The Galaxy Tales - Dirk B. (Page 15 of 49)

Huh?

So, Australia goes for Windsor. You do realize, Janet, that I named her after the Queen, don't you? Windsor-Mountbatten, I believe is the correct spelling.

First, I don't think I ever questioned that God was real. I assumed he wasn't because the voices are so different. Giving the boys a connection makes me wonder otherwise. It could just be a coincidence, but I would like to see something that could be misconstrued as real God.

As to mentioning it before the first draft was done? I didn't think of these things before I saw the big picture. I'm trying to suggest options that you can keep or discard. I don't think it is fair to point out my nits without suggesting solutions.

Janet, I added "mate" to the chapter, as you suggested. It's hilarious. I only use it once at the end when the AI is pissed off about the lack of respect. It says: Listen, Mate, I've asked you repeatedly to refer to me as Queen Aussie...

Interestingly, this is the most common complaint K w a n has drawn from the market - that she doesn't take enough of an active role in her own destiny. And it's very true. As one reader put it, "things happen to her".

Usually it's the character who's willing to fight who gets our attention. The chance-takers - the gamblers who put their necks out to hire assassins in a cause they believe is right.

I don't believe that's possible within the desired structure. I also don't believe it's warranted. I did not suffer a disconnect between the two stories (Sorry, Amy). My disconnect, as you know,was Caligula.

You must picture Caligula as a character the writer finds interesting, but always remember he was not a sell character. As such, he must work that much harder to earn our pathos.

Think of him like my Marsha McKnight: a) absolutely essential to the plot b) 100% replaceable
(in my case by David McKnight and in your case by Apollo's little-used brothers)

Your unenviable task is to get me to feel one way or the other about him. You don't want me neutral on this guy. I should either love him or hate him so much, I want Apollo to kill him just to wipe the smirk off his face. There are a bazillion ways to accomplish the former, but having him kill Adam and Eve is a good start. Bonus points if he's despicable. Shooting tied up, helpless opponents is a good way to harvest those points (Joseph, I'm looking at you shooting a guy in handcuffs).

This is the basic premise of the story. Why are you trimming that part?

Remember Star Wars New Hope when Palpatine abolished the Senate? How his guards gunned down the senators and he rose, cackling with glee to accept his throne? No? Oh... it happened off camera.

Agreed

Why hide it?

Writer: "Bob felt something brush his cheek"
Me: Is this a shard of metal? A fingertip? A tree branch? You kinda know this stuff even if its dark.
Writer: Oh, I don't want to say yet. It's for suspense.

So I ask of you... is there a benefit I'm not seeing to hiding a major character?

Sure... as long as it was intentional and not an oversight, I'm down

I needed more build to that to make me remotely interested. I would have liked to see a 10-15 minute sololiquy from Yoda about how he hates Palpatine for killing his puppy or something. It was literally two randoms going at it with lightsabers for me. All the magic / personability / pathos-driving of Expendables II but with half the action.

Stage 3:

After the mumbling stage he should start to see furtive mevements from the car of his eye. When he randonly turns to look, people are staring at him quizzically. He's not sure if they're doing it to unnerve him. He finds muddy footprints in his room when he wakes up. Security assures him no one was in there. He starts imagining Aphrodite is cheating on him. He can suddenly no longer write straight - he hires a scribe.

Stage 4:

He starts to worry about poison (specifically of the exploding bowel nature). Hires a tate tester. Hires a second backup tester. Aphrodite grows distant. He thinks it's a conspiracy. He randomly has her arrested and searched for evidence (comes up empty-handed). Good time to throw in an exploding car bomb from the Heresy.

Need more? Amy and Seabrass are also good at this.

PS: Joseph needs a burning bush encounter. It's kind of a Judaic staple.

The increased tension seems like a good idea. Most of it is already swirling in my head - the hidden assassin, the homophobic decisions he makes that kill Andrew and his cadets, him truly despising Adam, as opposed to simply being mad at him (boo hoo), etc.

He'll get more nuanced screen time (setting up the Caligula chapter), plus he undergoes a miraculous change of behavior after the blast to his head. I want there to be enough clues that something's not right, right up to the reveal. I didn't care for him as a character until I came up with his hidden plot. Now I love him, which is the main reason he survived the battle. I want to do more with him. I could see putting him, Lady Kay, Leonardo, and Aussie in a book on the edge of settled space.

No plans to get rid of them. Just expressing a preference for the stuff in Act III. I was thinking of trimming the chapter with the Essence. I crammed in too much stuff. It drags.

There are other ways to write it, but there's not much point to the Caligula chapter unless he gets an enemy. Who better than Apollo?

Very nice stuff. Is it copyrighted?

Awesome idea.

I'm back to toying with military ranks in the Imperium. Currently, I use modern military ranks (captain, colonel, general, etc.). However, I also use Roman names for legionarii and classiarii. And I use Roman military ranks as classes of ships. Confused yet? Anyone with a basic understanding of Roman history will probably wonder why the hell military titles aren't used for the Imperial military.

Ranks that would be used for the Imperial military would include prefect (general), praetor, tribune, centurion (captain), etc. I'd like to use the titles correctly, but I worry that readers will constantly scratch their heads when they see these ranks. There are, however plenty of films about the Roman era that do use these ranks, although probably not as many as I need.

Thoughts?

Well... take my thoughts with a grain of salt because I was confusing legionarii and classiarii (and still can't keep them straight).

Adding more divisions and ranks will only make me more lost. Thus, you must choose between "fresh" readers and readers with a good command of latin. I see no major issue with any option as long as you know your readiability going in, and provide sufficient explanations to handle it.

-K

And then, thinking back to my previous series... I have tons and tons of ranks.
Electron ranks go from electrokinetic->Lightning/Kinetic-Lightning->Elika->Namika->Nuclearkinetic (Each of these ranks can take "minor" or "arch" eg Minor-Elika or Arch-Namika).
Proton ranks Deputy->Sheriff->Lieutenant->General->Telika.
Telepaths rank themselves with a number representing how far they can reach + a division (projection / empathy / biopathy / placing / etc)
and there are many many more.

And I'm thinking about Book 6 and less than 10% of my ranks appear. The only ranks you see in book 6 are the ranks that matter to the characters. For example, [S t r a d i n] is technically a Minor Namika, but J calls him Namika. It's not relevant to her which kind he is because as far as she's concerned, he has all the properties of a normal Namika. She never refers to [K w a n] by her telepathic designation of "projection rank i". The term never appears in books 5 or 6. It exists in the story, but it's never so critical that J needs to mention it.

ok... back to yours. I ask of you... how important are the ranks? Which do you really *need*? Of course in a first draft use "lieutenant corporal". But in a second draft, maybe that guy is just a lieutenant or just a corporal. In a 3rd draft, maybe he's just "a leader baddie who wants to beat up the good guys".

Ideally the ranks are so unobtrusive that the story can remain dominant.

Here are some random questions to demonstrate what I mean:
a) In Seabrass's story, Tammon's rank/title is "Cityseer". Can you name the rank of Mawk?
b) Before the term "battle droid" was coined in 1990, how many classes of droid did Star Wars have?
c) Aside from "Prime" name at least 3 ranks of autobot.

(okay (c) is me cheating)

d) Aside from "dinobot" and "triple changer" name 3 classes of autobot.

PS: Classiarii and legionarii didn't throw me. I mentally re-assign them as "military guy carrying gun". Therefore no complaint. A 3rd, 4th, and 5th group merely joins this existing classification. Again, no complaint. UNLESS all five are in the same paragraph.

I use four classes of ships in chapter one, set in 3994, and another four in the final battle set in 4017. Those eight classes are of one of four basic warship "types", namely command ships, dreadnoughts, destroyers, and battle cruisers. For example, I have a Praetor-class dreadnought named IRS Hercules. Still with me? The destroyers are a recent addition, used by the Realm, while the Imperium has a comparable type, the battle cruiser. To hell with Mickey Mouse. They didn't invent destroyers, although I do yield 'star destroyer' and 'super star destroyer' to them.

If I could have clearly defined all of the Roman ranks to match modern equivalents, and if most of those ranks were reasonably well known, I would have gone ahead with it. At various points in the story, I need a general, admiral, colonel, major, captain, and lieutenant, so they need ranks. I'm usually pretty good at hitting readers over the head with explanations when needed. I intensely dislike books that throw terms at you starting from page one without explanations until pages 9, 17, 98, and 123.

I'm working on the rewrite of chapter 2 (introduction of the MCs). I'm struggling to create a real-time galactic simulator to introduce key historic moments in the galaxy (Collapse of Civilization, Rise of the Imperium, etc.) in about 5 pages.