476

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

I had to google "Bored of the Rings" and I must say the character names are hilarious.

"Arrowroot, son of Arrowshirt," == oh dear

477

(17 replies, posted in Close friends)

Suin wrote:

I'd be interested to know if anyone has tried 'hybrid' (or vanity) publishing where you pay for their expertise in publishing including editing, printing, Amazon & marketing...


I used a vanity. Would do so again --  They were happy to dance around my requirements, and they gave me print + US market where I'm deficient. I'd hoped they'd edit a US English version for me but that was a no-go.And marketing was a "hella-no pay us 4x the base". But print really delivered

(posted here instead of premium to preempt the inevitable battle)

I built up a network on Google+ which I shall soon lose

479

(1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)

I've not seen the movie, but I can say excess complexity is a real problem for the big names. I find myself reluctant to keep up with O.S.Card and Kim Stanley Robinson for this reason. Love the writing, love the worlds, but it's just too much /work/ to read

Royalty's not so bad if the percentage is right

Oi! Quit revising or it'll never get writ.

You've come so far... why not just finish it before you re-tool it?

The race is almost won. Matters not that it's not the race you set out to run or that you no longer care for that particular prize. Those two satisfying words "The End" are yours for the taking.

The issue is minute. I bet most of your reviewers haven't even spotted it. Connor starts in pretty much the most safe place on the planet barring the Oval Office. So there's more onus on the story to make a threat entertainable

Hi Rayner

Your solution (that humans are cheaper to acquire) has merit but consider: horses are 1/20th the price of a car.

-K

A note regarding the video in case you've not played the game (also huge spoilers): The protagonists are the aliens - the defending Terrans are working for the evil Emperor Mengsk. In a sense, the video asserts a false stasis that the ensuing story will challenge.

To hold Shakespeare's Tragedies as "episodic" makes the point that plays, movies and tv are a form different than a novel, and it is a mistake to formulate a novel in the same fashion.

I also have reservations about formulating a novel in a structure other than that of a novel. Won't stop me from massaging some words around the concept. Easily abandoned if it proves unworkable

Suppose you sit to watch a movie and you see a black screen and dialogue starts up and runs for five minutes,  then flashes of scene and action, perhaps with dialogue

Consider this StarCraft intro:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVbeoSPqRs4

Where is stasis here? I would hazard to suggest it is about three cinematics ago when Mengsk creates the Terran Empire. None of that matters here. It's just random violence and disjoint narration. Yet, the uninitiated viewer can spot the opposing sides. Make an educated guess who the protagonist might be.

Here, I question the traditional stasis-first concept. To what extent can a novel borrow from a video game? Can a novel launch with  a "Here's Bob and he's fighting for his life"? Can we infer the inciting incident from this mere statement? Certainly not - we merely know there was one and presume it will be related to us at some point.

Regarding Legend, I believe the stasis is not presented until the third episode. That's a rather long wait for such a complex world.

MacBeth Act I Scene I

When shall we three meet again?

Is stasis merely that the witches meet on some agreed upon schedule? I dare say that stasis is introduced in the second chapter rather than the beginning of the story.

This probably won't help at all, but I rarely mention there is a "bolting position". I typically do it if there is some dramatic moment. Or if I need to slow down a scene: "Bob slowly raised his hands to bolting position, crackling energy shooting from hand to hand". Similarly, after a funeral, I had two characters standing a late-night vigil, I went out of my way to mention one of them sat.

"Crystal Singer" by Anne McCaffrey. It's the most plausible premise I've ever seen that a highly futuristic society would use human labour for excavation.

You could potentially lift from it. Norm too, because he has a digging chapter.

New version looks good. You've got a good internal compass.
As per normal, I'll still wait until you hit your stride. Those first 3 chapters on this site can be rough

491

(10 replies, posted in Close friends)

mulling it over

too much, based on where I sense this is headed, but I need about seven to ten more chapters to give you an accurate answer

I didn't get the same feeling. The doctor caught my attention only because you mentioned it and started looking for it.

Oooh dialogue is a tough one. You don't excel at it overnight for sure.

"That’s all the time we have for today. I have a ten o’clock appointment that I need to prepare for. Because of Mr. Goodman’s recommendation, this first visit is free, but I really would suggest you come talk to me again soon. We can work something out for the price if you need some help."

Ok here, the character is using meticulous speech. Try reading it aloud. When I did, I was sounding like the H.A.L. computer by the word appointment. Conversations tend to bounce back and forth more. They're replete in half-spoken sentences. We go for efficiencies a lot. Unless you're a celeb, you get interrupted a lot. The above convo would probably be closer to:

A: That’s all the time we have for today.
B: Already? But--
A: Tut tut. Ten o’clock appointment
B: How much do I owe ya?
A: Mr. Goodman’s recommended you, so this first visit is free--
B: Ooh, I like that price
A:  --but I really would suggest you come talk to me again soon
B: (Looks doubtful)
A: You're worried about the fees? We can work something out

It's a rather interesting angle to take

Do you remember Stanley Tweedle from the sci-fi series "Lexx"?
http://www.skyfire.ca/kwan/tnbw/Lexx.jpeg

if not, let me summarize him. He works a cubicle job earning only enough to get by, sleeps maximum quota and does the minimum to not get fired.

Eventually aliens show up and eat his planet. He escapes by fluke of being with the other good guys, and he's a pilot and they can't fly their ship, so they keep him.

After that, he spends the rest of season 1 shirking responsibilities, napping while on guard duty, trying to get into Zev's pants (but by peeping on her showering instead of bothering to hit on her), and many more. He is, effectively, the least motivated character I've seen in any work of fiction.

I found myself often wishing aliens got him so I wouldn't have to put up with him

My thought: The plot you have chosen appears to be  leading you down a similar path. This is salvageable, but let me answer that the long way.

tng: Lt Barclay
http://www.skyfire.ca/kwan/tnbw/barclay.png
They introduced him as this blathering inept, socially awkward engineer but he was more of a laughing stock.
Later on he cleaned up. He was still a blathering, inept, socially awkward engineer but he was suddenly freaking smart*.
What happened? Writers watching him getting panned realized he had to win hearts. And apathy wasn;t going to win hearts, so they made him good at something. They picked a new areas of engineering no other character could excel at and gave them to him. In the turn of a season they had a cult hit.

Why? What changed the viewers? Easy. Suddenly we were all Barclay. Scraping to get by, awkward person out. Not invited to that party and passed on the promotion. But having that one skill that made us special and wishing the world would recognize it.

Therein is my recommendation

If your character is Luke Skywalker, fixes droids and drinks blue milk in some backwater -> have a mysterious guy in robes tell him you are the one

If your character is Rand Al'Thor and his only want in life is farming and shearing sheep -> make him deadly with the quarter staff (Actually, I stole this one for Tia because she's rather passive in her 3rd chapter). Your logical option here is the pistol. Make him a crack shot with it even if he is terrified while in action.

Recommended reading: One Punch Man (In your case,  "one shot man")

Give him at least one thing he's good at so the reader can latch onto it and identify with the struggle, and you'll be fine

the danger need not be that direct. You could degrade "shadowy figure" just to shadow. He follows it wondering who's there. Oh, empty room.

This would be enough by itself to remove the main character's impregnable safety net. Temperature change + boiler room part may be too cluttered for the current narrative

hey all. Sorry to wade into this. Here's some interesting data.

Note: Germanic languages take prepositions on their native verbs. They generally don't on borrowed Latin verbs.
examples:
Eng: Bob climbed up
Lat: Bob ascended
Eng: Bob climbed down (Remember this beastie from another thread?)
Lat: Bob descended

This is part of a general debate French speakers have learning English:
Bob walked across the street
Bob traversait la rue
In Romance languages you just cross the street. It's hard to understand why in English you have to cross-across the street.

Back to the point. Stolen verbs in English don't need prepositions. "Stood" is not stolen. Ergo it takes the preposition.
That said, "Bob crossed the street" has worked its way into the language illegally. If English had language police, this use would have been banned 100 years ago, and the language would still look like Elizabethan times.

Consider: "Bob crossed the street"
By default, middle English speakers would ask: Crossed with what?
Modern English speaker: Crossed intransitively, of course.

Now I have a random urge to re-watch rocky horror

The author of the Exorcist took a long time to create the tension in his book. Ditto for Angels & Demons.

Indeed... and Stephen King took about 100 pages in Tommy Knockers before he even decided to mention danger.

But we live in a very different time period, and unless you're famous already that people will read your work until it hooks them, you'll need to hook them manually. So many distractions these days -- Facebook, sports, 400 tv channels (I remember feeling blessed to get 21) a writer's work is cut out for them to retain readers sad [I mean a relatively less famous writer]