weird, i can't copy the numbers.... anyhoo....
Does nothing happen in the first fifty pages? murder, sex, intrigue... then it's right onto the second paragraph.
Is your main character a young farmhand with mysterious parentage? yes. well, yes if you replace 'young farmhand' with grizzled soldier and 'mysterious parentage' with 'cybernetic penis,' colour me guilty.
Is your main character the heir to the throne but doesn't know it? funny, but no, that's never happened in any story i've ever written. honestly, it just never ocurred to me.
Is your story about a young character who comes of age, gains great power, and defeats the supreme badguy? no, they're usually about regular jerks like me.
Is your story about a quest for a magical artifact that will save the world? i've used some variation on this, but not this specifically that i recall.
How about one that will destroy it? see above.
Does your story revolve around an ancient prophecy about "The One" who will save the world and everybody and all the forces of good? no, i hate prophecies as much as i hate country music.
Does your novel contain a character whose sole purpose is to show up at random plot points and dispense information? nope, not that i'm aware of. then again, i tend to use an omnicient POV what removes a lot of that.
Does your novel contain a character that is really a god in disguise? no, but characters are often not as they appear. not always, and rarely supernatural in nature.
Is the evil supreme badguy secretly the father of your main character? he wishes.
Is the king of your world a kindly king duped by an evil magician? no, though some have been seduced.
Does "a forgetful wizard" describe any of the characters in your novel? all my forgetful wizards forget to duck and have a tendency to go splat. that's the price of stupidity.
How about "a powerful but slow and kind-hearted warrior"? isn't slowness and uber mercy the hallmarks of all 'powerful' warriors?
How about "a wise, mystical sage who refuses to give away plot details for his own personal, mysterious reasons"? well, if he's forgetful he can hardly be held accountable for not mentioning that everytime you use the magick pendant you suffer a year of erectile dysfunction, eh?
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? usually it's when another female character is around. let's face it, women get gussied up more to impress other women than they do to attract a guy's attention. guys don't tend to be that picky if they think they can get a piece, know what i mean?
Do any of your female characters exist solely to be captured and rescued? nope.
Do any of your female characters exist solely to embody feminist ideals? i don't go in for that whole femi-nazi thing, no, though they tend to be on the strong side more often than not. by that, my women usually use their wiles and natural skillz of deceit than brute force.
Would "a clumsy cooking wench more comfortable with a frying pan than a sword" aptly describe any of your female characters? see above.
Would "a fearless warrioress more comfortable with a sword than a frying pan" aptly describe any of your female characters? see above.
Is any character in your novel best described as "a dour dwarf"? the only good a dwarf is is having dwarf-tossing competitions at the tavern.
How about "a half-elf torn between his human and elven heritage"? nah, i think spock covered this nicely.
Did you make the elves and the dwarves great friends, just to be different? once, in a parody.
Does everybody under four feet tall exist solely for comic relief? the last shorty i wrote about was an elf who got raped and murdered in the process of prostitution, so i think that's a big negatory, good buddy.
Do you think that the only two uses for ships are fishing and piracy? yes, yes i do.
Do you not know when the hay baler was invented? don't know, don't care.
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"? does 'the blasted forest of fearful doomland' count?
Does your novel contain a prologue that is impossible to understand until you've read the entire book, if even then? because it's important to know the exact instant the universe was created, eh? uh, no.
Is this the first book in a planned trilogy? typically no one survives by the end, but that seems to be a growing trend, so i'll probably change that.
How about a quintet or a decalogue? oh, hell no.
Is your novel thicker than a New York City phone book? guilty as charged. to be fair, i wanted it to be one solid book rather than three with tons of filler.
Did absolutely nothing happen in the previous book you wrote, yet you figure you're still many sequels away from finishing your "story"? can't answer that one.
Are you writing prequels to your as-yet-unfinished series of books? impossible.
Is your name Robert Jordan and you lied like a dog to get this far? i'm not bob jordan but i'd like to have his bank account.
Is your novel based on the adventures of your role-playing group? uh, no.
Does your novel contain characters transported from the real world to a fantasy realm? no, never got into that.
Do any of your main characters have apostrophes or dashes in their names? i despise this practice.
Do any of your main characters have names longer than three syllables? sometimes their last name.
Do you see nothing wrong with having two characters from the same small isolated village being named "Tim Umber" and "Belthusalanthalus al'Grinsok"?
Does your novel contain orcs, elves, dwarves, or halflings? indeed i do see something wrong with that.
How about "orken" or "dwerrows"? how about 'dorkens'?
Do you have a race prefixed by "half-"? 'half-dorkens'?
At any point in your novel, do the main characters take a shortcut through ancient dwarven mines? as opposed to newly constructed mountain mines?
Do you write your battle scenes by playing them out in your favorite RPG? no, i use army men for that. or buttons. sometimes loose change.
Have you done up game statistics for all of your main characters in your favorite RPG? only if i get a +2 or higher on a 10d.
Are you writing a work-for-hire for Wizards of the Coast? i wish! (what's wizards of the coast?)
Do inns in your book exist solely so your main characters can have brawls? no, they need to get laid, too.
Do you think you know how feudalism worked but really don't? i used to. then i forgot. guess i'm up for wizard of the year.
Do your characters spend an inordinate amount of time journeying from place to place? no, but it's something else not to show the journey at all.
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? it's a secret.
Do any of the magic users in your novel cast spells easily identifiable as "fireball" or "lightning bolt"? no, i can do better than that.
Do you ever use the term "mana" in your novel? no.
Do you ever use the term "plate mail" in your novel? no, not any more. i did when i was, like, 12.
Heaven help you, do you ever use the term "hit points" in your novel? only if i'm writing a script for uwe boll.
Do you not realize how much gold actually weighs? do i not? do you not realize the unnecessariness of putting in 'not'? gold is heavy. that's what the women are for. it's simple: carry around a small smelting pot, make jewelry out of the gold, and they'll carry it around all day long.
Do you think horses can gallop all day long without rest? no, but the alternative is having to do easy research, and who's got a minute and thirty-five seconds to spare?
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? if i can, so can my character.
Does your main character have a magic axe, hammer, spear, or other weapon that returns to him when he throws it? no, because i figure my characters are smart enough not to want dangerous weapons flying at them no more than the enemy wants it. why not just have a sword that you say 'attack' to and make yourself a snack?
Does anybody in your novel ever stab anybody with a scimitar? scimitars are for slicing and looking exotic.
Does anybody in your novel stab anybody straight through plate armor? no, plate armour is designed against that generally, no? that'd have to be one damn good sword or knife to do that, anyway, something along the lines of a ginsu. ronco, you'll note, makes everything for such things.
Do you think swords weigh ten pounds or more? [info] oh, i think about four pounds is enough metal to be swinging about with any real skill for extended periods of time.
Does your hero fall in love with an unattainable woman, whom he later attains? my women tend to be complete whores.
Does a large portion of the humor in your novel consist of puns? i'm not funny in the least, haven't you figured that out by now?
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? it only makes sense to take anyone with a weapon seriously, doesn't it?
Do you really think it frequently takes more than one arrow in the chest to kill a man? depends on if you want to 'kill' him or 'kill him dead.'
Do you not realize it takes hours to make a good stew, making it a poor choice for an "on the road" meal? sure, if you're not using magick ingredients and cookware.
Do you have nomadic barbarians living on the tundra and consuming barrels and barrels of mead? barbarians have to consume something, don't they?
Do you think that "mead" is just a fancy name for "beer"? no, but i don't remember the difference.
Does your story involve a number of different races, each of which has exactly one country, one ruler, and one religion? for the purposes of telling a story, i don't generally see the need to go way in depth on the various dorken factions.
Is the best organized and most numerous group of people in your world the thieves' guild? i have pimp guilds, but, yeah, they pretty much have their stuff together.
Does your main villain punish insignificant mistakes with death? no mistake is insignificant. ask any human (ha!) resources manager and they'll say this is a dream situation if they're being honest.
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? who else is going to record their brave and noble deedery?
Is "common" the official language of your world? well, it's easier than chinese calculus. seriously, this is saying these bumpkins have their world operate in a more orderly manner than our real life one.
Is the countryside in your novel littered with tombs and gravesites filled with ancient magical loot that nobody thought to steal centuries before? nah, but no long story of mine goes by without at least one trip to the gravediggers.
Is your book basically a rip-off of The Lord of the Rings? lord of the what?
Read that question again and answer truthfully. depends on if you want the truth or 'the truth.'
