Aminar

I would like to point out, overlapped cadmium bendalloy bubbles in game create seriously cool special effects. I've DM'd for the rpg twice now, and I really like it. Plus this one is more fun to play as the DM than a player. My mistborn may lose most of the time, but they do fun stuff.

I agree, it's jarring. That's why Iraisa's perspective is the prologue. If it still feels jarring after the very beginning of chapter 3/End of Chapter 2. I'll consider it a major problem. Until then I ask it be given time. As far as prologues giving a sense of the book/ a promise. I'm trying to do that. There's an awful lot of dimensional movement throughout the book and the prologue is meant to set that up as a possibility early on so it is foreshadowed later. If it doesn't work like I want though, I'll have to change something.

I read this book twice when I was young, mid to late 90's). I got it from the Brown County WI library. No matter how hard I try the title and author escape me. I don't remember a ton, but the book was very interesting. The main character is some kind of mountain guide. Very early in the story he falls off a cliff and is stabbed by an icicle. This icicle however is special. It is made up of three kinds of water. One from each of the three interconnected lands separated by mountains. From what I remember the main character was from a standard medieval style fantasy world. No magic or anything special though. The second land is basically hell, a ream filled with demons and the like. The last one is a fairyland of some type. The magic icicle uses up half of itself to revive the main character, and revives the rest of him later. Anybody ever read this? Know its name? Have it? I've been looking FOREVER! Thanks.

I'll bet it's Elhokar. I just put a couple things together on this. Point A: His shardplate gems were drained that one time, in the fight with the Hugenormous crab. Point B: His paranoia's cause. He's been positive several times that something is watching him. Shallan has the same thing. She has Truthspren that watch her. Kaladin has Sil. I think that Elhokar has some kind of spren watching him. he can tell its there but it's undetectable to normal folk. Derp. Can't be. Mistook herald for person who could use magic for a second. Been a long day. NM

Quick note. I'm going late cretaceous, but I'm not going into a ton of detail on any of the dinosaurs to keep them simple. Anything like a raptor is a raptor with a size. Same for Tyrannosorids and everything else. Place doesn't especially apply, my story isn't on Earth, just a world with identical biology, like most high fantasy. That keeps things a bit more open, especially given the giant continent I have everything happening on. In addition the dinosaurs themselves are psuedomagical. They've been trapped in a magical dimension for 67 million years or so. That has twisted their biology to match the aesthetics. basically I'm too anal about the dinosaurs to ever get anything done with them, so I chose to cheat. I just wrote a scene with Quetzalcoatlus in my prequel short story a few minutes ago, although they're just being referred to as giant pteranodon's for simplicities sake. I have a couple fun references though. One of the characters obtains a Dawndrako Kanzai later and I couldn't help but throw in the name considering he took it from the dimension where it is always dawn. I greatly enjoy having somebody to dinosaur geek with me though as I've done a ton of research to keep my cheating acceptable.

Awesome, I now have somebody to pester for cool dinosaurs.(If you Don't mind of course.) I'm working on an Urban Fantasy setting where the dinosaurs were preserved (mostly) in an extradimensional bubble, along with a pair of prehistoric societies that hate eachother.

Yeah. That said, If you just jopined the group I have a prologue that cuts down on the first few pages effect quite a bit. But yeah, I'm likely to cut some of this chapter if not all. I still needed to write it and submit it though.

What are you using to read it? I'm not gettig that at all.

Is it just that its super spaced out?

Is there a better way to show flawed and biggoted narrators then have them say things that are quite different? I haven't found a better way. And honestly Aldriu is based on places like Jamaica and Haiti where everything not full of tourists is poverty stricken and unsafe. Your assuming the two polar opposites can't exist in the same place when most of the third world is exactly as I just described.

Well, here goes chapter 1. I hope it goes over well. I'll probably end up cutting the second part of it and working most of the information in elsewhere.

Well done sir. Well done. I really liked this. It's the first thing I've read for this group that really has gotten me going and caring. The story is darker than I would generally read, but I'm very impressed. You've raised a few questions I feel Coil would have answered somewhere in his thoughts. Specifically, does he have the plague too? It doesn't seem like it but a line saying he didn't somewhere would be helpful. Your references to human immortality scare me. As do some of the timeline bits. Maybe a reference to the fact immortality was lost within their dad's lifetime for clarification. Otherwise I don't have much. I'd like more though.

As soon as i finish rewriting chapter 1... I sucked so bad when I started this story...

It's not an alien planet. It isn't earth, but it is earthlike in the same way most fantasy is. That gets explained later. (And I think earlier in the thread.) It's a parallel dimension(a quirk of the magic system) that was created as a fallout shelter to avoid the meteor that drove the dinosaurs to extinction, although that meteor was technically a tiny moon yanked out of orbit to end a war-basically the nuke everything option- The moon was yanked out of orbit by the same people that made the portals to the other dimensions. On the common usage bits. I, as the writer, am translating this from the thought processes of the characters into something understandable by humans. I've never liked keeping measurement different unless the description is self evident. For instance if I said Iraisa is 5 foot 2 you get the idea she's short. If I say she's 16 belta's tall you have no idea what I'm talking about. If I do everything comparatively then distance characters run is confusing. If I say she's 2 steps tall you can work it out, That comes to about 5 feet. All in all though keeping measurements in the standard notations of the reader makes more sense.(To me) I always get annoyed by using alternate words that mean the same thing too. I've heard time done in Bell's. Odds are she thinks of everything in shifts(Those being an hour and a half long). I translated that in a way the reader will understand easily. And as an Urban Fantasy that is going to be far more comfortable later. Grumble I'm argueing. Please don't argue back. I'm really just explaining my thought process on writing.

I get into it a little around 75k words in... The answer is just complicated and beyond character knowledge.

You ever have that nagging thought you knew you couldn't put in. You resisted it over and over again, but somehow it slipped in. This is one of those. I was going to try to explain the sun shifting bit. Then I realized that metaphysics are just that, Meta. They wouldn't do anything if I explained them in the story itself and might skew your read on things. I'll leave it at this. Belief is not a logical power source, thus its workings often seem illogical, and in character the odds of anybody ever figuring out how belief powers things are low. I can think of one character that knows and he's bound by oath never to let that information slip. All you ever see of him are journal entries.

I so want to defend Shadowmarch here, but I just can't. The love story was exactly what you say it is. But how much of falling in love is a mental thing built upon your thoughts of a person rather than time you spend around them. I'd say a whole lot of it is. The conjunction of two people falling in love like that is unlikely, but it happens, and it can be just as true as any other kind. If you puzzle over a person long enough you will start to care for or despise someone. A big part of love forming is the mystery bits. I wouldn't call it cheap. I would honestly call it more realistic in many ways.

I'd like to submit too if possible.

Well, not Male Tineyes anyway.

I was cynical once. Then I started working non-profit and seeing how hard people work just to help a few kids for minimum wage. How many nearly broke families donate what extra money they have because we charge next to nothing for our services. How many well to do people throw their energy into helping us. There is a whole lot more good intentions in the world than bad. We're just not capable of understanding the scope of our actions. If you examine Martin's work that's almost always the message too. I think that's what Brandon is getting at. Look at book 2. It's all about the consequences of book 1. Consequences I could see from a mile off, but they mattered anyway. They were a good story to tell. I dunno. I like to think of myself as a good person. I'm an idealist, but I only hold myself to those ideals because frankly not everyone was given as much as me. I use my advantages to help people. I really empathized with Elend. He felt like me. To have myself called unrealistic feels almost personal. Don't take it the wrong way. I heavily blame my personality on deriving my moral code from reading about too many heroes. They're my inspiration. If all fantasy were like ASoIaF I wouldn't be me. I'd be someone else and probably not someone I like as much as myself.

I live in the town where Pat Rothfuss lives. Every time he teaches a class at the local university I work when it happens so I can't audit it. Anger face. Love his books though, and there's nothing quite like looking out the window of the Korean place and knowing that the Hobo-looking guy walking by is one of your personal heroes.

I've got to be a little cautious; this book is kind of important to me. Sending the email now.

In the other topic you said you were booted from the E-mail list. What do you mean by that?

I suppose making the reasoning a little more sound might work, but I can see it ruining the tension. I honestly would have probably acted very similarly to how Lisu did, but I'm often a little on the arrogant side. A couple weeks ago at work I was using a ladder. I set the ladder up. I took my tablet and phone out of my pocket because I was worried the ladder might fall, but instead of fixing the ladder I climbed up it. I was in fact right, the ladder wasn't secure. It scraped down the wall twenty feet with me at the top. I sprained my wrist out of the deal. Lisu's decision feels similar to that.

I didn't really feel her actions were unjustified. She was worried that her sister might get taken too. Basically, she needed to find out what was going on before just running away. This was a family thing. Now, I'm worried her actions will have repercussions on her family... Or more specifically it would feel unrealistic if there weren't.