Two thoughts.
If you want to show that Tazar has an eidetic memory, you might move his old memory scenes to a previous chapter and here have him recall some hinted-at detail of how the guards handled him in the previous chapter.
Second, if there was someone 'inside' the Wolves at the Earthwound, we're running out of suspects, but ... what about that ring Airen wears?
There are many aspects of writing. On having a good story to tell, you've got your BA.
Yep, it's a tantalum cap. Now, why would I choose an expensive tantalum cap for that spot? You did read the articles, right?
Okay, this is the 3-way pigeon flasher I mean to try. Note that some component values are TBD.
(I may reverse it right-to-left.)
Yes, but what -kind- of capacitor? And what are the resistor values? (No running off to a chart!)
Red is reserved for true danger.
Over on the 'where to host' thread, there's a photo of the test article. Identify away! But the color rendering may make it hard to get the values. (They are all standard, E24 5% values.)
Bonus points for that tan blob in the front on the right.
My progress with current chapters is blocked because I have let slip some gremlins of TNBW by trying to reorder chapters. A brief of the sad, sorry tale is over on Site Bugs II.
In the meantime, I'm working on (very) large scale questions. I also worked the kinks out of the level detector in my off-hook alarm. (Biggest problem: transistor Q2 was one hole out of position on the plug-in solderless breadboard.) Next step is the three-way pigeon flasher (derived from and named for this).
Then there are a variety of physical design problems, and the choice between amber and yellow Platinum Dragon LEDs. The amber flashes are a bit harder to ignore, but it's closer to red than I would like.
Alda's library tour should be cut short for other reasons, like her habit of keeping rescued food in her pockets. There might be a really embarassing incident there. Something like this. Or just mice following her and making nests out of precious old volumes.
I'm going out of my mind with the chapter renumbering mess whose thread I started on Wishlist.
TNBW is moving chapters on me that I haven't touched.
I'm trying to reorder a couple of chapters. I don't want to simply swap content because I want the existing reviews to go with them. There are/were previous versions.
Every time I make a change, something else gets changed as well. An earlier chapter is moved later. A later chapter is moved earlier. Previous versions get whole different chapter numbers.
Clearly, the data and transaction model cannot accomodate moving chapters around, and the version model that assumes that previous versions are in the same place as present versions does not match the way things actually work.
Is there -any- solution short of copying everything to a new work, losing both a day and all the accumulated reviews?
Where a number is duplicated, one of the two should be inactive. I'll have to double-check.
When I made my first pass through the story, I was working different threads so I left holes in the sequence. I'll have to be a little more fastidious now. (grumbles.)
Making one change requires several page loazds just to see if you got it right and what the fallout is. Fixing a domino-tumble could take all day.
Anant Tazar and memory: Maybe you could set his extended retrospections during his meal? The new kid might trigger them somehow.
I see how that memory and the markings might go together. A few words, maybe earlier, on how old the prison is(n't) relative to the city and waterway might be in order. Or is that for later?
Anant KH's point about Alda and the books, her brief experience everywhere might be a running joke first to the readers and then to the characters. 'I cast cleanse so often ...' might be the start of it.
1) There are a lot of repeat words now that you are adding more adjectives and going over the same thing for elaboration. You need to get used to using synonyms. Ex: A sorcerer might be a close friend, but never a close neighbor...At the Academy, she and Caneth had many friends-(friend)
I'll go with Strunk and White (unbowdlerized) on this one
Another example: By reflex, she windmilled her arms for balance. By reflex, she used control of the Elements (by reflex).
The problem is not the repetition of the word, but its use without a strong frapping to create the unity that I'm trying for.
2) Avoid using the word 'it' whenever possible.
Above you don't want me to repeat a word, now you deny me pronouns? I'm guessing you're inveighing against constructions like 'it was his good fortune that ...'
3) Incomplete sentences due to fragmented revision. Ex: They had traveled and adventure awaited the traveling sorcerer. (note this also repeats travel in the same sentence)
The sentence is quite complete, but a comma or semicolon after the conjunction would make the parse clearer. The second use of a part of 'travel' gives purpose to, and fulfills, the first use.
4) Order issues. I believe these would shake out with more revision. Here is a big one. Even late bloomers like Melayne had male friends. Friendship led to interest. Later, interest led to friendship (First she has male friends. Then she has interested males. Then she has friendship. Huh?)
The logic is clear. Before Melayne blossomed, friendship preceeded interest. After she blossomed, interest preceeded friendship. The inversion is important, not contradictory.
Okay, it's not clear enough.
5) Logic issues: A sorcerer might be a close friend, but never a close neighbor. (They are essentially home-schooling Merran in a remote area with few sorcerers, surrounding her with normal people who respect/ fear their abilities. Logically, Merran would have few friends, yet Melanyne hopes for this to just happen. Then she says later, With no society to mingle in, Merran had no chance to find her own circle of friends. When she bloomed as a woman, she would have no experience to draw on. (What you are telling us is that Merran is stunted by her home and abilities, and has had few if any friends. Give a reason why this isolation is needed. The Academy isn't being set up as a trouble spot. Make it clear that Merran is better off with few friends than going to that hole. Start parcelling out clues. This is where you hook someone with curiosity. Ex: Rapunzel wouldn't work if you kept Mother Gothel a secret from the reader for forty chapters and just had Rapunzel living the day-to-day. If you're going to bring up the Academy, then by golly BRING IT UP!)
Needed? It's not an existential or ontological necessity. It was an unforseen consequence, and one that they've delayed dealing with.
I can guide the reader better to that point.
And the backstory can unfold. You don't tell us about the Mage Master in you first chapter, and when you mention the Age of Magic you don't give us the full history right away.
6) adding 'her' as an extra word when not needed. Ex: Her hair worked loose as she straightened up and she pulled the rag off it to be sure the knots were tight. Her hair fell halfway down her back, a bit darker than her daughter's but still shiny without sorcery. Possible revision: Her hair worked loose as she straightened up, pulling the rag off (eliminate it) to be sure the knots were tight. (Synonym to avoid repeat) The whole mess fell halfway down her back...
First example possible. As to the second, Melayne's hair is not a mess, not in whole, not in part! (There, how's that for repetition?)
7) If Merran were here instead of practicing, she'd be asking why they were fooling around with vinegar instead of finding a spell for the job. (Add a clarifier here. This was a sign of her daughter's inexperience.)
What, I'm not showing it with the tender boiled laundry?
8) LOTS of 'was' added to your verbage. Ex: Someone was moving (moved) out front.
Eowne was falling (fell) against a wall and buckling.
First example, maybe. Second example, no. It announces a sudden change and contrast in the (perceived) speed of the action.
You and I will probably disagree on this for a long time.
9) Gone ... Barris ... Caneth ... they're gone ... dau-COUGH-ghter." She looked past the standing brick Hearth, past the charcoal bins (I dispute that Eowyne would know this. She is concussed, reeling from the explosion, and then the air was full of ash. All she knows is 'where is my baby? He's sick!)
If she trusts what she saw about her son, she has to trust what she saw with the others who were there. That was the last thing she saw before the air turned to mud.
I should probably have her describe it. She didn't hit her head against the wall, by the way. She slumped down as she watched in horror.
This continues to improve. You writing isn't static and the kitchen scene does a good job of setting the stage instead of leaving a blank curtain for me to guess about the surroundings. You explain that Merran was wearing house shoes (or mocasins) and is feeling the rocks through her soles. I didn't get that before.
You are relaying Melayne better. I have a better sense of her size, appearance, and disposition. Her training matches her upbringing. Now start adding this to Merran and Jamen. Ex: Most sorcerers wear those bracelets. You and your father don't. (Jamen knows exactly four sorcerers. Goran, Melayne, her husband, and Merran. Three of four wear the bracelets. Correct these little details because Jamen doesn't see bunches of sorcerers travelling through this hick town)
You are doing better on power descriptions, clarifying how Fire works in this world and letting us know what happens around Melayne as she puts out the chaos.
I'm still spending 8 words where I should spend five.
Oh, Jamen has come in contact with other sorcerers. He's not that isolated. Compared to Merran, he's practically cosmopolitan.
I'm going to put this in under 'wishlist' rather than bugs because an argument can be made for the behavior described herein. I don't think it's a good one, but it's at least plausible.
I have been moving some content around between chapters. I have multiple story threads, and changes in the weight given to one episode or another are driving the reordering. In the process, I exchanged the places of a couple of chapters.
There are also inactive previous versions of a couple of chapters. I stress that they are inactive. They had the same numbers as a couple of the active chapters. The renumbering caused first one of them, and then the other, to be given the number of an active chapter. That change the number of another active chapter, triggering a chain reaction. I don't know if I've gotten it straightened out, since my laptop battery ran out when a five-minute task took over an hour. Both the time and the battery problems were worsened by the multiple page loads I needed to get back where I was after changes were made, navigating through the edit chain from the top each time. I also found the drop-down bouncing to different spots on the page. (Sorry, I didn't think to capture screenshots. My bad on that.)
I think you have a deep problem stemming from your model of version control (snapshot vs. structure, and how to resolve the tensions that result) so I won't ask for changes there.
Instead, my request seems simple: exclude inactive chapters from the renumbering arena, so they cannot trigger chain reactions of this sort. ( It might not be simple and a different fix might be easier. But I'm trying.)
I'm getting back in harness after Christmas. I've just finished three Ellery Queen books I hadn't read before (one Wrightsville novel, two collections--one of them radio scripts) and almost half of the complete TV series. (That was a gift for Mom that I convinced her to open early. We also watched Frozen on DVD. In some ways, it is almost operatic.) I'm becoming convinced that Queen was the real master, even above Christie. The EQ collaboration was immensely prolific, and at its best the character painting is so good it's scary.
On the long drives, I listened to a lecture course on ethics, and got another three quarters of a page of themes that I want to work into my story as it develops. (I use half-sized notebooks: 
)
You and me all.
They indicate connection someplace. When the wire comes out down the page, they are generally connected to the positive rail (often called Vcc or Vdd), unless there is a notation for something else.
High school is coming back very slowly. I recognise some resistors, capacitors, diodes and switches.
I need to read more carefully. Where did you see a switch?
Nothing. But you need to make the old version inactive.
I'm used to thinking of version control as a system for creating snapshots of the text and then, if necessay, creating branches off the snapshots. This isn't that.
In-line may be a good way to enter them, but it's an awful way to read them. IMO. YMMV.
Agreed that the side-by-side entry for 'regular' reviews is a boon.
Look towards the left. You'll see a Weller thermostaticly controlled soldering station. The pencil is further to the left, out of view, along with my power supplies.
If I were really up-to-date, I'd have a hot-air station for handling surface-mount devices. I don't know where I'd put it, though.
The chaos gem is peach-sized. The others are a little bigger than a walnut. That's why I give them fewer facets.
The works you see on the test article, along with some other stuff, will go on a circuit board about 3+1/2" x 1+7/8". It will go at one end of a box 4+1/2" x 7+1/2" x 1+3/8". Most of the box will contain the battery box and the input filter, which will also provide some protection from a high voltage transient on the line. It will have loops on the back for hanging from a wall.
But somewhere I have the diagram for a 'mobile' of parts that is actually a functioning AM radio. Diode detector, not superhet, and I think I'd have to make up my own loopstick for the rf tuning tank. And today's transistors are so good they'd probably overdrive the circuit--drive it into clipping. But that can be fixed.
I'm thinking of the big Chaos gem as one of these:
For the lambda-world gems, I'm thinking of this:
Anyhow, here's the flasher operating:
The narrow pulses dropping are the LED being turned on; that's the voltage between the mosfet and the big LED.
I'm driving a testbed (not the battery-powered test article) on only about 3v, so the on pulses are quite wide.
The other trace is one side of the sequence timing multivibrator.
Let's look at it more slowly:
Here we see one side of the sequence mv, with the two sets of pulses. Because this is a digital scope, some of the pulses disappear in the sampling process. Note the slow rise and sharp fall. The other, much longer, side of that mv has an equally sharp fall.
Here's the battery-powered test article, running right now on the bench supplies.
I was able to catch it the LED flash by using a 1/10 second shutter time, but the camera can't show the real effect of the flash. (I'm setting this test article up to work out the revised line voltage detector, visible just in front of the big IC. The two green LEDs, with their resistors and mosfet switches, will be used to read the line state off the detector.
Here's the whole 'lab' in its present form:
