The Archangel Syndrome (Page 10 of 11)

One possibility is to make half of it wrap up act 1 and the other half the second chapter of act 2 (Apollo is up first in act 2 since Joseph closed act 1).

You mean live to the end of the book or to the end of this nonstop chapter ("The Freudians")? No one dies in the chapter as it's more of a character development chapter for Joseph. I also introduced a young nurse named Catherine in it who is now among my favorite characters. She becomes somewhat like an older sister to Joseph. I'm considering punting other characters, so I can make room for her in the rest of the book. She's much more real than either Princess Stephanie (doormat) or Eve (Joseph's ex-doormat). As written, though, the chapter belongs at the end of act one, not the beginning of act two.

I have a similar problem brewing with Apollo's first chapter in act two, although not with regard to length but rather the fact that it doesn't really belong in act two either. It's an assassination attempt against the Imperial Family, staged by Nero to rally the support of the ruling elite, who are beginning to sour on his rule. The assassination attempt is where Caligula loses half his face. That's a great chapter to close out Apollo's first act, not to open the second ("The Young Leaders' Conference").

I think if I choose a moment of maximum danger to both Apollo and Joseph in their respective chapters above, then I could end act one on a cliffhanger for each of them. At that point, it seems more reasonable to wrap up those two chapters as the first pair of act two.

I'm still wondering if "The Freudians" is too weird compared to the rest of the book, though. Joseph is pretty much naked the whole chapter, and it gets stranger from there, although I think it all makes sense given the circumstances, some of which you don't realize until near the end of the chapter, when a few secrets are revealed. Terry seemed to like it; he said he hopes Catherine and Joseph will eventually get together, although it won't be that simple since Joseph is supposed to be coming to terms with being gay, and there is Christian, his intended love interest, to deal with. I could shift it, though, and make him bisexual if need be.

Hmmm.  It seems unlikely that Freud would have won out over everything and everyone.  There are so many to choose from.  Of course, you could just use Kafka, or that destructive fraud, Bruno Betterheim.  Or you could go with Oliver Sacks, if you mean them to be places of dignity and true healing.

I suppose Doctor Caliogstro is out?

I'd suggest Brainial Ward or Department instead of Unit.

Don't laugh, but for the staff, I'm partial to psychiatrist and shrink (as opposed to Freudians and Pinels) only because of term-occlusion.

(eg in VQ I could have called androids "Bills" or "Gates" or "Jobs"... maybe even "Babbages" but to do so, I'd need to do a lift to ensure the terms fit well and the world-history supports it. This would naturally put pressure on the competing terms that show up after she "dies" thereby crowding the story)

Kdot, how do you feel about shrinkers and master-shrink? I tried both (and brainial) but found they were too bland. Hence the reason I'm looking for something sexier. Unlike other sci-fi stories, mine is a demented space opera with no need to remain 100% serious. In fact, going against norms is a hallmark of this story.

Admittedly calling them tsantsas requires a little setup, but all of the setup I've done for other names I've toyed with was indirect: the shrinks are addressed as doctors, Joseph is at the hospital because his parents fear a mental health problem, he's taken to a "branial" unit and is asked whether he considers himself mentally ill, he's placed in a rubber room, his clothes are taken away because someone suicidal could commit suicide using just clothes, and he's at the hospital to evaluate whether he has Archangel Syndrome.

Now, Joseph is not suicidal, but the head shrink takes away the clothes of all new patients to pressure them to cooperate with whatever tests and treatments are deemed appropriate. Joseph has been promised that he'll be given something to wear "soon" as long as he continues to cooperate. Also, he'll be allowed to contact his parents "in a few days" if he continues to cooperate.

In theory, that could allow me to use any of the terms discussed in my previous post (I realized that after posting), but tsantsas are a cool Easter egg in that they are, literally, shrunken heads. Admittedly, it requires a few brain cells to connect the shrunken heads of head hunters with shrinks, but once you've got it, it becomes obvious why this crazy story would use such an odd term for its psychiatrists.

A bit of trivia: There were two real-life cases in the not too distant past where patients hung themselves with just their underwear.

I googled for famous psychiatrists and there was virtually no one in the list that most people would recognize, certainly not more so than Freud. Barring some inspired term better than brainial, I'm going to go with the latter. Kind of plain but needs little to no explanation.

I'm curious, why do you suggest brainial ward instead of brainial unit?

Okay, last one:
- psychiatrists will be brain-masters
- a psychiatric ward will be either a brainial ward or a brain-mastering ward; I lean toward the latter; makes the terminology more consistent

EDIT: Brain-mastering ward is way too long (I use it a lot), so brain-masters and brainial ward win.

My thanks to all.
Dirk

What are your posting plans for this vs Connor?

I've been kinda following in the background but haven't reviewed as yet. Curious which one is higher on your radar for completion.

Queen Aussie: I would ask that you free my humatronic brain from this vessel as soon as this mission is over. I find naked apes exceedingly violent, even more so than their turd-flinging hairy brethren.

I'd love to see Alexa talk like that.

Hmm how many? All of them. But one particular act may extend along multiple volumes.

For example, Fire's current story, "Act I" is everything from the beginning to the point where she's with the Uranians and realizes she's going to have to go on this mission. So that's currently all of Book 1 and half of Book 2.

Within this "Act I" and several smaller Act I-II-III groupings. such as "Begin Auction - Secure bee - Escape Auction"

Q: Too long?

This is hard to answer, but I can definitely say I don't feel the length of a book, but rather the strength of the reward for reading the ending. In this sense, Han Solo vs Kylo Ren ending left me unsatisfied. Unrewarded. And one may make a counter-point that sometimes life is random like that, and not every death has meaning, but I would argue this should have meant more and rewarded more. It wasn't far from the death of Superman or Optimus Prime, (both of which the companies chose to walk back but Disney decided to plough forward).

If the reward is great enough, no length is really too much.

consider to be the end of act one/beginning of act two

I have trouble dividing the acts unless I reach the end.

(I imagine you face the same dilemma if you tried to split Laurie's journey in the ship right now. You know she goes to town on the crew in the third act, but where exactly did Act I end and give way to Act II? I checked my notes. Formally, Act II starts in chapter 20 when Laurie commits on a course of action. A purist would say her first commit is much earlier, probably around the introduction of Alice where the journey-story changes direction to survival-story)

For yours, I can guess Act I culminates the destruction of Joseph's homeworld, but not knowing now much story comes after that, I could be way off.

My concept of "too long" is really how many disparate elements I need to track over how long a period. As long as there is character growth, I'm usually along for the ride.

Since it will probably take me a long time to finish cleaning up and publishing Archangel (since Connor v2 is the priority), I'm seriously considering publishing the first act of Archangel Syndrome as a longish novella (about 50K words) and putting that up as my first book. I would then take an occasional break from Connor (probably at the end of each act) to clean up and publish each subsequent act of Archangel as novellas 2-4, resulting in the following:

Novella 1 - the first act of Archangel. The two points in the first act where Joseph and Apollo commit to their destinies, determined that nothing will stop them, would be the end of this novella, give or take an epilogue/preview of novella 2. A trimmed version of Brain-Masters would then get punted to the beginning of novella 2. I could then restore to novella 1 one of my favorite deleted chapters (the one where Apollo is almost whipped to death at the Colosseum by Nero, after which Apollo has to undergo surgery without anesthesia).

Novella 2 - the entire second act of Archangel (the Young Leaders Conference), ending with the assassination of both Regent Mary and Nero. This act is currently rather short, even if I prepend a trimmed version of Brain-Masters to it, so it gives me the option to have the delegates visit Catholika and maybe one other planet. Depends on how much new material I care to write. Since the pope would be female, I have a few folks here I can choose as the pope (probably either Georgina or the Virgin Marilyn, both Protestants in real life). And I would definitely include a bit of crossover nonsense from the Connor books.

Novella 3 - the entire third act. Apollo is sworn in, is haunted by Nero (assuming the changes aren't too complex), up to where Apollo is overthrown and "hung" on New Bethlehem, including being accidentally decapitated as he is hung. Joseph accidentally ends up on a slaver ship, is enslaved on Earth, then imprisoned, then is rescued by Leonardo (the loonie taxi driver), and boards a transport for home, knowing an attack on New Bethlehem is now imminent.

Novella 4 - the fourth act of Archangel, consisting of the main battle and its aftermath, including the current epilogue, in which Joseph throws himself off a cliff, and Apollo concludes God is real and decides to build a Christian empire. I would reveal at the end of this novella the cause of the supernatural beings that plague Apollo and Joseph.

Beyond finally getting something published, an added advantage of doing this is I get enough room to flesh out each act of Archangel. In spite of cutting unnecessary chapters from act one about a year ago, by the time I fleshed out the rest of that act to what I consider an appropriate level of detail, I was back to a huge first act. I suspect the same will be true of subsequent acts, heading toward 200K total words. I always have the option at the end to put them together as one big book.

The main problem with these, I think, is that Joseph and Apollo don't meet at all in novellas 1 and 3, only in novella 2 and briefly at the end of novella 4. Naturally, they regularly interact via Galaxinet during novella 1 (via the Royals Forum, where they piss each other off).

Thoughts?
Dirk