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The disease manifests as noted above, resulting in visible trembling, which can be taken as a sign of mental illness. Apollo comes from a long line of psychopathic emperors who routinely overthrow each other using the family motto for cover: Only the mentally fit shall rule! Apollo has a half-brother who wants the throne but is not in the direct line of succession, so he's looking for an excuse to move against Apollo.

There are many ways I could represent this, including a disease that's not well understood but is believed to be the result of long-term genetic engineering. With that sentence alone, I'm halfway home. I could stop there, but I'd like to throw in a little genetic depth, on the order of a paragraph.

For example, if the illness is the result of genetic engineering that modified a single gene who's only other known purpose is to, say, improve night vision, then you stop messing with that gene in humans, and the illness goes away. If, however, the gene change(s) provide the only known defense against the "Ebola" of the fifth millenium, then there is no alternative. Again, I could stop there.

However, I'd like to make it so fundamental to genetically-engineered humans that there is no way to change the gene(s) in question without a cascade of deadly effects from other, dependent genes that have also been messed with. Essentially, is it possible to construct a house of cards from which there is no realistic hope of return?

My second question I can probably research on my own, which is how is gene therapy able to alter all copies of a defective gene in a body with trillions of cells that are constantly dividing?

Ideas?
Dirk

Thanks, dagnee. I'll wait to see if anyone on the site has any knowledge on the subject and then contact DiSalvo with (hopefully) intelligent questions.

I do plan to keep the mental illness a secret from most of the character's family and the galaxy at large, as I do currently. However, my previous attempt at this fell apart after several chapters. I'm hoping to avoid that in my next draft.

Thanks for the lead.
Dirk

I could never get into Seinfeld. Ditto for Everybody Loves Raymond. However, for years I thought Married With Children was too crude. I'd watch a few minutes here and there while channel surfing. Eventually, I watched whole episodes and soon thought it was a riot. I've since seen every episode.

Okay, fess up. You both googled it, didn't you?

Thanks, Karen. I'm only going to replace the "real-world" quotes (e.g., the JFK quote in chapter 3). The epigraphs that you liked in chapters 1 & 2 are the style I'll be going for when I eventually rewrite Acts I & 2. Act III already uses my newer style of quotes. As you'll eventually see, I often use them for something tongue-in-cheek, since the book isn't meant to be too serious.

Dirk

I read a review of Scrivener not too long ago. The reviewer said one of its biggest drawbacks is the difficulty importing from MS Word. So, if you work with an editor and use track changes and MS Word comments to go back and forth like I do, you'll end up doing a lot of cutting and pasting to get it back in, which also means you can forget about track changes and comments. If it wasn't for that critical limitation I might have bought it.

Instead, I write using MS Word, where I've configured the grammar checker to my taste, and the document map that works with my chapter headings. The document map (available on the View tab/ribbon) is great because it lists all of my chapters; with a single click, I can jump to any chapter I want.

Like penang, I use a spreadsheet to keep track of every named item I have in my story (stars, planets, ships, characters, military ranks, etc.). I also have a Word document for my story and chapter outlines, and another one for research information and a long list of to dos. I should probably split the last file in two.

I've gotten through almost two drafts that way with minimal overhead or fuss.

Dirk

Amy, make him stop. :-)

I beg to differ, njc. I don't think the Filbert Flange will mesh with the Grapple Grommet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ6jCM3UeZo

Pretty well. Thank you both.

Now, Amy, when one of your characters grounds their staff:
- Does that mean they're tapping the ground with it?
- Why do they need to ground their staffs to get power? Or are they just doing that to focus their own inner power?
- If it's to focus power, why do they need to ground it to focus it?

Thanks.
Dirk

I agree with Tom. Initially, there shouldn't be much tension among the flight crew, just Reese's concerns about his crew and Delana. You can begin to increase tension there as the others get to know her better and interact with her on more friendly terms. That's a good point to begin building tension between Reese and his crew.

I stopped reading the Star Wars EU books after they killed off Jacen and Anakin Solo. I didn't want to put it in the effort to learn to like new characters, only to have them killed off too. The only exception is the Darth Plagueis book about the apprenticeship of the Emperor, which I bought recently to study the writing technique. Did I mention it already? Probably. :-)

The author has excellent knowledge of the Star Wars EU, but it's a mess to follow if you're not that deep into that universe. It's information overload. The only thing I liked about it is the use of narration at the beginning of chapters to give a brief background of whatever world the MC was on. A lot like the epigraphs you and I are using, only longer.

I'm trying to figure out how to provide such background, plus the epigraphs. Perhaps two epigraphs, one for the chapter, and another a fictional excerpt from a galactic encyclopedia. I'll have to figure out how to make it work, because it's an excellent way to communicate major elements of my fictional universe (pages of pure telling!). It's quite a bit of extra work, since it will require me to define those elements in greater detail (planets & moons, palaces, cultures, history, family lineages, etc.).

For the next bunch of chapters you'll see in my book, my epigraphs are real-world quotes, which I plan to eliminate. I had originally thought to go back and forth between religious quotes (for Joseph) and atheist/secular quotes (for Apollo). I plan to change them all to be in-universe, like the two you've already seen.

I noticed that when I receive an email notification that someone has replied to a topic to which I'm subscribed, clicking the link in the email takes me to the bottom of the last page of the topic, which is where I want to be. However, the links down the right hand side of the home page take me to the start of the first page of the topic, requiring us to click to the last page of the topic, then scroll down to the bottom. Would it be possible to change it so that it always goes to the end?

EDIT: Thanks! :-)