Acts/ Dictates/ Mandates/ Mantle - Amy's Thread (Page 13 of 77)

Oh, don't lead with opinions.  Lead with facts.  The original paper was a fraud, the journal retracted it, the authors were prosecuted, they were trying to sell their own vaccine without thimeresol, and the increase in autism diagnoses are matched by a decrease in diagnoses of mental retardation.

Then you can say what you think of the con artists--but don't insult the marks.  You're trying to gain their confidence, remember?

I should've said the links njc supplies us to the cartoons!  LOL, you first have to fix Evalene (probably spelled wrong) and the off-hook gadget before you can go drawing cartoons!  Speaking of which, how is the gadget thingy going lately?

You're also giving people who have limited exposure to Autism some wonderful insight!  And you're doing it so nicely, they won't be offended in the least!

Working on Erevain now.  Have some household stuff to work on.  Desperately need to work on the voltage level detector.  Haven't had much time lately.

Another Collin short is up on the site.  This one is called 'A Sensory Mind'.  I'm gonna run out of ideas pretty soon, but until then, I'm writing!

Hey, folks.  I put up a new short story about my son.  'When did I know? Part 1'.  Anybody who wishes can have at it.  I've already done the first revision, so I think it's up to your snuff.  We'll see!

A

I'm thinking.  That was the timeline that I had in my head, is all.  I need time to pass after the Earthwound.  Airen needs to go to Aerie.  Melody needs to be healed and join a caravan that loops South and then comes back to the main city.  Tazar needs to be alone and unsupported, which leads to him losing it at the Games and blindsiding Slash. 

That said, I think you're saying that I should have Kha healed a week before Anver takes night watch at the Academy.  This way, Kha spent a year and a half cursed and travels out of this book as soon as he can get out of bed.

OK.  It works.  *POOF*  (for now at least)

A

Always modern writers want you to start in media res--in the middle of things.  And for a story where adventure carries the story, that makes sense.  But this isn't that kind of story.

First of all, you have a world to introduce.  Secondly, you have an ensemble that is, in the first volume, at least as important as Master Kha and maybe more so. Your current first chapters introduce the ensemble and the world quite well.

Heinlein started in media res with (if I'm not confusing stories) Starship Troopers, but that story was, in the end, about the relationship of individual and society, and the incident quickly turned in that direction.  That's not your story.

Moreover, it would not be proper, in the story logic and the logic of the characters, to pull all the students in with Master Kha and discuss the risk there.  The scenes you have fit the logic of story, situation, and characters.  You don't need to spike those with amphetamines.  Anyone who will like your story on the macro level will be drawn into those those chapters.

The chapters you need to fix are the adventure inside the containment vessel.  You need to let us see what's happening in the dark, and make it more sharply memorable.  I'm not sure whether the solution will involve shortening or lengthening the episode, or neither.

If you dive right into Alina, you have two story threads that you'll have to connect later, with no common starting point.

Is it important here to have the death by blown staff?

Now, I think you could make part about Alina poaching Kha's manpower more memorable.  Perhaps Alina could suggest that Kha's school is a school of menials, fit for the work of 'tradesmen'.  Perhaps you could sharpen the parts about Alina having the goods on everybody, and even threatening to spill some secrets of Kha's lieutenants.

And perhaps that needs to be woven in a little bit with Katerin and how Anver is trying not to be in love with her because she is Alina's lieutenant.  Heck, you could let Katerin be a brief distraction in an earlier chapter.

Rather than bring another thread in--unless there is an organic reason for it--I think you should find a way to play up the existing elements: Earthwound and the Black Staff.

Or else throw them out entirely.  But I think they are too central to your story.

Right now, Alina is more likely to kill someone than one of the necromancers--until that containment vessel is opened.  Earthwound and the violation of the containment vessels would seem to be precipitating events.  I'd prefer linking the containment vessel somehow to the Black Staff and Earthwound, at least thematically.  If you can arrange things somehow that the reader catches on before the characters, so much the better.

Do you want Alina or not?  She's a brilliant precipitating event, providing vital information and letting Anver be a hero early.  The duel with her also carries some important clues.

Now ... knowing your skill, I've no doubt that you could tell the story quite well as you've just outlined, but you'll have a lot of patching to do along the lines I've written above.

If you do want to play Strongest Start, start with the utterance of Su Cinibrae (and I'm pretty sure I've got the spelling wrong).  But then Anver's first utterance will be ruthless, and you'll have to work to convince the reader that Anver isn't really like that.

Chapters 1 and 2 are not problems.  The containment jar chapters are, perhaps because the action and the story arc tend to obscure each other.

I've been listening to an audio course on Beethoven's symphonies.  Beethoven was the composer of structure.  You listen and listen and listen, and discover that everything you've been hearing comes from some transformation or complementarity off of the tiny melodic fragments with which Beethoven began the work.

The lecturer feels that the greatest work ever written for solo piano is Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, in which this process of variation, transmorgrification, and rejiggerication is itself varied, transmorgrified, transmuted, and rejiggered as we watch.

That's how I encourage you to approach this question.

I think the main overarching problem is that the real problem of the book isn't even introduced until after Alina's death. I could deal with the whole roof fixing and the Alina problem if I knew from the start of this book that the REAL issue is that there is a necromancer that is still alive somewhere, and everyone is in danger because of that. That danger needs to be introduced right away. Find some way to tie that into why the roof must be fixed, the chamber found, etc. and I think it will be much stronger.
(The healing of Kha belongs as a flashback in this book, perhaps as late as the reintroduction of Kha.)

It's a magical roof on a magical building.  It's beneath Alina, and she's in the mood to stick it to people especially to the nice guy students of that nice guy Kha.  She hates goodness, which he and his school represent.  That's already implicit in her character.

We know about the necromancer when they explore the containment jar.

If Earthwound or the Black staff can be linked even indirectly to death magic you have the link Judy asks for.  Old threat/sideshow is revealed to be the main attraction through a series of episodes.  See symphonic structure and Beethoven.  Then all the reveals that now exist become amplification.

It's even better if the reader sees it before the characters do.

Amy et al., the place for the link to drop in is right there in plain sight, from the first jeopardy to the unplanned capture of Caneth.