I enjoy writing fight scenes, so it should be no surprise that an idea I have brewing revolves around a major war. This idea was born from playing a lot of Dynasty Warriors, which is based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I really wanted to write a book that was the tales of a giant war and this is where War of the Tainted came from.
At some point in the multitude of series that I have, the evil Hejinn are going to return. For those too lazy to hit the link, they are the original elves of Windemere. Corrupted by demon blood during their creation, the Hejinn conquered the entire world until a handful of them fought their demonic nature. They led the other races to overthrow their people and the result was most of the Hejinn were transformed. The demon blood was locked away under a god seal, so when that seal breaks, the elves revert back to Hejinn. About 10% of the elves avoid this by being in safe zones, wearing a protective item, and other things that protect them from the anti-curse wave. The exception are the chaos elves who are protected entirely by their queen’s magic.
Once they have their new home, the Hejinn set out to conquer the world again. This time they have created their own curse. Every race that turned against them is now forced to sit back and be conquered. The one race that attempts to fight back is decimated to the point where they feel like their god has betrayed them. This negates almost every hero that has appeared, except for the regular elves, but they are too few to cause trouble. In fact, they’re terrified because they don’t want their people to be wiped out.
So, who stands up to the Hejinn? The chaos elves and the orcs. You see, the Hejinn wiped out the original orcs, so the new orcs are immune to the curse. My ‘evil’ race and the traditional ‘evil’ race of fantasy get to unite against a new ‘evil’ race. I had grand battles, epic heroes, betrayals, and so many other things planned. One hero of the chaos elves gets to go on her own adventure to destroy these Titans that the Hejinn have awoken, which is something spawned entirely from playing too much Shadows of the Colossus. A few other species get involved or find ways around the curse. For example, they can’t fight back, but they can let the orc bandits ‘pillage’ their towns for supplies, which is a plan made up by the orcs themselves.
I think this is an exciting idea if I can figure out how to pull it off. I’m thinking breaking it into battles, heroes, and events that shaped the war. Everything has to have a purpose in this book, so no scenes of simple chit-chat unless it’s to push something important. This story might end up happening earlier than expected since it sets up a character for another series. This could even be the one-shot story that I use between long series.
Oh and the primitive giltris (lizardmen) play a role in this too.
Legends of Windemere 
This is what always fascinates me about sci-fi and fantasy writers…having to invent entire new worlds. I’ve never written anything like it, since it seems so much explanation has to go into the writing. A good friend of mine, Maureen McHugh, is a sci-fi writer, and has been awarded a Nebula and that other major sci-fi award. She wrote mostly about the “real” world with the sci-fi overlaid. I’m going to have to dowload your book on my kindle when I go to the states next month, see what you’re up to. Doesn’t work here. I used to play an old video game with Three Kingdoms in the title…something about a Chinese civil war. Hope all is going well with your book, and your Amazon problems are getting ironed out.
Later…
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Three Kingdoms is about the unification of China, so it is a civil war there. The Amazon problems are as ironed out as they can be. Sales are low due to the summer, but if I can release the sequel next month then it should pick up again. From what a few early readers are telling me, the sequel is better than the first book. Probably because the groundwork of the world and main hero have been laid out.
I take a gradual, explore the world with the characters approach to make it easier and limit my info dumping.
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Good strategy. Messing around with historical fiction the way I do, and tossing in eccentric characters, it seems similar in some ways. Realistic writing can be entered near anywhere, and the actions and events will have some relative meaning, but toss in a fictional world, or an eccentric character into a historical scenario where they don’t really belong, and the whole needs to be a known quantity. Good luck with all that, and looking forward to reading your book.
Later…
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Thanks. I’m going to have to be careful with this one because there’s always the temptation to have the ‘good guys’ win more often. I have to remember that some war heroes die in battle and some outright fail. There needs to be a sense of the war going in either direction.
Hope you enjoy the book when you read it.
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Charles this sounds epic! I would love to be able to write war scenes, because I actually need them in my books too! The thing is that I have no clue where to start! I’m collecting books on weapons, campaigns and so on (I haven’t had the time yet to start reading them!!!)…do you think they could help?
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Reading about battles and studying the different weapons can help a lot. You can look that stuff up on-line too, so research in the middle of a story can work. In the big battles that I’ve written, I choose a character and focus on him/her with the war being the backdrop. You can describe the war for only so long before you need to focus on one area of it.
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Yeah that’s was the other problem. I usually write in scenes and each one had its own pov! That should describe better, but yeah I think it’s a limit anyway!
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I did that if we’re thinking the same thing. I had my 4 big heroes scattered about the battlefield, so I had a chapter section for each one. I learned that some characters have very short scenes in big battles. An archer or spellcaster might only have 2-3 paragraphs because they’re on the edge of the battle while the warriors will have pages.
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So they can be more useful! Thanks! Yes we were talking about the same thing!
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