Prepare to abandon ship, if needed. My Galaxy Tales trilogy (Book 1: Into the Mind of God) started out as an autobiography in 2012, morphed into a space opera in 2013, needed to be abandoned halfway through the first draft, finally became semi-logical/readable in v2 (including six months of writer's block where I did nothing but read), got relatively polished in v3, after which I concluded there was no audience for it (too religious for the non-religious and to irreverent for the religious). So, after six years, I shelved it pending a complete rewrite, which will require at least two more drafts that will takes years. I don't mind, however. I learned a lot.

In the meantime, I got inspired to write a fictional trilogy about the Book of Revelation (The Lord of the Earth). This time, I chose my target audience first (primarily Catholics, hopefully some Catholic-curious Christians, and maybe a few thriller readers). I spent a year doing detailed research (much more still to do), didn't do enough plotting (the murder/mystery element fell apart almost immediately), went back to the drawing board, had life intrude for four months with no writing, and am now partially back in the saddle trading reviews and editing early scenes. I'm sufficiently inspired by my current story that I will keep going as soon as I get my life fully reorganized. It will take me at least ten years to write the whole thing. At that pace, Galaxy Tales will probably never get done, which is too bad because some of what I wrote there is very funny, IMO.

I think Temple may be onto something. Try writing short stories and you may find something inspires you to write a new book or finish an existing one. The Lord of the Earth started that way. I wrote a short story called Connor based loosely on the Angel vampire TV series. Many people encouraged me to turn it into a book. Once I started the research, it morphed into a full-blown project, albeit with a completely different plot, setting, and ending.

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(4 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Hmm. Just checked. I can't find a monthly plan. My mistake.

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(4 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

If I remember correctly, there's a monthly plan, although it costs a little more. Try it out for a month or so before deciding on the yearly plan. I've been a member since 2012 and have learned a lot from the feedback given here, both from reviews as well as from asking newbie questions in the forums.

I guess that means I saved myself nine years worth of senseless drama. I wonder if it will ever come to Netflix. That might justify me keeping the service. Right now I watch maybe one movie per month and no series..

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(14 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

My previous book (now shelved) opened with "Battle stations!", a long chapter that was set 23 years in the past where everyone got killed. I was told to get rid of it and put all of the history and world-building info into the rest of the story. One person suggested to change it so that it was a declassified report read by one of the main characters after the story opens. Personally, I don't see what difference that would make except to interrupt the flow.

My current story started off slowly and I was told I needed a stronger opening for a thriller. When I added a prologue to do that, others told me to get rid of it. When I got rid of the prologue, someone rightly noted that I was missing danger to the MCs in the first two chapters. When I added danger, I was told it may be too much too soon. At this point, it's a first draft, so I'm going with it as written, otherwise I'll never get past chapter one.

Bottom line, I refer you back to Temple's item 4.

Just watched The Last Jedi for the second time. Once you ignore the fact that they threw out the rule book about how much power Jedi can have (e.g., Luke projecting himself to another part of the galaxy, Rey not needing to be trained, etc.), it's tolerable, albeit with some major weaknesses (e.g., no character arc for Snoke, Admiral Holdo waiting far too long before ramming Snoke's ship, etc.). No worse than The Force Awakens. I'll probably see the last one in a theater since it's the end of the saga. I'm looking forward to seeing how they handle Rey vs. Kylo Ren. The Legacy books had Jacen Solo fall to the Dark Side, and they killed him off. It would have been much more difficult and interesting if they had tried to redeem him. I stopped reading Star Wars books after that. I hope my stories turn out better.

I made some changes based on your feedback, but not enough to republish. Thanks for your help.

Kdot, I'll respond to your review later today, but I wanted to highlight one item in particular, which is the danger from the "demon". The scene with Vitale evolved from your suggestion for some sort of threat early in the book + your other suggestion for making the reader care about the victims before I kill them off. The scene is also the natural place to put it, since the sleuthing begins in the next scene. Obviously, I'm introducing the demon right at the start, but I don't know how else to introduce the victim before his death and makes the reader care about him before the investigating begins.

If it was a cheap horror flick, the camera would slowly approach Vitale from behind with ominous music and then kill him before anyone really cares about him. Theoretically, I could invent some other opening for Vitale besides sitting in the church (e.g. perhaps a ride to the church plus a conversation with his driver before he enters the church and is killed by some unknown entity that the reader doesn't see).

I reread the scene from the perspective of whether I should write it horror-flick style but I think the fact that the demon is shrouded in shadows keeps the key element a secret (the true identity of the killer), while building a up a good deal of tension. He's not really a demon, by the way, but that's not important yet.

Thoughts?

Since your multiverse is made up, I don't see why it couldn't include magic. Even our universe can include magic. The only reason I can think why someone would object is that it becomes a little harder to choose your genre come time to publish.

In a pure science fiction novel, hard-core readers expect you to obey what is "likely" based on known physics. There is a great deal of theoretical physics about higher dimensions, but those papers are usually heavy on advanced math.

In my first book (shelved), I went for space opera, with at least a little grounding in science. For example, my terraforming took hundreds of years, required worlds that already had a human-breathable atmosphere (otherwise terraforming takes too long), and starter soil from an already-terraformed planet (or from Earth) to grow food for the early colonists. That being said, I had a form of hyperspace, blast cannons called novas, shields, blasters called crispers, anti-gravity tech, etc. All the stuff you see in Star Wars, except no aliens yet.

I saw those. Thought they were intentional. Due to minor incompatibility between most word processors and other words processors (including the one on this site), you will generally get quirks like that.

Whenever I use indented paragraphs in my Word documents (e.g. the cardinal's phoney suicide note) those require me to manually go back into this site and manually indent them.

Try to avoid manually formatting anything in your master files, if possible. Use styles instead. That way you get fewer magic hidden characters copied over that the site doesn't know how to process.

I checked your chapters. They all seem reasonably well formatted, as do your chapter summaries. Your book summary is a little screwy, but that's a quirk of the software.

Can you point me ata chapter that shows the botched formatting?  Fyi, the book and chapter summary boxes have broken formatting. I'm not sure why those can't be fixed. However, I've had no problems with the formatting of the chapter itself.

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(260 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Bobbie, I suggest posting a new thread in Premium describing what kind of formatting problems you're having. You'll get the most advice that way, although not always the best. :-)

If you see new forum posts in your groups list, instead of clicking on the post, click on New Forum Posts. That takes you to a page that gives everything in the forum. From there you can click on the words 'new posts' next to a particular thread. I think that works. It's still a few too many clicks, but you saw what happens when someone makes suggestions for improvements. Vern is particular annoying because he likes to shoot down any changes to the site.

Bobbie, here are some variants of that problem sentence:
Original: "The man, some form of demon, chuckled."
Option 2: "The man -- some form of demon -- chuckled."
Option 3: "The man -- a demon? -- chuckled."

EDIT: I went with option 4: "The man -- surely a demon -- chuckled."

Actually, the fog isn't a problem. This is a supernatural being, not limited by lack of oxygen caused by dry ice. Romano charges into the mist but doesn't pass out, so he's left wondering if it was dry ice or supernatural fog.

Thanks, Bobbie. As Yoda would say, "Meditate on this I will."

Vern, in the time it took you to write that, the thing could already be fixed. And things don't get prioritized if we don't mention them.

Most people do, but i usually remind new members to be sure. Like Bill and I have noted, it's easy to forget and would be a trivial fix.

Sol, would it be possible to have the "Subscribe to this topic" checkbox default to checked? It's one less thing to teach new members and one less thing to forget. I suspect the vast majority of people want to be notified when someone responds to their threads. The rest can always uncheck the default.

Thanks
Dirk

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

In Alberta, the utilities are not a serious problem, but the cable companies could make Comcast look like customer service nirvana. "You are number 91 in the queue. Your approximate hold time is two hours and thirty-five minutes." Fortunately, they do now have callback functionality.

Good to see you're still here, by the way.

The tricky part to work out next is the sleuthing/hunting/chasing to be done to fill half a book. Each death is a scene. The historical conspiracy in the Church archives will fill several scenes. A bunch of false leads will add some more. Security footage is good for at least a scene. There will of course be the obligatory car and foot chases. Reporting to the higher ups will be a scene. The ending will run five or more scenes (that overlap with Connor). I may add the special ops team back in for added tension and action. Add a stake out.

Also, there'll be an early scene where Angelo first introduces Inspector Campagna to Connor at the orphanage before the kid leaves for the Holy Land with Romano. Connor looks suspiciously like what Campagna's stolen baby might look like at age fourteen. Of course, according to chapter one, Connor was almost killed in a car accident that took his parents' lives, so could he really be her son?

I decided that my six suicides will not be obviously supernatural at first. I want the detectives to come to that realization slowly, even though the reader knows from the book's description that the Antichrist is stalking Connor and the Church. I found a cool Satanic symbol online that is actually an old Colgate-Palmolive logo. I'm thinking each victim has a ring on with that logo instead of a traditional cardinal's or bishop's ring. Rolled up within the logo are what could be three inverted sixes, although you have to really want to see it.

Plans within plans.

I think I've finally got it. All the deaths are suicide by various means caused by sheer terror at the prospect of going to hell. They came to believe that Satan was coming for their souls and that suicide would save them from that. Everything from poisoning, hanging, jumping off a bridge, etc. A little gruesome, but there will only be a total of six deaths. Maybe the first one simply kneeling in prayer, who died from actual terror without having to commit suicide. The centuries-old secret conspiracy then is a bunch of unexplained suicides of senior clerics, which of course is a ticket to hell unless you have a good excuse (e.g., fear of suffering). I like the circular reasoning of this.

I can die happily now. I think I'll go bury myself.
Dirk