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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.

Hi Rayner

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

-K

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Do you remember Stanley Tweedle from the sci-fi series "Lexx"?

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

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

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.

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 [I mean a relatively less famous writer]

Re my review:

What I've done here is shove C up front. He's kind of the topic of these two paragraphs. Originally he's kinda buried in the woodwork. Took out some of the location bits (is it relevant that the chapel is in the orphanage or adjoining it? Maybe even free-standing? Bigger / smaller? I suspect not relevant at this time). Dropped a "he heard" which will get the POV demons on your back, and played with words a little bit to remove an "eyes widened"

btw you know that post in premium by charles (those posts) are just punking us. The most recent two are mocking Norm's (Dirk) posts