The TEST!

Here is how it works. Take the test. If you answer "yes" to any question, scrap your story and start over. (Not really.  Read it and you'll get the point.)

1. Does nothing happen in the first fifty pages?
2. Is your main character a young farmhand with mysterious parentage?
3. Is your main character the heir to the throne but doesn't know it?
4. Is your story about a young character who comes of age, gains great power, and defeats the supreme bad guy?
5. Is your story about a quest for a magical artifact that will save the world?
6. Does your story revolve around an ancient prophecy about "The One" who will save the world?
7. Does your novel contain a character whose sole purpose is to show up at random plot points and dispense information?
8. Does your novel contain a character that is really a god in disguise?
9. Is the evil supreme bad guy secretly the father of your main character?
10. Is the king of your world a kindly king duped by an evil magician?
11. Does "a forgetful wizard" describe any of the characters in your novel?
12. How about "a powerful but slow and kind-hearted warrior"?
13. How about "a wise, mystical sage who refuses to give away plot details for his own personal, mysterious reasons"?
14. 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?
15. Do any of your female characters exist solely to be captured and rescued?
16. Do any of your female characters exist solely to embody feminist ideals?
17. Is any character in your novel best described as "a half-elf torn between his human and elven heritage"?
18. Does everybody under four feet tall exist solely for comic relief?
19. Do you not know when the hay baler was invented?
20. Does your novel contain a prologue that is impossible to understand until you've read the entire book, if even then?
21. Do any of your main characters have apostrophes or dashes in their names?
22. Does your novel contain orcs, elves, dwarves, or halflings?
23. At any point in your novel, do the main characters take a shortcut through ancient dwarven mines?
24. Do inns in your book exist solely so your main characters can have brawls?
25. Do your characters spend an inordinate amount of time journeying from place to place?
26. Do any of the magic users in your novel cast spells easily identifiable as "fireball" or "lightning bolt"?
27. Does your hero fall in love with an unattainable woman, whom he later attains?
28. Do you not realize it takes hours to make a good stew, making it a poor choice for an "on the road" meal?
29. Does your story involve a number of different races, each of which has exactly one country, one ruler, and one religion?
30. Is the best organized and most numerous group of people in your world the thieves' guild?
31. Does your main villain punish insignificant mistakes with death?
32. Is "common" the official language of your world?
33. Is the countryside in your novel littered with tombs and gravesites filled with ancient magical loot that nobody thought to steal centuries before?
34. Do the heroes lose every battle, but win the war?
35. Does it only rain when the heroes are exhausted and running out of food?
36. Are the enemies killed by the slightest mishap, but the heroes live through anything?
37. Do the hero and heroine fall in love on the last three pages?
38. Is magic (if available) used intelligently by the heroes, but wasted by the enemies?
39. Do you start off occasional chapters with a description of one of the main characters engaged in some activity, without using their name so the reader will feel exceptionally smart when they figure out who it is before you reveal it?
40. Is the enemy able to predict all of the hero’s actions, but be powerless to stop them? Do the heroes will foil all of the enemy’s plans through sheer dumb luck?
41. Are the heroes will be able to survive for weeks without feeling the call of nature, unless they are in a cell?
42. Should the heroes be captured, does the enemy gloat and reveal all of their plans?
43. Do magic swords not glow except when the heroes have no other source of light, or if it is dark, and they need to be captured for the plot to advance properly?
44. Is at least one of the heroes the second best in the world at something? The only person better is one of the enemies.