Main problem is MPD robs your MCs of agency
Secondary problem (as I'm discovering with my bounty hunter) is readers may side with the wrong entity, creating a false promise that the book has no plan of living up to. I'm kind of okay with it, as the bounty hunter is a relatively minor character, but as a main, it'd be a real problem.
so I might as well use a simple solution that doesn't break the story.
In one of her early battles Lenore used a speed potion (she got from another character) to beat up a bunch of enemy construction workers.
This caused me all sorts of grief because there were other instances where she could have used the potions, but did not. And I further had to use the potions among other characters since it wasn't believable one might sip some holy water and get sixty seconds of x100 speed and strength.
Getting rid of the potion-concept and having her simply shoot her enemies. So simple. Solved so much.
I can say the same for Protestant, too
Herein is the problem because I'm bringing a judeo-christian upbringing into a catholic story. It gets difficult to navigate the intricacies.
Most of that activity is likely webcrawlers. Especially so if Amy's thread consistently grows its view-count
Oh hey... I'm back online. Wow. Laurie's been scrubbed from existence
I'm randomly back to work on the backup site. I deeply regret not getting to that sooner 
I also have to be careful not to give any hints about either Connor or De Rosa.
I've been turning this around in my head for months with no solution yet. Problem is De Rosa stayed on my list because he had a measurable power. IF you remove that, you can end up with a case where the reader complains there weren't enough clues and De Rosa was out of left field.
The unanswerable question is "Do I have enough clues based on him being conveniently out of breath at one episode had he not been on my suspect-list?"
Answer probably not. (Heck, on the other site I read a rape scene and had no idea lol.)
How to remove the powers yet still leave a trail? More clues from the "Dark figure" episodes perhaps? One of the cardinals figures out the dark figure is left-handed. Oddly, so is De Rosa. But the Cardinal doesn't live to report his finding. Someone stabs dark figure. De Rosa later explaining he cut his hand on glass? Too obvious?
From what I've read, I believe Michael is more powerful, although it's always possible that Michael never faced him one-on-one. There's a mosaic at St. Peter's Basilica of a victorious Michael standing with a raised sword and his foot on the head of Satan. But that's imagery and not necessarily based on anything biblical.
Assume the chain is made by God since it has supernatural powers (otherwise, how would you chain a spiritual being?). But then, so what? The wager involves Connor choosing whom to kill using the dagger from book one. Does it matter if Lucifer is stronger than Michael or not? Strength isn't gonna decide that contest
So, not sure where this falls, but I read the scripture as saying "Lucifer went to war against Heaven and only God could stop him. But God loved everyone and couldn't kill Lucifer outright, so he cast him down to Earth"
Now... if there were other beings who could stop Lucifer but were not creator entities and thus not beholden with creation-love, one would think they would just do it.
It follows from scripture that Lucifer's wings stretched over the throne of God. He shielded the rest of creation from God's glory with his own presence. Michael did none of these things... thus, one might one infer that Michael could not stop Lucifer from sinning (had he wanted to, of course). Could Michael have prevented the original war? Implicitly God could not because he valued free will, but Michael is not so beholden.
Herein lies the problem. If Michael is more powerful, and he could have stopped the great war... and he was not beholden by being the creator (eg creator of Lucifer and able to be compassionate to ultimate evil)... then by rights he should have used his power to prevent ultimate evil from taking lives. Even should the Creator have ordered him not to, Michael would be justified to disobey and follow his calling. Same as Lucifer could follow his calling and plunge the world into darkness, so too should Michael be able to plunge the world into light. Free will shouldn't only apply to bad guys, right?
No middle ground available where these two simply call off their bets. If (ultimate evil) can break the rules to chase (x) then (ultimate good) can also break the rules to chase (y)
Ergo, the stronger of these two would have decided the fate of the universe.
Since Lucifer exists, therefore we must assume Michael was not strong enough to stop him. OR Michael could have stopped him i(n disobedience of God (sacrificing himself in order to upheld righteousness)). If Michael was strong enough but opted not to, he has permitted evil to exist to save his own skin (from the punishment of disobedience).
I can buy an alternate timeline path (and bear in mind, my main series is also an alternate timeline that branched in the 1200BCE range but sort of mirrors ours until the discovery of steam)...
As a reader, if I'm in an alternate timeline, I'd like enough hints to get it early so I don't read in the wrong reference frame. I wouldn't want to be reading in my reality that Goldilocks ate the porridge only to discover at the 75% mark that the three bears altered her initial entrance to the cabin.
That is to say, I love remakes of the classic storylines... as long as I'm in on the game. How well the hints play out (that it's a remake) take a major role in whether I've followed well or been cheated
Michael the Archangel slipped it around De Rosa's neck while he was distracted. It's essentially a chain around De Rosa that limits his powers
Fine... but does that mean Michael is stronger than Lucifer? Or does that mean the chain was made by God (essentially a cheat in the wager)?
Something about Connor prevented him from committing the assassination, although he doesn't know what.
Something == the third party. No problem. Only inconvenience: it takes away Connor's agency. In the end of section three, when he has to decide who to kill and he asks himself how he arrived to this point, he'll need to avow that some third party set him up to be here.
ofc, that's not a bad thing. I flirted with the concept for J3nna, often having her actions directed by the collar.
Whatever it is that prevented Connor from killing the pope will continue to influence him until he learns the truth in book 3
Here's where the interesting pain-points will begin, as we'll have learned that the previous two books actually were irrelevant. Connor was created to solve a bet between two infinitely powerful entities. He solves the bet by going his own way only to learn his own way was someone else's intent. Everything he has done until this point has been moot. Ah, but how can he solve this? Does hw truly have free will or is he but a puppet?
Wouldn't it be premeditated murder? I have a feeling that that is hellish behavior.
I can buy that. If the target market can pick it out. all's good
In Matthew 4, Satan is able to whisk himself and clearly passengers wherever he needs to be. You'll need to do some legwork to understand why this Satan cannot
before Connor throws the dagger, he already knows, if he kills his father, then Connor is himself still destined for an eternity of suffering
Is this a catholic teaching?
I don't know if Campagna has a turning point in book one
She doesn't need one. I mention it as I try to resolve how to chain the stakes together.
K and George, I'm wondering what you think of the hunt for the Antichrist. I personally think it reads like just a bunch of "episodes" that don't build on each other sufficiently. I think it's missing ever-increasing tension and "thrill" as the detectives get ever closer to identifying the AC. There is continuity between those chapters, but nothing particularly important ties them together.
That's going to be a bitch to fix.
I've considered it from several angles and not sure it is fixable.
Fear not, I'm facing the same issue with [K @ j o]'s tale. Ok, so he's fighting the ninja twins. He can blow them into smithereens because he doesn't want to destroy large swaths of his city. But little in them is inherently dangerous. Then later he's fighting together with his mom and blowing up enemies left and right. And the only thing connecting the twins to this is the presence of the main character. There's been no chain of events, no upping up the stakes.
Ah but how to up the stakes. Obviously have his loved ones targetted. Problem is he doesn't really love anyone. I mean there's his school friend... but there's no villain with enough personal investment to want to do so, and even if one did (perform the killing), my MC would be sad but not struck to his soul.
Compare this to J who starts off her story with fixed assets (remember her burying her gold in the desert to protect it?) and slowly dwindles through her resources. As she chases bottom zero, she's forced to depend on others for help and this increasing dependence forces a mental shift of paradigms... an awakening as it were. But it's only a seed, and the pressure is mounting and she has little time because the two groups of enemies are tightening the noose. This very chase forces mistakes out of her plus her drastic attempts to cover.
Ah, but no one forces [K @ j o]'s hands. He sets his own timelines and he has infinite resources. He claims he needs to finish his studies, but no, he doesn't need to. His world won't come to an end if he waits until next year. The only threat to his timeline are the randos... and even his timeline is flexible.
Back to the detectives in Connor...
We don't know the enemy's timeline. I imagine they're guessing "soon" but the villain can't exactly say how much time they have (if there is even a clock).
What are Campanella's stakes?
a) Getting demoted was something she didn't like, but it also didn't hurt.
b) Her search for her son ties into the last 5% of the story but it's just a would-like for the previous 95%
My challenge for her is what decision does she make around the mid-point that sets her on an irreversible course that she either struggles against and runs with until it's too late for her? What does her transformative journey look like? If you can find her turning point, you will understand how to shape the key that will turn her trip into a rollercoaster.
Romano's much easier because he hits his point of no-return in chapter 7.
My question to Romano is what are the ultimate payments his conscience will demand on him and what does he have to do to avoid it? I don't mean karma / eternal damnation. Saving his lover's soul is sufficient to earn Romano a place in heaven, and provides a nice time-limit, but it's not a character study. Romano's made a mistake. He's taking the steps toward penance, but it's hard to chain increasing stakes, since he's more-or-less waiting for Benvolio to get a lucky break. The process is taking place around him, and so he needn't face any soul-searching to navigate it. Or think of it this way: If Batman saves Catwoman from a fall, that fact alone does not make Batman more interesting. What will fascinate readers is if Catwoman was mean to him before she fell and he still saved her (inner journey of forgiveness). Or if saving her meant not being there for someone else (start of journey of guilt). Or a million other angles.
Seems like you've got your book split up into 2-3 with one different chapter in each. Try going back into the first and click "add new chapter"
Disclaimer: I am not a site admin
have become neutrino-to-energy reactors, usually referred to as neutrino boilers, or just boilers
"boilers" may prove confusing to a lay-reader given your boilers aren't actually boiling but converting
This process can in theory extract up to 20 percent of the black hole's mass energy,
Curious how they arrived at this number
Using some kind of electromagnetic or physical confinement mirrors
wait, what?
runaway effect where particle energy amplifies particle energy in a feedback look
loop*
It would be similar to Hawking radiation, but in this case, it doesn't rely upon quantum gravity.
Isn't this an imposed variant on his research?
There's no way you could use neutrinos to power cell phones and EVs, as suggested in an article I read
Hmm, well the logical extension here is that cell phones and EVs consume less power
The original idea (of converting a neutrino into heat energy (used to boil water to turn microscopic turbines?)) may be a bit flawed in retrospect, yet the concept has some merit
In one of mine I did l,w,h,anode (mirrored cathode).
Past four, things get exponentially complex and you'll have diminishing returns. I remember trying to hit 6-d and re-reading it later, things get incomprehensible.
-55C in Edmonton. Nice.
Btw Jupiter is sitting at -110 right now. You're half way there!
Whichever you choose, may I suggest you merely note plot holes and move on rather then go back and try to fix them? That's my current method. VQF had about half a doren (but all the chapter notes were lost in the Great Crash). The one you might recall is where the team moves from Imager's island to the station and Roberta was there but was supposedly left behind. I merely noted at chapter end "continuity oops!" but ploughed forward.
Just thought of another plot hole, though. If the Hercules wants to dump huge amounts of power into the emitter, all she has to do is install another powertron just for that
Two good options from njc.
A third, more simple: They generate heat which the ships system have to deal with. Two will make too much heat.
(And unlike star wars would have you believe, you can't vent heat from your core into space; it'll just radiate into the core of the vehicle. You need to build a fluid dynamics engine to transfer all that heat to the hull)
I'm considering calling mine extraspace
Both this and 4D space are current terms (4th dimension nominally considered time and extra space is what I get when I clean my closet).
Consider "Pentaspace" (example only -- don't use these ideas lol)
Example: The ship's P-Drive fired up, bringing the ship close to pentaspace translation.
(Reader: "Translation" sounds like this might be hyperspace-like)
(Writer: Similar only. Objects in p-space can be observed from outside)
Example: The ship turned, aiming its pentacannon. St-J had her ships race to keep it broadside. The beam couldn't be stopped by shields or anything in the physical dimension.
(Reader: Ah, so a beam can achieve a sort of hyperspace velocity? So, then they can send a low-power signal home for help?)
(Writer: No. High diffusion rate keeps it within x km)
Every time I think I've accounted for all obvious plot holes, and I write it up, I find new plot holes.
If you had your own terms, you could fudge the rules around any plot hole. I think that's the problem you're running into. Trying to use hyperspace would lock you in as much as using "tardis" because in both cases it ties your hands to someone else's imagination. UNLESS you simply use hyperspace and redefine it as you need rather than use someone else's definition (A rough count in wikipedia easily finds over a dozen variations)
I don't actually mention hyperspace when it comes to the operation of my stardrives.
I think you're onto something profound here. I just need some time for that to percolate.
It's kind of like I don't mention teleportation in my main series because I wanted to define it my own specific way
Did Dune ever explain their drive mechanism?
Dune uses pleeenty of handwavium on that and just gets on with the story. We're given to understand the ship does not travel through normal space and is in a web of cosmic worm holes that would be impossible to navigate without prescience. We don't get how the ship powers itself there and how it exists, or reads energy signatures etc.
Dune's engine therefore would not support a cosmic space battle. The only ship battles I can recall involve the ship entering the atmosphere and operating as a normal object (Except the No-ships, but even the Dune characters would call them magic)
Edit: Dune's power and beauty is part of the original writer's abstractness. When the son came along and explain how the Tleilaxu cloning tanks work, all the magic of the father's build ended in logical but crushing realism.
Whose hyperspace though? Every writer will give you a slightly different nuance of it.
For example in many dimensional travel tales one is referred to as "returning to one's home dimension" not realizing it might be plural
