Kate Flournoy

Hm… I like that. I like that. I really do. Let’s see… let’s see where I can take this…

Oh boy, I’m too tired to avoid cliches tonight.

Let’s say Walter was out on one of his long walks, and he comes back to find his home burned by terrorists and his family all presumably dead. Sufficiently tragic?

He’s not exactly the type to go off…[Read more]

Oops— my bad.

But isn’t that IN the forum called Novel Ideas?

Ooh… don’t tempt me, Daeus. I have too many characters already. 😛

That’s great though. I may just have to. Oh dear…

I just realized we did that backwards. We should have started with a charming good guy and made him villainly.

You start it this time. 😀

Welcome, Little Brown Dog! And thanks for bringing @howlingwolf along with you. 😉

Here are the basic rules of survival for the newbie on an online writing forum.

1. Learn the lingo. A few important abbreviations you need to know are as follows.
POV: Point of View.
MC: Main Character.
WIP: Work in Progress.

2. Watch out for…[Read more]

You didn’t scare me away. I just had to eat dinner. 😛

It sounds like you’ve done a good job of having this be a story element, @howlingwolf, but not promoting it. That’s perfectly fine. In fact that can actually be a very good thing, as it forces the reader to stop and think about these things. And that’s always good.

I think it’s safe to say…[Read more]

Yes, you can. Go to the forum called ‘novel ideas’ and create yourself a topic there.

Hm… the problem with that though, David, is that the Bible condones war as a necessary evil, but says nothing about torture.

This is what we logic fanatics call a slippery slope. If you go so far, you’re going to have to go all the way to the end.

If you took that same argument— that torture is bad, but it’s better than letting thousands…[Read more]

Hm. I guess I missed that part.
No, I didn’t read the unabridged version. I wanted to so badly, but we looked everywhere (and I mean everywhere) and couldn’t find it.
So I picked up an abridged version and read about the abridging process, and it sounded like it was only stylistic editing. Well, turns out I was wrong, so I’m still looking.…[Read more]

Yes! His name fits him perfectly. 😀 I think a lot of the reason I liked Luigi was because he was obviously so refined and educated, so it was intriguing to imagine how he fell to where he was, and what he had been before.

In regards to those who start out bad, I would say you still have to understand why they’re like that in the first place.…[Read more]

Yes, that makes sense.

Here’s the question then. This person that you’re torturing, supposedly at least, has been engaged in a war against you. He has been killing your soldiers, and would kill you if he got the chance. Does that justify it? Especially when you consider that the information he has could likely save thousands of lives?

The only…[Read more]

Yes, good points, Hope.
I’ve got absolutely no problem with good guys using mental manipulation. It’s torture I’m not sure about.

I’m going to suggest a tentative thought. You can still have a non-villain employ torture without promoting it. Just because it’s not the villain torturing someone doesn’t mean it’s right to do it.
If it’s essential…[Read more]

My favorite messed up protagonist? Sydney Carton. Bitter, cynical, lazy, slovenly, drunken— the list goes on and on.
Yet he’s a great character because we all know what it’s like to want something we cannot obtain (Lucie in this instance) and to work incredibly hard at the most thankless job imaginable and still see nothing come of it.
Or even…[Read more]

My apologies, Master Yoda. I didn’t say you weren’t wise, I said you weren’t refined.

There’s a big difference. *cough* Excuse me. Big difference there is.

Ha!

Crazy you are. Like Yoda your last sentence sounds. Very not-refined is Yoda.

A lot of us on this forum write fantasy, I think.

Just a guess. 😉

Ah! Okay. Yes, I didn’t even notice that, but it’s true. 😛

Very true.

Oh, a pretty fair mix of both. I’ve found that combination makes for an excruciatingly long novel, though. 😛

I’ll bet it was!

Do you like to do medieval fantasy or modern fantasy? And do you prefer High Fantasy or Heroic Fantasy? Or a mix of both? 😛

Hm… those terms aren’t so common. Maybe I should explain. *pulls on nose* yeah, I probably should.

High fantasy is epic in the truest sense of the word, focusing primarily on the plot, and usually the…[Read more]