3,226

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

Just to keep you in the loop: I'm working on backstory involving Erevain and his prentice-master, Niccano.  What caused Niccano to pull up shop from a world near the center of sorcerous commerce and move to the sticks of the sticks, with his apprentice in tow?  He had long habit and skill snooping into the secrets around him so that he could avoid stepping into them openly and accidentally?  When he stumbled into a danger he could never have imagined, in a secret that could look back at him, what did he tell Erevain to justify the move yet conceal his knowledge?

Did he die, or just fake his death and disappear into a non-sorcerous world, beyond the eye, if not the reach, of the worst danger the Worlds ever faced?  (This question I don't answer now, but I have to know what Erevain sees and believes.)

Whom does Niccano trust as a courier and business front to bring commissions to Erevain, and completed work back?

Once I have some answers here, I can flesh out his role in the next few chapters.

Okay.  I didn't mean to suggest you try to force a handedness change on Collin.  I don't have any reason to expect it will make a difference.  I suppose if you are desperate enough, you might try it, though.

3,228

(11 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Major congratulations here!  You've won a fan in the Fourth Estate, and she can't hld her praise in.

So ... do we start a pool on which of Amy's novels will see the next chapter?

3,230

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

I've just had an insight on Everain and his mentor Nikkano.  I know more of their backstory now, and I have to rework the next Erevain chapter to fit.

I've got some open questions, too.  See Dr. Dmitri Vapnoodle.

3,231

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

The Version #2.  Take the latest version extant.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_la … in_English

KHippolite wrote:

Heh... that wasn't me, so no worries about ANver finding out

i suppose you've got a literary cockroach typing there?  Which makes the thing even  more icky.

3,233

(212 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

How are we coming with 'printable' functionality?  For me it would be helpful to do clean prints not only of content but of reviews and replies.

Just making the drop-downs print as they appear (instead of by their content) would be 80% of the solution.  It might be easier to do it sitewide than page by page.

KHippolite wrote:
amy s wrote:

Love that you love Katerin. I think Anver is hot, so he has at least one fan.

I have the hots for Anver too

I wouldn't tell him if I were you smile

3,235

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

I was notified that I hadn't completed the integration of the sections of Ch. 4 back into Ch. 3.  Well, I've done it, though none too adroitly.  Feel free to have a look.

Isn't there a way to tell the browser to display via local time?  I wonder if the time supplied is Zulu time, as it should be.

Put the volume break shortly after Alina's death, just where the 'Easter Egg Hunt' is announced.  That way Volume One's immediate arc is concerned with Alina and her school while the background problem has been introduced, and Kha has told us about the necromancy attacks.

A fellow I worked with, years ago, had written and performed a song called =Yesterday's Tomorrow is Tomorrow's Yesterday=.  Leonard Cohen he wasn't, but it's an intriguing and Zyrtec-ish title.

I learned that the Fantasy novel that had come in the belated Christmas bundle from my brother and sister-in-law was a self-published work by a friend, so I read it.  I wish I'd had the chance to comment when he'd workshopped it.  But it was published after gathering dust, in the knowledge that it wasn't what it should have been.

But it wasn't -that- far from being good.

I took another look at Acts, and wonder whether you could break the story soon after Alina's demise, or with the announcement that Zyrtec's quarters are in Kha's building.

Also, and this qualifies as a problem, in one of the containment jar chapters, you have Katerin claim knowledge of the layout of Kha's rooms.  How can she?

This male reader is in love with Katerin.  Do you expect your female readers to lust after Anver?

Oh, that snickering knife.  I hope you're hanging something important on it.

Now, larger question: do you have an overarching title for the whole work.  Something like Long Shadow of the Chronomancer or Earthwound?  Or The Ages of Magic?  Or a quote from My Name is John Wellington Wells?

If the series title includes 'Chronomancer' you could blurb Kha's line about Chronomancers seeing multiple futures ... two apples short of a pie.

I'm beginning to wonder now about Rubats showing up in all the right--or wrong--places.  And if the Guildhouse is sentient in any degree, whose mind(s) do(es) it carry?

I'd hold this use for the big battle, or for a small battle critical to it in the run-up.

The shadowbook-future could be used to prime characters to take the right actions in  crises, even when they misunderstand what it's telling them.

In the first couple of chapters, you mention The Overseer.  I'm guessing that's the Mage Master Geron.  You can use that to get the politics in, as well as the structure of the schools.

Note that you could have one of the chronomancer's shadowbooks look into the =future=.

amy s wrote:

Geron has motivations that I haven't figured out yet, but this is what I have so far.  ... He screwed himself.  Up until the time where Anver took over, Geron's only ally was Kha.  The other five were narcissists and routinely outvoted the old man.

All of this works with what I wrote above.  You just need to name him--and the process--earlier  His appearance fulfills the anticipation and answers the curiosity that you set up.

I too am getting blank pages when I try to read Acts.  I think you better let Sol know.

The real Q? is why Geron the Mage Master allows Alina to do this.  'twould  be good to mention Geron and explain why he allows it (he would be outvoted by all the other misbirths on the council).  Maybe even mention that Anver considered approaching him, but knew if he lost everyone on the council would have a general warrant on all things and all persons Kha.

Maybe even have that as subtext (later explained) in the argument between Alina and Anver.  Give Tilly a chance to get good and riled as Anver explains--one more reason for her to hate Katerin.

What you have now is an out-of-the-frying-pan (Alina) into the fire (necromancer) progression.  I don't see anything wrong with it, BUT you could link plot lines/jeopardies (NOT themes) if you link the Black Staff or Earthwound or both to necromancy via Death Magic, which is an established part of your world.

(Now, if you explored Katerin's loyalty to Alina vs. first Anver's loyalty to Kha and then Anver's loyalty to Katerin, you would be dealing in themes.  If you invited the reader directly to follow you to a conclusion, you would have a thesis.)

It's a magical roof on a magical building.  It's beneath Alina, and she's in the mood to stick it to people especially to the nice guy students of that nice guy Kha.  She hates goodness, which he and his school represent.  That's already implicit in her character.

We know about the necromancer when they explore the containment jar.

If Earthwound or the Black staff can be linked even indirectly to death magic you have the link Judy asks for.  Old threat/sideshow is revealed to be the main attraction through a series of episodes.  See symphonic structure and Beethoven.  Then all the reveals that now exist become amplification.

It's even better if the reader sees it before the characters do.

Amy et al., the place for the link to drop in is right there in plain sight, from the first jeopardy to the unplanned capture of Caneth.

KHippolite wrote:

Rather than bring another thread in--unless there is an organic reason for it--I think you should find a way to play up the existing elements: Earthwound and the Black Staff.

Here we differ too. The Earthwound story thread and the Black Staff story thread don't seem to be thematic to this story. In fact, they are not resolved in the slightest in the version I read. If you don't plan to resolve them in the rewrite, I'd recommend not making a huge fuss about them... if the story ends with 5/8 of the major threads dangling, you'll succeed in frustrating me. Like in Game of Thrones, I'll just wait for the last book to come out so I can read it and find out who to like, then go back and read the series.

Go that with aSoIaF and you'll -never- follow the story.  The ensemble turns over at least three times.

If Earthwound and Black Staff aren't important enough now, make them important.  Just don't tell us how important.  Don't say 'they're not important enough' and add something else.

I've got a plot connection set up  in my first two chapters.  Kudos if you guess it, but I don't plan to let it out for a couple of volumes, at least.

I've been listening to an audio course on Beethoven's symphonies.  Beethoven was the composer of structure.  You listen and listen and listen, and discover that everything you've been hearing comes from some transformation or complementarity off of the tiny melodic fragments with which Beethoven began the work.

The lecturer feels that the greatest work ever written for solo piano is Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, in which this process of variation, transmorgrification, and rejiggerication is itself varied, transmorgrified, transmuted, and rejiggered as we watch.

That's how I encourage you to approach this question.