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Better said than me. I write for myself. I revise for others

oops

That ends up being a judgement call methinks. I started Alda at the resurrection, but the story starts a whole lot earlier. I have a book (mandates) where I have a terrible time picking where to start, but I keep ending up w Kha climbing back up the mountain. Acts has a better placement for Chapter 1 because there are more characters and a clear threat.

Question: where is Izzy first under threat? Is that a potential starting point?

I’m not on Dropbox. Not familiar with it. (Embarrassing)

Make it simpler. Find another accountant.

I don’t know your story well enough to predict when to intro the antagonist. Give me an outline of the first five chapters, please.

K just writes to kill off his characters. I've learned not to care about anyone. He also writes about 30 mph horses and has his MC ride bareback in freezing cold weather wearing nothing but a sheet. Did I say the character was bareback? Naked except for a sheet? In the freezing cold when she had availability of clothing in the castle where she just killed everybody? OK, moving on.

This is why he needs me around. I scream and stick pins into his voodoo doll when he pulls that kind of crap.

K dot said: Not so! I've guaranteed that Firestarter will survive to the end. And by survive, I mean be "animate" but not necessarily having a pulse or sanity. Plenty of people wake up with neither of these until their morning coffee, so it still counts as alive

Me: Does that mean that K A J O dies? Your bromance with the character will actually end? WHHOOOOOPEEE! (said with all the respect in the world. Not:-)

Awww. It made my heart go pitty pat!

I asked my sisters kids to read my story and had the same reception. Turns out my story isn’t for grown up fans of Harry Potter. It is for experienced readers over the age of forty. At least that’s what I’ve come up with for a demographic.

If you are writing for a specific age group, then what have you read and analyzed that has been received well by that demographic?

Ideas: could you start your story having Izzy turned away by magic in the forest? Or her hiding from the Minx on the day of her Summoning? Or exploring one of the empty homes?

I have one of my books that is a similar problem. I just don’t know where to start the story. Try this...go to the book store and read the first chapter of ten books in your genre. It might give you an answer. And it is cheap:-)

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

Sounds like Christ got ahold of my writing techniques, “and then cool things happen” as an outline for ten chapters:-)