Glad they're able to treat you so quickly. Waiting times would have sucked.

Ahhh this is cleaner that it first seems. Let us consider The Prophet IRL (Mohammed). Consider a follower of Islam saying:

I studied the life of the Prophet. Now I want to become a prophet

This wouldn't work for "king" for us because the listener would say "wait... which king?". In Rebecca's story it would work for "the Ard Rhi" since there's only ever one of them at a time.

Therefore, rule of one cannot apply to prophet or king. Similarly in your second example "No king (among many) and no regent (among many) has pardonned a traitor." You could get away with "the Regent" when referring to the Joseph's mother (provided in your world, it's as unique as Amy's Voice), but you'd generally get bogged down while generalizing them (As we do IRL when saying "No Pope/pope has ever drank wine" which I would argue is general and should be lowercase, but when "The Pope hasn't drank wine" I think of one specific (living) guy).

Scared yet?

Interesting problem.

"Police" implies justice system. Hanging traitors (instead of allowing them a trial which they will probably get out on technicalities that Andrew never killed anyone) implies autocracy (or widespread corruption in the justice system).

I think your life will be much simpler if you just ignore police and make everything guards and robots.

-K

904

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

I agree the font is a little too skinny given the complexity of the graphics behind it. Overall, I liked it.

Is that Amelia? Reminds me of harley quinn. You should give her a bat in the story

-K

You might also consider naming the government if you plan to use it a lot. Just like we can say "The Whitehouse spokesman" irl or "Parliament Hill passed a law"

Some minor word tweaks to clarify the [subject pronouns] and imply that the people are generally {against} it:

Given its history with and proximity to [its enemy], New Bethlehem is under constant threat from plots to undermine or overthrow its government. For this reason, it has adopted strict rule of law as a means of defending itself from attack, giving the government broad powers to detain and interrogate citizens suspected of treason. The interrogations, known as inquisitions, are considered harsh by Realm standards. Those found guilty are executed by public hanging, as a clear warning to others. Although there is {} pressure from {} Realm {inhabitants} to eliminate these practices, {the government has assured them the techniques are} necessary to protect their world from the Imperium, which many believe is the literal [arena] of Satan. {Government spokespeople} claim that capital punishment is consistent with the Bible, while opponents claim that, since Jesus fulfilled the Mosaic Laws, capital punishment should be abolished, frequently quoting John 8:7 of the New Testament: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” {Some within the government have accused} overly vocal critics {} of being Imperial sympathizers.

taken out of context, this section is impossible to decipher. The keyworks are in the OT when they say the Old Covenant (mosaic) is done-for and when the messiah arrives it will be replaced with a new covenant

Interesting. Wikipedia basically says capital punishment amounts to 2 first world nations and a slew of dictatorships.

Here, seen in red for countries that have it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_country#/media/File:Capital_punishment_in_the_world.svg

Assuming the trend of the last 20 yrs continues we could see the end of capital punishment in one generation.

Perhaps you cold have Andrew's execution be a more humane lethal injection... or a private / secret hanging? This would give you an out to explain how society reverted.

Hi Norm...

I don't believe your stated goal is possible within this context. I'm going to label a state evil if it practices capital punishment (I consider the OT's practice of stoning evil btw*). Mind you, I'm liberal-leaning. It's not relevant to me that there are dissenting views. The fact that 1 in 10 disagree with the evil doesn't make it good.

You're not going to be able to satisfy right-leaning and left-leaning readers on the nature of evil, so why not just let them make the judgement and go acheive other goals? I suppose my question is why is the asignment of evil important? Did a reviewer ask an unresolvable question?

Let us assert that the pharisees were perfect in mosaic law. If we shall equally assert that the mosaic law was used to condemn a perfectly innocent man to death, we can say that the OT law would condemn everyone else. Eg if OT laws were to apply, no one would be saved post JC.

I can't believe there are authors who can crank out entire books in a few months.

Hmm... once you're a few books in, you'll get your world established and you'll just churn them out.

Most of what you're experiencing now is uncertainty about the rules of the world. If X has Y property, will it work within the context? Does this concept work? Does this style and character voice work? Once the rules are fixed, and everything is all but immutable, you'll be able to just sit down and write.

The Quickening
(Highlander)

Dance with destruction

Magic foundation watch

Earthwound Saga
Founders series
Cataclysm reborn

I vote for anything that doesn't contain the word "of" in position 2

Well yeah but with the caveat that it needs more work. Only so much I could do on the bus

I wasn't thinking mystery... more...

http://kwan.skyfire.ca/images/tnbw/DictatesS.jpg

I suppose if you're going traditional, the cover is irrelevant as they'll have a department to handle that

That Dictates cover makes me think of the Tomb of Jesus and Easter and things like that... can you fantasy it up or reconsider the title?

bzzt!

half-tempted to expand my outline and make bare-bones chapters from it

Do it!

921

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

(That's the sound of a cattle prod)

922

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

njc wrote:

K, I'm working on that section.

Bzzt!

Norm d'Plume wrote:

I didn't much care for K I m b e r l y until you killed her and everyone around her in a blast. The book felt too short to get to know her and your story world, so the ending was too abrupt and final. Kind of like the opposite of deux ex machina. Hence my delight when she showed up at J e n n a's hanging chopping heads. I thought you had resurrected her. Sometimes you just need the hero to kick ass and win.

First draft is about 60K words... novella length. I'm generally 75% more wordy on a 2nd draft, so I expect to hit about 90K. I don't like to pass the mid 80's, so at 90, I'll be looking to kill even more characters off.

I agree sometimes the hero needs to win. My original story line called for [K i m] to lose in Book 4, Lorraine to Lose in Book 6, and Books 8 and 10 to be losses as well -- such that even-numbered volumes would be downers followed by comeback volumes. Not all has gone according to plan with characters often refusing to die et al, but I'm working on it.

But Is Anver's distaste for his responsibilities an obstacle or a flaw?  I think it's a flaw.  Or maybe a quirk that helps us empathize with him.

A quirk that helps empathize, agree 100%.

A flaw? I dunno.

People are calling Trump unfit to lead because he doesn't want to brief as much as past presidents. Is his distaste for debriefing a flaw? Or does he want to focus his time/energy elsewhere and trusts the people around him more than past presidents? If he uses the extra time to golf, yes, it's a flaw because he has a job to do and isn't doing it.

So the question becomes is Anver shirking his duties or trying to steer his priorities?

This is why I think letting Anver know about how Alina killed his friend before he commits to the duel is a mistake.  It's too much outer reason and not enough Anver


... Egads! I'm in agreement with njc. Note if Amy will agree the universe could cease to exist