Search options (Page 9 of 12)

I'm running late with this belated add-on, I know. I'll leave it up to each author to decide if they want to continue reviewing Ann during her absence or not. I'm going to continue reviewing her and also because I'm interested in how a romance novel is constructed, having never read one before.

On a completely different subject item--as I work through my skeleton bones plot outline and try to put more meat on it, so I have a firmer grasp of what to aim for in each chapter, I begin to feel a smoldering anger building in me at Stephen King. His creative writing book says don't work with a plot, just wing it like he does. I'd like to chew him out over that but I don't feel like being looked down on, if I actually were to bump into him, since he's 6'4"? 6'5"? Grrr, stork!

Yes! I got past my writer block for chapter 14 and beat Santa Claus. That was the first chapter I ran into where I had such a bad writer block. I feel I deserve one of those awards they give out in elementary school or at least a cookie. Why? Well, this is the first time I wrote a chapter under 6k words. And it doesn't have a truncated feel to it. Yes, the smallest victories seem to make me happy

Completed a review of Stephanie's chapter 27, The Day of Darkness novel..........

Thank you, Cobber. I feel the quality of reviews we give each other is very high and for that I'm grateful. I feel our group basically fulfills what the point system was intended to do but with a more long term outlook which is what everyone wants. You just can't beat someone who has reviewed your chapters from the beginning and can watch for pitfalls that might show up to contradict earlier plot points and such.

I'll still be holding out my hand for a signed copy of your guys books when they get published

I think it's going very well on reviews and everyone is keeping pace with the designated work for the time period. While we are all reviewing at different paces depending on our daily tasks, I believe everyone has and is continuing to receive valuable advice on how to improve their work--I know I have.

From the reviewer perspective, I get to learn as I review from our members in this group as well. I can see how each author paces their chapters, how they measure out the suspense and tension, and how they structure their chapters in general which in turn helps me out

If you reach the end of my novel-in-progress for reviewing then, speaking for myself, please just skip me in the rotation until I put out a new chapter. I'm currently plodding along and should be finished with my chapter 14 soon. Thank you...

I feel something is "off" about the lumping of comparisons with the selling of a sex slave marching in step with the circumcision example. The Afghan in the example will point to the Koran and Muhammed's historical example of taking sex slaves as justification. This is hardly beneficial to the boy or thought to be an act of love in the eyes of the Afghan seller. Contrary to this, the Jewish parents agreeing to the circumcision are acting in the belief of honoring an old testament covenant between Yahweh and the child (I'm not Jewish so a Rabbi may have more to say on this). Christian and Catholic parents can also be found to be paying homage to this tradition in using circumcision.

Male circumcision is widely used here in the U.S. and not just limited to the Jewish faith. Back in my health insurance days, the claims became so numerous the hospitals were then told to stop billing the procedure separately and it would instead be considered as part of their ancillary per deim fee to give you an idea of how prevalent circumcision was.

There was also the ricochet attempt to color the procedure as harmful in general with the colorful use of "mutilating" when the vast majority (Actually, I never spoke with or met a doctor or nurse in the health insurance field that believed it was harmful in the way portrayed) of physicians actually recommend the procedure as beneficial to reduce infections and allow for a greater degree of hygiene. Perhaps it would have been a better example to use the female example instead. The cutting of female genitals (A far more detrimental effect of removing the cliterous and not just the foreskin of a penis) has no voice in the medical community as beneficial and is widely agreed to contribute to long term adverse health effects on the female.

I would not want to see any readers here misled into thinking the male circumcision procedure is generally "mutilation" to their infant should they be contemplating having the procedure for their child. You can find a good outline of the medical benefits on Web MD.

Completed a review of Randy's chapter 2.

Has anyone had to break apart and create new chapters out of their old one? I'd like to know the best way to do that, if you don't mind.

So lets say you have 7 completed chapters and you wanted to break in half 3 of them. After ending up with an extra 3 from the separation, you don't want them numbered out of order, so do you just list them as chapter 2.5, chapter 5.5, and say chapter 7.5? Or is it something like chapter 2v1? I'm guessing after you decide to break a chapter in half you would use the edit function to round out the existing chapter then pay points for the new other chapter? Something like that?

I'm going to need to consider doing that maybe for a few of my chapters. I've got probably the longest chapters you will review and that's mainly because I'm heavy on Milieu writing which is sort of one of the main cylinders that make the engine go in heroic fantasy.

When you get to that WTH? moment on my chapters and find out its 10k words in length. I assure you, I never try to just fill the chapter for the sake of length. Nevertheless, if you are pressed for time, I will consider it fair to post on my turn that you've reviewed half the chapter then you can post on my next turn the review of the other half, if you'd like. I'll be the only frog in this well. The rest of you have chapters that are fairly close in length to each other.

I'm pretty sure I have everyone beat on Gilligan moves this week My mini tornado of a 4 year old burst into my room and was fighting me to take the keyboard away. I frantically tried to save my chapter 14 to my flash drive and entered the wrong DOS command--permanent delete/no recovery. I'm used to deleting out my old copy and placing the new on on the flash drive but went out of order as I panicked. I feel I am a victim of child abuse. Where the child abuses the parent. Lost my keyboard in the end, too.

I'm currently working on restoring my 4k words gone. Good thing I still remember most of the events.