How to Breathe Underwater (trilogy: Lessons in Skills for Life) (Page 1 of 8)

Oh, yes.  Points say you care.

Once ypu'be paid, you've paid, I think.

Lynne, I suggest you eventually edit the first post in this thread so you can rename it to something that catches people's attention when they see it on their home pages. "Hi" is fine for now, since you just got here and people will read that. Most of us routinely use something like: title - name (e.g., Rise of the Unholy Trinity - Norm d'Plume). I had to edit my title about a billion times this week, trying to find one that didn't stink. :-)

No, the points needed are based on the individual chapter you're trying to publish, not the work as a whole.

If you want some easy points feel free to read my story Into the Mind of God. The early chapters have been revised to death, so feel free to drop the minimum number of comments (five) and run. My chapters are a bit long, though, although I hope the early ones are worth reading.

Oh, and it is polite to reply to reviews.  Tells the reviewer you're listening.

right, will do that. It's all about available time! #bangsheadondesk

ah, right, then I'll do that too. thanks for your help!

ah, that's good then. Yes, I check my review page regularly just in case I missed one. But to never read the replies? Why bother then?

you poor old cynic, you.

thanks for your comments on the initial chapter, btw.
Dire, innit

My personal opinion is that NJC (New Jersey for short) is a crusty old bunker. He knows it and admits is freely, so I feel no guilt pointing that finger.

Welcome, Lynne. You've hit the jackpot on this site by finding us. It helps that we like and respect each other. And give each other crap. But this is the reason that I love this forum. We make each other better.

Norm (Dirk in another life) is correct. You have to review to improve. The reason is that you gain the ability to self-edit. So you MUST become an editor to knock yourself off whatever plateau that you are on. I usually have a backlog of about two hundred points. If it drops below 150 then I know I've been neglecting people. New Jersey concentrates on format, sentence structure, parsing your words and condensing, and the musicality of your sentences (a very different way of looking at your writing). Norm looks at flow, and does a great job of letting you know when you are off-topic (tells you when you are boring or losing his attention) and finding typos. I look at character and keep you honest when your character acted one way (in the beginning) and falls off-track because it is convenient to the plot (ask New Jersey about that one. I totally made him groan last week and threw a big steaming pile of garbage into his plot...it was glorious)

The others, like SeaBrass is a line-by-line editor who is very good a rearranging my sentences for better flow. The others, you will find out about as they poke their heads into the forum.

FYI, give me a single review. Be critical. Show me what you know by nit-picking and making my first chapter (named Dictates) stronger. I'll read your first chapter and return the favor. I've got energy this week and will put you on my dance card.

A

thanks for that review Amy, some comments inline and in my reply.  I will get to yours later today, and hope to speak more with you all.
To give you all some background, this is a piece I first started in NaNoWriMo a long time ago. It sat in a drawer for years, along with another NaNo offering, and then I decided that I really should do something with one or the other. It was an arbitrary decision, pretty much a toss of a coin. The Minx came head up.
So, I pantsed the first two-thirds of the novel then ran totally out of steam.
I have an agent friend (I have career history in publishing) and she and I pulled it apart to see what needed to happen to it. She decided at that point, 2015, that it had sufficient legs and she wished to take it on, but it needed a LOT of work.
So I sat and outlined the remainder. But it was much too long.
So I pulled a third of it out, the parts referring to other people's actions, and concentrated on Izzy's actions only. That third became the guts of book 2. Now it had much more shape, but I was still having trouble with the beginning. I tried several versions, but each time I took away the first chapter (the one you have now) the beta readers shrieked. So I left it in.
Now, I have had some 12 year old beta readers try it out, and they are deathly quiet. They were excited to read it, so schtumm means they don't get it. If I were 12 I would only want to give something positive back, if I didn't like, I would say nothing.
So I had a long Skype with agent, and she was horrified that I would give it up, she loved the last part of the book but agreed with me that it was weak at the beginning.
So here we are, back at the beginning, at the structure.
I am a natural pantser. I don't mind line-editing, but developmental editing and structure? My least successful parts, so the parts I need to learn most about I guess.

Thanks NJ, I am going through the thing scene by scene, trying to apply scene or sequel to each one, to establish the goals of the characters within the scene, the conflict, what does it reveal, does it repeat any information, etc. It is timeabsorbing but probably necessary. I need to undertake an analysis to work out where it is going wrong. Later, I'm going to put up a much later chapter for you to see if I got anywhere in the second half.