7/22/19—JWerner—Greek Confederates Ch. 4—4129—L, V, G

[JWerner]

Greetings, 

 

This is chapter 4. It's a shorter chapter with a bit of a faster pace. Hopefully, it feels like it gets the plot moving. Please criticize. Thank you!

 

Also, I admit I kinda jumped the gun in submitting; as I have not been technically confirmed for Monday yet. But seeing how there's a spot left and there hasn't been a swell of other potential submitters, I hope that this could be excused just this once. I apologize, and will not do this again.

 

In chapter 3:

 

JV, who now suffers from crippling pain thanks to Channeler's Reflux, has sold off her family ranch and works as a barmaid. She ends up talking with two strangers from out of town, one of whom appears to be blind. The strangers leave, then one of them burns down the local house of worship before attacking J's boss, L. 

Edited July 23, 2019 by JWerner

[Mandamon]

Overall, I though this was cleaner than the last chapters. I had some confusion over who B is compared to R from chapter 2, but it's not that relevant to the plot right now. Also not sure why B seems squeamish of doing what she's doing. Also, was there some meaning to the church burning down and not the surroundings?

I did like expansion of J's character, and getting to follow along in her POV for two chapters. We get to see a lot more of her personality, and the meeting with A gives a lot more depth rather than just saying her friends left her.

There's a bit of the idiot plot, where the Person In Charge won't let the Rational Person call in the Troops. Some more expansion of why the city is so much more technologically advanced might help.

Starting to shape up. Looking forward to more.

 

Notes while reading:

pg 1: "The White Viper"
--Oho. I guess now we know who the other half is.

pg 2: "As of now, this town’s property of the Great Rider himself"
--Wait, so did J get to both halves of the W.V., or is B actually R?

pg 3: "when she managed to mount the saddle, she looked almost nervous."
--ok, not sure what's going on.

pg 3: "Then unseen knives stabbed the flesh of her left hand and she screamed, dropping the weapon. Above her, A started in her saddle, and saw J"
--I read this first that A had stabbed J, then relaized it must just be J's condition.

pg 6: "his little name-plaque started with a B"
--Did J just not read the rest of the name?

pg 8: “I can’t read all that well, ma’am,”
--OK, I guess this is why she didn't read the name-plaque.

pg 9: "Do ya know what else the tabloids call Scylla,"
--do we ever get the answer to this question?

pg 13: "This is gonna work, she thought."
--highly debatable...

[shatteredsmooth]

This is probably my favorite chapter so far. J's voice is very strong, the emotion is vivid, and the tension never flags.

J's idea to hire a man hunter seemed out of nowhere to me. In the scene leading up to it, I was very invested in her emotion reaction to the attack, but until this point, I hadn't been sure how much the frontiers people even knew about manhunters. Granted, the conversation with the mayor implies J actually might not know much about them at all, which makes her enthusiasm a little frustrating to me even if in some ways,  it is actually a good thing. If your  intention was to get the readers a little frustrated with a character they liked, because she was making a questionable decision, then it is working. The frustration I'm feeling with it is something I often feel while reading published novels or watching moves (most recently, Spiderman: Far From Home). 

My only other issue was this was the end of the chapter. I loved the scene with J persuading A to let her use the phone, but after, the last line didn't pack the punch I was hoping for. I'd say either end off with the meet me at midnight or try to beef up the second guessing so it packed more a punch.

Here are some notes I made as I read:

"The W...V... of New Athens" I thought it was her. :-)

"...barest perceptible moment, shame flickered...." Interesting. 

"...had received down the V's whip across the face..." The wording here is confusing. 

"...phones were too expensive for Frontier folk to buy." Good bit of world building! It clarifies that the tech divide between the Frontier and bigger cities is economic in nature. 

"...she'd never smiled once in her whole life, because she looked awfully young..." This might just be me, but I've always thought of frowning making people look old, not smiling. 

"...she found herself withering in her seat..." I'm not sure I understand why she reacts this way. Her bravado vanishes very quickly and the mayor hasn't done anything. Later, she doesn't seem so cowed by this woman.

I can't wait to read the next chapter!

 

23 hours ago, Mandamon said:

Also, was there some meaning to the church burning down and not the surroundings?

I was thinking this was because R/WV didn't want to actually do too much damage to innocent people, but I could be wrong. 

23 hours ago, Mandamon said:

There's a bit of the idiot plot, where the Person In Charge won't let the Rational Person call in the Troops

That seen did have a trope feel, but I wasn't seeing J as rational in that seen. I kept thinking J was being an naive and was going to get everyone killed. Though maybe that actually is part of the idiot plot you mention. 

 

 

 

If I venture into making predictions, I'm thinking calling the MH is going to be a big mistake, and that J and R/WV are going to end up working together somehow. 

[kais]

Overall

This chapter is fairly solid, and the MC has decent voice in it. The parts I'm still really struggling with are buy-in (I don't have any yet) and the Random Proper Nouns that keep being presented without description. I need more concrete worldbuilding before chapter four, I think, and some deeper tension, to really be engaged with where the narrative is headed. I'm not even sure what threat the town really has ATM.

 

As I go

- pg 2: I just read the previous chapter yesterday but I'm still not clear on what is going on. The villain here seems to be from a comic book, and the way said villain talks is more like comedy than anything meant to build tension

- pg 5: J's internal rambling here about wanting some revenge continues to fall flat because I do not yet care about J or her struggles. A temple exploded, but I don't care about the world yet, either. I'm reading and searching for an anchor, right now

- pg 7: 'manhunter registry' would have more impact if I knew what it was. I feel like this is a fairly common element here in the story. We get given a Proper Noun without context and are expected to use it as a hook without getting any information

- pg 10: I still wish I knew what a Blacknight was in relation to why it should be driving fear and tension. The narrative keeps saying be afraid but I don't know why or of what

 

[Robinski]

On 22/07/2019 at 5:56 AM, JWerner said:

Also, I admit I kinda jumped the gun in submitting; as I have not been technically confirmed for Monday yet. But seeing how there's a spot left and there hasn't been a swell of other potential submitters, I hope that this could be excused just this once. I apologize, and will not do this again.

No sweat, JW. You will see this happen from time to time. It's a judgement thing. I shoulda posted when Silk didn't swing in and give you the go-ahead, but you've made the right judgement call.

Sorry this is so late. Also, I hope my positives last time did not get swamped by the issues I had. Just to stress, I think there is good writing and there are good ideas in here, and that certain fixes would go a huge way to nailing the problems that are tripping me up. I had a thought about this. (1) I did not take J's first chapter as a prologue. Was it? <looks back> I see it was. For me, it didn't feel like a prologue. It did seek to show is important information necessary for the story, mostly how channels work, and what the world looks like, but it was set in the timeline off the story, which makes if feel very much like a chapter. (2) I suggest trying what I would think of more as a true prologue, maybe take us out of the timeline and out of the location, back to when RL was in the city, as a vehicle to explain what the wider world looks like and where and how the Greek aspects of the new culture were adopted?

Anyway, on to Chapter 4

(page 1)

- "trying to pull the whip away from her neck" - every verb (every word, really) is a chance to convey tone and emotion and detail. Here 'trying' is kinda tame. It could be 'grasping to pull the whip...', for example.

- "hear her boss’s eyes bulging out of their sockets" - my issue with this is the bulging eyes don't make a sound, surely 'see her boss's eyes bulging...'

- "like a kd to the face" - yes!

- "She was known to..." - This is very on the nose for me. She's known for doing exactly what she did here. Also, not a single person noticed her? Is her poster not still up?

- "The WV of NA" - Aw, heck. It was all going so well. I talked about complication last time, and overcomplicating, imo. Why does the WV need to be two people? For me, that's overcomplicated and includes another important character that we need to keep track of, where fewer characters, clearly, would be less complicating. But consider this, it would be much less complicated, I think, if RL and BL had a collective name that clearly labelled them as a pair. Like the viper sisters, for example. That makes it easier to parse that they are a duo, and we don't need to remember that WV is two people, puzzle over why one name for two people, and always be stopping when it's mentioned (in may case anyway) to try and figure how that ever worked and what it means.

- "tears of blood again" - boom. Great punch. This chapter is working much better for me than the last. Now there is conflict, tension, J is active (as others mentioned last time). She's allowed to be passive, of course, at times. There was still emotion in the church scene last time and it easily could have worked for me by being cut down and getting to the bar scene quicker. 

(page 2)

- "scanned the crowd, sentry-like" - not sure that sentries scan crowds much, surely they are more about spotting individuals who are where they should not be.

- "yer tresspassin’" - Okay, this is a warning, but's what's to stop the townsfolk killing BL for the money? There's no way she can resist them with a whip and a sword. They could easily swamp her. Then, at least they'd have the reward, even if they do still vacate the town.

- Also, for me this was the inciting incident. It's the first major thing that has happened in the story. Before this it's been personal encounters that have no larger stakes.

- "gasped like a fish yanked out of a stream" - I get the image, but it struck me as an odd simile. The fish is taken away from its ability to breath, whereas L is given hers back.

- "rushed forward as much as her wounded leg would allow" - phrasing. A lot of the time the thing that upsets me most is clumsy language. This is wordy, and rushed forward 'as much as' is... 'much' means absolutely nothing in this context: it conveys no emotion and no description. I know this is not a language pass, but still, I think it's worth having in mind to be more economical and effective with the word choice. I'm thinking in terms of something like 'she hobbled towards L'.

- The rest of the sentence is all over the place, imo. You don't need to say check, we know why she's going to L. 'right as' - meh. 'a choice few' - doesn't really mean anything. What makes them choice? It's our old nemesis lack of specificity. 'waiting amongst the crowd' - very, very passive, they should be gaping in horror, brimming with anger, not just standing here waiting for the author to tell them what to do.

- I just don't believe that she can avoid the quarrels. The implication, rightly, is that a bunch of people all fire quarrels at the WV at the same time. No way she can avoid them all. No way.

(page 3)

- Greek fire is investing. I've no idea if it's a real thing in some way, but I can suspend my disbelief, BUT, it's the same thing again. How in holey heck did the world turn Greek? It's such a large impediment to me now that I'm starting to concoct my own reason as to how it came about. THEORY #1: An extremely powerful dictator rose to power in 'Murica (our post apocalyptic setting... it's post apocalyptic, right?), and had the power of a brutal military and a privileged elite behind him, and he imposed martial law and decreed that the country would adopt the new religion that he invented, based entirely on Greek culture, and he burned all the churches and synagogs and mosques, and he spent decades eradicating all forms of thought and worship that did not comply with his vision. Then...... he decreed the genetic engineering of mythical creatures from Greek mythology?!?!

- "exploded outwards" - redundant, this is what exploding is. Interesting fact: 'explosion' comes from the Latin 'explosio' which means 'scornful rejection', apparently  

- "flaming bits of the temple rained down around her" - she's so close. I just don't think it's plausible that not a single but of debris hits her. Even if some smalls bits hits her, it would be more believable. Or if a big bit just missed her, but it reads like there's a magical shelter around her. Also, more dramatic if she were to shield L with her body, as L is out of it, as far as we know.

- "She was fine" - Seems to me everything that's gone before in this chapter, ending with escaping death from a stone barrage, is the definition of 'not fine'.

- "The ground thrummed from oncoming hooves" - style: this is really bland wording, and actually I'm pretty sure is grammatically incorrect. Most importantly though, for me, it ruins the effect of the hooves. I think it's as simple as 'the ground thrummed with the sound of oncoming hooves'.

- "trailed dutifully behind" - this doesn't sound like galloping to me: 'trailed dutifully' sounds plodding and slow.

- "She halted" - I'll stop mentioning word choice at this point, but my point here is, if the horse is galloping, thundering, etc., it's not just going to halt, it's going to skid to a stop in a clatter of hooves and cloud of dust. I won't mention any more lost opportunities for drama and description and reader immersion.

 (page 4)

- If she's clinging to the horse for all she's worth, I don't believe WV can crack the whip.

- "Eventually, she closed up the shop proper, around midnight" - Confused, why doesn't she close up right away if she's not serving drinks in a bar?

(page 5)

- "who’d taken advantage of her and fooled her into telling them what they wanted to know" - Okay, this might sound, but cross my heart, I almost said at the time that I thought J was being rather free with some very specific information about channellers when she was asked. I felt nervous about it, but not enough to mention it last time. I'm not wholly onboard with her forgiving herself though. I think she was naive, and does not really have the right to absolve herself of all the guilt for this.

- "J hated them both" - This we can agree on. I want vengeance!

- Odds are not plausible. They're good or bad, high or low. They are also plural.

- Ha! Is she going to hire RL? She is, isn't she? We'll get a showdown between the Vamp sisters. I'm up for that.

(page 6)

- "papers and demands" - I don't understand what these are. Request to use the phones? Confused.

- "still, shimmering figures" - Confused. I people are standing still in the booths, how are they shimmering?

- Confused: how can she not see the whole of his name? A plaque is a fixed 'sign'. If it's actually a badge, and his arm is across it, you need to call it a badge.

(page 7)

- "I’m gonna hire the biggest, baddest..." - She's doing it again, saying too much. How has she not learned her lesson? This feels contrived to me. The only reason she tells him is so he can tell the deputies and they can give her trouble, I presume. It feels like the plot intervening to make sure the right things happens.

(page 8)

- "where an upwards-spiraling-staircase was blocked off by a velvet length of rope tied to two posts" - If you're standing at the top, it's a downwards-spiralling staircase (no second hyphen). Essentially, it's just a staircase. I think the reader will be able to work out the rest.

- Iron is not used for soldering. Solder is made of softer metals. I think it's pretty unusual to solder pieces of iron, normally that would involve welding, as soldering would produce too weak a join, I presume.

(page 9)

- "will bring down enough tourists and nosy-bodies" - Huh? Confused about the tourists, but also, an influx of people would be really good for the town economically. Big money and the ability to charge people through the nose. I would have thought the mayor would be more mercenary. In my recollection, most fictional mayors are all about the income, the cash, and the benefit to the town. Far from driving the town to ruin, I think that only people who could afford to leave their jobs for while and travel to the town would come, and therefore they would have a certain level of disposable income, which they would dispose of in the town.

- "taking her intestines and twisting them into a clove hitch" - for me, that's excessive. She'd be prostrate on the floor, imo.

- "I just need to convince her of the danger" - Confused: the mayor must know about the danger, because other people heard the threat to clear out. Also, how is the town going to be safe in a couple of days? The BKs are coming and I don't see any mechanism to prevent them. Also, you said it's a small town, where were the deputies during the attack?

(page 10)

- "I ain’t go no godsdamned clue" - Eh? So what if the answer actually is 'of course'? How do you say that? I don't think J's logic is very reliable here.

- "til it runs out" - dead words. Of course it keep going until it runs out. I'm a pretty tetchy individual, as you may have noticed  so I'm really not fond of being considered dumb. A school of thought would be that it's J who is treating the mayor as dumb, without realising that she's coming across dumb herself, but however you slice it, someone's coming off dumb here.

- Not sure that I know, or remember, what an iron kn is. Ah, is it a weapon? I was thinking for a moment it was another defensive thing, because she was talking about the healing aspect.

- "gave her a view of the moon" - this feels out of J's POV, since I'm struggling to believe she's got the same view as the mayor.

(page 11)

- "severely overestimatin’ the threat" - I think this is a problem. I actually don't feel a sense of threat. I think you could do with playing up a sense of dread hanging over the town. Also, I'm not sure that J's internal logic about the threat really scans. She actually seems very dismissive of it, when she thinks that it might not even happen. What gave her any indication that it wouldn't happen? I think maybe this needs a refresh so that everyone assessment of the threat is consistent, and the dread is ramped way up. I mean how is it that the mayor is more scared of the 'superhero' damage that might occur? I just don't follow that. There doesn't seem to be any kind of defence force to resist the BKs or protect the town, and no reason to think the WV was lying, that I can see. Why did they come into town at all otherwise?

- I don't see the point of the mayor pretending to consider. It's overcomplicated. Why not just have the more resist, and J try to convince her? I mentioned over-complication as an issue before and this is a clear example, imo.

- "A immediately popped in" - There is no more urgency in this by adding the word immediately. Does it sound less immediate if you drop 'immediately'?

(page 12)

- "She remembered this" - remembered what?

(page 13)

- "hadn’t thought were possible on a person" - too much: we've all seen people frustrated before, and stupefied.

- The repetition of 'come back' is weird, for me. If they've come back once to see the man-hunter, then they've already come back.

Overall

Word choice and phrasing needs to be better on most pages to draw the reader in more and deliver the drama. It's a fairly straightforward editing pass really, but worth mentioning, I think. Grammar and typos too, I got tired of highlighting the issues. I'm not capable of ignoring that stuff.

The more I read, the more convinced I am that solving the conundrum and convincing the reader about the Greek culture is the key to unlocking this whole story. The more comments I read and the more I think about the more sure I am that the major problems arise from the reader not understanding the world.

There's some good plot movement here, and some of J's scenes are fine (with editing), and could be quite powerful and engaging, but I'm not convinced about the two POVs, that we need them both. There's great potential in J to be a disabled main character, and it seems to me that would be an interesting challenge to write, and make compelling. RL's POV? I'm not that excited to go back to it, if I'm honest.

<R>

[Robinski]

On 22/07/2019 at 6:22 PM, Mandamon said:

OK, I guess this is why she didn't read the name-plaque.

Ah, yes, ok. I forgot this. But it's a small town and she works in the bar, she really doesn't know his name?

[industrialistDragon]

I like that we're staying with J. I don't know if I could handle more POVs this close to the beginning.

 

That said, I'm having a hard time getting worked up about J's predicament and I definitely don't care about L. They're nice enough, but I haven't really gotten invested in either of them. 

 

The trigun lady is acting like a caricature of a villain here and that's sort of putting me off. I feel like most of the other characters are a bit more grounded than this. I like the touches of awkwardness J notices at the end, but the whip and the glasses flash and then the sword are a little too over-the-top for me. 

 

So trigun lady == White V == R by her city name? That's what I'm getting. I think. Maybe. 

 

I am still unsure why White V/R/B is necessary for this destruction. It could have been accomplished by anyone from the way it looks to me, and the mayor doesn't react to the name at all (as I thought was the plan? For White V/R/B to use her name recognition to make people call down individual bounty hunters and thereby destroy some group back in the city somewhere? I am unclear). They mayor only seems to be affected by the idea of a ton of knights descending on the town.  J herself is only motivated to call a city bounty hunter because of the money she received. She's motivated by the White V name to go on a personal vendetta, which seems to me to be counterproductive to the stated goals of a couple chapters ago. (Also I am a little unclear why the destruction of a church creates this level of hatred in her.)

 

I'm with @kais on the knights, though. Everyone says they're super scary, but we've not seen them do anything. I'm willing to go along with the "everyone says" for a while, but it's come up pretty much every chapter, as a major point, and I don't feel like there's been much to prove why they're the terror of the frontier. The one knight so far on the page has gone to lengths to be non-threatening (as I feel he should have in that scenario. Unfortunately, that doesn't do a lot for cementing the group as a whole as the worst possible boogeyman to come after a person, place, or thing.) and I'm not sure the White V/R/B's nonlethal, pinpoint, seemingly minimum-required-by-contract mayhem really does much to illustrate why the knights as a whole are so feared. So far, from what I've read, I think I have more reason to fear people who can drink magic potions or use neck batteries than I really do the knights. Are the knights feared because they're all potion-drinkers? What's to keep a fear of potion-drinkers from spilling over to non-knight practitioners? 

[JWerner]

Hi guys, thank you all for the critiques! I appreciate them, and I think I'm going to take some extra time to work on the story before I submit for this again. I realize now that the story is obviously is in a very rough state, and since I can say that it doesn't get much better from here onwards, I need to put some extra work into re-writing and editing. I'd like to re-submit this knowing that it's of a better quality. 

Thank you!

 

Edited July 25, 2019 by JWerner

[Robinski]

8 hours ago, JWerner said:

Hi guys, thank you all for the critiques! I appreciate them, and I think I'm going to take some extra time to work on the story before I submit for this again. I realize now that the story is obviously is in a very rough state, and since I can say that it doesn't get much better from here onwards, I need to put some extra work into re-writing and editing. I'd like to re-submit this knowing that it's of a better quality. 

Thank you!

Excellent! Glad to hear your positive approach. I've enjoyed plenty of bits so far, and I would read this again when it comes back.

[hawkedup]

With a few hiccups here and there, I think this was a really good chapter. We have some action and the MC finds a purpose and forward momentum. The Greek elements weren't jarring at all.

I think the first section should be included in the previous chapter since the rest of this chapter has it's own through plot that works on its own and the previous chapter had some direction issues. The good thing about direction issues is that you can get away with them if you deliver big at the end.

I liked bringing WV back. I'm wondering if R's chapter shouldn't be your prologue/chapter 1 and then just go right into 3 chapters of J. I think that one switch alone would help with some of the pacing issues.

At first I thought her coming into money right before wanting to hire a manhunter was too convenient, but the resistance she experiences helps to balance this out. It gives her an obstacle and a moral dilemma (i.e. direction) which I think is the primary thing that has been lacking thus far.

My biggest question, though, is... Why a manhunter? I understand why that is her first idea, but aren't there alternatives? Couldn't she use the money to help outfit and train locals? Aren't there other private security people out there who aren't as extreme as manhunters? I think a compromise could've been met between J and the mayor.
 

On 7/25/2019 at 5:14 PM, JWerner said:

Hi guys, thank you all for the critiques! I appreciate them, and I think I'm going to take some extra time to work on the story before I submit for this again. I realize now that the story is obviously is in a very rough state, and since I can say that it doesn't get much better from here onwards, I need to put some extra work into re-writing and editing. I'd like to re-submit this knowing that it's of a better quality. 

So, I see why you think you need to do this, but I disagree. It's like Brandon Sanderson and the Writing Excuses cast say. It's better for aspiring writers to push forward in a draft and change things as you go and write the whole thing straight through than to keep going back to the beginning. This leads to you being more practiced at writing beginnings than middles and endings, which in turn makes your beginnings worse since what comes after isn't as good. Also, it's much easier to fix a beginning when you already have the rest written. I mean, to each his own and all that, and if you feel it's right for you to go back to the begining, then it's right for you. But this story has so much potential and has only gotten better with each submission, and while this group has harped on a couple things (a bit too harshly in some case imho) I personally think it would be a mistake to go backwards.

[JWerner]

2 hours ago, hawkedup said:

It's better for aspiring writers to push forward in a draft and change things as you go and write the whole thing straight through than to keep going back to the beginning.

I might post the rest of Act 1—I want to test the waters on some new characters—but beyond that, I don't know. I'm also trying to re-evaluate how I want to tackle my writing projects right now; it's a confusing mess. I'm torn between doing more editing of Scarlet Saber, revising 'Confederates' and kicking myself into finishing my third novel, a project I've been trying to figure out how to write for years now. 

Thank you for the critique. 

[shatteredsmooth]

13 hours ago, JWerner said:

15 hours ago, hawkedup said:

It's better for aspiring writers to push forward in a draft and change things as you go and write the whole thing straight through than to keep going back to the beginning.

I might post the rest of Act 1—I want to test the waters on some new characters—but beyond that, I don't know. I'm also trying to re-evaluate how I want to tackle my writing projects right now; it's a confusing mess. I'm torn between doing more editing of Scarlet Saber, revising 'Confederates' and kicking myself into finishing my third novel, a project I've been trying to figure out how to write for years now. 

I completely agree with @hawkedup here. I think even if you are getting tough feedback in the early chapters, that it is good to just keep pushing through as much as possible.

I also recommend just picking one project and seeing it all through until you finish a complete draft or complete revision, then moving on to the next while that draft rests.

Last summer, I tried putting a novel length work through this group. I had a skeleton of a draft that had big chunks missing in the middle. I thought I'd revise, and fill in the gaps as I got to them, but I got so hung up on perfecting the begining that I ended up deciding to put it aside and work on something else. I still haven't come back to that book, and I'm not sure I will. I truely think if I hadn't kept back tracking, if I had made changes I agreed with and then just sent the next chapter and didn't keep resubmitting, I would've finished the book in the time I allotted myself to work on it. 

Over the fall and winter, I wrote another novel, the sequel to my published book. I only sent the first chapter through the group and instead, sent the whole novel to beta readers after I'd revised on my own. This was what more or less what I had done with the four books I wrote before joining this group. One of those is published, two are shelved, and one will hopefully be contracted soon. The process worked, to an extent. It was what I needed to do to get through those books and not get bogged down, but I know my writing could be better. I want an agent and a larger, more established publisher. 

So for Junk Junction, which is my 7th, I'm sending it through the group, and promising myself that I will keep pushing through it and not get hung up on the early chapters. I encourage you do the same, whether it is with Greek Confederates or Scarlet Saber. I was enjoying both of those stories and would love to read them through to end. 

Additionally, if you want a beta reader for either, I'm happy to read through the whole thing and give you more general feedback on the whole thing instead of on individual chapters.

 

[Robinski]

On 29/07/2019 at 3:05 AM, JWerner said:

I might post the rest of Act 1—I want to test the waters on some new characters—but beyond that, I don't know. I'm also trying to re-evaluate how I want to tackle my writing projects right now; it's a confusing mess. I'm torn between doing more editing of Scarlet Saber, revising 'Confederates' and kicking myself into finishing my third novel, a project I've been trying to figure out how to write for years now.

Despite all my babbling about developing skills, @hawkedup makes an excellent point. Finishing things is so important and such a valuable skill. Of the three projects, you mention Third is not finished, are Sabre and Greeks both complete in draft? (Forgive me if you mention this already.) If not, there is real merit in pushing through even if the slings and arrows are giving you pause.

[JWerner]

Saber is on its fifth draft; I plan on revising Act 1 based on the changes I've made after receiving feedback here. Confederates is on its 2nd draft, which will be significantly shorter than the 1st (as I have removed the POV chapters of two characters who will still appear). 

[Robinski]

7 hours ago, JWerner said:

Saber is on its fifth draft; I plan on revising Act 1 based on the changes I've made after receiving feedback here. Confederates is on its 2nd draft, which will be significantly shorter than the 1st (as I have removed the POV chapters of two characters who will still appear). 

Cool