Author Topic: Need help with riddles  (Read 3444 times)

RelicMaster

  • Guest
Need help with riddles
« on: February 02, 2011, 09:08:38 AM »
This will sound strange, but I need help coming up with a few riddles for my next book. In my second book I have a skeleton guarding the path to the Fountain of Youth and I am having a hard time coming up with riddles for him to ask to allow the main characters to pass. Please help me.

Thanks

Offline Electric MacButters

  • Conversationalist
  • **
  • Posts: 614
    • View Profile
Re: Need help with riddles
« Reply #1 on: February 02, 2011, 04:59:17 PM »
1.What is your name?

2.What is your quest?

3.What is your favorite color?

(Sorry, had to do it. ;))

I got nothin' right now, I'll let you know when I've had time to percolate.
Okay, I flipped the breaker, pulled the fuses, and blew up the transformer.

Why are my lights still on?
Henceforth, therefore, to be known as Electric MacButters?
Chairman of the Amanda Beckett Society

Offline Enjorous

  • Seriously?
  • ***
  • Posts: 12664
  • Prince of the Gutter since 2010
    • View Profile
Re: Need help with riddles
« Reply #2 on: February 02, 2011, 05:21:02 PM »
What kind of riddles are you looking for.

like When is a door not a door?

Or like "Something so hard that it can crush roofs yet must fear the sun"

or: I run, though I have no legs to be seen. I possess no heat, yet I do have steam. I have no voice to let words out, but from far away you can still hear me shout. What am I?

or even something like You hear it speak, for it has a hard tongue. But it cannot breathe, for it has not a lung. What is it?
Kentucky Fried Shuriken - Finger Lickin' Death.
Quote from: horsehearted
Nah, women are just batshit crazy ALL the time!  :D
87.1% Dresden Pure rank: Nicodemus

Offline Kali

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 2424
  • Redhead
    • View Profile
Re: Need help with riddles
« Reply #3 on: February 02, 2011, 05:32:56 PM »
What time period?  Are riddles about electricity, roads, cars, etc., possible?
We don't get just one life.  We get as many as we can cram into one lifetime.

Visit my page! JessaLynch.com

Offline The Corvidian

  • Conversationalist
  • **
  • Posts: 987
  • I like crows and ravens.
    • View Profile
Re: Need help with riddles
« Reply #4 on: February 03, 2011, 02:53:33 AM »
What happens once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in one hundred thousand years?

(click to show/hide)

I have a tongue, but cannot talk; I have eyes but I can't see. What am I?

(click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: February 03, 2011, 02:56:41 AM by The Corvidian »
Clarke's Third Law: Sufficently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Niven's Converse to Clarke's 3rd Law: Sufficently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science.

Offline Nickeris86

  • Conversationalist
  • **
  • Posts: 362
    • View Profile
Re: Need help with riddles
« Reply #5 on: February 04, 2011, 05:27:24 AM »
"What is in my pocket?" ;D
In the darkest hour i shall be there.

Offline LizW65

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 2093
  • Better Red than dead...
    • View Profile
    • elizabethkwadsworth.com
Re: Need help with riddles
« Reply #6 on: February 04, 2011, 02:36:26 PM »
One way to go about this might be to work backwards, as it were:  what big reveals to you want to come at the end of your characters' quest?  What do you know about the endgame that they don't?  How will the experience change them?  Devise some riddles around the answers to these questions, couch them in obscure and obfuscating language, and voila!  Instant foreshadowing! ;D
"Make good art." -Neil Gaiman
"Or failing that, entertaining trash." -Me
http://www.elizabethkwadsworth.com

Offline SuperflyMD

  • Participant
  • *
  • Posts: 23
    • View Profile
Re: Need help with riddles
« Reply #7 on: February 04, 2011, 08:03:57 PM »
"What is in my pocket?" ;D

This one never ends well for me.
I've got two words for you: no.

Offline raljamcar

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 7829
  • "United we Stand, Divided we Fall"
    • View Profile
Re: Need help with riddles
« Reply #8 on: February 19, 2011, 03:33:45 AM »
What kind of riddles are you looking for.

like When is a door not a door?

Or like "Something so hard that it can crush roofs yet must fear the sun"

or: I run, though I have no legs to be seen. I possess no heat, yet I do have steam. I have no voice to let words out, but from far away you can still hear me shout. What am I?

or even something like You hear it speak, for it has a hard tongue. But it cannot breathe, for it has not a lung. What is it?
when it is ajar
snow?
Train?
whats the last one though?

how about a good universal one like
what has mountains, that are flat, lakes that are dry, and winds that never blow
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
- George Orwell

Offline Enjorous

  • Seriously?
  • ***
  • Posts: 12664
  • Prince of the Gutter since 2010
    • View Profile
Re: Need help with riddles
« Reply #9 on: February 19, 2011, 05:40:53 AM »
It's actually a whistle and a bell, respectively.
Kentucky Fried Shuriken - Finger Lickin' Death.
Quote from: horsehearted
Nah, women are just batshit crazy ALL the time!  :D
87.1% Dresden Pure rank: Nicodemus

Offline Nickeris86

  • Conversationalist
  • **
  • Posts: 362
    • View Profile
Re: Need help with riddles
« Reply #10 on: February 20, 2011, 02:11:39 AM »
Offer me food and i shall thrive, offer me drink and i shall die. i am friend to all and to none.
In the darkest hour i shall be there.

Offline jeno

  • Posty McPostington
  • ***
  • Posts: 1357
    • View Profile
Re: Need help with riddles
« Reply #11 on: February 20, 2011, 02:27:56 AM »
...fire?
You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don't. -Christopher Moore

The kraken stirs. And ten billion sushi dinners cry out for vengeance. -Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman