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This isn't script formula.  Yes, there's some large-scale plot and pacing advice but that's a small part of a big picture.

Item six in his big 13:  It's very hard to get audiences to care about any hero because they care about being hurt.

Every time I watch Jackson's =Return Of The King= there comes a moment, about two minutes after the cold open, when I ask myself if I really want to ride this emotional roller coaster again.

Amy, per your comments on Melayne amd her daughter I am going to see if I can do a sequence where Melayne is somehow learning, step by step, what her daughter is up to and is alternately horrifed by and horrified for her daughter.

Merran is, I think, still Daddy's little girl, and waiting for him to be freed will eventually wear on her.  Both her parents have trained her in 'you broke it, you bought it' as a basic part of the sorcerer's ethos.

I'm not sure you need multiple chapters.  It may just be the ordering and progression of the reveals.

I have about 2200 words for a short on-the-road chapter between Maurand and the Garden of End and Beginning.  It's draft zero.  I'll type it up after I get some sleep and see how it looks.  If it doesn't look too bad you may see it w/in24 hpurs.

Amy took that battle painting out, didn't she?  I think that was a mistake.  What would Alda think about it, looking up.at the ceiling and thinking of that roof she might have to clean?

I'm just guessing here, but is your favorite mystery And Then There Were None?

Whilst struggling with framing and voice on Count Lundersot's little adventure, I got ideas for a scene and an episode between Maurand's home and the GoEaB.  Let's see what I can do tonight.

I should do a couple of reviews after.

I'm still working with The Secret of Story.  What's it like?  Well ...

Maybe the best book on the Vietnam war as a whole is Harry G. Summer's On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War.  Col. Summers was given the job of making sense of several stack-feet of studies on the war, none of which could be woven into a coherent whole.  The US Army was recovering with a 'back to basics' movement, and one of Summer's lunch buddies suggested that he read von Clausewitz.  With nothing better to try, Summers began to read On War.  From the first page, from von Clausewitz's first step of logic ("The subject of war is divided into preparation for war and the conduct of war proper") Summers found errors the US made--and that continued on page after page.  In order to lose Viet Nam, the USA had to reject every principle in von Clausewitz's book ... and they did.

That's how I feel reading The Secrets of Story.  I'm going to spend a lot of time thinking and re-thinking.  Not that I'm doing everything wrong--I've got a few things surprisingly right.  Just not enough things, right enough.

Amy, let us know what you think of the editor's advice.

Had distractions. Was trying to get a demo box with my flasher circuit working for one family confab.  I finished Test Article 4, finding an interesting and possibly useful failure mode along the way.  Useful, that is, once I fully understand it.  I bought some materials for working with Surface Mount devices and got to the point where I could solder the beasties (that's 2.5mm x 2.7mm x 3.2mm) well enough, then started to assemble the final board.

And hit a failure mode that has me flummoxed.  I need to spend serious time trying to figure it out.  There'll probably be a Blinding Flash of the Obvious at some point.  And I haven't begun cutting the openings in the housing for it.  That's the sort of careful work I usually muff.

Meanwhile, I learned a new word just when I needed it.  Well, a new phrase: "false document".  It means a work (eg. a book) that exists only as a name within a work of fiction.  Like an Encyclopedia Galactica, or Fleetrow's Guide to the Universe.  Or The True and Complete Record of the Instructive Adventures of the Daring and Sagacious Count Hulhausen Lundersot, And of His Life and Times.  Only, as you know, I am trying to put a bit of that fictional work, complete with the Count's own recounting, and the sorcero-cinematic-virtual-reality experience thereof, into my own work of fiction.  (Maybe in another fragment, I could have the Count peruse a copy of one volume of the supposedly apocryphal Sorcerer's Progress.  Only I'm not sure my cheek is large enough for that kind of tongue.)

I spend Wednesday eve reading a trade paper copy of The Secrets of Story.  I recommend it HIGHLY to everyone here.  It is a rapid-fire discharge of Blinding Flashes of the Obvious, complete with stunning afterimages thereof.

I'll be visiting my brother for a few days starting 12/10.

I'm way behind in reviews as well as in work.  Amy and Rebecca, you should expect reviews within about 20 hours.  Oh, and Amy, I think you used tomato sauce before.  Just remember that the tomato is a New World plant.

Now for some rest.

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/ar … ot-so-good and read the comments.

Also, if you are looking for reciprocal review relationships, it helps to post in groups that use points.  You might also look for stories similar in style or subject and do a few reviews on them (collecting the points) to see if you can drum up recip relationships.