Thread: The Elements

What do you consider an element?
Water, Air, Fire, Earth and Spirit?

Or should more be used in a story about elements?
Like Iron?

I ask because I have an idea for a story based on the elements. When I think of them I think of them in their simplest forms; the four main elements and Spirit.

Should I consider involving more?
If yes which ones?
Any more advice on working with the elements?

x

Um, hm... well, you're not giving us any info regarding what you want to do with the elements, so.... are they gonna be like personalized/anthropomorphized into characters or character types...? Is your main character an alchemist of sorts, or....?

If you want to get some more ideas about elements, check into the I Ching (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching)--they have the "traditional" elements plus several extras, such as "wind" and "mountain" and so on.

I didn't think it was important, but I'll throw that out there.

The idea is that people are born with the power of a single element, its a way of keeping control because they are brought up in a society based on that which splits up the people of the realm rather than uniting them.

I was just trying to figure out how many factions to use, and thought that it'd be interesting to see what people regarded as elemental and stuff like that.

Hmm, that's an interesting question. I think you can be pretty creative when it comes to choosing elements, not really any rules there. Sometimes you see elements with abstract themes outside nature.

If you look at lots of old-world religions, their gods had elemental themes, like Ra the sun god, but also more abstract themes which could be construed as elements. For instance, Dionysus was the Greek god of drinking and partying, and Loki was the Norse god of mischief. There were fertility gods and gods of cats. Probably gods of fertility cats.

I have one writing project that has a whole smorgasbord of gods in the background, with the big three having what I consider the core elements: the sky, the sea, and the earth. The lesser gods get less specific. There's the Forest Spirit, the goddess of the wind, the god of thunder, the god of knowledge, the goddess of the frost. One guy is even called the Lord of Moths.

The four elements are Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

Each person's soul is a mixture of all four. The person's nature is determined by the proportion of each.

The elements' individual primary and secondary characteristics are Earth - Dry and Cold, Air - Wet and Hot, Fire - Hot and Dry, and Water - Cold and Wet.

A long, long time ago I wrote a short novel based on the use of the four elements in the life of a man, assuming that the ratios changed over time. His birth and childhood I associated with air, his young manhood with fire, his middle age with water, and his old age and decline into death with Earth. It's still sitting in a file cabinet, probably rusted shut by now, in the Far Frozen North.

As Garza mentioned, earth, air, water and fire would be the typical. The concept of a fifth element often refers to aether, as in the ethereal. China had iron/metal as their fifth element.

I'm sure there's more alterations to the idea, but these are the ones I know

Originally Posted by Scarlett_156

If you want to get some more ideas about elements, check into the I Ching (I Ching - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)--they have the "traditional" elements plus several extras, such as "wind" and "mountain" and so on.

this seems fairly brilliant