I have several storylines under construction and I need some opinions on them.

Story One: The first story basically involves the Pagan deities, but instead of being gods and goddesses they are fallen angels. The theory was that Heaven had two forms of punishment; for minor crimes angels were sent to Earth and for major crimes they were sent to Hell. The deities are all fallen angels, but after the rise of Christianity they were forced to hide amongst humanity and now exist in a cycle of reincarnation as basic humans. The story starts at the point where the main characters find out what they are(reincarnation required that they forget after their first human life) and they begin to search for others of their kind. While searching, they come across a group with the same goals, but there is a difference. The main characters have the goal of uniting everyone to find out why they hid and to find out whether or not they can/should return to their more powerful forms. The other group, the villains, have the goal of finding out how to return to their more powerful form only so that they can take over the world and enslave humanity.

This is somewhat of a modern-day fantasy type book.

Story Two: The second story takes places billions of years ago, but on a different planet. The main character is an alien on a primitive planet and he lives in a simple tribe. His tribe is constantly being raided by other tribes so he learns to fight, teaches his tribe to fight, and conquers all the neighboring tribes to form the planet's first empire. The tribes who didn't join him follow his example to create their own empires and the conflicts escalate to warfare.

This is a much simpler storyline, I think. A science-fiction, obviously.

Story Three: The third story is a romantic fantasy and is actually a part of three books. In the first book the knight(main character) has to save the princess of his kingdom and goes through various other kingdoms from other races to get to her. The person who kidnapped the princess is a witch who has been giving all of the kingdoms a hard time, so each kingdom offers their help and as he travels the knight unites each race; elves and dwarves, goblins and werewolves, all stand together to help the knight. Each also gives him a special ability or item along the way. In the second book the knight wants the princess to be capable of defending herself, so they again travel to each of the kingdoms and she learns magick from each of the races. As they go through the kingdoms they face various difficulties they must overcome and tasks for the potential teachers before the teacher will teach. In the third book they hear about the Fountain of Youth and begin to search for it, but when they find it they also learn how the elves were created. The fountain turns them into an entirely new race and the racist human kingdom they came from refuses to believe they are who they say they are, so they are forced into the mountains were they begin to build their own kingdom.

Do any of these sound like stories you might read?
Note: this has been posted on other sites as well and I already know the second story doesn't have enough detail given. It does have a plot and it is original(from what I have seen), but since I haven't decided how it will definitely go yet I haven't said how it will go yet. I will give more details when I have more details made definite.

Story 1:
Interesting idea. My question is why did God (Christian God) decide to punish the pagan gods? How are you dealing with His coming about? Was He always there or were the pagan gods there first?

Also, are you choosing a certain pantheon? Pagan really just means anything non-Christian. So are we talking Celtic gods? Greek? West African? Egytpian? All of them?
If it is all of them, I suggest reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman just so you don't accidentally overlap any major plot points. =]

And how do the reincarnates find out? Obviously someone in Heaven has done an awfully good job hiding it from them for so long, what suddenly changed?

Story 2:
I don't have much to suggest for this. It is a much simpler storyline, really. And there doesn't seem to be much to it, which is all well and good for the kind of story it is. It sounds like it's going to rely pretty heavily on character development though, so I hope you've got some loveable characters in mind. ;)

My only concern is that I can't quite tell over how long a time period this is supposed to take. Going from tribe to empire and the subsequent growth of empires around it would take quite some time, don't you think? Will the story focus around one set of characters or two? Will it be a generational story following the growth of the planet instead of the individual characters?

Story 3:
I love fantasy, so right off the bat I like the idea. However, I'd be careful with it. It has so many elements of your "basic fantasy" that your characters are really going to make of break this.

The 'becoming a new race' actually seems like quite an interesting end to the book, so I applaud you for that.


Personally the first one was the one that appealed to me most. Intermingling religions is always interesting to me. I'd probably read all three if they were well-written, but then I read just about everything as far as genre goes.

Both the second and third are really going to be made or broken by character development, so I'd be sure to put a lot of thought into those characters. The first one might be able to skate by on plot alone if you flesh out all the little details well enough.

I hope I was able to give you something helpful!

I like you, Nolari. Of all the people who have been kind enough to give their opinions on the other sites, you are the first to ask for more detail.

Originally Posted by Nolari

My question is why did God (Christian God) decide to punish the pagan gods? How are you dealing with His coming about? Was He always there or were the pagan gods there first?

Also, are you choosing a certain pantheon? Pagan really just means anything non-Christian. So are we talking Celtic gods? Greek? West African? Egytpian? All of them?
If it is all of them, I suggest reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman just so you don't accidentally overlap any major plot points. =]

And how do the reincarnates find out? Obviously someone in Heaven has done an awfully good job hiding it from them for so long, what suddenly changed?

Of course I can't give away to much information, I want the book to still be interesting for the people helping me out here, but by "Pagan" I do mean all. At first we'll start with the Greeks, Norse, Egyptian, and surrounding areas. In later books(I do intend for this first storyline to stretch over several books) we will expand to cover Asian and African deities as well as the Native American ones. I'll take your advice and see if I can check out that book, can it be found in Barnes and Noble?

In my book the Pagan gods are fallen angels who simply took up a disguise as various deities when being cast down to Earth. They were punished for different reasons; some were disloyal and wanted to do their own thing rather then obey anyone, some lacked faith and thus asked to many questions, others simply had some personality flaw such as being to aggressive or argumentative.

This book, although I intend to mix historical facts with my fantasy storyline, is not meant to be true or specific to any one religion. Rather it will combine many religions to make one interesting and hopefully informative story.

They knew who they were before the story takes place, basically the memories are stored in their subconscious and as they grow older from birth more of the memories come back to them. The story starts after a tragic end in the main character's most recent previous life which somehow causes a block in his memory, he doesn't regain the memories as he should have. Likewise he wife and other family members have blocked their memories. Over time they are able to get some help with things and certain events or objects(according to the person and place) help trigger some memories, but they still have to piece most of it together for themselves until the second book.

God actually didn't interfere with this, not in my story. The fallen angels decided for themselves to go into hiding. If you click on my website button or click here you'll go to my personal website, after signing up you can see a rough draft of the intro if you'd like. More is explained on how things got started there. It is only a rough draft and was edited slightly to be more as if speaking to an audience rather then a reader so naturally the intro in the book will look a little different, hopefully more professional.

Originally Posted by Nolari

My only concern is that I can't quite tell over how long a time period this is supposed to take. Going from tribe to empire and the subsequent growth of empires around it would take quite some time, don't you think? Will the story focus around one set of characters or two? Will it be a generational story following the growth of the planet instead of the individual characters?

The growth would probably take awhile, but interesting things can happen during that time. The story will focus on a group of semi-main characters, but will mostly be about one individual main character who caused it all to happen. The story will end with the death of the main character, it would be a single book rather then a trilogy.

What you mentioned about book three is yet another reason why I'm working on the first storyline first. I'm confident that I can do well enough to make it good, but even if I'm wrong it has a better chance of being good enough then the other two and the experience I gain from writing the first book should help make the other two good enough as well.

American Gods can be found at any major book store. It should be under the fantasy section, I think. It's a great book and I certainly hope you get the chance to read it.

My only other question is about the first book. If God didn't have anything to do with them going into hiding, why did they? If they're fallen angels, because obviously they're not content with the way things are being run Up There, why would they hole up and give up? There had to be a catalyst for that.
I understand if you don't want to share the reason, but I just wanted to make sure you had one. =]
(I didn't read your rough draft at the time of posting this, so if it's explained there, my apologies.)

I'll take a look for the book this Thursday or Friday, if I have the time.

I have thought that through and it actually has to do with the humans. They went into hiding around the time of the rise of Christianity. Not all the Fallen were cruel or cold-hearted and they wanted to live in peace, so they didn't want to partake in what would be an inevitable war between the Fallen and the Christians if they remained as gods and goddesses. Some of them did desire a fight more then hiding, believing that they were where they belonged and so the Fallen fought amongst themselves. That's all I'll say here, except that obviously the Fallen who wanted to hide won.

Well, if they're peace-loving why not just move to societies where polytheism still exists? Hindu gods and goddesses are still worshiped in India, so does that mean that those gods and goddesses are not in hiding? Or is your world entirely Christian now?
Again, just things to think about, but it sounds like you've got most of this planned out already.

Most of them just disappeared, but before they became human they had to stop the other deities if for nothing more then the sake of their own conscious. The story doesn't focus on them, but for background information they did, in their first life, take to peaceful societies. Some of them, the ones that had nothing and desired nothing to do with humanity, remained as Fallen, but they were capable of creating little pocket dimensions to hide in. Erebus happened to make one, we call it the Underworld. The world in my story is our world here on Earth in the 21st century, but the main characters are in a generally Christian environment although they can't(for reasons unknown to them) get into the religion as easily and readily as other people. The reason for that they discover later.

What of the religions themselves then? Are the polytheistic religions that are still around (such as Hinduism) simply gone in your world? Or are they worshipping gods that no long care about them/don't have power anymore?
That seems awful depressing.

All the religions still exist and are practiced just as they are in the real world. The only difference is that the story is enforced by my belief that such deities really only exist in the minds of the practitioner; they are real because we believe they are real. So even after the fallen angels go into hiding, people still worship those deities and hear answers from them because they believe that they will. It's one of those "we create our own reality" type things. Our thoughts form our reality.

Here's an example. Say someone prayed to Zeus or Thor for strength. In my book Zeus and Thor are both humans, the prayers would go unanswered, however the faithful and loyal follower would not believe that. The follower would believe that his prayer was answered and that he was given strength. Through that belief he would quickly feel stronger and more energized because his faith reinforced his actions, at the point he stops believing he is alone and starts believing that unlike his opponent he has a god on his side. That alone is enough to make someone stronger.

Then at the time these fallen angels were "gods", did they ever answer prayers? Or did they simply just kind of exist and people gathered around them?

Also, what then of the the Christian God? Do those angels and that God have any interaction with the humans? Or is it simply keeping balance or... whatever it is God does.

(Please keep in mind that I'm still asking about the story. I don't mean to get into any debates/questioning of your personal faith/beliefs. :) )

Some did and some did not. Some, mainly the ones who didn't really care about the humans although they liked being gods, just let the humans be and their own belief is what supported them. Others, mainly the ones who did care about humans and so backed off peacefully when realizing their time was up, chose to interact with the humans more frequently and answered prayers most of the time, sometimes in person.

The Christian God did interact with many people, but prior to the rise of Christianity he was mostly limited to the Jews since the Jews were the only ones who listened to him. The angels that were not cast down acted as God's messengers, workers, etc according to what God needed them for. Different angels had different jobs.

I understand that these questions are about my book and I really appreciate them. Although most of this is planned out, it is helpful to have someone ask questions because then I see where I need to fill in some blanks and I see where readers might be looking at. All this will have to be explained throughout my book.

Although, if you were to ask about my beliefs, I would freely say that I am Christian, Buddhist, and Taoist. I do not believe we should be restricted to one religion and neither Buddhism(which is more of a philosophy) nor Taoism have a set deity to worship so neither of them conflict with my Christian beliefs.

I'm glad their helping! I was started to think maybe I sounded like a pester.

That makes sense. But how are you explaining the fact that polytheism existed before monotheism, if the gods for those polytheistic religions had to be created by God? Was it just that the fallen angels were more loud and proud about their power than God was?

Speaking of old religions, since Zorastranism was the first monotheistic religion, are you going to say that was the Christian God and Satan by different names? (Granted, the Christians didn't get along with them well, but that seems to be the way of religon. =\ )

Or are you just going to leave it out? I doubt many people would notice - I just happen to be learning about Middle Eastern history right now and I found the interaction between monotheism and polytheism interesting. That's why I'm so interested in the idea for you book. =]

And for the fallen angels, did they all fall for individual reasons or did some/all of them have to do with Lucifer's rebellion? Why did God decide to toss these angels to earth instead of Hell? (Or is He just all-powerful and mysterious in His ways? ;) )

I meant it when I said that I like how you ask questions.

Originally Posted by Nolori

That makes sense. But how are you explaining the fact that polytheism existed before monotheism, if the gods for those polytheistic religions had to be created by God? Was it just that the fallen angels were more loud and proud about their power than God was?

More loud and proud, yes. It was the only way they could make a backlash, and some were cast out before humanity was made.

Originally Posted by Nolori

Speaking of old religions, since Zorastranism was the first monotheistic religion, are you going to say that was the Christian God and Satan by different names? (Granted, the Christians didn't get along with them well, but that seems to be the way of religon. =\ )

I actually haven't heard of Zorastranism, but I will look into it and see what I could do.

Or are you just going to leave it out? I doubt many people would notice - I just happen to be learning about Middle Eastern history right now and I found the interaction between monotheism and polytheism interesting. That's why I'm so interested in the idea for you book. =][/QUOTE]
lol, if I can't find a way to fit it in I may leave it out. Some of this stuff may end up in a kind of off the storyline type book. Something of a manual to help explain the fallen angel theory.

Originally Posted by Nolori

And for the fallen angels, did they all fall for individual reasons or did some/all of them have to do with Lucifer's rebellion? Why did God decide to toss these angels to earth instead of Hell? (Or is He just all-powerful and mysterious in His ways? ;) )

The main character was cast out for doubting. He asked a question, God answered, he didn't like the answer(or didn't understand) so he asked again. The ones that rebelled with Lucifer were given a greater punishment, they were sent to Hell rather then Earth. Those that were sent to hell are demons and that is the difference between the fallen angels and the demons. That difference will be important in the later books.

Zorastrianism is the first monotheistic religion and first gained popularity (and maybe started) in Perisa in...2000 BC-ish. It was, like Christianity and Islam, a dual religion that believed in the seperation and balance of good and evil. The two gods were siblings. The good god (Ahura Mazda) was represented by fire (for light and life). Because of this they got termed the fire-worshipers and when the other monotheistic came around they saw this as a sign of polytheism because of that misunderstanding. The evil god was Ahriman.
It was a lot like Judaism, actually. It was/is an ethical religion (meaning that it has a law code) and they didn't cremate their dead because they believed in a day of resurrection and Judgement Day.

It's still around in Iran some, but for the most part it's pretty darn small now. At least considering the size of other monotheistic religions.

So that's my really really basic run-down of the religion. =]

Back to questions!
So if the fallen angels were cast out before man was created, wouldn't it not be considered 'casting out'? I mean, didn't earth only become not-paradise after Eve ate the apple?

Maybe I'll set something up for that. Perhaps, if they are similar enough, I could say it was a form of the same religion and it was just interpreted differently by humans. I think that sounds like a possibility.

Originally Posted by Nolori

So if the fallen angels were cast out before man was created, wouldn't it not be considered 'casting out'? I mean, didn't earth only become not-paradise after Eve ate the apple?

Yes, that is why for that part I said "cast out" rather then "cast down." Angels who were cast out after Earth became non-paradise were cast down. Being cast down was not as bad as being cast out because the fallen angels were sent somewhere. Outcasts, on the other hand, floated through nothingness as if they did not exist until the Earth became their place of punishment. Some of those who were outcasts may exist happily on Earth, appreciated having been placed there due to what they went through and thus living peacefully with the humans. Others may still hold resentment and thus would have cause to be "evil" by our terms.

That would probably work, really. They had very similar ideas. Granted, that's just my basic run-down/understand of it. I'd need to do more research before I could accurately say how similar they were.

Well. I think I've finally been exhausted of questions! You really seem to have all of this planned out and I hope they go well for you. I wish you good luck on everything you go for, but judging by how well you've got things laid out, I'd wager you don't need it. :)

Dude, you're on Zan too!! xD I commented on your stories on Zan. xD