Acts/ Dictates/ Mandates/ Mantle - Amy's Thread (Page 64 of 77)

Anent the review reply: Tell us, either in the flashback or the chapter before, why the bracelet has survived this long.

Don't trust your reviewers. Due to the nature of the site, reviewers are on your side and will forgive you a lot of greivances.

This includes me. Don't trust even my reviews. A lot of things that would make me put a book down irl I am willing to tolerate here because its a workshop site. I feel like I can overlook giant flaws because I know the writer isn't done yet. Is this a sports novel and the MC rookie quarterback completes every pass? I'll probably mention it in chapter 10 and forget about it. I trust the writer to figure things out. Said writer might think "Oh... only one reviewer commented and not very much. It's ok for a rookie QB to never fail". But the truth is, I (the reviewer) trusted you (the writer) which means you shouldn't trust me.

At the very minimum, paying for a substantive edit is worth the money (usually $1 per page). The harsher the better. Your readers will not spare your feelings when it comes out, so you might as well get that part over with.

Amy, the introduction of the ants really made me want to meet the queen eventually. Even the Borg had a queen (she was damn cool). Or do I mean Queen?

I'll see what I can do for more time with Zylph. I'll keep it in mind.

I'm here. Had a bout with the newest designer flu and had to work in the interim, so I've been too weary to pay attention to fun.

So far I have a bunch of projects that I need to catch up on.

1) I need to do a power point on how to read CT scans (lecture next month)
2) I need to finish Nicole's beta read. I've been stringing her along for simply MONTHS, so I need to get cracking on it.
3) Rebecca Vaughn and I have been interacting more and she drowned me in reviews. I've hit her back with my best ideas on how to improve her work, but the individual chapters are time consuming.
4) I have to get my prescriptive privileges filled out and sent to the DEA. Work is making me do it. I've been resisting for years, but it is finally time for me to pony up and deal with the pain of rx privileges.

In addition, I need to review youz dudes.  Pity is that I had some free time at work and all I got accomplished was looking at the inside of my eyelids. I feel the better now, and I have 2 days off coming up without having to travel. Or deal with any drama. Or cook for hours. Other than taking down my tree, and run a street sweeper over my carpet (which has seen better days), I don't have a lot planned. Lets see if I can spend some time with my besties.

A

I couldn't spoil her style any more than I could force you to take a single step in any direction other than where you were headed any way. You give me far too much credit.

Gotcha. Point taken.

I'm thinking how this can be adapted, making Dictates more convoluted. I see your point and I agree. And I'm still mulling Mandates, trying to see how I'm going to adjust the story so that it doesn't have anything to do with the Earthwound, and everything to do with who is trying to kill Kha. I'm going to keep the relationship with Sil. And I'm going to steal Kha's pants at least one extra time.  I have to make sure that the reader realizes that he isn't old...just ill. And I have to make Airen less bitchy as well. (I softened her once, and it will likely do it again.)

Dictates will have more about the attempts on Jaylene's life. And I like the idea of her story involving more mystery and less exploration.

Points taken.

The Secrests of Story. Got it. Right now, I'm mulling a lot and not writing much. That edit took a lot more out of me than expected. I let myself read more. Now I need to restart the writing engine, and it is turning out to be harder than expected. I have a scene in my head with Geron, that shows his opinion about all of his Masters and the world he helped create. He needs to change his opinion about Kha, who was always passionate and mercurial, and realize that the pupil has become a man. (Not helped by the lack of aging, BTW). Since Geron deals with the baggage of Kha's daddy issues, this isn't a terribly easy proposition for me.

Eh, there is always reviewing to help with the recharge. Normy normy...I'm comin' to get you... And you'll be next, New Jersey.

A

I spent most of the night with Bird and my notes, and I've got a way to handle Erevain.  It won't make things shorter, but it might make things fit better.  I also have some thoughts on Merran's training and Melayne's suggestions on it.

And although I am quite fatigued, I'll try to lay out my Bird-inspired thoughts on Mandates.

Acts works because we identify with Anver from the get-go.  Why?  Because he has a problem that we can understand, and because we sympathize as well as empathize: He has to protect those kids--his family.  If we didn't have that, nothing would work, not even the threat of the whole world subjugated to the Defiler.

Why not?  Because we don't have to buy into the world.  And because once we buy into the protagonist, we buy into the protagonist's view of the dilemma.  Look at The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth and the whole solar system are destroyed in the first chapter, blasted out of the way to make room for a bypass off a Vogon skyway.  But we hardly care because we are invested in the two sky-hitch-hikers.

For Mandates to work, we have to buy into Kha, and we must buy into Kha's dilemma.  We have to have a sense of what that dilemma is, even if he doesn't quite know what it is.  What is it?  It's loss: Loss of power, loss of people he loves like family, loss of confidence in whatever ability he brought to the Wolves, loss of purpose, loss of--what?

(And I maintain that we need capsule descriptions and illustrations to bring those losses to the reader.)

Kha is flinty.  Airen is flinty.  Anver can be flinty.  Tilly can be flinty.  Kha needs Anver and Tilly, but he has somehow lost his sense of connection to the Guildhouse and its people.  He needs the flint not contaminated by his present life--that's Airen.  (And I think Airen should understand that Kha needs her to be flinty, though as an outsider, not through his eyes.)  And through his time with her, he finds Sil.  That moves the story to about where Acts is after Alina's death.

(And maybe Anver and Tilly aren't willing to be flinty to the recuperating Master, not understanding that the flint is what he needs to recover.  I can see him saying something like this to Airen.  God, you do characters well!)

Kha's love for Sil has to give him determination to save her when he might not have the determination to save himself.  And ... he's long-lived; she's as near to immortal as you'll find.  Without actually having Kha say it or think consciously about it, that ought to free him to love her wholeheartedly.  (Or did you already have this in mind?)

Most of my suggestions about how to open Mandates seem to fit this model.

And with all this in mind, maybe Mandates isn't the best title.

Now I'll get some sleep.

(Oh, an I right in thinking that Kha found comfort in Tazar's taciturnity?)

Don't worry that Kha's journey turns from the personal (loss AND the Earthwound mystery) into the cosmic problem.  Anver's journey changes, too, several times.  It's Rising Action, or Rising Jeopardy, snd ties nicely into The Mysteries of the Earthwound.

Now, if all this advice  is any good I will wish I  could do as we with my own story.

Kha and the sickness: if the sickness is killing him then he -has- to seek help.  But if it's not killing him and he -chooses- to seek help anyway, something is motivating him . . . and -that's- a story.  His personal search leads him to Sil, and then the Mysteries of the Earthwound come after him.