Shrike76

Right, so Renfield himself was never on the Council per se, he just had extensive knowledge because he was so close to Dracula? Are the council sour on him because of his association with Dracula? Or because they knew that he more or less took Dracula down?

I thought Dracula was on the Council, and Renfield was just some sort of lackey?

I like Stephanie's re-evaluation of Evelyn as woman rather than monster. It's the sort of thing I was hoping for more of earlier as these enemies were forced together under strange circumstances. Also, here we finally see her explaining her thoughts on the supernatural - she's always thought vampirism was caused by bacteria, not a curse. This sort of stuff should have come far earlier, and been woven into the fabric of the Westenra we're shown. That way when Stephanie begins to realize here that there's supernatural elements behind the whole mess, we're surprised to learn it with her and it brings us into both the character and the story. As it stands, this chapter reveals information and we're going "Well, duh. Where've you been, Stephanie?" It also makes the previous chapter, where I noted her dismissal of the bible seemed out of character, a little better in context. As a perfect example: In Irving's chapter we learn vampires are blurry in cameras, how does bacteria explain it? If these phenomena are scientifically-explainable (as far as Westenra is concerned), you'll need to show the science (even if Westenra turns out to be wrong). Irving's chapter is weaker than his most recent ones, but that's mostly because his intruder goes from furious to resigned so quickly that it feels strange. Renfield's short chapter is interesting, and shows how little the Council respects him that they would lock him in the same room as Stephanie, but I don't know why Stephanie would react so strongly to his suggestion that what was thought to be mental illness was actually the visions. Wouldn't that be preferable?

It's your book, and it doesn't have to conform to anyone else's definition of reality. If God is an actual presence in this book, or if he's an entity that makes his presence felt in other ways, then I think it's perfectly valid. Especially if the Scholomance is an actual thing taught by the actual Devil, then I wouldn't see it as preachy, because in this book's world it's made clear that God and the Devil are two real things that exist. Even atheists should be able to enjoy it as fiction (I'm an atheist, and I have no problem with the mythos of Constantine or The Fifth Element, and I thought the Force in Star Wars was more interesting before midichlorians came around to ruin it with science). Again, I only mentioned it because it seemed out of character for Stephanie to be doing it, since she's seen all of this stuff first hand. For your other point, about Irving, I don't think a Watson character is necessary. If you add a secondary character for the express purpose of Irving going all "As you know, Bob" then I think that will show, and it will not be enjoyable reading. If we're in Irving's POV then it's enough for Irving to know it and mention it in the opportunities that he has, and it's even appropriate for him to think about them in certain situations. He has lots of opportunities when he's on the phone with the Buyer, or his hitman, or just worrying about stuff. The problem is I don't know what it is that he hasn't revealed yet, so I couldn't suggest when would have been an appropriate time to have brought it up. I'll keep an eye out for it in future submissions, and if something catches my eye I'll be sure to mention it.

Keep in mind that you, as the writer, know that this is a try/fail cycle. Most readers who aren't also writers won't think of it in that way, and even writers might not see it for what it is. If you're presenting it properly, so that the attempt feels like it has an honest chance at succeeding until the moment it fails, then I don't see why anybody would be bored. As to how it's supposed to feel, that's hard to say. I suspect writing is different for everyone. If it feels like you're faking it, then my best advice would be to finish the whole thing. Sticking the landing at the end might make the rest of it feel like you got it just right. If the problem is that you're bored writing it though, that's a sign that it might be boring for the reader.

Many of your characters do seem very blasé about the strange or violent things going on around them. I understand that they've all been exposed to oddness for most of their lives, but it's rare that they exhibit any actual fear or discomfort even when it seems their lives are in danger. I think Irving might be the exception, as he seems more prone to worry than the others.

This was a good chapter, having Kang think he achieved his goal and then having the rug pulled out from under him. Having to watch his father transform was pretty brutal, but we knew it was coming. The action was a little convoluted in places, but that can be cleaned up in edits. I think the scene accomplishes what you want it to. I'll note that I'm not sure why Kang is so important to the warlock that she insists on punishing the people around him rather than Kang himself. It kind of has to be more than just conversation. And you do have to be careful with that trope, not to fall into a trap. If the people around Kang always bear the brunt, we start to expect it's going to happen and it takes away some of the punch. As a side effect, your main character isn't suffering directly, and so you end up having to do ever more brutal things to side characters to make up for it.

P1 - "speeding through rush hour traffic" - If there's heavy traffic, he isn't speeding. P1 - "snatched the hood from his pocket and stuffed it into his pocket" - one pocket too many P2 - For a manual-transmission car, a clutch is a foot pedal. Your hand goes on the gear stick. P10 - Stephanie calls Frankenstein's creation a monster, to the face of said monster? A little rude... P12 - Stephanie takes the news of Abe Van Helsing a little too easily Not much actually happens in these three chapters, but the interplay between the character is mostly good and I can see that you're mostly setting pieces where you'll need them later, which is fine. The council is interesting, even if they're small in number here. Rewer is creepy, but he could be more creepy if that's what you're going for. Evelyn is the more interesting of the bunch. A little less on the info and a little more about how these characters act to and around each other would have been good. Nobody seems to be acting any differently here, confronted by the Council, than they did anywhere else. (Stephanie who's deep in enemy territory, Renfield who's back where he ran from, Bannister's still Bannister...) I've mentioned Renfield's knowledge base before, and I see others saying it above so I won't repeat it more than to say that I noticed it here too. There was a lot of information passed around here, and it felt like an info-dump, but it felt more like backstory. None of it felt to me like something that was moving the story in a new direction. We'll have to wait and see what comes from Stephanie's vision.

I'm not even a fan, but those sound like club-me-over-the-head James Bond hints? Was it Skyfall?

I found the process interesting of turning a person into a monster, and the prospect of her replacing them with members of Kang's family if he killed anymore of them was a nice twist. On page 5, Kang has a paragraph that he expresses in thought and I felt it would have been better spoken, so that he could contest what the warlock was saying and get her version. it would have been nice to have more interaction between the two of them rather than her just telling him everything he needs to know. She calls him good for conversation but he spoke little more than a rock would have. The whole planning scene ran long for me. I got tired of hearing them talk about escaping and think they could have managed to make a plan in fewer pages. Also, by the end of it, I'd forgotten that they were in the sleigh, so a few more hints to that end would have helped.

This was pretty good for at least 2/3 of the chapters. I enjoyed the Irving chapter the most, and felt like we were again getting a good view into his thought process. He's turning into one of the strongest POVs in the book. The only thing I dislike is that his POV is still trying to create false suspense by hiding things from the reader that Irving knows. There's still the Buyer, but now this mystery person on the phone who's going after Stephanie. Now I'm more curious about who he is than I am about whether he'll get to Stephanie before others do, but that's not as big of a payoff. In Renfield's chapter, I was a little disappointed at first that we didn't get the transport of Bannister, but I think you handled it well. I don't feel like I'm missing anything. What I don't get is if Bannister had this great hideout for himself, why did he need Renfield at all? I don't see what Renfield would have done that he couldn't have planned for in advance? The last chapter was my least favourite. There was overlap in the timeline between Renfield's chapter and Stephanie's but Stephanie's doesn't start the same way, and doesn't at all feel like it flows from Renfield's. It's a very clunky start. I also disliked her staunch criticism and dismissal of the bible (not for religious reasons, I'm not religious myself), but because it felt somewhat out of character. She hunts supernatural creatures for a living, from a line of people who do, and she spent the night with a werewolf, but she's going to dismiss everything in the bible as "a book of fairy tales"? Erg... Some minor things I disliked: Stephanie mentions "Rob Renfield" by name but I think that's the first time we hear it? It was jarring. She also refers to him as "a madman, pure and simple", but I haven't seen that reflected in the story. He's always been intelligent and level-headed. He just likes to eat bugs... I also felt like it was too easy to get her in the trunk again, as though her limbs should have gotten caught in the closing.

Totally know it, but I'm going to let someone else answer.

Yay! As long as I don't win Smallpox. New question, staying with the sciences: Name all eleven elements that are gasses at room temperature (roughly 22 degrees Celsius).

Smallpox

I just saw it. There was a lot of action but it still left me underwhelmed. People keep doing such incredibly stupid things, and it makes no sense at all that not a single one of these raiders had guns.

I'm optimistic. I remember watching the first prequel trailer and being less than completely impressed. This one doesn't immediately look like they're making a kids movie, which Phantom Menace absolutely did. I'll go see it unless I hear a ton of negative word of mouth, because I never make it to the movies on release day. I'm always at least a week or two behind, so I'll have lots of time to be warned away if it turns out to be terrible. But I choose to remain optimistic.

It's October. It never fails. I'll find myself humming and need to play the album on loop for a couple of weeks. Famous Monsters by the Misfits.

I enjoyed the story, such as it was, but it felt a lot like a Chapter One, in that not a lot got resolved and it felt like it was directly a lead up to a larger story than a nicely-wrapped package. I do think that it has a lot of potential, and it can be a very functional short story with a bit of rearrangement. Portsef was interesting, and so was the magic system which I thought was very cleanly defined. In a four-page section I feel like I have a good grasp on how the magic works and what its limits are. I didn't even mind the accents (which I usually strongly advise against) because it was specifically presented as an in-world thing and I understood the gist of the words, this is a good example of doing strange accents right in fiction. Where the story lost me mostly was with the poison. Portsef knows that he's been poisoned, and even knows what it is, but the way it's presented had me scratching my head. the vomiting and the hallucinations are mostly okay, but here's some of my issues with it: P1: "could bring the strongest man to the ground for as long as it fancied" - Is the poison sentient? Because it shouldn't fancy anything. - In the same paragraph. "It was impossible to shake once it claimed you, but luckily it could be held at bay for a time through willpower alone" - I can believe that this particular person can do it, but I don't think it's necessarily a feature of the poison that anyone can. Maybe focus on this person's struggle against it, rather than make it a global thing about the poison. - And to finish off the paragraph: "all who were poisoned with Sel's Venom succumbed to the torpor eventually" All of this makes it seem like it's a particularly brutal poison, and one whose effects are made to seem permanent. but at the end, our protagonist is lying on a rooftop, slipping into unconsciousness from the poison, and plannign his next move after it wears off, but the earlier descriptions had led me to believe that this wasn't the sort of thing that was going to wear off. Or at least, not for a very long time, and he's here on a rooftop, exposed to the sun and the elements for who knows how long, and it left me underwhelmed. I think the story could be made much stronger by presenting the information differently. In my opinion, if the story is about him finding a particular place (or person), we can know about that, and we can even know why Portsef wants it, and the story becomes about him getting there before the poison stops him cold. Seeing him attacked and about to fail at it at the last moment and then using the magic you've nicely planted earlier to pull the rug out from under his adversaries is also satisfying, and it would provide a better conclusion. We then know that he's going to get what he wanted after all, and in a very clever way by using himself as a decoy. Since in this version I didn't know what he was doing from the beginning, when he achieved his secret goal at the end I didn't care very much. Lastly, I felt like you mentioning the hallucinations was a promise, that some of the things Portnef was going to be seeing weren't going to be real, but then it sort of gets dropped. The magic is presented as real, the fight is real, everything is real up until the end, and I felt a little let down.

Yikes... I can get the party started, but that's mostly the ones I remember during my lifetime and what I remember from studying WWII Margaret Thatcher Tony Blair Winston Churchill Neville Chamberlain Gordon Brown

Is this a movie?

I gave that a listen earlier today and it's pretty decent. Thanks for sharing Currently listening to the new Silversun Pickups album - Better Nature.

I thought these were very interesting chapters. Definitely I feel like the exchange of information between Renfield and Stephanie moves the story forward, and as a reader it's nice to be clued in to what the characters have known for a while. I had issues with the whole chase scene, but I think with a few easy clarifications it could be very compelling. - You mention Bannister (in wolf form) several times ("hurtling towards her", "bounding towards her", etc.) but he never actually gets to her. It's a bit like the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Lancelot is storming the castle, and the camera goes to him six times but he's always as far away as he was the first time. Only this isn't Monty Python so it wasn't funny. Then she gets into the train car and she takes "a little over a minute" to get from one spot to another before Bannister shows up. Google tells me a wolf can run 800-1200 meters in that time. I don't think she had visibility roughly 1 kilometer away in a dark train yard. So a better explanation of how close he is here would help a lot, or they need to do something like drop debris on him in order to buy themselves time to get where they need to go. (Or if she still had her gun, to wound him but not badly because it's probably not a silver bullet... From a Writing Excuses perspective, this would be a pitch-perfect "Yes, but" moment) - Once Stephanie's in the train car I'm completely lost. I don't have a good grasp of the shape of the interior or how she separates herself and Renfield from Bannister, and that's something I think needs to be a lot clearer in this scene. I like what Stephanie does very much, and I love where the chase scene leaves the three of them for the night, I just need a better visual of what she's actually accomplishing Despite the fact that I say the chase scene didn't work for me, I did enjoy it and I think it works fine for the story. With a few tweaks it could be one of the most compelling scenes in the book so far. As stated above, I thought the conversational exchange between Renfield and Stephanie was excellent, because it answers a lot of the questions the characters had, so it answers a lot of the questions I had as a reader. It does, however, leave me wondering about Renfield himself. At times he seems to know a lot about Dracula (that he performs a ritual to which only vampires are allowed when he knows that an end is near), and then sometimes he has only the vaguest idea of what's going on (like where said ritual actually happens, even though he makes the travel arrangements?). I'd like to know more about what Renfield's actual responsibilities were where Dracula was concerned, it would help me understand why he does or doesn't know certain things rather than just knowing what the plot needs him to know and nothing more. All in all, this submission was good. If I'd had the next chapter handy to see what happens next in their cozy little train car I'd have turned the page eagerly.

Bingo! You get the next description.

Nope. More fantastical. And more focus on the dead guy.

Nope. This was not a comedy.