how bad could it be?

Yikes... I realized tonight that I have written myself into a corner and have severely limited the amount of danger my protagonist will face. So in the world of my story there is magic and people know it exists... but its rare and the ones displaying it are almost always unhinged and dangerous people. So the counter to them is the government (and godly) mandated and approved counter group. The problem is that in scenes I've already written (and there are a lot of them) it is made abundantly clear that normal people shouldn't attempt to fight the magical powered folk or the counter govt group and doing so guarantees you a quick and painful death. But that means that unless I create an extremely large number of both I'm not going to have much for anyone to fight I need mooks, faceless minions and people for the heroes to fight but if I make too many of them then we wind up with essentially a world of badasses that for some reason common people don't realize even though the culture, religion and goverments are all built upon a foundation of magic. Ugh. I realize the solution but I'm just dreading it.

What do you do when you realize you've screwed up thoroughly in your preparation that you thought was complete?

I don't want to have an all magic world where everyone knows magic... but it might be the easiest change at this point. I also can't have a world where magic is completely hidden. It won't work. I was planning to have magic be cause for people to mistrust a character... but have the heroes using magic although in a different form that people don't recognize as traditional magic. But there are plot holes galore going about it that way. Ugh. What a mess.

Or maybe I'm just realizing the world I created doesn't match the story. That would be really upsetting.

I've been working overnights recently and despite having tons of time I've only written a few pages. I don't have to do much but I keep procrastinating. Perhaps (trying) writing at work is a bad idea. ;p

I guess because the video had a funeral in it I always think of funerals for the song but....

November Rain by Guns N Roses.

When an idea you hoped would be a 5000 word short story is now at 10000 words, and your critique group tells you "you're telling a lot. You need to expand this whole chapter into two or three and show more."

Sounds like a good problem to have. Didn't the Codex Alera just start as a bet for Jim? Surely he wasn't initially looking to write an entire series of books when the idea first was presented. Keep at it.

Just a quick question on how people feel about new races being injected into traditional fantasy situations. How do you view books that try to go outside the traditional fantasy races? Orcs, dwarves, elves, etc.... There are different humanoid races that have been created although the ones that aren't completely monstrous don't seem to be very popular. Sure Jim's Codex Alera has the Canim, Marat and Icemen and some games have expanded the possible human/animal combinations like the Elder Scrolls series with the Khajiit (Cat men) and Argonian (lizard men) but I just wondered how do you feel about these additions? Is it trying too hard to be different or do you appreciate having something new to figure out and get to learn about?

I suppose you could go the Eragon route and take the normal tropes and rename and rework them a bit.... but meh. Seems too much like cheating. Do you roll your eyes when something new walks across the screen/page? Or do you appreciate someone not just taking LOTR and putting a fresh coat of paint on it?

I've really only worked on one story since I got the idea. The problem is I mostly just have the main events outlined so doing an actual outline helped me flesh out some of the story. The problem after that is that things keep shifting the longer I plan. So I've done lots of different things planning for it... But not a lot of writing to be done because I change things so frequently. The main events that I thought about in the beginning haven't changed but nearly everything else has.

So I guess the answer to the question how do you plan your stories is: Badly and often.

I like art... especially abstract and fantasy art and artists. I like to take one or two small things from a picture and twist them around and make it my own and then use that to create a whole backstory for a character or a place.....stuff like that.

Makes me want to update my board now... I like the new layout and the color scheme is boss.