Given the third quartile of the story, you sort of need bland.
But bland also doesn’t keep the reader turning pages
So let me rephrase my question of your target reader into: what is your competition doing?
Also considering Kim is pretty bland. In the main story it's 60 pages before she even kicks a soccer ball. Readers on some other site have been asking if she can do anything. I haven't warned them she'll be lopping off heads in a scant 200 pages
I don't know what to say that could help solve this conundrum. For me, removing = simplicity. Simplicity = more time to focus on thriller elements. Thriller elements = evil plan + riddles + action.
Plainly stated: What should your target reader be thinking? If anything in my list, you may need to pivot a bit
I haven't been logged out in a few days. Did you guys stop kicking spammers for the holidays?
Personally, I think it should simply be a month to try to system since, as you noted, not everyone dives in on day one
Indeed... the trend these days is toward 30day+ trials and hope to drip-feed some income. My non-sub models seems to have a tokenized pay-per-post system, but otherwise I'm a "full" member.
I've been trying to come up with a solution that jives better with the existing business model. This assumes there is a valid business model, and we're not being underwritten by Booksie. In this latter, let's call it a dire case, more drastic efforts may be required.
One option for example, user starts with $25
A vowel costs $7
A consonant costs $1
When you run out of money, you lose
This means you could start with 3 vowels and 4 consonants which would make the puzzle MUCH easier (But still sort of impossible)
Hmm... Sometimes you can get a great idea and when you implement it, you find it's trash
When this was in my head, I pictured players would solve the blue squares first... this would turn the next crossing squares blue and be related words.
Example Car (blue) crosses "vehicle" yellow (Both contain a C + relation). Then vehicle turns blue.
Vehicle (blue) crosses "wheel" yellow
etc
The fact is the farther along the relation-chain you go, the more obscure the guesses become. I made one puzzle and put it away for a few days to "forget" the answers. When I came back I could hardly solve it myself.
I need to bring this back to the drawing board and consider actual clues/hints.
For anyone following, the site logged me out while I was composing the above message
I feel your pain... we used to have a lot of magical realism ppl here who would have been great fits for your story.
If Sol ups the prize money for contests it might attract new subscribers
At the risk of derailing your post, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the current structure.
I'd like to a flag that a busy person (who's really not busy these days, right?) may not post for the first 5-10 days of joining. If he posts late, he may get the "You have a new review" message and log back in to see "You can't see your review unless you pay". Not saying this has happened to me (okay, well it has, but I'm not a new member so it didn't faze me), but I wonder if it is happening out there as a deterrent.
I've been doing mental gymnastics to figure out how this might be addressed without essentially giving away the cow for free but not coming up with anything.
I can only imagine what he'll do to the decorations later this month.
Pulling tinsel out of a cat's butt is a rite of passage
So far shortlist
crossadoodle (hee, cross-a-doodle-doo!)
cross-o-saurus
cluezzle
picto- (word / scrawl / worm etc)
with special nod to an irregular "anticross" event where all the words have to be written backwards
Random Brainstorm Question
I've designed a crossword with no clues - only a picture. It needs a name.
All the good, snappy names are taken such as "crosswordle" "pictoword" etc
My current contenders are
imagicross
descripticross
pictoworm*
cluezzle
*= Since it'll appear on the backup site, "worm" makes sense in this context
Dear creative brains! Throw me some other outlandish suggestions
Out of morbid curiosity, was that Gemini? Mine usually gives more light-hearted answers which sound like a TV commercial instead of scholarly
Here's a different angle on it. Please forgive it's a tongue-in-cheek variation of Abraham/Isaac:
Example:
Man: Please God, my wife and I are trapped on my roof, and the flood waters are rising. Please rescue us.
Voice from Heaven: I hear you, faithful servant. If you will prove your faith by sacrificing your wife, I will grant you both eternal life.
(Scream)
Man: I've done it. You'll resurrect her and grant us both eternal life?
Voice from Heaven: I just did! But to an alternate you in a different dimension. Bye, now. Have fun with the flood
What's happened in this example is the speaker is able to enter direct negotiation/discourse with God, unlike us trying to interpret scriptures. Eg: if the scripture says "Nation X will be fruitful and multiply" we implicitly understand not every individual will be fruitful and/or multiply. As the scripture doesn't (well, can't) single out Bob-From-New-York, then should Bob get into a fatal accident before Rapture, he couldn't claim essential facts were omitted.
Satan doesn't have this limitation if he can by-pass the scripture and have a direct-line. He's entering a negotiation where vital facts are being withheld with intent to trick him into losing.
was writing a prophecy during the Middle Ages and was trying to keep from being burned at the stake for heresy for suggesting
Or... an alternative view is: One expects the author of the verse to die for the truth, not fib a little to escape his doom
"He'll come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven," and he returns as a boy (like my first draft)?
This seems fair. He ultimately came back and didn't come back to some other "me". The state he left in changed from man to boy but "same" is ambiguous wrt which verb is modifies
author of your verse was writing a prophecy during the Middle Ages and was trying to keep from being burned at the stake for heresy for suggesting that he will return but not in this dimension? It would still be factual to write he will return.
This seems like a falsehood. Granted, one brought about by extenuating circumstances. We might say well this is clerical error and not God's being non-factual, which dodges the culpability. A bargain between God & Satan where Satan does not know all the rules cannot be accounted for by misinterpretation or by human fallacy
Revelation, itself, is drowning in figurative language that will never be understood with 100% certainty. Are those falsehoods?
Yes if they are written intentionally to be misunderstood.
For example, it the verse says "Christ will return" but the true meaning is "He will return but not in this dimension" I'd call that being lied to
God tells him when Satan issued the challenge that he will in fact be given a kingdom of his own, whose size will be smaller than the smallest grain of sand in the universe. This is true since God is referring to the black hole. Satan interprets this potential outcome as
Due to omniscience, and knowing Satan misunderstood... does that mean God allowed a falsehood to be understood from his statement?
God will leave Creation behind anyway, moving with those who are saved to Eden in a different dimension. Although the Earth will be renewed
Which is to say God can simply replicate the creation, except without Satan in it?
Four days later, zero logouts. Normally it's 2-3/day
Cancel that! The dreaded logout arrived
huh... well it's a little early to tell based on only seven days, but I get to be a free-member probably until the end of the month thanks to Canada Post.
I haven't seen a single logout on all my devices during this time.
Openly wondering if Sol doesn't see the logouts because he's not a paying member
Hey!
Has anyone been logged out in the last seven days?
Odd Q, I know...
Also note: I've learned to keep my posts in the clipboard before pressing submit
Funny... I googled one of my older stories to see which cover would pop up first (Bad news, it was the older version) and Google AI was like "Hey, I know this story. Go ahead and ask me anything about it."
I played along, picked an MC, and asked the AI for her boyfriend's name. Surprisingly, it came up with "K a i" which was horribly false, but surprisingly similar to another MC (who shall remain nameless lol) who shares a lot of page space with her.
Note to Sol: I was logged out of the site while typing this post
I double-checked on my desktop which has more clicky things and can state that the image int the forums is a different URL and probably gets updated by some other task that runs at infrequent or unpredictable times
