On dialogue: moments ago I heard a radio advertisement in the form of a conversation about a dilemma and the product that solved it. The dialogue had to introduce the people, the problem, the product, and every one of its claimed virtues, in encyclopedic detail. It was loaded to breaking with modifiers; it ran every detour into detail; it bubbled and burbled with praise and delight.
It was a magnificent anti-exemplar of dialogue writing.
If your story is written in past tense, then past tense is the story's present amd past perfect is the story's past. Switching to past progressive ('was going') does nothing. Oh, and The Best Advice nowadays is to avoid the progressive aspect unless it's really, really needed, to make the text more compact and to make it feel a little more definite.
I see your double chapter. It may take a few days to get to it. I've got a week with family coming up. But I'll try.
Meanwhile, does this book go on for nine months? Because I see an outcome for that barn scene.
Oh, topic shifts and flow are things I notice because I have to work hard on them too.
IIRC, in the case I called out, it wasn't so much a flashback as explanation after the fact.
The point is that I need to know to look! TNBW alerts me when you do the basic reply, so I look then. If you add to it after thst, just let me know.
My preference against the name 'Final Conflict' comes because it lacks any specific (and spooky) image like those of fog, raven, and tiger.
Of course, you can add the comments and put a note here.
Nearly everything I pick on in reviews is something I learned here, either by being reviewed or by reviewing.
I will read the replies at least once when the main reply is filled in and I'm informed that you've replied. Feel free to reply in the forum if you prefer.
Oh, and use the reply-to-review. Makes the reviews feel loved.
Do reviews. You'll get one or two authors to reciprocate. If you review works that are in similar genre and style to yours, the authors may be more likely to reciprocate. And expect to do twenty or so before you find a few review buddies you'll be working with.
Even if you don't get many responses, you'll build points.
You said nice things on your last review reply. Let me remind you that I Really Believe in your story. And you are a prince for putting up with all the ideas I hurl over the ramparts at your work.
Okay, the Chapter 2 review is complete, with lots of gripes, bellyaches, proclamations from on high, and snyde comments. All for your enjoyment, of course.
ONCE UPON A TIME when the world was young there was a Martian named Smith. Valentine Michael Smith was as real as taxes but he was a race of one.
This book shakes and shocks us, half a century after its first version was published. But today's obsession with opening In Media Res would rule out this engaging, fascinating opening, surely in the top 100 of all English Language novels.
Is the James Bond style of In Media Res progress, or just fashion? Is it, perhaps, a crutch for writers who have no other interesting opening?
I'm starting a six to eight hour review session. I've got reviews to do up the wazoo, and, as some of you know, I have a very big wazoo.
My mother was fond of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum books, and I've kept reading them in her menory.
Stephanie is a sorta' sweet not-too-young thing who works, improbably, as a bounty hunter. She'd be dead if not for some male admirers. One of them runs a very profitable security business, and has the money to give Stephanie expensive cars to drive. And destroy, in ever more outrageous ways. Many are Mercedes or Porches. At the average of two cars destroyed per book, and 24 mainline Stephanie Plum stories, she's up around 48 cars. At $150,000 each (estimated) that's 7.2 million dollars of Ranger's 'entertainment' account she's sent to the internal combustion grave.
But who's counting?
'Child' here means the young girl we saw in the shadowbook?
So AM is potentially far more powerful--and dangerous--than either Saundon or Behira? I can imagine them getting the willies.
And when Jaylene learns who AM is behind the mask ... does she really learn? .... why isn't she cringing Character evolution here?
I believe it's Jack Bogle who pointed out (at a particular time maybe 20 years ago) that if you'd 'bought the market' just before the great depression hit and kept the money in until that date, you'd still have over an 8% annual return.
Of course, compound interest is an exponential process, so highs and lows don't average out in the obvious ways. But according to Wikipedia, Bogle on Mutual Funds/New Perspectives ... is now considered a classic. I can't recommend it enough, especially since it covers things like the interest rate/bond price linkage.
Don't worry about short-term blips. Worry about the long-term effect of business policies and international actors like the little-lamented OPEC.
Some years ago my mother was in a monster tizzy because a rather large bond my father had bought (to help provide for retirement) had lost about half its value over the course of a month. I looked at it and tried not to laugh. It was a zero-coupon bond from some reasonably sound company, with a 20-year maturity. Zero coupon bonds take those swings in resonse to small interest rate changes. It took a while to almost convince her that swings like that don't reflect the company's soundness, or affect the bond's value at maturity.
When that happens, try twiddling your thumbs. Change speeds, reverse directions, make it look like you're working on the Schrodinger Wave Equation.
Or keep a crossword for Those Special Moments.
Ouch, Dirk. Two percent is a killer.
If it's tax-protected, you don't need to worry about buy-and-hold. You just need to worry about returns and expenses.
Even in Canada, you need to worry about changes in currency valuations.
If you're still investing in Vanguard, you might look at their just-barely-junk High-Yield Bond fund. It acts like a mix of bond and stock.
RPG authors say New Orleans, No City For You!
They're wrong on point two, by the way. It's an eroded river delta. Flowing water does things like that.
Owa Taboo Biam, to quote Oscar Madison.
The Horror bits are gems. Kat has been studying gem magic from Faulter's private library.
Connection? Eeek. Ulp. Oop Errrg. YAAaaaaaaahhh!!!
That's why I use low-cost mutual funds, mostly indexed. But Canada's securities laws may not allow such things.
Take this offline if you want: what drove AM to become what she is?
Sorry. I'm a bit slow to see the obvious.
Do they have index funds in the True North?
