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It gets better after a few days####weeks#####months######years.

Meanwhile, what have I been doing?  I'm supposed to be working on Day 2 of Merran's time with Maurand's family.  Instead I've been (starting on) getting my hundreds of small thematic and plot device/structure notes in order.  I'm also thinking about what has to happen shortly after Merran and Jamen leave with Pausonallie.

This matters because there's a lot to write downstream, and I may have hundreds of thousands of words that will depend in some measure on details I set up now.  I can't get everything laid out or I won't be able to get anything written, but I need to be sure I don't close things that should be open, or open too wide things that should be closed.  I also need some sense of what's going to happen in the next three to four books.

So, among other things, I'm trying to lay out what one or two non-Kirsey back entrances to the Academy look and feel like.

Then plan a great ending later for her, pehaps via her Lance-held soul.  Let her help with a key step in this book or the final one. Maybe even let us see Behira claim her.  She can be the cavalry over the metaphorical hill.

FYI, for some part of today and maybe tomorrow, Mad Genius Club's Kindle editions are up for free or at dollar or two-dollar discounts.  Several of them are start-of-series teasers.

I just read Kate Paulk's ConVent and some of the combat scenes might be useful studies for this group--very different in pacing and event structure than anything we do.  (Okay, I can't speak for NormD.)  Unfortunately, that's a dollar book ... limited time only.

In re Slow Chapters:  Slow does not mean uninteresting, especially when Airen gives her opinion of her mother in very plain language.  How much did Marion's character and Airen's coming-to-terms with it shape the Brat?  Airen's a fascinating character and I suggest playing her a little more strongly when you can.

(And what did her Mage With An Itch remark allude to?  Dr. Freud would like to know ... )

But ... still something remains undisclosed.

A couple more days on Day 2.  I do want a contrast between what Mamma expects and how Merran actually manages.

A small (groundhog meat) correction on that Standardese quote: A =type derived by a derived type definition= may be further derived if the derived type is used as parent type in another derived type definition.

It's going to depend on what the story is.  I'd rather have the story begin in the right place.  Noi and his sister have a perilous hatching and a perilous early life.  Make that good enough and you don't need the human conflict.

Is your back cover blurb going to say that the dragons are major characters, that their struggle is an essential part of the story?  Then you're writing for readers who are prepared to accept them as protagonists ... so long as the story is good.

Heinlein started =Starship Troopers= in an action scene, then went back and gave the history.  But the struggle in his history was incidental.  The struggle in yours is essential to the story.

There's a humorous example in =The Hunting of the Snark=, =Fit the Third=:

The start doesn't have to be an action scene.  It has to be a point of departure, a place where the reader is ready to accept =Interesting Story Begins Here=.  Action tends to involve jeopardy, so it's an easy place to start.  But it's also a cheap start, almost a cliche.

Of course, if you're a fan of James Bond movies, opening with a chase scene that would be the high point of most movies is one of the conventions that define your genre.  But compare that to the opening of =The Fast and the Furious=.  I've never watched past the opening, but that opening is a =story= of its own, not just smash-crash-wake-to-find-Amy-suturing-you.

Make us care whether tha dragons survive.  Make them characters-- Actually, you've already done that.  Their opening is stronger that the openings of your human characters.

Erndog's review of your latest chapter.

Something to note: K's stories are about individuals in a milieu.  Yours are about multiple people whose actions affect each other.  The extreme prune that works for him may be disaster for you.  It certainly would be disaster for me because my story is as much about the milieu as the characters.

When GRRM kills off a character, it's not to clear the field or to piss off readers.  It's to cut off an avenue of hope.  And people who might, with a nudge, have become heroes revert to their worst: Tyrion Lannister (if I remember the name aright) and the dragon woman.

Per Ern's review: Don't simplify, =clarify=.  You've got a rich setting.  Bring it to us!