Nope. Fey and dragons though...
40. How about "orken" or "dwerrows"? Nope.
41. Do you have a race prefixed by "half-"? Nope.
42. At any point in your novel, do the main characters take a shortcut through ancient dwarven mines? Nope. No Dwarves
43. Do you write your battle scenes by playing them out in your favorite RPG? No battle scenes.
44. Have you done up game statistics for all of your main characters in your favorite RPG? Nope.
45. Are you writing a work-for-hire for Wizards of the Coast? I'd like to. MONEY =D
46. Do inns in your book exist solely so your main characters can have brawls? Nope.
47. Do you think you know how feudalism worked but really don't? Nope. Don't bother with it.
48. Do your characters spend an inordinate amount of time journeying from place to place? Nope. Chapter at most.
49. 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? Nope.
50. Do any of the magic users in your novel cast spells easily identifiable as "fireball" or "lightning bolt"? They're wizards who's powers are to control the elements. So yes, of course they can. But it's not like they can cast invisibility.
51. Do you ever use the term "mana" in your novel? Nope.
52. Do you ever use the term "plate mail" in your novel? I don't believe so. I'd have to double check with Darian's armor.
53. Heaven help you, do you ever use the term "hit points" in your novel? AHAHHAAaaa no.
54. Do you not realize how much gold actually weighs? no.
55. Do you think horses can gallop all day long without rest? no.
56. 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, though Darian wishes he could.
57. Does your main character have a magic axe, hammer, spear, or other weapon that returns to him when he throws it? No.
58. Does anybody in your novel ever stab anybody with a scimitar? No.
59. Does anybody in your novel stab anybody straight through plate armor? Nope.
60. Do you think swords weigh ten pounds or more? No.
61. Does your hero fall in love with an unattainable woman, whom he later attains? Alec is happily in love with a nice young man. Marlina also has a significant other and a child. So, no.
62. Does a large portion of the humor in your novel consist of puns? No. I'm starting to think this guy has a grudge against certain novels.
63. 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.
64. Do you really think it frequently takes more than one arrow in the chest to kill a man? No.
65. Do you not realize it takes hours to make a good stew, making it a poor choice for an "on the road" meal? Hrum. Never really thought about it before.
66. Do you have nomadic barbarians living on the tundra and consuming barrels and barrels of mead? No nomadic barbarians on a tundra. (I'm thinking this is in regards to R.A. Salvatore.)
67. Do you think that "mead" is just a fancy name for "beer"? No.
68. Does your story involve a number of different races, each of which has exactly one country, one ruler, and one religion? Now this is an interesting one. See in real life that's sort of true, at least with the races having one religion, especially if they're rather small. Wizards are a minority in the world and tend to be insular so they do have one religion and once country, but not one ruler. However they do live in other areas where there are other religions. And some of them are a part of the Cult of Lorac ... um no.
69. Is the best organized and most numerous group of people in your world the thieves' guild? Nope.
70. Does your main villain punish insignificant mistakes with death? No main villain.
71. 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? Nope.
72. Is "common" the official language of your world? I don't have an official language.
73. Is the countryside in your novel littered with tombs and gravesites filled with ancient magical loot that nobody thought to steal centuries before? Nope.
74. Is your book basically a rip-off of The Lord of the Rings? Nope.
75. Read that question again and answer truthfully. Nope.


This guy was obviously biased against some particular writers. I think I shall try to write a test that's more neutral. ( Link to the quiz here

Comments

[ambientfiligree.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not seeing the reason why a book about someone from our world being transported to another world is an automatic fail. A lot of the other questions are pertinent (aside from the ones thrown in for a laugh), but that one struck me as particularly senseless.

Also, gold is really, really heavy. I doubt it would be an issue in your story, since you're pretty genre savvy. But you can see how small a kilogram of gold is here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Goldkey_logo_removed.jpg

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Maybe he didn't like the Chronicles of Thomas Convent? A lot of them are pertinent but I don't think that one simple yes should be an automatic fail. Maybe a point based one like the Mary Sue test would be good.

Whenever I think about the weight of gold I always think about the Pinky and The Brain episode where they try to rob Fort Knox. They get all the way in and then find that the gold is to heavy to move. Brain ends up saying something to the effect of "I seem to have forgotten to take into consideration the mass of gold" after the two of them get squished.

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

He's probably read too many self-insert fanfics. :P

[dracorn-adagio.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that doesn't seem like a very accurate test. A lot of the questions are "do you use this cliche" without regards to how it's used. Stephen R. Donaldson has already been mentioned, and one of my favorite series takes place in a country called Ile-Rien. Nothing inherently wrong with forgetful wizards or magical artifacts or prophecies, it's when they start to build up without any kind of actual originality that they become a problem.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Indeed, as TVtropes has taught us in all of its time sucking glory.

[canadianevil.livejournal.com]

Um, I think this quiz is full of shiiiiiit.

But that could be my intense crankiness speaking.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

No. It is full of shit.

[jacedraccus.livejournal.com]

R A Salvatore, Robert Jordan, David Eddings, Raymond Feist, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms...

This guy REALLY has issues with modern fantasy in general, I think.

Heck, even Tolkien would potentially fail this test... I wonder if that's the point.

[the-norseman.livejournal.com]

I'd tend to agree there, I mean my novel is quite non-traditional (or rather very traditional) and yet I have dwarves. I'm too self-conscious to really fill out a quiz like this though.

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

42. At any point in your novel, do the main characters take a shortcut through ancient dwarven mines?

Yep, he fails.

[easol.livejournal.com]

I think that Tolkien, Lewis and the original classic authors are meant to be be exempt since they CREATED those cliches. He should have a disclaimer.

[acdragonmaster.livejournal.com]

65. Do you not realize it takes hours to make a good stew, making it a poor choice for an "on the road" meal?

Now, this question is just splitting hairs. The "stew" the question is talking about is stew in the formalized sense, where you take a bunch of ingredients, put them in sauce, and and let them, well, stew for a few hours. However, many people often use the term "stew" to basically mean "any random combination of foods boiled together too thick to be soup". Or as wikipedia says, "a combination of solid food ingredients that have been cooked in liquid and served in the resultant gravy." In which case, yes, it is in fact a good "on the road" meal, and in fact possibly your only on the role meal, depending on your resources and cooking ability.

[lemon-m.livejournal.com]

Plus, it says good stew. Who said it had to be good? most of the time it's just made to have something in the stomach and move on.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Sam made stew.

[gjohnsonkoehn.livejournal.com]

25. Do you not know when the hay baler was invented?

Okay, why is this an automatic fail? Not only does it seem to assume that hay bales will come up in a story (if your fantasy novel is about, say, an inuit-style tribe and you didn't know, would you still fail?), but unless I'm misinterpreting it the question seems to imply that anyone including bales of hay in a pre-modern setting is wrong. Which is just nonsense.

36. Do any of your main characters have apostrophes or dashes in their names?

So... No gaels or celts in fantasy?

[kevias.livejournal.com]

Dashes and apostrophes were just added in so that non-Gauls and Celts could figure out the pronunciation. The goal of the question (I think) is to make the author reflect upon why the name is spelled the way it is, rather than their banishment entire.

[cogitoergoilusi.livejournal.com]

This exam feels like it's based solely on a male lead character. And it's obvious that just having a female lead doesn't excuse the author from those cliches. And I'm echoing everybody else saying that cliches are fine if you use them right.

62 must be a jab at Piers Anthony, but his hokey jokes are one of the least objectionable things about his books.

[jacedraccus.livejournal.com]

I think Piers Anthony himself has said on occasion that he doesn't exactly like having all the puns in his Xanth books, but his fans love it and send him puns, and he feels obliged to use them.

[mistyeyedreamer.livejournal.com]

This test has always bugged me. You can have points of the quiz in your story and still have a really great story. You could have none of them and have the most boring thing ever. What matters, I think, is how you spin the ideas to make them new, not just disregarding everything that a bad fantasy author used badly.

[kjtaylor.livejournal.com]

I passed :D

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Aren't you planning a trilogy?

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

52. Do you ever use the term "plate mail" in your novel?

There is no "plate mail" in history per se.

Plated Mail, aka Splinted Mail or Plated Chainmail, which can be referred to as "Plate and mail"

And Plate Armor, which is what most people think of as platemail.

[kjtaylor.livejournal.com]

Well, exactly. That was the point of the question. "Are you dumb enough to think there's such a thing as plate mail?"

[lemon-m.livejournal.com]

37. Do any of your main characters have names longer than three syllables?
38. Do you see nothing wrong with having two characters from the same small isolated village being named "Tim Umber" and "Belthusalanthalus al'Grinsok"?

These two questions bother me the most. There are plenty of normal, actual names that are longer than three syllabes, and the situation in #38 has plenty of potential to be interesting.

This annoys me. It's quizzes like this that can make a person shy out of an idea just because someone said that the basic gist of it is cliché.

[the-norseman.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that in a genuine village you could have one man named John Smith, another Balthasar M'Tavish, and a third IfnotforChristIshouldhavebeendamned Barebones (commonly known as Damned Barebones). So yeah naming traditions can vary enormous in a single culture, with an English village having weird names from a small Middle-Eastern tribe.

[easol.livejournal.com]

The quiz would be better if it had "answering yes to three or more means automatic fail!" rather than one, because ONE of some of these would not be a total plot-killer. I mean you could have a truly awesome and unique book and it could still have a magic axe that comes back. :)

And dwarves and elves (and orcs, under different names) have existed in myth for millennia so I don't consider those automatic fail. F'rinstance, Tad Williams has elves and pint-sized "trolls" sort of halfway between hobbits and dwarves, but they're not written as stereotypical Tolkien ripoffs.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Captain America has a shield that comes back and he's kickass awesome.

[foxypope.livejournal.com]

13. How about "a powerful but slow and kind-hearted warrior"?

I answered yes to this one because of the way it's being put. "Would it describe any of your characters?" Yes, it would describe one of my characters. Fully, though? Hardly. But yes, you could describe one of my characters as that--that is, if you disregard his full role in the story and any of his other attributes.

It's not like I picked him out of a book of fantasy archetypes; he just turned out to be good hearted, strong and actually about average intelligence (I'd only consider him "slow" compared to the two mains, who are educated and more on the brain side than the brawn). Although I wouldn't call him good hearted to everyone...

I thought some of the questions were unfair. Like knowing if you really knew how the feudal system works... since it was worded in a way to make you doubt that you do. "Obviously you CAN'T know ANYTHING about it!" It's mostly the wording of some of the questions that get to me.

And yeah, in agreement with everyone who's said "it's how you use the cliches" already. I answered "no" to most of the questions, and yet I fail for ONE question, and another one that I'd really count as like... kind of yes, kind of no? Rather silly.

[foxypope.livejournal.com]

Oh, and this question, too:

Is your novel thicker than a New York City phone book?

I guess we'll all have to take back our Harry Potter books, guys. It obviously sucks just because of this.

[kroveechernila.livejournal.com]

You shouldn't throw out your book if nothing happens in the first fifty pages. Maybe throw out the first fifty pages. Something really good might get going on page 51, no?

[easol.livejournal.com]

Or at least whittle them down. Or write in something interesting happening.