industrialistDragon

It'll be interesting to finally get the beginning of this, since I started somewhere in the early middle! But going in, the first thing that strikes me about this introductory section is how much there is going on in it that has nothing to do with the primary story I read in the later parts. There're a lot of... gimmicks, for lack of better word. The binary chapter numbers, the trademark icons, the footnotes, the fact that there's what's basically a prologue to the B-plot POV character AND a B-plot POV character introduction with an extra POV from the doctor-guy BEFORE we meet the protagonist -- it's a lot of ... noise? ... to sort through right off the bat, when I'm trying to get a handle on the protagonist and the world. Without prior knowledge of the story and without the series name subtitle, I'd be fairly confused as to which part of this section I was supposed to regard as the actual beginning with the actual protagonist. If this is a work intending to be shopped around to a US market, I'd listen to @kais and really, really streamline these first 50 pages or so. Increase the signal to noise ratio early on, so readers are clear it's Quirk's story even if they miss the series subtitle (and I often only see a series name for the first time when I'm looking for the book on Amazon after I've read it) and add some of the stuff back in slowly later on. For instance, I've gone the entire rest of the novel, minus the 7 or so chapters I missed initially, without knowing what the name of their future scifi pocket internet device means, and I did just fine. Same with the name of the space transfer station. The amount I gain from knowing the meaning of the acronym is tiny compared to the confusion and immersion-breaking frustration I feel when I see footnotes, which is compounded by everything else going on. (I know you know how I feel about footnotes. This is the last I'll say on them for this time around. Or I'll try anyway. I'm passionate because I like the story! ) "some sexual references ... in later submissions" -- Um. I'm hard-pressed to find a single, whole page in this section that isn't making a sexual reference, sexual joke, or pointing out someone's genitals and/or someone else's interest in someone's genitals somewhere on it... The acts described get more graphic later on from what I remember, but, I mean. I'm just sayin'. I agree with @Mandamon that Quirk's chapter seems more study than introduction, especially combined with the other chapterlet-parts preceding it. The description is done well and colorfully, and sets up the place nicely. Quirk's personality is also well on display, and I do like a character that knows his couture sewing techniques! However, it doesn't seem to be going anywhere right now. If the other POVs weren't before it, maybe I'd be willing to give Quirk's part more legroom, but as it is, well, spinning in a circle is fun and all, but at some point I want to know where I'm going. I am also finding that Quirk without Moth is not nearly as compelling as Quirk with Moth, so I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how Moth has changed!

I can definitely see improvement in your writing, so keep up the good work! That said, I agree with the others here, that S seems very superficial and somewhat shallow. The lack of reaction to events around her, the death of a friend, or even just a collaborator, combined with the relatively large amount of attention paid to clothes and tidiness makes it seem like she doesn't really care about anything of substance. She is reading slightly older, though, so that's good. I am more interested in her than I was in previous characters. Pedant time again, though. Sandstone IRL is actually one of the less dense rock types. It's density can very a decent amount depending on the kinds of minerals that comprise it, but even at its heaviest, it's still pretty lightweight as far as rocks go. Not that a big chunk wouldn't be heavy, but describing it as dense doesn't seem right.... I also agree that it seems a bit odd for someone who has lived in sand their whole life to be thinking about how troublesome sand is, as if she's used to something different. And I definitely, definitely agree with @Mandamon and others that the protagonist needs to be more active. The one who does things has been almost uniformly the villain, and it makes me wonder a bit if maybe he shouldn't have a go at being the protagonist instead of all these others who are just reacting, at best. I'd be interested to read about why he wants to steal the thing that's key to the city's survival, why he thinks his life is worth the slow death of an entire city -- or even species, from the other stories? This is the last settlement, yes? Shy is getting there, too, though, so don't be discouraged!

Exile short 1 Like the sibling banter, but the first page and a half to two pages is very redundant. it's difficult for me to stay interested. Not digging the mom. She reminds me of my maternal grandmother, who I was told I was supposed to like like despite the fact that to child-me she looked scary, smelled bad, and apparently enjoyed taking people on guilt trips. I do not find her very sympathetic at all, and thus am having a tough time being invested in N caring so much about her. Ne is really channeling So from Foxfire here, from the answering the aggressive mother while looking at the floor, to the "of course this is what will happen" daydreams during the graduation ceremony, to responding to stress by crossing arms. It feels very So cosplaying Ne. Maybe after you've gotten a few more Ar stories under your belt and are fully back into space lesbians mode, come back to this one for a rewrite? The ending felt rushed. I'd rather spend more time on the ceremony, capture, and arrival than basically all the lead up. I also question whether the space-taurs section was necessary. You've got a decent ending with a potentially big punch if you play up the realizing-its-a-spaceship and the associated loss from that. Not a happy or hopeful one, but, well, this is not a happy or hopeful part of the timeline for the protagonist. Don't pull the punch it just 'cause it's a downer ending. Downer ending's are why short stories were invented! I also agree with @Robinski that this story is rather heavily relying on prior book knowledge to give it internal context, emotional impact, and emotional buy-in. I don't know how stand-alone this short collection is intended to be, however, so I can't say whether those things are in need of correction or not. I feel like it needs some amount more just to hang together better as a story, but then again, if the focus shifts to the interesting bits, maybe not? Bar short 2 Again, feeling a lot of Foxfire in this, though maybe less than before. I have less of a hard time believing cowed Ne in this situation than I did in the previous one. But still. Could use a pass for disconnecting intermingled protagonists. ", his face had chanced into incredulity." ...this had better be a typo... "on the lamb" -- lam. On the run from authority is lam. Young fuzzy ruminants are lambs. But to continue to quibble, "on the lam" is usually in reference to being on the run from the police, who actively want to chase you. It has the implication of flight (from pursuit). Ne is neither really running, nor being pursued. "Forced expatriation" might be another glib option. "Involuntary Journey year." "Ersatz Journey Youth." "Life of the solo diaspora." "Exploratory mission of one." I could probably keep going... :3 Yo appears to be acting rather randomly here. The argument in the alley is confusing me a lot. Part of it is the sentence structure, but part of it is that this is so very random. He's accosted her, harassed her, chased her down and belittled her and then offers her a job? That's like, borderline abusive? And what is the point of the poker game? "Interesting woman" also doesn't make a lot of sense here; I think that easter egg belongs in a Yo POV story. I feel like this is the confusing Yo from the early betas of bk3, before you'd really gotten a good grip on his character... I feel like this one is lacking bits, especially at the beginning. We're not given a clear idea of Ne's circumstances, or how much time has passed since the first story. Again, I think her dire situation needs to be emphasized, a lot, to have it make sense as to why she'd take a complete stranger up on his random job offer after a string of demonstrated abuses and assaults. This is, again, not a terribly happy end, but once again, it's not a terribly happy part of her story. it's getting there, but that's the spice surprise bonus for previous readers, the knowledge that things get better for her. Nick short 3 Yay, nick! Uhm... the rest of this? Is this stuff that's supposed to be in here? Are these finished? I don't know what kind of comments I can give on half-finished stories...?

You will get the submissions when they are released (sent to the mailing list address) by their respective authors on Monday. There were no submissions last week, so none arrived to be critiqued. Have you checked out the welcome thread? There are a couple sections called "How to Submit," "When to Submit," and "Submitting FAQs" that answer most questions about the submission process.

Just going to chime in with more of the same here. While these two are more engaging than your prologue characters, it's an incremental improvement. I still feel thrown in to things without much of a lifeline to hang on to, and very little in the way of signposts to orient myself to what's going on. I also agree that the way the protagonist panicked was not in keeping with a mature adult. As a character exploration it's a good start, but as a replacement chapter it still has a long way to go. Keep at it!

Oh goodness! I wrote up my response on Monday then forgot all about it! Sorry! I also agree that the swords strained credulity, but I think @Mandamon has covered just about every thing I would have brought up about them. I don't know enough about climbing to offer any suggestions, but the situation you have -- an ascent requiring teamwork with a time limit -- is a good one. It just needs a bit of tweaking. The TLDR for the rest of this is just "I agree with @Mandamon ," so I'm not sure how much help it'll be, but here we go... Thanks for keeping up the subs during these NaNo doldrums! To answer your question, I found the character to be very... average. It's not that the character is either good or bad, it's just that I've seen so many protagonists just like him. Young, male, strong, athletic, chivalrous, doing good to save everyone, rescuing the girl through grit and inborn natural ability; right down to the dead mother and the fridged nameless girl for him to, Anakin-like, kneel over and bewail at the end of the chapter, I've seen this character. I've seen him in everything from novels to TV commercials. So, can he carry a book? Oh, absolutely. He's done it before, and I'm sure he'll do it again. Will it be a book that I'm interested in reading? Not at all. There's nothing unique about him to pique my interest, to make me say to myself "all right, I've seen this trope before, but I want to know how he's different from the other heroes." And what D is is a trope, a stereotype. I don't even have a good TVTropes entry to link to because there's just... nothing to distinguish D from just being "the hero." The thing to remember here is that Tropes Are Not Inherently Bad. They're also not inherently GOOD, either. They're tools, and shorthand, and some are far more problematic than others. They can be deliciously subverted, or comfortingly met. They can be horrifically overused and terribly written, too. Any way they are used, though, the author should be aware of them in the work. If the tropes are desired in the work, then how is the author differentiating their characters and plot from all the others using the same archetypes? How is the author turning the work from just another Trope X tale into something uniquely their own? That's what readers of genre fiction look for in trope-heavy stories. They want to see how this story makes something new out of something familiar. Or at least, that's what I look for. I'm not sure D as a character is quite there yet, but keep at it! Drafts are drafts for a reason -- they're easy to modify and iterate. I really like Mandamon's suggestion of an older female protagonist -- that's not something that comes up very often in.. well, basically any fiction but especially fantasy, and I'm interested right off the bat on that! But in this submission specifically, I'm more interested in the dead girl, to be honest. Why did she think she could hack it here? How did she end up at the bottom of the pack? SHe's clearly barely passing, but has still made it through I think four trials now? That's compelling. What's keeping her going? It sounds like women don't usually sign up for these Trials for whatever reason, so what brought her here? How was she treated by the other contestants? From the way the hero is dismissive of and actually forgets her prior to her death, it sounds like she wasn't treated that well -- why was that? What made her the class pariah? There's a story I'm interested in. Especially once she wakes up at the bottom of that well or whatever. I don't think that long in the water would actually kill her, so all she'd really need is a good thump on the back... Imagine, waking up at the bottom of that well, left for dead, and then her climbing back out (or otherwise escaping) -- what would the Masters make of that? Accuse her of cheating? Be amazed? Call her undead and shoot her on sight? These are things I want to know!

Hello and welcome to Reading Excuses! Overall I found this piece difficult to get into. I never really got a clear idea of who these people were beyond their titles, which mean nothing to me at the moment. I have no frame of reference for the setting beyond a sentence or two at the beginning. I have nothing to latch onto with the characters, so it feels like I'm watching an unfamiliar video game, where there are no stakes and the violence doesn't matter. The premise seems interesting, and I don't have a problem starting a story in the middle of a siege (I think it's a siege? Or a coup? Or a terrorist attack? Maybe?), but for me, I would need more feeling from the characters to understand and sympathize with them enough to care about the subsequent fight. Here are soem as-I-go comments: I'm at the end of the first paragraph and It sounds a lot like a science fiction opening. I agree 'world' or 'land' would keep it more firmly in fantasy. ", nonetheless from the Master " I'm afraid I can't quite parse what this sentence is getting at. Is the secret from the Master, or the soldiers? if it's the soldiers, then how is the artifact a secret, since it's presumably now on display for a bunch of random guards and whoever else comes into this room (alcove? palace? temple?)? "Master of the Swifters" Seriously no joke, when I first read that I read it as "Swiffers," like the dustmop for hardwood floors, and it has made this entire section unintentionally hilarious. I'm sorry. XD Some grammar issues throughout -- pronoun agreement, capitalization, stuff like that -- but you said this was a first draft, so I won't get into them There's a decent amount of repetition throughout the piece as well. Repetition in words and phrases can sometimes help establish a rhythm in writing, but if it's unintentional, it can break immersion as repeated words stand out and draw attention to the words themselves instead of the story. "I guess you would prefer to die then" Yes. he has stated that he is willing to die multiple times. And does so again directly after this line. This feels like a bit of a "boy who cried wolf" issue here. He's said he's willing to die so many times that it starts to lose meaning, and he keeps going with it to the point that I'm wondering if he's a bit suicidal? Or if he doesn't know what those words mean? Okay, I know this is pedantic. It's pedantic and quibbling, and it's not an important part of the story, especially at first draft stage, but ... It's ... just bothering the heck out of me and sand and dust are not the same things! Argh, there! I said it. But they're not the same. At. All. Compositionally, size-wise, any of it! And if you want a sedimentary stone that breaks down into dust-sized particles, you're looking at a shale or a siltstone. Sandstone has some dust-sized particles in it acting as a glue for the bigger particles, but that's, like, the definition of a sandstone -- sedimentary rock containing bigger sand-size particles held together with smaller colloidal particles.... Sorry. Pedantic rant over. "into a pendant" That's one big pendant! Did he just happen to have a setting hanging around in just the right size for the secret artifact? I'm slightly confused by what part of the life-giving stone is secret? It's mentioned in the beginning that the "secret" is what he's willing to die for, but it seems like everyone knows all about this thing he's fighting to protect. "lunged again toward the Master" I'm unclear on the blocking in this fight. I don't really have a clear sense of the space it's happening in, and from the way the fight went to this point, I was under the impression that the other guy had already left the area when he lunged. "reached into the ground beside him" Who is doing what now? I don't understand what's going on in this whole paragraph. It seems like it would be an important paragraph, too, so I'm a bit frustrated. To answer your questions 1) Is it interesting -- to me, not as such. There's a good premise, but as it stands right now, I'm not involved in any of the characters, and there isn't enough about the location to make me want to read past the fight to get to the setting. This feels like a piece in a video game designed to show off game mechanics and finishing moves, and for me, that alone isn't enough to make me want to keep going. Plus, the POV character dies at the end of the chapter, so any sympathy I'd been building for him is lost and the only things getting me to the next chapter would be setting or plot. For me, neither of those are fleshed out enough to keep me interested. Sorry. 2) Promises -- well, assuming this isn't a stand-alone piece, my assumption would be the stone is returned by a doughty and ragtag band of heroes, with or without the eventual avenging of the death at the end of this chapter. The villain is presumably the one who stole the stone, who will likely lord it over everyone else, possibly with an evil speech of evil or two. I'm unclear what his motives are beyond "Evil!" ... Maybe he wants the entire planet to himself so he's causing genocide to do it? The ragtag band of young stalwarts will possibly find a new way to use magic and fix the broken world, too, but that might take a while. The first chapter can be one of the toughest to get right, so keep at it! I'm looking forward to seeing more from you.

Hello and welcome to Reading Excuses! Your formatting looks just fine, and I had no problems parsing your paragraphs, so no worries there from me. Overall, I found this to be a cute little story. It did not make me laugh, but I was amused. Humor can be difficult in writing, so the fact that this story was consistently amusing is pretty impressive! That said, I was not a fan of the footnotes. Opinions are split around here (as you can see between @Mandamon and myself), but I'm pretty firmly in the camp of "footnotes break narrative flow" -- I find they are very difficult to use effectively and don't often contain information worth the hard stop they cause me when I'm reading. I'm also going to disagree with Mandamon and @TKWade pretty firmly by saying I think you've sold the premise that this is a recorded bar conversation pretty well with the title and the conversational voice. The footnotes seem unnecessary as they are currently and any more framing would make the piece seem pedantic and just ruin its light and airy nature. Not all things need to explained baldly on the page, especially in a short piece. I think this works because of its short length. If it was a longer work, maybe I'd want more background on the recorder, but for this, to me it doesn't matter. The recorder is not active in any of the story itself, so I don't really care, nor do I need to know, what he's thinking or doing or why he's doing it. In general it could use some cleaning up, like all drafts, but it's a solid little piece. I liked the end where the story dissolves into an argument, but the transition felt a little abrupt. I don't know that I really need to know more about Paul or whoever he's telling the story to (because again, that doesn't seem to have any bearing on the story itself), but if there was a way to work the unraveling a bit more smoothly into the rest of the story, it might help. Here are some of my reactions as I go --Some grammar quibbles at the beginning. I'm on the fence about them in that they could go towards narrator voice or be too troublesome to keep, but the story seems to even out later on. -- "the littlest goat was traipsing " 1) yay traipsing! Great word. but 2) here and subsequently whenever a new goat gets mentioned, the story seems to assume we-the-readers have already been introduced to them and know about them, when in fact we have not. Just reading the story, I don't know there are only 3 goats, and that one is small, the other medium, and the third large. They are only introduced as "some goats." I know the fairy tale the story is pulling from, and it seems like it should be very well-known in general, but relying on the reader to have certain knowledge in order for the story to make sense can be problematic. --". I pay for it to be upkept." I don't know if this is a stylistic choice or not, but all the repetition of 'upkeep' is bothering me a bit. 'Maintenance,' 'repairs,' something else in place of one of them would really help smooth it out for me. -- that third goat has a rude mouth! o.o --"The big goat rushes him! " Here the story switches to present tense, where before it had all been past. The whole action scene is in present tense, then it switches into past once it is over. -- " Shut you're gob" -- your Anyway, I enjoyed this piece and look forward to seeing more things from you. Welcome!

And if you want more ways to connect, there's also a NaNo subreddit

IT BEGINS! Good luck everyone starting the crazy NaNo journey! I haven't come across as many beginning-NaNo motivational posts as I have in the past, but I'm sure they will be out there eventually. For now, here're a couple from Chuck Wendig's blog: Last year's about letting yourself be wrong And this guest post by Fonda Lee about the inverse of NaNo -- taking your time and being deliberate (Standard Wendig warning: he's very nsfw language-wise. Fantastically, creatively, but still nsfw) Okay, I lied. One more twitter thread by Max Gladstone about growing your unique mustache-novel

Last year's encouragement post from Chuck Wendig (who is always fantastically profane, so consider that a head's up for language) seems relevant here http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2016/10/25/a-cooling-mist-of-nanowrimo-flavored-novel-writing-advice/ You can do it!

Like Mandamon, I'm mostly left confused by this story. The biggest confusion for me is the ending. I get that the results indicate the hypothetical brother will have the disease, but what's that to her? From my quick read of wikipedia, she would still have a 50/50 shot of having the disease, regardless of if a hypothetical brother had the disease or not. If she's still in college or late high school, she's still a good 10 years below the youngest average starting age wiki mentions, and from the story it seems like she's asymptomatic, so I don't know why "people like her" would have issues finding a job.... I caught a few sentence structure issues and repeated words, but I think this story needs shoring up the way Mandamon suggested and some streamlining to get rid of loose information (do the male dad-clones really matter to this story?) before it gets to the point of being ready for line-level reads. It might be good to put in a bit of info about Huntington's if possible. I had to go out to wiki to even have a clue of what was going on. It's a solid start, keep at it! As I go... "Just like having a real sister" Hah, great pair of lines there. All right, slightly confused as to what the random letters have to do with smashing a vase and maids. It seems we're somewhere posh? From the first part I was picturing a lab or an average bedroom or something Wait, why can't she get a job? Is she a clone of the other one? Is this one of those "clones aren't really human" things? I'm having some difficulty telling the two of them apart. What does not having a job have to do with being a geneticist? is "geneticist" not a job? Does being a geneticist not require schooling here? I'm so confused. The dad's a mad scientist? One of the girls is a clone, right? What do the dad-clones have to do with anything? Are male clones different from female clones? I'm still having a bit of trouble telling them apart. Okay, I know what the letters are now, but I'm still a little unsure why they keep taking over her thoughts? I mean, I'd get it if she was some kind of programmed clone and just discovered her "use by" date, but I don't think that's the story ...? I'm confused. Why are inherited diseases a big deal? Shouldn't they know this already? I mean, if they have holo-DNA-games, and it's apparently easy to get DNA from anyone alive or dead, why haven't the girls already looked at their own DNA code?

Hahaha, nnnope! I enjoy the encouraging essays that come out during NaNo, and I'll cheer on anyone who's trying for it, but that kind of fast writing is waaaay beyond me.

I think the difference is usually a matter of degrees. When "internal consistency" becomes "I can't possibly start writing until absolutely everything makes sense!" is when you might need to start worrying. Here are a few more links about it: Link one and link two

Soo... NaNoWriMo is coming up. Anybody here going to try for it?

Slow week, so how about some links? I stumbled across this series of posts by Judith Tarr talking about writing horse-based aliens with more focus on research into actual horse biology and behavior. Besides being really cool, it got me thinking about research. Has actually doing the research on something you've been writing fundamentally changed the way you've thought about/written it? (Besides the alpha wolf fallacy I mean.) This post by Kate Elliot does a great job of both citing sources and deconstructing commonly held ideas about women in history. Has research ever led you down a rabbit hole as deep as Patricia and Mike Briggs' quest to cast real, working silver bullets? I love doing research, but when I'm doing it on my own I definitely use it as a way to put off actually having to write. Have you ever been struck dreaded "getting ready to get ready syndrome?"

Yay no more downer ending! Just kind of bouncing all over here.... I like the integration of the mentor's previous attempts much better now. It fits a lot more. I still feel like maybe the wrap-up runs a bit long, but I don't mind it as much, and it ends on a better emotional note. Agree with @TKWade that that section is now a sticking point for the introductory paragraph. But I would say that everything starting with "His first father" and going to the end of the first paragraph is... off kilter somehow? I don't know that it all needs to be cut, but I feel like some of the thoughts as presented there are maybe out of order now? The phrase TKWade pointed out is awkward anyway all on its own, so it's not helping things much. I am still somewhat confused by how the House of Potential works in relation to the other houses. You have whathisname Mr. math-and-grants describing it in detail now, but I still feel like what he says is being contradicted by what R thinks to himself while dealing with the machine. I've got a pretty clear idea of what R's doing in actuality; it's the larger, in-general descriptions and the comparisons to the other houses that're tripping me up. "the glow from an overheard light" overHEAD? Though, I mean, given it's a magical Symphony-powered light, it COULD be "overheard" too... :3 Also, hah! Snake guy signed his name to the wall he made! Like it was some kind of an assignment, I love it.

You have my hackjob on the interlude on another platform. :3 As I go "was taut from scabs" do not understand this. did Sorin scratch themselves bloody AND heal up overnight? Am I missing something from last chapter? I'm assuming the self-harm is worked into the other chapters more? This casual reference seems to imply it. I'd be more willing to believe Sorin reopened old scabs or scratched the arms to the point of raised weeping welts over the course of a night, unless there's something I'm missing here. "to kiss her, right there, on the glacier" Um, weren't they doing just that last chapter? Like, totally nomming on each other? Sure, there were plot reasons for it, but still. Smooching on the glacier has totes happened so I'm not quite getting why Sorin's all "the glacier is a strange place to be kissing".... ". They refuse to be left behind by mechanization" I'd think they'd refuse to let their families starve for the preservation of a glorified union, but that's just me. This lake section is reading much better now. There's more interesting conflict and the lake is better integrated here than in the previous chapter. There are still some rough places that could do with a pass to tighten them up, but it's a big improvement. Yeah, definitely going to need a pass for awkward sentence formation.... Overall It works better than the previous version by a long shot, but it still needs some clean up and tightening. Also I feel like it'll fit better with the new chapters than with the old ones I'm remembering, so that might be affecting things too.

Hmmm... I don't think so? I mean, I felt like it was pretty obvious he knew what he was assigning R to do. Maybe if there was less of the story of his attempt at the end? I felt like it ran a little long, the denouement, i mean. Or... maybe if he showed more appreciation for what R did? Because, like, we go from R being all "yeah i figured junk out and did stuff on my own and fixed things and want to be a mage now and yay!" to hissyface going "*sad sigh* Well at least you didn't kill the poor thing. Maybe someone else will be smarter than you or I when it comes back." and then it flops back to R "Well I guess there's a beer story outta all this. maybe I should be pulling turnips after all or whatever" and that's kind of a sad, defeated place to be, especially after the triumph of figuring out the problem. Maybe? [ETA:] Or, like, maybe, more emphasis on the cyclical nature of the problem? like with older senators or whatever being like "dude I thought you fixed this thing why does it always come up during an election" or whatever? Or with some kinda apprentice graffiti hints scratched into the walls from all the frosh who've tried to lick this problem once and for all? something to show it's a longrunning recurrent problem? I mean, if the cyclical thing is important, maybe?

Hello and welcome. Thank you for submitting one with the double spaces! TKWade beat me to the reminder. Yes it is in the rules, and it is really super helpful for people like me that have some difficulties reading things on the screen. In general: i want to say that this is a well-written story. The grammar is solid, the characters are mostly believable and the main character's personality really shines through. As I go: Moving on to the story, I have to admit that present tense is not my favorite way to read a story, bit it works with the narrow, personal focus in this one here. There are several paragraphs, especially at the beginning here, that kind of loop back around on themselves. They're in the format like "I said A. Therefore B and C. Which is why I said A." People talk like that a lot, but writing is usually expected to be more linear. Ah, I see a Perfect Girlfriend here, I bet this collection of idealized qualities on a female-shaped pedestal is marked for some horrible end, to occur before or during the timeframe in question... (note from future me: ha! called it!) "When the Devil first came to me, I'd asked him" This really sounds like he's asking the Devil to teach him prayers... So... he's never been on the elevator in his own apartment before? Is that a phobia of some kind? I am confused. Also, I did not really get "avoidance of all reflective surfaces" from the story. I think that needs to be played up more if it's an important beat. I don't really have a problem with the cross or the park one way or the other. People need to get out and walk off stress, and parks have odd statuary. I've certainly gone walking around the block during insomnia attacks at half-past too dang late at night before. Though the bum did seem a bit random. I think the encounter there was the roughest part of the story for me. To get to the questions Yes, the fantasy element is "weak," but I don't think its weakness is a reason to change the plot around. I wouldn't call this story a "fantasy story" based on the elements within it, however. Plain fiction, maybe. Magical realism, maybe. Surrealism, maybe. Not fantasy. That would affect where to market it, but not whether or not to hang a plot on the elements in question. If it was a longer work, I'd expect a little bit more, maybe some kind of eventual commitment to whether or not the thing was his survivor's guilt talking or an actual crossroads deal, but here, in this short format, I don't think it's really necessary to know the whys and the hows of the mechanic by which he is still alive. Suze... so, yeah. What @kais said. She's fridged, and that's not good. She's barely a character, more just a collection of idealized notions for the main character to moon over. If i'm supposed to feel... anything at her death beyond the satisfaction that comes with calling a plot reveal before it happens, there's not enough of a person there to engender it. This also ties in to what I feel is the lack of resolution in the story. The story doesn't resolve so much as simply stop. What's the purpose here? Why did we spend this time with the main character? There's not condescending to your readers, and there's being purposely obtuse and leaving things unresolved. An ending that hammers home that it was the main character's attempted suicide that killed his love would go a long way to both giving the story some kind of resolution and not make it feel like it's being intentionally obtuse or simply random. As I said above, I don't think it needs more magic or godly intervention so much as a bit of streamlining and a real ending. It wouldn't help the fridging a whole lot, but if you're gonna axe a chick that's barely a character like this, at least use the death to give the story a good resolution.

Definite improvement! Most of what I'm noticing now is sort of version mis-match? Like bits that remind me of v1 that don't quite jive with what's going on in v2.... "Now he wished he was back home" like this one. Now that the open is more concrete, this is striking me as vague. It SOUNDS like he's saying he'd rather be home pulling spines (v1), but I think it's supposed to be him wondering what's the point of being in the nether since he can do manual labor just as well at home. Yes? Maybe? But it could also be plain homesickness, since he's name-checked all 3 of his parents in the span of a sentence? "We hear how energy moves...This, it is not as limiting" So, this section seems to me to imply that Potential has SOME perception of the other houses' stuff, yes? But then there're several places where it's mentioned that they can't hear any other symphonies at all period and like maybe use math to get around that, and then there're another couple parts that seem to imply all mage-people can at least see other magics' colors if not hear them outright, and I guess i'm a little confused? The difference between his own notes and the ones he harvests from the environment is clearer, at least. And I like that he feels consequences of using his own now too. "and see what the Snakey was thinking" This makes me think Rey's telepathic. >_>;; I understand wanting to see the face of who you're talking to, but if feels odd to say that makes one able to know what the other person is thinking... "dry out the little hairs that covered his fingers" How does he grip anything?? >_>;; ", evener, " More even? Or is this more dialect? "ward of pure energy around the machine" So, in v1 he shielded the machine, but in this version he was trying to cover the hole, wasn't he? Earlier in that same sentence he anchored the spell to the floor under the hole, yes? And then it's not addressed directly again so i'm confused.... "back on the horn " this is a specifically telephone-related idiom, I thought. It sounds odd to me here. Like, he has telephones where he's from? "discover a solution in time" I thought that's what he just did? Since he changed the frequency, and it seemed permanent.... wouldn't that fix the problem? I mean, ignoring evolution, which would take at least one more iteration, wouldn't it? Since the baby critters wouldn't know to evolve until they tried the higher-frequency juice? So he's bought them like 60 to 100 years at least? Also, I agree with @kais here, in that the extended story kind of knocks the knees out of the momentum of the end here. Kind of turns a success into a downer ending, y'know? I don't mind the mentor character knowing the creature and having history with it, but I don't know that I need the how or the why behind the mentor know that stuff right at the end? Hah, maybe if people ask, it could be turned into anther short story!

Is this the obligatory "I agree with @Mandamon?" Because I do. This is much improved. I have a better idea of where they are located, and how they are moving. It's a lot more interesting than before as well. As I go: "glacier looked more like a snowy landscape" well, yes. It would, wouldnt it? being a glacier? this just seems a bit redundant Thank you for the serac definition. I am still unclear on why Sa is shepherding them through the glacier. He didn't have a terribly good reason for escorting them out of the village, either, and I'm more unclear as to why he's still hanging around helping them out. (Note from future me: I see he sort of explains it maybe? I don't know if this uncertainty is really working for him right here at this point, though.) It does seem a little random for Sa to call out M about the lake, unless we're missing some part earlier (not in an interlude) where M somehow indicates it's well known that she's obsessed with it. Because, I thought I remembered last chapter M being worried about getting to the negotiations on time? Presumably someone who cared about meeting deadlines wouldn't be inclined to make costly side-trips on the way to their destination, yes? Or is he just being a jerk? "who know and love me instead of you?" While I like the increased motivation, I am confused. They're on a glacier, yes, but Sa just stated earlier he was avoiding all towns. In fact, the only other person with him when he says this line is the literal definition of "loves So and not Sa" and as far as I know, the witch shenanigans kept him from having a discussion with So in the town, so...Why is he out here with them again? "we were on the opposite bank" -- Of a thing that's little more than a puddle? Is this more symbolic than practical? I'm a bit confused. Sa hanging around the edges of this makeout session feels weird and a little icky. Voyeuristic? Sleazy? Skeevy? Something? I could see him being angry about the delay, and maybe the obvious attempt at subterfuge, but just watching? >_>;;; "She likes curly hair.” -- it's a good line, but is it a little flippant for So? I could really have done with description of the lake a bit earlier so I didn't keep thinking it was a puddle like the ones So mentioned right before they arrived at it. This interest in magic also strikes me as a bit out of character for So, unless things have changed significantly and So no longer has a pathological fear of it. "Why wouldn’t magic just leave me alone?" well... this time you kind of caused this, So.... The magic WAS leaving you alone, until you poked it... "This isn’t a political game." ...Except that's kinda exactly what it is? The whole things is basically a textbook example of a political power play.... even without foreknowledge.... >_>;;; "throw you into a serac." Now that serac has been defined, how does one get thrown into a giant spike of ice? Is M threatening to impale him? Keep it up!

Substitutes don't get superlatives.

Overall, it's a good start, but like your one last week, I got hung up on the tech. As I go: I am slightly confused by the location. On the way in, M is feeling claustrophobic about skyscrapers (which is a good line, btw! Very evocative), but the bulk of the story is set in what feels like is a send-up of suburbia. (Aside: they can't be THAT poorly off financially if they can afford a house with a yard close enough to downtown proper to feel overshadowed by skyscrapers!). Once again, I think this day-after-tomorrow story is suffering from not-enough-future. Everything the "cell drone" is described as doing a regular iPhone already does (including the household tasks -- I keep telling my friend he's going to create Skynet with all the household appliances he has linked to his phone). "default programming" -- I feel like this would be a superhuge deal, letting military-grade programming out to the general public. It's not *that* hard to run a wipe delete on things before letting them out... In fact, I just looked up Illinois' policy on recycling surplus electronics and it states a 3-pass wipe delete as a minimum for data storage devices, and for resold desktop computers to have their hard drives removed and outright destroyed/recycled. I can't imagine the procedures for decommissioning missile-firing attack drones would be any less rigorous... "the internet" -- I'm confused. Even if these drones did have default programming left in some kind of actionable form on them, I don't understand how the pictures got to a publicly-accessible place on the internet that also had an image search function and public commentary. Theoretically, wouldn't government-default programming upload to a government-default server? Even presuming it uploaded to a private or consumer location, who is opening the database to the public? Who is paying for bandwidth for all these people to visit and view images? Who wrote the code to change an image database into a website and implement public commenting? Why hasn't this site been taken down, like, immediately from privacy violation complaints? Websites don't just generate themselves, comment widgets are fairly complicated, and image searching is even now annoyingly difficult (despite what TV tells us). Again, even touch-sensitive, internet-connected tables are existing tech, and that combined with the other already-existing technology makes this instant-upload-to-a-public-website-that-is-somehow-easily-searchable-down-to-an-otherwise-private-individual idea a very hard sell for me. Moving on... I feel like a lot of the tropes going on here are kind of... dated? Like the vaguely Stepford neighborhood. The book the trope is named after came out in the '70s and it just feels a little old to be played straight as it is here. Are people really still afraid of suburban uniformity? The neighbors also feel a little Stepford-ish, but mostly remind me of '80s-era yuppies. Again, if they're supposed to be hipsters, I think the tech misses the mark a bit (also, aren't hipsters by definition around more urban centers, not the suburbs?). I feel like the husband is hewing very close to a sitcom-style incompetent husband, with all the issues that come with that stereotype (it's not fair to men or women). @kais has hit on the most problematic of the ones in the story here, so i won't rehash them. To me, the husband himself looks dim and slightly contemptuous of his wife, constantly pooh-poohing her fears and only doing things to humor her. The fact that he only gets involved when he reads internet commentary disparaging his wife feels especially cringeworthy to me. I'm wondering a little bit what she sees in him (also, thinking about my farming cousins just now, why didn't she just shoot the darn drones? I'm decently sure they'd just shoot it, if they were in a similar situation...). I did laugh at the end with Arnie, that's some good build up and payoff with him, but then I wondered at the implication that Arnie still had weaponry. Wasn't he remade into a crop duster? How can he terrorize camera drone yuppie stepford neighbors into submission with duster tanks? Again, the setup is good, M is a good and interesting character, but the tech needs a decent amount of work, and I felt like the husband is a bit of a fixer-upper as well.

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot to add to this beyond what @kais and @Mandamon have already said. It's definitely better, but it definitely has a ways to go. For my part, I'd like a little more grounding on why W needs to use two intermediaries (one of them apparently disposable) in order to get the contraband magical item to the priest. Purple Cape clearly knows how the whole job is set up, and that the person she's interacting with is a patsy. Why the extra steps? My second nitpick (other than those already mentioned) was the bit of POV shift where we suddenly are inside the heads of the thrill seekers attending the burning. One, it's a weird POV shift. Is R suddenly psychic? Two, additionally and unfortunately, it doesn't take a depraved person to watch and even enjoy such spectacles, it only requires habituation and being inured to the atrocity. Hangings in England in the 1500s through the 1800s were like festival days or modern sporting events, with people bringing their sweethearts, having picnic lunches, and generally partying. If this government regularly held public executions and isn't crazy oppressive to everyone in general including their followers (which doesn't seem like what this is?), I would expect a more jovial atmosphere, or at the very least more interaction between the crowd and the priest, and the crowd and R (it's super short notice, so I imagine the food vendors and souvenir sellers would be put out?). If you wanted to play up how rigged this system is, maybe it *is* a scheduled hanging day and R just doesn't realize he's the main event! I did enjoy the ending much better. It's well set up for the next chapter at that point. Also, welcome @ICanDream ! Have you read @Silk 's wonderful introductory post? It explains how this online writers' group works. You'll need to send a private message to @Silk and @Robinski (Silk is our lovely mod who is away traveling currently, and @Robinski is our mailing list manager pro tem) to get on the mailing list, and make at least one critique post before submitting work. Once you're on the mailing list, new submissions for critique go out on Mondays, usually. If you'd like to critique on this week's submissions, you'll need to contact the authors directly. As @TKWade mentioned, sometimes the group mailings can get picked up by spam filters, so be sure to check your spam or junk folder if you're on the list but haven't received any emails.