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manaheim

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  1. hmmm... no comments? Weird. I found the piece really entertaining and immediately engaging. My only comment was a total nitpick, which is that carbonara sauce is not really a "red sauce". Maybe you're thinking marinara? Thanks for the read.
  2. Trying to get more review time in up here on RE, but I'm still slow. I think you have an interesting piece here, but I think you need to grab us sooner and cut out a lot of "extra" stuff to punch it up. This first paragraph made my eyes glaze over a bit. It was happy sunny joyous and festive. Ok, so where's my interest? What's the conflict? Why should I care? If the sun is shining and everything is awesome, then we don't have a story. You have a lot of adjectives. This is something I'm learning more about. Back when I started I had people say this to me and I was like "but adjectives describe things!" so I figured I need to have at least SOME. And some is fine... but you should work very hard to avoid them when you can. Try to find words that sum up both your action or noun AND your adjective in one shot. This, btw, will also help you with the show vs. tell thing. I suggest reading through this and looking at each sentence and asking yourself "Does the reader need this? Does this support what I'm trying to accomplish?" Anytime you say to yourself something along the lines of "Well, no, but I love this!", cut it. Also, try to think of your piece as an argument. What point are you trying to make? Where are you trying to bring the reader, and how far do they have to go from where they are now to where they need to be? Does your piece start from where the reader begins and smoothly build them up to the point where your statement hits home?
  3. The forum changed my profanity to "storming". That took me a second. I was like "What the hell? When did I start writing like Brandon?" lol
  4. So... to address some of the complaints about Paul, I ran back to Chapter three (Paul explaining to Candace she has to kill people) and tried to lace in a chance for Paul to explain himself. I'd love to know how this works for people (it's still rough, mind you)...
  5. Super helpful as always, Robinski. Thanks! On the fear of flying, it was foreshadowed a couple of times, but it's been a while since you've read that. I actually often wonder about the convenience of it as a plot mechanism, but so far you're the first to call it out. :-) I'll definitely do a re-read and look for inconsistencies in the responses and whatnot. I have ground my teeth over the pashmina thing a bit... maybe I'll just say a "drape of white cloth" or something like that. I'll also consider trying to turn the dial up on the corporate America thing... I fear it when I do that, as usually I find I have to dial most things DOWN. On the alpha read... I can't actually do that quite yet, mainly because I'm re-working the relationship of Candace and Seth, so the way it stands now chapters 9-24 or whatever are inconsistent with the changes I've made in 1-8. At the rate I'm going, it'll take at least a few months to finish this editing pass. After which, maybe I can send it along. You probably won't see anything new from me for quite a while. lol Thanks again!
  6. Thanks, Andy. Actually, I was thinking today about how a number of you had commented that my writing was good and easy to read.... kinda made me think "Hey wait... I totally skipped that... and that's sorta huge." What you say on the audience is food for thought. I definitely have had both hot and cold reactions to this... and in truth, when I first set out to write it, I was like "Uh, I'm gonna have to get a pen name because I'm going to be stoned in the streets if this ever gets published." Well, we'll see. I'm mulling over next steps, and in the meantime, I'm grinding through the chapters cleaning it up. Thanks again!
  7. Mandamon... Please don't give me license to get harsh. That's a baaaaaaaad idea. Thanks for making me laugh. Robinski... I oversimplified my comments. I felt compelled ALSO because I value the time you've spent and I very much want to do whatever I can to pay it back in kind. (same goes for everyone on here.) And I was being a little unfair when I said that was the ONLY reason I kept reading. Sorry. I was a little tired when I posted that. Sorry the remarks weren't more helpful. I'm going to go to bed now. :/
  8. Hi Robinski. Being perfectly honest, I only managed to read to the end of this chapter because I felt compelled to do so because of all the time you have spent sharing your thoughts with me on my work. Yes, the setting was nice, and yes we get some sense of the character, but it was just so much description and such that I found myself zoning out repeatedly while reading it. Some of this is just that there isn't a lot happening... she walks to work, she passes some people on the way, she does some work, she gets changed, she does some other work. Then finally we get a little action/activity when she talks to Benham... that part is pretty interesting, but then we flip over to Benham and he starts describing things some more. Some of this is also that there is a fair bit of passive voice in the work... or at least passive description. "Ahma started passing a straggling line of farm workers..." She started doing it? Why not "She walked past a line of farm workers"? The last part of the problem, I think, is that it seems like much of the description isn't giving me anything more than description. I'm not getting a sense of Ahma's feelings for many of these things, nor does much of it seem to move the story further. In the end, I honestly feel like I could cut out 75% of the text here and have roughly what I have now... but quicker. Try mixing in some dialogue. Try getting in some more action. Read each sentence and ask yourself: "Do I need this information to further plot or character?" "Is this sentence showing us at least two things?" I'm sorry. I know this is probably harsh, but I wanted to give you my honest reaction here.
  9. Thanks, Mandamon. Yes, this has really been invaluable, and as much as I wince when I open the link to writing excuses, I know it's all going to be useful information. I usually have to go away from it for a while and think about it before I go "Yeah, you know, they're probably right." lol Anyway, yes, super helpful. Thank you.
  10. Hey Andy. I haven't read the other comments yet, so this should be interesting. It's written really well and flows easily. A couple minor issues that I've flagged in my comments below, but really trivial stuff ... to the point of me feeling embarrassed for even mentioning them... but I had so little else to call out. As far as the story... interesting, I guess, but I'm a little weirded out by a corrupted King Arthur. I've seen probably a dozen interpretations of him, the worst of which being the UK serial they did some years back, but never where he was so corrupted. (and yes, I fully get the pot-kettle-black thing here... my rendition of Heaven was far from usual) I also have a little bit of a hard time reading anything about the Camelot characters without my mind reeling through every interpretation, every person who has ever played a part, etc. Since you've gone the route you have, it seems likely that you're covering new ground, but it's in a field so heavily travelled that it's hard to make that ground feel truly unique. At around page 4 I also felt myself wondering what the real conflict was. Obviously Arthur spurned Mordred, but that seemed a little thin. Then eventually we determine the blade is corrupting him. Okay, but I didn't get the sense that was ever resolved. The end of the story was confusing for me. It seems Caradoc stoof up to Arthur and died, but the last paragraps almost read like a letter to someone or something, and in the end I don't feel like we resolved the issue of the blade corrupting Arthur or anything related to it. So those are my general thoughts. Some specifics... "Hidden behind a pillar in the corner of the great hall, I looked out at my father and his knights sat in their bright heraldry at the Round Table." Seems an off word or something here. "But I donned my none the less" I assume you meant "mine". "I though about the way his expression changed " I assume you want "thought". "'Enough!' I turned my back on her. 'You cursed my father when you gave him that sword. It is up to me to save him.'" Seems awfully bold for him to be mouthing off to her when in the last scene with her, he was in awe of her power. Caradoc seemed pretty casual around the Lady of the Lake. The ending of the story really confused me.
  11. Oh, mandamon... I meant to mention... You commented on her saying "You were both there". Based on some great suggestions I received, I went back and had both Paul and Michael at the Coffee Shop in the first chapter. They each utter one sentence, which Candace hears but swears she must be hearing things. This was my making it so the first chapter had just a hint of the fantastic in it, which it was lacking before. Because of this, I had to have her recognize the voices at some point, because there's no way she wouldn't.
  12. Thanks, Andy. Taking the time to catch up like this was really nice of you.
  13. Thanks very much for the comments, Andy. Really appreciate it. BTW, was perusing your list of published works the other day when you posted the link. Very impressive and very cool.
  14. Sure, Shiver. Whatever works best and easiest for you, and thanks for taking the time! By the way, if any of you who have been reading are interested in reading the full thing, I'd be happy to send it along. Someone asked me this once, I think... I think it was Robinski??
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