Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
large blood loss, concussion, facial trauma (don't make blood in the mouth because you can see bubbles). Severe pallor. Head trauma (never know until they wake up)
Is that good enough or should I go on?
1,403 2018-02-20 07:54:20
- njc
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
I should add that this is a press-of-shields battle. When one side's line breaks, a melee will ensue, but the presumed loser is given a chance to quit the field--at a run.
Most likely deaths are by trampling and crushing, though some battering with swords occurs before the melee (if it occurred).
I'm leaning toward concussion with unconsciousness so severe that he doesn't react to the pain of major broken bones. And maybe blindness for hours or days when he does regain consciousness.
1,404 2018-02-20 12:23:43 (edited by Norm d'Plume 2018-02-20 12:24:54)
- Norm d'Plume
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
amy s wrote:
large blood loss, concussion, facial trauma (don't make blood in the mouth because you can see bubbles). Severe pallor. Head trauma (never know until they wake up)
Is that good enough or should I go on?
You must have been the scariest kid on the playground.
1,409 2018-03-01 22:21:14 (edited by njc 2018-03-01 22:21:38)
- njc
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
Finally getting pen to paper on the 'prequel' chapter. I've got about 2100 words down. It's the easy part, it's about 25% too long, and it's about a third--or maybe a quarter of the thing.
1,411 2018-03-02 05:31:52
- njc
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
When it is within seven leagues of ready.
1,412 2018-03-03 02:30:06
- njc
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
Musing:
I just watched a performer who trained at a now-closed clown college, and who just attended a reunion in Orlando. I didn't ask, but I'm pretty sure it was the one run by the recently-defunct RB,B&B Combined Shows.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, CHILDREN of All Ages!" I was never a circus habitue, but the words give me goosebumps. An adult without a child inside is hollow. A child forbidden to grow into an adult becomes a monster.
And our present political climate makes it shameful to keep a child in the right place inside .. and even more shameful for a child to grow up as a fully responsible and accountable moral agent.
1,413 2018-03-03 03:58:08
- Kdot
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
From here, on the outside, we're all wandering around in a daze
1,414 2018-03-03 05:32:43
- Norm d'Plume
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
Personally, I wander in blizzards. This winter is sh*t in Calgary. I'm stuck indoors half the time because all-season tires aren't sufficient for the roads. Although I'd rather be here than in the NE US today. I saw a video of a cross-wind so strong, it almost tipped a tractor trailer on its side along a straight stretch of highway.
1,415 2018-03-03 18:47:17
- amy s
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
you can't strangle me. I told you the ending
1,416 2018-03-04 06:00:29
- Norm d'Plume
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
njc, how bad is the weather near you?
1,417 2018-03-04 07:29:19
- njc
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
Some wimd. An hour or two of slow, large-flake snow on Friday. Mostly a little warmer than usual (unlike last year, which flirted extensively with Farenheit Sub-zero.
1,418 2018-03-04 21:56:54
- njc
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
Apparently there were ice storms in NW NJ. Powerlines were down for over twenty-four hours in places.
New Jersey is not a homogeneous place. It has almost as much variety as NY, a much larger state.
1,419 2018-03-04 22:05:37
- njc
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
On writing, and de Saint-Exupery's maxim:
The original Star Trek told one story in a 48-minute 'hour'.
The Next Generation often told two stories in a 42-munite 'hour'.
Babylon 5 fit three or four storylines into most episodes.
All doing more with less.
The backstory I'm working on now needs more. I've got a battle scene that probably needs 15% to 20% pared.
Then I've got a scene of dialogue that meant to introduce a setting and broaden some horizons.
I think I'll post that much when I have it.
Then I need to compress several months into a series of short, dramatic scenes. MUCH harder than anything I've done.
1,420 2018-03-06 04:01:41
- njc
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
Bruce Catton told the story of The War Between The States seven times, each time through different eyes.
I realized last night that I'm trying to tell the story of civilization in this backstory ... from one set of eyes. Or three.
Hard job, but somebody has to do it.
1,421 2018-03-06 07:44:56
- Lynne Clark
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
I wasn't aware we were civilised yet...
1,422 2018-03-06 09:19:22
- njc
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
Some of us wonder if we are civilized any more. The urge to the primitive-and from the primitive-is leading to explosions in diseases that we thought eradicated at the turn of the millenium. Cities need sanitation. Mobile populations need vaccination. Population clusters need hygiene, not children defecating on city sidewalks.
1,423 2018-03-06 09:33:32
- Lynne Clark
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
I agree. Worldwide, we need politicians who actually care about the people they are mandated with caring for, instead of worrying about lining their pockets.
1,424 2018-03-06 11:09:23 (edited by njc 2018-03-06 11:21:12)
- njc
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
Many of these disasters come not from politicians but from culture--like American parents not vaccinating their children, often on the advice of entertainers who know less of medicine and public health than I know of their businesses.
It's an inconvenient fact that these people have the wealth and resources to absorb many of the costs of their screwups. The people following their glittering images usually lack those resources.
1,425 2018-03-06 11:19:58
- njc
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Re: The Sorcerer's Progress
South Africa's legislature just voted to confiscate the lands of white farmers, without compensation. Moral dimensions aside, colonial-era Spain and modern Zimbabwe made the same error. The wealth of the society is not in the land nor in what you take out of it. It's in the skills of the people and the incentives the people operate under. South Africa is going the way of Zimbabwe (a case study in PJ O'Rourke's =Eat The Rich=).
All this is happening under a constitution that Ruth Bader Ginsberg called a better model than the US Constitution that Notorious RBG is charged with upholding--better because of its explicit civil rights language. I'm not holding my breath waiting for her to wonder what else she's wrong about.
