Exasperation is not just irritation. It's related to frustration, though it's causes are slightly different. Frustration comes from one's purpose being thwarted, by purpose or accidend. Exasperation is a lesser emotion and results from the failure of another to understand or conform.
451 2018-03-08 13:52:19
Re: Lupus's blue eyes burned with exasperation (42 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
452 2018-03-07 22:51:50
Re: Lupus's blue eyes burned with exasperation (42 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
You can read feeling in the eyes, yes, but can you narrow it to exasperation?
And does exasperation constitute burning, or is that require a different species of frustration?
If you can't identify the emotion from the eyes alone, you need other description.
453 2018-03-07 19:11:48
Re: Lupus's blue eyes burned with exasperation (42 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
The real problem is that you're mixing external description with internal emoting.
454 2018-03-07 19:09:27
Re: How to Breathe Underwater (trilogy: Lessons in Skills for Life) (197 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
BAMF! has been used for the noise of air displacement from teleporting. Maybe 'djomp'?
455 2018-03-07 19:06:13
Re: How to Breathe Underwater (trilogy: Lessons in Skills for Life) (197 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
You mean like Ravel's =Bolero=?
456 2018-03-07 18:01:00
Re: How to Breathe Underwater (trilogy: Lessons in Skills for Life) (197 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Maybe look for a two-syllable compound?
457 2018-03-07 14:43:55
Re: How to Breathe Underwater (trilogy: Lessons in Skills for Life) (197 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Added thought on the little review:
Fartravel -- four syllables, and awkward, for a bit of 'tech'. After a decade or two, people would be saying 'Farter' or they'd invent other terms. (Are you old enough to remember https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrvergnügen ?) Anyway, if people could substitute a short walk, it doesn't seem very Far.
Heinlein was a genius at this. He could drop a nonce term like Welton Fine-grain or Burroughs Bachelor Buggy and the reader would get it at once.
458 2018-03-07 11:21:07
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
You've got me thinking about a BVD foundry ![]()
459 2018-03-07 10:45:46
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
I have the battle and the conversation on paper. I'm going to type them up and start editing, thinking about the next part in between.
I don't want to fool around with rechaptering B1 for this since I'll need a full rewrite anyway. My thought is to put this up as a couple of shorts. Thoughts?
460 2018-03-06 23:33:50
Re: Acts/ Dictates/ Mandates/ Mantle - Amy's Thread (1,905 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Oh, do Sil and AM realize how powerful Anver is? When do we learn? Do they wish that Katerin was along?
461 2018-03-06 23:20:57
Re: Acts/ Dictates/ Mandates/ Mantle - Amy's Thread (1,905 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
I'm just working your possibilities. The Founders must place AM one and a quarter steps below G and half a step above the forces now threatening them. They have AM's staff, and could even threaten to destroy it. (Does Jaylene know what that staff is?) (Aside: do the spears itch in Alda's hand? I'm thinking of Anver's demo with the other mage's/student's staff.)
You've built a tremendous point of conflict here, one that could shake Jaylene in the crisis moment, threaten all the resolve she's built up--especially if Alda was somehow part of how that resolve was built up.
And what if Jaylene makes the wrong choice, but is too late to stop Alda, and has to watch as Alda's actions rally the enemy--right before she destroys the Horrors.
The first law of battle is that the enemy changes the plan. What if the only hope of ending the battle is to destroy the Horrors so the enemy will have nothing to fight for, and AM is the one who understands it?
And this leads to a possible redefinition of the Alda/Jaylene relationship. By their presence and character they constantly test each other. By right of power, Jaylene should be the tail in the dog, but Alda wants to be that tail. She keeps pushing the role of war dog on Jaylene.
462 2018-03-06 18:17:02
Re: Acts/ Dictates/ Mandates/ Mantle - Amy's Thread (1,905 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
I note that you are fighting for Sulder and Tazar (and not Jaylene). This is par for the course. Nobody roots for that character's perspective. However, I don't think there is any benefit in changing Sulder out for his replacement, other than throwing the church into disarray. Your politics have the potential to bear fruit in keeping Sulder alive longer so he can die dramatically.
You kill Sulder to get a single-point crisis.
Jaylene comes alive when there is a crisis. She may not be able, in the beginning, toget to the solution unaided. By the end of the book, she should be doing that, perhaps even defying a Founder.
But the long slog through the Catacombs has few crises. It has many dangers, but few crises. You need to make it shorter and add hard decisions, some of which Have Consequences.
463 2018-03-06 18:02:56
Re: Acts/ Dictates/ Mandates/ Mantle - Amy's Thread (1,905 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
FYI, given that Jaylene is small and slight, I see her with a narrower face, maybe oval. And I think that displays better on the beir.
464 2018-03-06 17:55:56
Re: Collective Nouns - Married couple. (30 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
That is almost necessarily mutual. Sextegenarianism is not necessarily mutual.
465 2018-03-06 13:44:11
Re: Collective Nouns - Married couple. (30 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Doesn't sound wierd to me.
466 2018-03-06 11:19:58
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
South Africa's legislature just voted to confiscate the lands of white farmers, without compensation. Moral dimensions aside, colonial-era Spain and modern Zimbabwe made the same error. The wealth of the society is not in the land nor in what you take out of it. It's in the skills of the people and the incentives the people operate under. South Africa is going the way of Zimbabwe (a case study in PJ O'Rourke's =Eat The Rich=).
All this is happening under a constitution that Ruth Bader Ginsberg called a better model than the US Constitution that Notorious RBG is charged with upholding--better because of its explicit civil rights language. I'm not holding my breath waiting for her to wonder what else she's wrong about.
467 2018-03-06 11:09:23
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Many of these disasters come not from politicians but from culture--like American parents not vaccinating their children, often on the advice of entertainers who know less of medicine and public health than I know of their businesses.
It's an inconvenient fact that these people have the wealth and resources to absorb many of the costs of their screwups. The people following their glittering images usually lack those resources.
468 2018-03-06 09:19:22
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Some of us wonder if we are civilized any more. The urge to the primitive-and from the primitive-is leading to explosions in diseases that we thought eradicated at the turn of the millenium. Cities need sanitation. Mobile populations need vaccination. Population clusters need hygiene, not children defecating on city sidewalks.
469 2018-03-06 04:01:41
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Bruce Catton told the story of The War Between The States seven times, each time through different eyes.
I realized last night that I'm trying to tell the story of civilization in this backstory ... from one set of eyes. Or three.
Hard job, but somebody has to do it.
470 2018-03-06 02:40:42
Re: Savior of the Damned (the Connor series) by Dirk B. (1,492 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
You don't use a sledgehammer. You use a scorsese spanner.
471 2018-03-05 23:05:35
Re: Savior of the Damned (the Connor series) by Dirk B. (1,492 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
What's needed is a very intricate database linked to the story text, all woven into a version control system, with an editing interface that can be replaced to let writers shake off the WYSIAYG shackles. Neither the WüRD format nor HTML is a suitable representation.
If someone wants to seriously brainstorm requirements, I'm available. But be warned, there will be serious language dependencies, so extensibility/flexibility must be designed into the software/database architecture. And serious database design--not necessarily relational. Text will need a versioned threaded tree.
Oh, and it must be possible to make the thing reliable, efficient, and usable atop multiple operating systems, each with its own strengths and (especially) weaknesses in file system performance, process interaction, user interface, networking, and behavior under load..
472 2018-03-05 23:02:04
Re: How to Breathe Underwater (trilogy: Lessons in Skills for Life) (197 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Letting readers think they know what they're meeting gives you the chance to weave story around the differernces.
473 2018-03-05 20:40:41
Re: Collective Nouns - Married couple. (30 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
The US and UK differ here. In the US, a group is. In the UK, a group are.
474 2018-03-05 20:38:41
Re: General Comments Section (281 replies, posted in Alpha to Omega - Review Group)
Summary narrative is so out of fashion it's almost considered evil.
475 2018-03-05 20:21:04
Re: How to Breathe Underwater (trilogy: Lessons in Skills for Life) (197 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
The first HP chapter is a prologue, though of course we can't use that word nowadays. Without it, we would be adrift when the story opens. It gives us key characters, a sense of the rules of the world, a sense of Harry's world, and essential backstory.
Rowling carries it off by making a,story of it, told in a storyteller's narrative style--which blows off the whole no-narrstor conceit.