stormvisions

Well I never heard it mentioned so glad I saw this post. Will give it a whirl. Thanks.

Hi. That's good news. I used Safari on Windows 7. In any case it looks like it has best to wait a bit. Feel your pain though.

Probably a little late for that. The 'pitch-forkers' and the 'pitch-forkees' are already running around the castle. On a side note I'm still in the midst of trade show season, and this year the company I work for is attending many more small ones which is why I haven't read or submitted recently. Hopefully things will lighten up by the end of May or they'll need to clone me.

@Robinski *chuckle*

Just finished Elantris and Words of Radiance back to back. Awesome stuff. There always seems to be so much going on in Brandon's work that it makes my writing look like a dinner of a stale pretzel and an onion slice (sitting besides his full course and glorious meal). I also started reading "The City" by Dean Koontz yesterday. He remains one of my favorite all time writers. There is a bit of magic in this latest book and some deep insight into the human heart. There is also what I'd call, in my admittedly unlettered and unsophisticated way, literary prose - or prose that at least dances in my mind in ways similar to the works of authors considered literary writers. Dean has always been a special favorite of mine, with a corner all to himself. He seems to be a little 'outside the stream' to me. Even when there is some tiny bit that I might not love, I find his work to be truly extraordinary and bordering in places on the sublime.

I guess you may have to research at least a little and look at different types of mental instability. As outsiders looking in we tend to lump people into large groups and label them "odd" "crazy" "weirdo" "dangerous" etc but the internal dynamics - the causative effects (?) or internal dynamics of individuals within each of those broadly labeled groups probably varies wildly. I think you need to dig more deeply into what the world is like for your character (are they delusional etc) and you can then use (and possible show through internal dialogue) what is going on in their mind, and how they perceive the world, to generate believable and consistent behaviors - which may seem inconsistent to 'normal' people (as if such a thing existed) but really have there own type of consistency; there is a reason why people with a particular problem react a particular way and it is probably valid from their particular frame of reference. In part episodes of the podcast they have talked about similar issues - like people with disabilities. You want to try to step into those shoes for just a bit and imagine what the world looks like from their eyes.

I use PageFour by http://www.badwolfsoftware.com/ which works well for my needs. Currently $39. It has the basic editing and some other tools (archive, word count etc), allows you to save snapshots of documents (say before a change which you might want to roll back), archive versions, you can select one or more pages and export them as a single document (for example you want to send someone three different chapters as a single Word document) - or you can save them as individual files. Behind the scenes they are RTF but I believe they can be imported/exported to others (and Word handles RTF's anyway). Here's a quick snapshot of my organization but it is basically a simple folder structure and you can have multiple books.

Ok here is another workaround if you want older items.. Using the Safari browser again I find you can go to the individual year archives and subscribe as described above. The format is like below. Try changing the year and you should be able to subscribe to all the years you need. http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/feed/ this got me subscribed to season 5 though it looks like it might only get the first 9 or so of each season, unless you are willing to also add the month parameter and subscribe by year/month blocks http://www.writingexcuses.com/2010/05/feed/ which got me May 2010's items (the months all have to be 2 digit i.e.'02')

I do note that if I open Safari and paste the url into the address bar http://www.writingexcuses.com/feed/podcast/ then pick from the right sidebar "Subscribe in iTunes' I get a list of the last 10 episodes and am able to download those 10. I right clicked on the podcast name in iTunes and 'Mark all as unplayed' and it downloaded them right away.

Made notes on your doc and emailed - sorry but was the quickest way and done during lunch break at work. I'll be buried for the next 3 weeks in prep for some tradeshows and after that hope to crit more people's work. I only lifted my head up for this because you have been so generous with your critiques on these forums. Awesome work.

Hi. Been a couple weeks since I read - in the midst of trade show season at work and I have been overloaded with assignments+stress. A few more weeks of this and then I can breath again. :/ I only read a bit of this today, but already at work so hope my few remarks are helpful. As I read this first bit I wonder if it might be a good place to try a different POV character. In the WE podcast Brandon and the rest do discuss this as a way to make chapters where not a lot is happening more interesting. For example in Mistborn he does one bit from the PoV of a guard on the wall I believe, rather than yet another section describing Vin traveling through the air from point A to point B. So here perhaps you could consider a first person PoV by Nidintu for example. This would allow people to get to know her a little bit and spice up the tramping through the grass. For example "Nidintu used the Bushkari blade to clear the hookthorn plant from the path. Wouldn't want one of these tenderfoots to stick their foot. She looked back and saw Kisare carefully stepping over the wickedly spiked branches. That girl is a strange one. Again, I am greener than the grass in your story so this is just a random thing to consider.

Have you tried navigating to writingexcuses.com and following the links to the itunes podcast from their - I click and the links seem good when I do. Perhaps you can do that and subscribe that way?

Hi Mandamon. I thought this was a good chapter and solid overall. I'll add a few nit-picky things to what Sprouts said. This line sounds off to me. Perhaps get rid of 'Even' and do something like "The little elder standing beside Kisa appeared surprised by the comments. Apparently Ku-Baba ... This is just off the cuff, so not sure. These in red basically all say the same thing. I would either remove them, or say it one time at the beginning i.e. "The old tales tell us that before those..." I like the idea of what you are trying to do with this, but it is a tiny bit confusing or not quite smithed right. I don't have a quick answer. I think a few simple phrases like this might be useful if worked in from the beginning of the book (maybe you did I don't remember it being used, or at least not often enough that I remember). Just don't overuse as I imagine it is like writing accents where it puts people off. This might be a better place for using a gardening phrase. i.e. Belili knew her sister thought she was a loose leaf (or a loose leaf in the wind) I'd just leave it "At least that scar was physical" My first impression here, is that give the gravity of the situation (the potential loss of their own magic) Hbelu would first look at the other elders since this would affect all of them (unless he is the ultimate ruler). I think this needs some slight reworking. For one 'not its worth' is unlikely something she could determine from his looks. She might, however, notice that he 'gazed it with a sense of wonder' or something like that. I see what you are doing here (establishing Hbelu's interest) but "as if the rest of the world didn't exist." doesn't work here (and might be a little cliche). Hbelu could seem 'overly interested' in Kisa's response perhaps. In any case Belil would notice his outward expression i.e. he gazed too intently, or his eyes drfted down, or he seemed flustered or spoke to fast which told Belil that there was something else at work here. Hope that helps clarify. Show this instead. i.e. "Belili hesitated, her displeasure obvious, but said" something like that. Perhaps '...showing no sign he was aware of their...' '...they ate greens, fruit, and the meat of...' Belili watched as Hbelu ... I think and '...Kisa didn't seem to notice..' I like the word, but perhaps 'grumbled' would fit here. Anyway as I said, just nit picking stuff. Hope you find it useful. Good job.

Ok, well I like 5 as well. This is good stuff. I think as I read this that the little problem in parts of this is that some of the moments have too much clarity? Not sure I am explaining it well but I'd just reread each line and make sure that any description, from outside Taras is minimal and does not dilute the tension (does he really need to know about what's in the quote at this moment of struggle? and if so, how much of it? Keep it lean and mean until he is at a point to think clearly. If you need the Melor reference for later, then perhaps you can have him hallucinate. 'Taras could see Melor running beside him but wait... Melor wasn't a kid anymore. Still, he swung his stick at Melor and they battled as they reenacted the great battles, laughing and ...' Hope that clarifies. Might be best to see as much as possible through his eyes as you do the wolves later. Especially since as he hallucinates and comes under the effect of the poison he is less aware of the real world outside, so stepping to a PoV or descriptive text outside of him waters down the effect. I think you have a great write in the works here. Thumbs up.

I can see you did that 5% stuff in chapter 5 so good - you just may want to begin hinting at it in the 5% section I mention above to avoid any lag.