Why does my most recent review--How to Breathe Underwater, Ch. 8--appear with a date of March 31?

352

(15 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

On horses and humans: https://phys.org/news/2018-05-foundatio … nship.html

I spend an hour to several on every review.  I'm trying to get to your latest chapter.

But scale changes call for different engineering solutions.  Surface area vs. volume, multiplied by higher energies that can be sustained in larger volumes.  Structural forces needed to hold the thing together versus the distance over which the forces must be fransmitted.  (See 'buckling' and 'deflection' in Structural Mechanics.)  Ordinary metal conductors in smaller weapons vs. superconductors necessary for the larger volumes compounded by higher energies.

Scaling is a frighteningly simple matter.  But if you make it simpler, the results can be frightful, costly, catastrophic failures.  The sort that ACME likes to hush up.

Same tech, some differences.  You don't load a pistol the way you load a belt-fed gun, and neither is like loading a battleship's guns.

Writing analytical reviews can make you a better writer, too, as you learn from other people's work.

357

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

Thought I'd pass this on: Things I Won't Work With.  Janet R. might find it especially interesting, in Jean Shepherd kind of way.

I was thinking of the phone operator ... but the driver is very good, too.

CJ, did you consider showing the leak at work in the AZ HQ at the end of the chapter?  It would up the stakes as much as anything you've got, more even than the 'all the time' dialogue

Yes, but it really does take off before the end.  And burn.  And crash.  And then the roof caves in.  Just your mug of coffee.

Somewhere around the fifth paragraph from the very end of the story body, the author of this story says what he thinks about people who worry too much about grammar and punctuation.  But don't jump to the end.  Read the story through.  The journey is the point.  Especially the part about the all-night auto parts store.

K, I'm talking to YOU.

C J Driftwood wrote:
njc wrote:

I don't agree with covercritics.com all the time, but the guy makes good points.

OMG! Thanks for the link, this is validating! I agree with 99% of what they said. And some of those covers- sorry, not even worth 5 dollars. Harsh, sure. But I am a professional. You get what you are willing to pay for- and mostly you get less. Keep that in mind when shopping for cover-art and design.

It's an old but oft-neglected principle that you should expect less than you paid for--and more than you bargained for.

You're welcome, glad to help.

I don't agree with covercritics.com all the time, but the guy makes good points.

Per last review: -homo economicus-.

'economic' is derived from a Hellenic Greek word meaning household management.

If the reviewer has found twenty or thirty instances and commented in them for just a few issues, I think he's justified in leaving the author to find the others.  It's probably more helpful to offer explanation and general suggestion in the end comment.

And if there are more than 80 comments, you could argue for a softball 'mercy rule' for both author and reviewer.  Yes, I recently did one whose reported comment count went over 100.  I've learned not to trust the exact count, but I'd be surprised if there were fewer than 85.

366

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

Searching for info about 'Heinleining', I found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_(narrative)  .

It's the engineer-tinkerer in me.  When something works, I want to know why.  When it doesn't, I also want to know why.

Experts have been trying for over two hundred years to understand why this works  They've got some interesting theories.

Ms. Ye, in response to your last review reply and your difficulties in writing action,

You're going to need some action to establish jeopardy.  It's a skill to be learned (says the guy who's facing a big hurdle of the same sort soon).  In the visual arts, artists do studies, trying out a technique, effect, or tableau  in isolation before incorporating it into their planned work.  M.C.Escher left a huge number of studies, now in museums and private hands, for his major works.   And the first couple of chapters I put up here were studies to see if I could reach some minimum standard.

People are attracted to YuFu's chapter, I think, because there is physical jeopardy involved, and because disaster has befallen at chapter's end.

I offer you a suggestion--or a challenge: Take YuFu's first chapter and rewrite it with just the action and implied jeopardy, absolute minimum of character and near-zero background--but with elements establishing the danger in that chapter.  Put it up as a short story with an appropriate title and explain what you're trying to do.  You can even put a barely illustrated outline up first.  I promise to review at least three revisions.  I think you'll get other reviewers as well.

I'm guessing that with some practice you can get the action and necessary background/milieu down to about 600 words.  But a good first try might run about 1,300.

smile

370

(22 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Most of all, you need to learn what things you need to learn.  You need to say 'I can't do that,' and then set to learn how.

It's the poor quality of modern coconuts.

See the tvtropes entries for 'asspull' and 'hammerspace'.

I was thinking about the alternation of IM and ordinary quote for Talmas and Ameth.  You have Talmas as the ordinary, Ameth as the IM.  Did you choose this way for a reason?

I'm thinking that it might be better to give Talmas the IM, since he opens and for him it is internal.  Ameth is speaking to the only person she can reach; that's less internal in a sense.  Also, you can put a beat on her first line, eg 'Ameth spoke ibto his mind', so that the reader knows for sure how to interpret it.

374

(22 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

I've been recommending Matt Bird's =The Secrets of Story= for close to a year now.

You said you found no logic.

I don't believe in the tenets of the Latter-Day Saints  but given those tenets, OSCard's conclusions about Frodo and Samwise make sense to me.  I can follow the logic even though I reject the premises.