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General: The Fantasy Novelist's Exam

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  1.  
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      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeAug 13th 2009
     

    Rinkworks is awesome. For those who have never seen it before, check out the Fantasy Novelist’s Exam, a series of 75 questions to answer for a novel you’re writing/have written. If you answer yes to so much as one question… throw out your novel immediately!

    http://www.rinkworks.com/fnovel/

    Being very, very kind, Eragon still gets 6 “yes“s.

  2.  

    I got a 3. However, one of them was the hay-baler one. I do not know when that was invented.

  3.  

    Is this the first book in a planned trilogy?

    Shit.

    Well, mine’s not actually, technically fantasy of the sort being referenced, so I choose to disregard the test’s results.

  4.  

    I’ll post my results on my blog.

  5.  

    You have a blog?

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeAug 13th 2009
     
  7.  

    Ah, RinkWorks. I used to go there for the Computer Stupidities pages.

    I got a score of one. My character spends an inordinate amount of time journeying, because that’s what the story is.

    @SMARTALIENQT

    The hay-baler question is meant to point out the anachronistic presence of hay bales in many fantasy books. If you know that it’s anachronistic, that’s enough.

    @swenson (way up there)

    >Being very, very kind, Eragon still gets 6 “yes“s.

    You must have been very, very, very kind, because I ended up giving it 21.

    •  
      CommentAuthorVirgil
    • CommentTimeAug 13th 2009
     

    Haha.. my upcoming NaNo answers yes to a lot of these, but entirely on purpose, and in a comical manner.

  9.  

    Wrong swenson. It’s

    http://natewinchester.wordpress.com/

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeAug 13th 2009
     

    Meh, I almost got it right. Couldn’t remember which site it was on.

    •  
      CommentAuthorhappycrab91
    • CommentTimeAug 13th 2009 edited
     
    I thought this would eventually make its way to this forum. I would've made a thread for it ages ago myself but forgot.

    The exam is to be taken as a joke so of course getting even a reasonable amount of yeses doesn't mean your novel is shit and unoriginal. Some of the questions are purely jokes and some I found to be flawed, like the haybaler one. I've got my results on my dead computer, but from what I remember I got 1 or 2 yeses and a bunch of "sort of kinda maybe a bit but different not exactly"s. Because I believe you can easily take something that's cliche and twist it around a bit to make it different enough.

    I tried to contact the people who did the exam several times with no response. I just wanted their opinion on my elaborated answers than just simply yes or no. Maybe they are pretty busy or maybe they didn't take me seriously because of my silly hotmail address, but they didnt respond. Though they have posted some people's intelligent replies on the site journal so they do actually interact with people. At the bottom of the page they welcome emails (and they have a funny disclaimer).
    •  
      CommentAuthorPuppet
    • CommentTimeAug 13th 2009
     

    Wow. If I used my novel from a year ago I would have answered at least 50 of those question’s “yes.” :P

  13.  

    Heh, I love rinkworks; the super condensed novels are SO FUNNY. :D

    •  
      CommentAuthorSpanman
    • CommentTimeAug 13th 2009 edited
     

    My recent NaNo novel completely failed that exam. This is what I get for trying to get back into writing fantasy (I’ll tell you right now – it’s not my forte).

  15.  

    I did better than I thought. Some I don’t really know the answer to, because they haven’t turned up yet.

    • CommentAuthorUn-Dante'd
    • CommentTimeAug 14th 2009
     

    I don’t think that the “names containing apostrohpes or dashes” is very good, because take a look at a woman, for example (pulling from Steven Gould’s Reflex) Millie Harrison married David Rice, but wants to be called Millie Harrison-Rice.

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeAug 14th 2009
     

    I think they’re talking more about first names, like Ebony-Ra*ven-Su’e

  18.  

    Dunno. While these questions are a good litmus to tell whether your book is a poor, derivative fantasy, I don’t think that answering “yes” to any one question should mean that you should adbandon your book at once.

    ASoIaF gets more than several yeses, for one thing.

  19.  

    Really? The only ‘yes’ I found for ASoIaF was number 30, that it was very thick. But with Martin, the more there is the better, so this is hardly negative. Anyway, experienced writers can get away with doing cliched things, because they know how to do them correctly.

  20.  

    I don’t think that the “names containing apostrohpes or dashes” is very good, because take a look at a woman, for example (pulling from Steven Gould’s Reflex) Millie Harrison married David Rice, but wants to be called Millie Harrison-Rice.

    The apostrophe one is used more badly, I think, like Ebony Dark’ness. I know one kid whose mom is named Mary Jones* and his dad is named John Smith*, so his name is Sammy Jones-Smith*. I pity the name-changing courts, or alternatively, the kids, when he marries.

    *Names have been changed to protect me.

    •  
      CommentAuthorJabrosky
    • CommentTimeAug 14th 2009 edited
     

    Didn’t do too bad on it. But then my story’s only a few pages long.

  22.  

    Same here.

    • CommentAuthorUn-Dante'd
    • CommentTimeAug 14th 2009
     

    @ Swenson:
    What about the names of a place or race, like Asu’a and Zida’ya?

  24.  

    What I don’t get about apostrophes is how they change the pronunciation of the word in the first place.

    • CommentAuthorUn-Dante'd
    • CommentTimeAug 14th 2009
     

    In that language, the language of the “Dawn Children” (basically elves) in Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, the apostrophes symbolize a kind of clicking sound. A bit like the language of the San and their exclamation points, like !Xhabbu.

  26.  

    Yeah, but most of the time, it’s there for decoration or something. Kind of like umlauts.

    •  
      CommentAuthorJeni
    • CommentTimeAug 14th 2009
     

    @SWQ, I thought it signified a gap in the word? forcing you to pronounce it a different way? Gah, I can’t think of an example at the moment.

    • CommentAuthorUn-Dante'd
    • CommentTimeAug 14th 2009
     

    If it serves a purpose, then I think that you can add punctuation where you please. A bit like K.A Applegate’s “thought speak.”

    •  
      CommentAuthorswenson
    • CommentTimeAug 17th 2009
     

    Apostrophes usually signify a glottal stop, like in the middle of the way most people (or at least most Americans) pronounce “mitten”. You know how you don’t quite pronounce the T’s, you just sort of go “mi-en” with a weird air-stop-thing in the middle? That’s a glottal stop. In Hawaiian, when you write it in Roman characters, the apostrophe signifies that. So I can understand a language in which that’s a legitimate symbol that represents a particular pronunciation, but I think they meant more like the kind where you just throw in punctuation to make it look “cool”.

  30.  

    In The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks, there’s apostrophes all over the place, but they actually serve a purpose. Like the Lae’Knaught, in which the apostrophe shortens it from like Laeanravashiaknaught or something ridiculous like that.

    Anyway, I scored a 2, but only because the main character is sort of a detective so he travels a bit and who honestly knows when the baler was invented off the top of their head.

  31.  

    Umlauts actually change the sound of the vowel (at least in German). So u is pronounced “oo”, but ü is sort of a cross between an “oo” and an “ih”. Apostrophes, however, just mean you are leaving out a letter, like how “don’t” leaves out the “o” in “not”.

  32.  

    Therefore it’s actually Mootley Croo.

  33.  

    The Invisible Man
    I turned myself invisible, and it SUCKS.
    THE END

    Lol

    • CommentAuthorUn-Dante'd
    • CommentTimeAug 18th 2009
     

    I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS READ THE NIGHT ANGEL TRILOGY! HOORAY!
    Caps is cruise-control for cool :B

  35.  

    EVEN WITH CRUISE CONTROL, YOU NEED TO STEER.

    • CommentAuthorUn-Dante'd
    • CommentTimeAug 19th 2009
     

    MY MIND IS OUT OF CONTROL, NO STEERING REQUIRED!

  37.  

    DID WE MENTION THAT THERE ARE NO BRAKES?

  38.  

    VTEC JUST KICKED IN YO.

  39.  

    Really? The only ‘yes’ I found for ASoIaF was number 30, that it was very thick. But with Martin, the more there is the better, so this is hardly negative. Anyway, experienced writers can get away with doing cliched things, because they know how to do them correctly.

    3. Is your main character the heir to the throne but doesn’t know it?

    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?

    14. How about “a wise, mystical sage who refuses to give away plot details for his own personal, mysterious reasons”?

    19. Would “a fearless warrioress more comfortable with a sword than a frying pan” aptly describe any of your female characters?

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

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