Pain from heat, pain from muscle damage, pain from cutting/tearing, pain from exposure to chemicals (iodine in the wound) ...

No, it's not real science.  But hey, I can extrapolate (said the guy who had two debridement in a sensitive place without anesthesia--and don't bother asking where).  I'm also very sensitive to dental pain.

The process of tearing down and rapidly rebuilding tissues releases substances that signal the pain nerves to raise an alarm.  This is at a level that saturates the normal triggers and, with the other rebuilding going on, all the pain receptors trigger at once and don't stop.  The triggers get more sensitive as they are kept firing longer.

Maybe paralyze the vocal cords and pad the teeth and jaws to prevent permanent damage?

753

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

Humboldt
Humbolter
Humbuggler
Magnificand
Löwenzähmer (Google Translate gives this for Liontamer)


Hulhauzen Lundersot is meant to evoke Baron Munchausen.

754

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

Nearly finished now with the new Rockpile chapter, draft (-1).  It's a here-to-there chapter with a lot of milieu and setting, and enough little adventure that I hope it will be engaging.  It looks like about 7000 words.  We'll see if I can have it ready before the weekend so Amy can ask me for 3000 more words to describe yellow rock.  I =really= want to get started on the full version of =The Seeming=.  I want you to meet Count Hulhauzen Lundersot.

755

(12 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Basic)

People often tell you in their author's notes.  When they don't, look for what you can offer.  Keep it constructive and welcome criticism yourself even when you disagree with it.  Reviewers should see themselves more as contributing than correcting, an sometimes the author will disagree. (But if two or more reviewers hit the same spot, consider that you may have a problem, even if it's not what they think it is.)

It can take weeks to build the recip relationships you need with writers whose work AND reviews you appreciate.

I glanced at the first chapter of =Strike Wing=.  You've got reviews from published writers.  That's pretty good.

I haven't looked to see if you'te active in any group forums.  That helps to maintain recip relationships.

String cheese

Found on The Passive Voice: All About Romance's version of the Scoville Number.

Pastrami

Mayor McCheese

Grammar checking requires something close to the strong AI problem

I suggest you investigate Rosanoff's Three Laws of Nonsense.

Or you can accept that the Oxonians in Washington State are the world's greatest experts on English as actually she is spoken.

763

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

I've got a sequence of scenes that provide experiences, leak info about milieu, and call for mood shifts.  And, of course, description that must stand Amy's scrutiny.  It's going slowly; I'm thinking and scribbling notes, then writing, then rewriting, then scribbling more notes and rewriting again.

Sorry.

I'm renaming the chapter now called The Rockpile to The Seeming.

764

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

An explicit first-person narrator can steer the story into description and the reader knows the narrator is piloting the story.  In the third person, you need an excuse to move the spotlight over the scenery.  This wasn't always so true--look at the description in some of Chesterton's stories, or the opening of Carr's =Hag's Nook=--but that style would never escape a modern editor's scythe.

More's the pity.

765

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

I'm working slowly on Pausonalie and Merran's trip to the place where the Seemings are held.  I keep finding ways to cut it and flesh bits out.  It takes a lot of time each time I pick it up.

I owe a passel of reviews.  Look for them in the next 30 hours.

766

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

I do have an entry in the latest contest.  Probably the shortest contest entry ever, it'll fit in a twit with room to spare.

Does it help fill in the milieu?  Would it fit if you added more milieu?

If that were true, you could never have a mystery story in the first person past tense.  But it's been done, over and over.  The narrator, telling the story, separates her past from the present in which she is telling, and you are reading, the story.

769

(5 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Eye-opening isn't entirely voluntary, thus the PoV character may be a spectator on his involuntary reaction ('just then, my belly decided to rumble') rather than the actor.

770

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

A thought for Amy on her last review of =The Lunar Contract=:

It's written with a first-person narrator, which makes it easy to put the description in.  The narrator, who is part of the story, wants us to see those things.  It's harder in third-person, especially if you don't want the narrator addressing the reader directly or offerring reflections (as mine did in the hole-in-one story).

And hey, I can't keep you from working on a private copy, but I'd much rather have you working on your story.

771

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

I'm getting just a couple hundred words done at a sitting because I'm treading carefully, wearing spiked boots as I walk across sacred cows.

772

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

'Shopworn' applies.  Read some of Ed Hoch's mysteries.  He wrote over 950, each one a honey.  I like the Simon Ark collections best, but you can't go wrong with any of them.

The best ideas come while driving.  For your situation ... maybe it will help to learn shorthand.  If you can write 130 wpm, you might find time to jot it down ... and nobody else will know what you wrote.

774

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

They're a team and they've done this before.  Pfennidz wants it done his way.

Yendor