Endurant Archivist

I'll tackle your second question. Enough is enough when you can build a story without constantly stopping to do more research. A pretty good rule would be that 1/10 of your research will appear in your story. This might vary person to person. The rest of the 9/10 is all background but crucial to your understanding. The 1/10 only works well if you understand why it's there, which means you need the rest. I wouldn't overdo the worldbuilding. I would write the plot out or brainstorm the ideas you want in your story (but seriously, write the beginning, middle and end to your story too, it helps a lot). Then research from there.

@Molah Hey! Check out the videos from Sanderson's Creative Writing course online here. Specifically, watch Lecture 6, he invites Eric Stone to come in and discuss his working with short fiction: successes, where to publish, how to submit, etc. Very informative, lots of info. Here's the first lecture to get you started! Lecture 6.1 If this helps, let me know!

I'll agree with most of the above, specifically @jagabond, writing everything out with the story in mind, then rewrite with others input. I've tried both ways, there are pluses to both, but on the forum, I would suggest chronological order with well thought out scenes near completion.

Well, we could start this ourselves and reincorporate the RE forums for our submissions overall comments. It wouldn't be too hard for us, we're used to it, and it would be simple enough to let others know so they could use it too. If people wanted to use it, they can, if not, they keep working how they are. I'll pass it by Silk again to make sure it's cool.

@SirenKing Just got to your message today and I've been thinking about how I could incorporate you into the Write About Dragons course. We've just hit the halfway point, so I'm thinking it'd be hard for you to really draw a lot from the group joining up now. However, like Silk said, RE is a great group, I've been a part for a while, though not as active because of WaD. And, in a few weeks, our WaD group will be working towards some new goals, when the course is complete, which you're more then welcome to join up with us. Shoot me a message and we can chat about how we could make sure your fit in future plans! And if you want to participate now and don't mind a steep starting curve, let me know, I'll get you added.

Within Reading Excuses, currently we just use the forums for discussion on each submission, which has been working literally for year. However, I’ve been busy the past five weeks trying out a new format that I think could be beneficial to the entire group of writers on 17th Shard. I talked with Silk, she knew it'd been kicked around before, but thought it could be worth revisiting. So, to give some perspective on the concept, during the Write About Dragons writing group as we work through the entire lecture series by Brandon Sanderson. We’ve been using Google Drive to upload and comment on our work. So far it’s been a huge success because we’re all able to lay out what we like in the specific areas that matter as we see them. This has added a lot of value to the critiquing process. For more info on the success, touch base with Robinski too, he's been a heavy part of the system (among others, but I don't want to speak for them). Anyway, I’d be willing to get the system into place with you and provide the admin team all the information they would need to monitor it or I could also help with the process and oversee it. Here’s what the process looks like: Standard Layout Uploading/Creating New Document Label (Used RE Formatting) Commenting & Critiquing Then we could follow up with overall comments on the forum, like we do right now. Each writer could then download their documents with the comments, adding a lot of value to the virtual critique process. What do you think, could this work for Reading Excuses?

That is a lot of try/fail cycles for a novella. It's possible, I suppose, in some small ways. But if it happens too much, it might bog down the story. Could you be more specific with what you mean about the difficulty? Do you mean levels of difficulty in each try fail cycle? In general–for me–I keep the difficulty the same, but after each cycle, I raise the characters skill and ability to meet the difficulty.

Almost done week five! Everyone keeping up? A few people didn't send in submissions, so I wanted to send out a reminder for you. Because the whole point of a writing group is to keep everyone writing! Stay with it and keep offering reviews!

@Andyk & @Jagabond great resources, thanks for putting these up here! How long have you both been in the writing market?

Just crossed 10K in the WaD novella! How's everyone doing with the course?

I'm writing this without looking through other's comments. It's hard to formulate what I think of this story. It's solid as a piece of writing. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of turning these old legends on their head, just because I feel like it defeats the purpose of having legends. That aside, the first person perspective was decent. Different and unique way to show the other side of the conflict. Mordred already seemed disillusioned, but I felt like Caradoc's arc was less believable. Maybe because I didn't understand him, so I hadn't bought into him. So, overall, I liked your writing, felt like you grasped the anger of Mordred. But I wasn't a fan of the plot. Hope this helps. Now I'll read everyone else's comments.

@helwar I don't know. I'll look back through when I get a chance. @sunshine no problem at all, hope you have a good week. Looking forward to hearing what you think of our work when you get back! Keep #writing!

To @Robinski as he points. "What? I don't see anything...Hey! That was 300 of my words!" Extra word count thievery from the surplus pile is allowed in moderation. I should clarify though, I've written about 8500 words total so far, so you may not steal from my surplus. Ha! Take that

That's the spirit! I'm happy to hear it's working, that's the reason we're doing this. Keep it up and looking forward to seeing more of your work. #amwriting: Update 2000 words written

I'm going to be posting some of a new work from the WaD class also, not this week but the 11th. Sorry if I haven't gotten to people's works here, this has been a tight week, next week looks the same. But after that, I'm hoping to be back and reviewing. Just letting you know, I haven't forgotten

Week 2, finally here. Almost everyone has their submissions up, so start reviewing and giving constructive feedback. These lectures were excellent so far (3/4 done), some great advice on early writer mistakes. How BORING happens in writing. I'm especially excited by the strategies of showing not telling. Great stuff there, particularly describing through character's len's. Anyway, 2200 words written, chapter one officially started. Can't wait to start getting feedback. And I'm looking forward to reading all the stories you guys are coming up with! Full steam ahead folks!

@manaheim What about having her reconsider the recent job she did? Or maybe she's hiding out because she went back on a deal with other criminals on her crew, determined to make some things right from her past. You wouldn't go into extreme detail, but give her a job she was supposed to do and some of her thoughts on it. Or maybe make that couple have an argument about something she took and she feels guilt? Just some random ideas.

Definitely not too late! Sent you the information you need, also, I updated the submission guidelines for some uniformity, go ahead and check those out. Can't wait to start reading, I just got more writing done this evening. And my outline is complete. This upcoming week, I think I'll try just discovery writing (DW) for as long as I can, to see how it goes. I've got a bare outline, so I'd like to just mess around with the concept of DW, which I've not tried super successfully. Anyone else a big DWer?

Agreed on the tactical info. It's there because the letter was the current prologue, but that will be changing. And yes, there are wagons, they got chopped during the rewrite. So...they're there...just somewhere in the scene description (that doesn't exist yet)

Whew, this is good...I'm listening. I'm seeing these issues you guys are bringing up as I reread, thanks for pointing them out to me. What I'm doing is taking the document and commenting on where scenes can be improved and structured better. Then I'm including a prologue to introduce the world more, so that both the war and geography are better understood. This should help as to why they are unprepared. I'll work on the numbers. Really, I'm going to rework these first 5000 words and resubmit them to you guys in a few weeks. There are some serious faults in the story, not insurmountable, but I don't want you to have to deal with the same issues throughout the entire novella. Give me two weeks, I'll get you an updated copy, then I'll keep submitting the rest of the novella as it's reworked. Thanks for the feedback, it's helping. I'm looking forward to getting you an improved copy very soon.

@Helwar I don't want to see you go, though I can understand why. Stay in touch at least with the group to let us know how your writing/learning is going --edit-- 533 words written and the lectures done for this week. 1200 words to go. Still figuring out the plot/character/setting mix. Took some time this evening to lay out other possible settings and characters, while leaving my overall plot the same. So...tired...need sleep...zzzzzzz

@WriteNowDave Write as much as you want, but for review, we're capping at 2000. I'd like to see us stay close to that for the beginning weeks. Also, hand slapping is difficult over the interwebs. However–if necessary–I will issue hand slap emoticons to all involved, to be used as deemed needed.

As a continuation of Ch. 2, this chapter was consistent. Paul stayed in character, their conversation was solid, lots of good back and forth. Big plus for wording things so I could tell that Paul or Candace was speaking, without their name attached. That's hard to do. Setting wise, it flows well, not much has changed. I was a bit confused by her wings moment, when she lifts off the ground in the room. Mentally, I had trouble seeing what was going on and "where" she was. I didn't think the room was that big, like she should have hit her head on the ceiling. My "Big Problems" (Thanks to WaD videos) involve this contract. And I don't mean religiously. The contract seems to need more explanation, because of how morally ambiguous it makes Paul–and by association–God seem. It doesn't help me that Candace accepts that she will kill people, but on a relatively "petty" (meaning small beans) scale. Paul isn't saying, "I need you to bring down a drug lord cartel or a cult worshipper or something. Now, granted, this whole conversation could be weighed down in "who do you kill?" but I feel like a reasonable argument could be made for Paul to use a better example. Something more black and white and less ambiguous then a drunken husband (sigh...writing this out is difficult, I know there are plenty of people who see more merit in a man like that dying then I do personally.) So, as a reader, I was left wondering how God would order a woman–bound for hell, with one shot at redemption–to kill little evils, not big. It seems...like overkill. Sort of like a legit ninja coming to steal my nephews cookies. Hope this helps.

@andyk I hear you on the scenes. I'll rework more description into them. I'll change portions of the conversation with the Baron, but could you give me some more points where you felt you wanted to know more about where you were? The beginning, during the battle? @Mandamon yes, I changed his name. It may change again, I'm unsure between two names because of their implication in story. More on that later. @Shivertongue Good catch regarding the poor sentence structure, thanks. @jParker could you expound on your comments some more for me? About which soldiers are sitting around talking, the sexual tension as it relates to interesting conflict and what your views are of the Baron. I'm not understanding what you mean. Thanks

I'm noting up here that I did have to read through this quickly. I'll try to find time to reread it later, but here are my thoughts. Well done on the conflict between Lain & Callum (who is also Kinetic, right?). There's a lot of bitterness between them and tension. I'm curious to see where it goes. As I was reading, I got bored with the balcony scene because it told a lot about his feelings and emotions towards one woman, then it just abruptly shifted to another woman. But it didn't tell me much about what I wanted to know about Lain's reason to be there. I thought for a while that he was the artist at a noble's estate. But it turned out that Callum was the artist and Lain was there to watch him. I was looking forward to Lain performing his art, given his knowledge of it. I'd like to know how powerful the players are. Lain and Callum lead the art market, but are they playing for something more? Or just to be the best? Also, side note, in the conversation regarding a leg being metal I was thrown off. Maybe include something about how it became metal. Or, at least, whether this is something that commonly happens to people. I had to reread that section a couple of times, because I didn't get it. This wouldn't stop me as a reader, curiosity is good, I just think you could give readers a better perspective on it at this point. Good job building visuals in the beginning. Looking forward to reading more.