The Archangel Syndrome v1/v2 (Page 14 of 25)

I'm thinking I could potentially make insomnia one of the side effects of 41st century narcotics, although it would be a pain to retrofit any effects into the whole first act at this point. And those effects wouldn't really change the outcome of major events that occur in act one.

I almost forgot. The drug stops working around the time Apollo becomes emperor. So, he's addicted and has to come off the drug in order for its effectiveness to return. The advantage of this is that I don't need to retrofit it into act one. In act one, he's become addicted and the drug barely still works.
All I need to add to act one is mention early on that it's addictive, that one eventually builds a tolerance to it, plus some weird side effect(s) that come with taking very high doses.

Rather than "standard" side effects like some of those listed by njc, (silly) personality changes may work. This would be a good chance for added nonsense in the story. I'll have to think about what those personality changes will be and slowly integrate them into act two. With full-blown nonsense by act three. It will be a busy act with regard to Apollo's health, so I may need to scale it back so that it doesn't dominate his scenes (his arm shaking already requires frequent mention).

Thank ye, gents.
Dirk

I like laughing. Marilyn has a character who giggles at all the wrong times. It's very effective.

As for what we'll have in two thousand years, keep in mind that there's no good way to test psychiatric drugs on animals, and there's limited ability to dig into a human brain to figure out how it works.

No value in writing to the end of this draft? What are the current pain-points?

- still too violent for a Christian audience, and there's no easy way around that
>If you have to get out the walkie-talkies, so be it.

- probably still too irreverent for a Christian audience (e.g., Joseph just spent a chapter rewriting the Ten Commandments)
> I'll need to check out a competitor book to be able to comment. Still, the book you want to write vs the book you want to sell appear to be at odds.

- Christian elements are unlikely to appeal to non-Christians
> Should non-Christians be part of your target market? For example, is it possible to write a story about socialism that will appeal to both Democrats and Conservatives? (btw VQx are socialist stories, so I'm speaking from experience)

- first act is way too long (roughly 40% of the story)
> This makes me think the remaining acts should each be longer. Or the divisions need to be revisited. It seems you're tackling the latter.

- also, I think the angels need to be visible to the boys (no more "radiating"), which is a sizeable change
>What does visibility grant?

A potential fix for the worst of the violence may come with the trimming of act one. The cadet massacre can go, and perhaps the haven riots.

Yeah, the book I want to write is not currently the same as the book that I might be able to sell. Basically, I wrote a book that I originally thought might appeal to non-Christians, which I no longer believe it's the case. So, I'm now trying to make it a book that appeals to Christians and lapsed Christians. That's a drastic shift, which is why my farting around the edges of the story won't work. That's the kind of change that requires a substantial rewrite.

Regarding the length of act one, most of it is intended to build to Apollo and Joseph accepting their destinies. Mainly, ever greater violence drove both of them to act. If I can get them to commit earlier without all that escalating violence, that would address it, or I simply need to trim the early chapters to get them down in size. The book is rather long. There are about 45 chapters (same as Connor), but most off the chapters are two to three times the length of Connor chapters.

I want to show the angels because, to the best of my knowledge, angels appearing to humans are always visible. Using an invisible entity made sense when it was God as the entity since God does at times communicate with humans without showing himself.

Quandary.

I have two kisses between Joseph and Christian in this story. Technically, the first is Andrew, while in control of Joseph's body, kissing Christian. I don't really describe that kiss in ordinary terms. Instead, Joseph simply thinks to himself about what's happening as the guy not in charge of his own body. He makes comments like "wow, Andrew's really going to town on this" and "I wonder how long I should let this go on". Shortly thereafter, he notices that Christian's about to put his tongue in Joseph's mouth, at which point Joseph freaks out, reasserts control, and lurches back. It's a forgone conclusion that some (many?) Christians readers would be turned off by this, but since Joseph is (spoiler!) gay and needs to eventually come to terms with that, the kisses are important to his character arc and him coming out to himself.

This is one of these story elements that makes me wonder if this somewhat Christian story can ever really find an audience. I've solved the issue with the book's swearing, and I may be able to further reduce the violence, but I'm not interested in changing Joseph's sexual orientation. His conservative Christian upbringing is at severe odds with his sexual orientation, and I think his struggle with that is a great thing to explore. It also drives key parts of the story. Most notably, since Joseph is so afraid of being gay that he's downright homophobic, he allows Andrew to die, and Andrew becomes one of the main ghosts in Joseph's head for the rest of the story.

This rather major issue makes me think I should dial down the Christianity in parts of this book and target a more secular reader who, hopefully, isn't turned off by a story that has at least some Christian elements. That could include casual Christians.

Special note: I don't refer to inspirational books. They could be wildly different from your own as long as they appeal to your future readers.

For example my main series targets people who like Princess Bride (among others) even though it shares more in common with Starship Troopers.  It's been compared to both which is high praise but more importantly validation my target mallet approves. Laurie's more James Bond on the Millenium Falcon group.

Is there a target audience?  Probably.  Read Kate Paulk's ConVent and ConSensual.

Joseph was never straight or bi. He had a girlfriend, but so do some gays until they figure out/accept their actual sexual orientation. The story never judges the church on this issue, but Joseph will eventually realize there is nothing wrong with being homosexual. I'm unsure how much time I'll spend on him coming to that conclusion. The previous draft left Joseph's orientation ambiguous, although that won't be the case in any rewrite. Regardless, there will be the two kisses mentioned in my earlier post. There's no way to explore Joseph's evolving thinking on that matter without them. If that costs me readers, so be it.

I didn't actually explore Romano's orientation in Connor. He's gay, but since he's a priest, I didn't go there.

It would have been better if I'd thought more about the target audience before writing the whole story. Now I have to try to rewrite key parts of the story based on target audience, assuming I can figure out where they lie on the spectrum noted in an earlier post. Target audience determines which of certain chapters stay vs go. Sci-fi and humorous won't change. Just the balance between secular and religious needs adjusting. I believe there's more of an audience near one end of the spectrum or the other; less so in the middle. Naturally, I'm not going to go out of my way to piss people off, but religion and homosexuality don't mix well.

Interesting. You didn't think the Roman Empire elements stood out? I would put humor after history/Antiquities.