Aminar

Brandon sets a very different tone than Martin. You're never going to get Martin's level of Gritty realism out of Brandon's books. In Brandon's worlds idealists succeed(To an extent). We're along for the ride to find out why and how. (That may be colored by his backstory, one of perseverance toward a dream in direct opposition to what society would have him do.) In reality war breaks some idealists and lets others succeed. No one path or mindset is right for everything, in life or in literature. Personally, while Martin is far more realistic, I prefer Brandon. He's much more fun and interesting to read. I don't hate the world when I finish his books.

This was well done. There were a few typos. Words missing letters and the like. You'll catch those and I've never read a novel that didn't have a few that made it all the way to publication. You've got everything well thought out and possibly the largest original magic system I've ever seen.(That can be good and bad, I'll get to that.) Watch your sentence starts for repetition. Watch for improper/excessive us of conjunctions. That kind of stuff was present, but not by alot. Just watch for it when you're revising. My biggest problem was your names. Especially the ones involving your magic system. There are going to be half a zillion of the things and there is very little obvious logic behind the names. Hersadamejji will be my example. Mejji is obviously your variant on magi. That's good. What does Hersada mean? As far as I can tell-Nothing. I'm likely wrong. You probably have a well thought out logic there, but I'm never going to be able to keep all of you magic names straight and I can name every single Pokemon.(Did it at work one day to impress the kids at the after school center, took hours.) I would try finding something a little easier. I know it sounds cheesy, but Ivymejj sounds cool and is obvious. As far as Commettsi, Dommettsi and the like go; those were good, but a little syllable heavy for something being used all the time. Another thing. You have too many names with this structure. *i***** Lisu, Jiska, Vizza, Crissa, Mik. That's too many for one chapter. It's bordering on too many for one book. Start some names with Vowels. Use other vowels as a second letter. Use vowel combinations. Vary it up. Last thing. I was this " close to not reading your sample because the start was irritating. There was a debate going on about something I had no clue about. It struck me as maid and butler dialogue. It wasn't interesting. There was no hook. Don't start the novel with it. Use it if you can't find a better intro to the magic system, but don't use it as a hook. , even if its just the hook for a plotline, find another way to start that section... Like I said, very good. I had to get pretty nitpicky on this one.

I agree with the Op to an extent. Their relationship feels passionless during book 2. That makes sense though, its a rough spot inthrir relationship. The lack of passion builds tension for the Sane plotline.

Thanks Charles. I'm not arguing, just explaining some things that get explained over the course of what I have done, and what I have yet to do as long as it isn't too spoilery. Mainly because if you know what's going on you can tell me if it still doesn't work. My next entries will unfortunately not be as good as this one. I wrote my prologue a month ago, and the first chapter 11 months ago. Since then I've gotten much better. <> implies scripting. Finding a good way to differentiate the silent communication from speech was difficult. In the short story I'm writing that involves 0 spoken communication I have three different annotations. >text> for Hamara, <text< for Valjeta, and (word, word, word.) for a communication style akin to morse code. I went with the arrows to convey directional movement and to reference animorphs.-It seems I need to explain Hamara speech better, but I'll leave that for now as it isn't incredibly important until much much later- The problems you have are all quite accurate, but play into my expectations. The Hamara's dimension is artificial. Everything you mentioned deals with that artificiality. The sun darts across the sky because The Hamara are only around for the last hour and a half of daylight in any given day that their dimension has. Thus the sun moves backwards an hour and half every hour and a half. I used the word dart because the human mind draws that motion connection when things instantly move a short amount of space. The Hamara dimensions exists as if it were in the late cretacious period because that was when the dimension was created(specifically to avoid the mass extinction of the dinosaurs caused by a meteor a pair of mages summoned to end the war between the Hamara and Valjeta. I'm writing that story now too.)-this deals with the complexity of my world building and require explanations beyond the scope of Iraisa's knowledge.- This story is an urban fantasy(not on earth though, just with earth biology because I'm not ready for that level of world creation.). That isn't evident in the prologue at all, because 80% of the story takes place in "the real world" meaning the dimension all the little pocket dimensions that surround it originate from. They pop into the Hamara world, The Valjeta world(Polar opposite of the Hamara. Come in sky blue, white, and burgandy. 1984 style society, etc.) and The dimension where the deity pantheon three of my main characters follow dwell. In addition, I have a race that capitalizes on the ability to create pocket dimensions fairly easily. This is my only real chance to develop the Hamara until close to the end of the book.-More on world building complexity but outside the scope of what I'll be explaining any time soon in book.- The bit with the psychic communication is something that I've only half explained 3/4ths of the way through the book. Those particular characters show up more, mainly in the background due to the level of power available to them.-Meaning that is a plot point. I know what's going on with it and I like that you asked the right questions.- The hooting is talking, but Iraisa has no concept of verbal speech. Or skin tone as a color. Implying that is really hard, suggestions welcome. On the plus side, I cheat to resolve that problem later, or more specifically one of the characters cheats badly. I'll try to forshadow the Tyrannosaur a little. He does kind of come out of nowhere. Iraisa's just too flustered to have noticed it. There's so much going on there. I want to spoil things for you, because I can answer your questions, I just can't fit all of it while holding tension. Now the apology. I'm a super newbie writer. This is my first book. I started it just over a year ago. I have 0 formal training. I do have years of reading exp, some good connections, and more creativity than I can handle without writing or some other creative vice-all of which are expensive.(Magic, warhammer, etc.) I have to go write now. Thanks so much. I'm glad everyone that commented liked my prologue. I'll send out chapter 1 some week soon. Hopefully it goes over well, but it is rough.

Which sentences? I have a problem with that and would love to fix it. The problem with this character is that by nature her race is hideously complex to describe quickly. That's a terrible flaw, but I'm unwilling to ditch something because its coolness is hard to work with. I'll look into the priestess bit. She is a priestess, but given the society that doesn't mean much. And thanks for the positive reviews. They make me want to write more.

I haven't read any of the earlier stuff. That colors this badly, in that I have no idea whats going on. That said, all in all this chapter does a decent job of catching my attention. From what I've noticed you have great ideas, a solid character, good side characters and the like, but sloppy prose. You use words that are similar to close to each other, overuse pronouns, etc. This is all something that can be edited easily, and something that is both fine and normal in a rough draft. One of the reasons I took forever to start writing was because I'm super anal about my prose. I'll spend half an hour trying to find a why to word a sentence so that it doesn't start with the same word as the last one. It slows things down. You need to be careful about pronouns and sentence subjects too. Occasionally they get confused. Your phrasing is occasionally awkward as well. That said, I liked what I read. It's just an early draft. Last thing, and this might be more personal preference than anything else, I hate the word AND. It gets overused. I find that quite often semicolons work better; splitting the sentence works well when qualifying a point where too many ands feels awkward. Sometimes its even necessary to just use two sentences instead too. My 112,538 word work in progress averages 1.8 semicolons per page and 9 ands, but and is the second most used word in almost any document. The is the most common, and first person books will often have more uses of the word I. But and is used alot. Trying not to use it too much is important. (To cget your word density go here, it is super handy. http://rainbow.arch.scriptmania.com/tools/word_counter.html)

I really enjoyed this. It was a little rough at points, but nothing that can't be fixed with some editing. I did feel the environment needed a little more description. The materials that things are made of. What the characters look like. You're packing a lot of unique races and things into the prologue though, making that description a chore. Finding the happy medium might be difficult. The biggest issue I had is super nit-picky but important. Try to avoid repetitive word use, especially at the start of sentences. You had a lot of spots where you started two to four sentences in a row with he. It's awkward to read. Otherwise your doing great. I couldn't like the viewpoint character much, but that's not because he was badly done. He was a little over-emotionless, but well defined.

I just finished chapter one. I'll be doing chapter two later if I find significant differences. I'll start this by saying that the first section may have contained some of the information I feel I'm missing. Now The good things. Creativity. You have it in spades. That means, in short, that you can write. Writing is all about ideas. Dialogue. Your dialogue blows mine out of the water. It's good, it flows. The characters have their own voices. The bad is going to be long, but none of it is unfixable by any means. First off, you need to pay attention to the clarity of your work. There were a few dozen points where I couldn't tell who was doing what, you didn't make that clear. A quick runthrough making sure each sentences subject is clear will help a ton. You had a couple times where certain words were used too many times in a section, or were used to start sentences three or four times in a row. Try to avoid that as much as possible. From there, I felt like I was missing a lot of information about the world and characters, both physical and lorewise. I was in a white box, in a strange world with faeries that suddenly grow beaks while being attractive. The characters weren't described quickly enough for my taste. In the birdbeak fairy's case, the beak, being the oddest part about her, should be the first thing described. Basically, you need more physical description worked into your writing. Set the scene before you start the dialogue. When a character comes onto the scene work in just a couple quick physical descriptors right away. I've heard three things. Fit those in for every character. Yes it'll slow down the stories motion, but as a writer your perceptions of this are skewed. Readers read faster than we type. The last big thing. Some of your sentences are really awkward. You were obviously having trouble finding a way to get what you wanted on the paper. In my experience that's when you make the description two sentences, not one. Adding a sentence gives you breathing room. Now for my biggest suggestion. Read your stuff out loud. With inflection and voices. It helps you notice where things are off. You would be amazed how much a good readaloud can help editing. Also, you may want to think about renaming some of your characters. Most of their names were very pretty, but they were awkward and hard to keep straight. Having two main characters with similar sounding A names gets awkward. Cerstanthany is way too long. Give her an easy nickname or change it to something pronounceable and memorable. It's very pretty, but it is just too big and awkward for a novel. In summation, I like whats going on a lot. Your just not providing enough information for me to build a good picture. Part of this may be from missing the first section. I don't know. What I do know is that I feel like I'm being too harsh. Keep writing. Don't let me get you down. We all have a ton of learning to do on the subject. This group is all about helping with that learning. Lastly, the way I critique these is to convert them to .mobi files and use my Kindle's ereader program to read them. If you have a smartphone or tablet with the kindle program you'll be able to see my exact notes if you would like.

Thanks for letting me into the group and allowing me to submit this. I hope you like it. I'm going to try to refrain from arguing in here, I have a tendency to want to explain myself,so if you have any direct questions please post them obviously, otherwise I'm likely going to work very hard not to respond. Thanks Aminar

This thread is for introductions. Give us just a little bit of backstory. Why you write. Maybe a favorite book or two not by one of the authors on this site.(We'll assume we all love them.) What you do. A quick who's who if you will. I'm Aminar. If you work hard enough I'm sure you can find my real name on the internet somewhere. If your from the Wisconsin Con-scene you may very well know me. I'm on the Board of Directors for Daisho Con. We have Pat Rothfuss and Scott Lynch every year. If that weren't important to one of my questions I wouldn't have put it, but Pat Rothfuss is the reason I write. I met him before the first Daisho Con, he lives in the area and agreed to come to our convention. pon meeting him I realized that I did in fact want to be a writer, maybe even an author if I got lucky enough. I bounced a lot of ideas around before I started my current project, an Urban Fantasy Novel set in a world of my creation, not Earth. This lets me make up a whole slew of cool beasties, peoples, and cultures; something Urban Fantasy always seems to lack. As of this post I'm 111,111(Great stopping point, hey) words into my rough draft, aiming for 150,000. It needs lots of work. My favorite book is War of the Flowers by Tad Williams. This is closely followed by Jurassic Park, The Dresden Files, The Kingkiller Chronicles, and Lies of Locke Lamora(and The Way of Kings, but we all knew that already right.) Now, in the immortal words of a blue caterpillar, Who are you?

The fact truth spren are invisible is ironic enough where I can see them erasing themselves.

I'm too old to have found Sanderson First, not that I'm all that old, but I've been reading adult fantasy since well before Brandon was published. I was bound to find The Wheel of Time First. That said, I heard Sanderson was picking up the series, read The Gathering Storm and immediately felt it revived a series that had been SEVERELY lacking for several books(The ending of Book 9 and 11 aside.) When I had some time I picked up Elantris. I was quite disappointed. I didn't much like it. Then I started my own writing, heard The Way of Kings was awesome from pat Rothfuss, came across Sanderson's law, and decided to give Brandon another try. I read Mistborn and enjoyed the first book a ton. The second book didn't really catch my attention very well although that might have been the fact I read it way too slowly because I was working a ton, writing a ton, and really only managed a few pages a day. The third book sold me completely. Then I devoured The Way of Kings. Kaladin did something I thought impossible. I found a character I like more than Mat Cauthon that isn't Harry Dresden. Eventually I found myself here looking up info on the Mistborn RPG, which is great.

Is that an invitation? I'll take it if I can. Lastly is there a place I should introduce myself? Should I include any basic info on the submission such as genre? Thanks

I doubt she has an actual coppermind. The shards that power them are too far away unless Sazed is running around Roshar now, and that would add all sorts of confusing magics. That said, I'm sure it will happen someday. That said, I highly doubt Brandon will ever go into the 65535 possible magical systems the interactions between all 16 shards would cause.(assuming it follows the 2^(number of shards)-1 theory.(I like saying that said...)

Photographic memory as Shallan has it doesn't exist. I know this is a fantasy book, but as she has it, its never even supposedly exists. Specifically the part where she can expunge the photographs taken by drawing them. It's so much like a coppermind that it might well be referential. My point being, that while it is an innate part of Shallan, it almost certainly comes from her radiantness, much like Kal's stormlight abilities were a part of him even before he knew about them. The real question is what can she do past what she's already done. Has anybody ever checked to see if Shallan notices spheres being dimmed around her when she draws?

Perhaps(and there is no proof but I guarantee this will be clarified.) she had the ability, but as she used it she got good enough to notice hidden spren, or she gained interest of them as they noted her knack for truth. I'm positive her memory ability is one of her powers though.

I'm certainly cool with having a new theory started. And I swear I edited away that saying Mal when i typed it. Stupid Tablet. Meant Kal for Kaladin.

We're having a discussion over in the thread on magic structure about the nature of Shallan's drawing/truthcapturing abilities. I think that heavily ties into her placement and suggests that there is more than soulcasting to her powers.(Plus it puts her squarely into truth.

I like it, that fits really well, especially the coppermind comparison. I agree that she's truth bonded like Mal is honorbonded, and that goes a long way towards explaining the physical consequences of her lies. Nausea and the like.

Aren't the weird things she sees Truthspren? Could it be that she is inherantly connected with truth and that one of the forms of magic is involved with that? It all seems connected. But I don't know how to connect the dots.

As far as the metals go, I'd assumed Burning them worked kinda like burning Atium. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. When a metal is burned it becomes raw power focused in one area, the more power it puts out the faster it burns. Once the metal has burned that power goes back to its origin point-In the planet.- From there it can be mined again, and used later. Or at least that's my theory. Now my question. Shallan's painting ability is almost certainly supernatural. How does that work with the theory.

Has there been discussion on the possibility of an Atium Rush akin to the Old Wests Gold Rush? Admittedly Atium is less powerful now, what with the apparent disappearance of mistborn, but there should still be Ferrings and Mistings for it. I can see it still being worth a lot due to rarity and past reputation.

found him, like so many others, via the Wheel of Time. I decided to check out Elantris after that and really didn't like it. I couldn't get into either of the main characters. Then this past summer I decided to give him another shot after Pat Rothfuss mentioned the Way of Kings at a book signing for Wise Mans Fear... Or maybe on his blog. I liked the first Mistborn book, was bored by the second, and loved the third. So I read the Way of Kings. That hooked me completely, as did the RPG. I've had good success running games with the Dresden RPG, so I've ordered the Mistborn one as well and have my first session Saturday. In looking for stuff on the Mistborn RPG I found this place. I'd caught some of the bits involving Hoid and read a wiki entry on him, but when I started reading the theories put forth here my mind was blown. Eventually I'll have done enough to actually start theorizing on some of this stuff too. Currently going through Warbreaker as a break from Malazan. I can manage about a book and a half of that series before I burn out and need a break. I should mention that as someone attempting to become an author I have no idea how Brandon gets so many books out. I mean. Way of Kings, Alloy of Law, and finishing MoL all in like a years time. He's amazing, especially when I'm used to the likes of Pat Rothfuss and Scott Lynch. Plus the Changes series break for The Dresden Files. I was about ready to tear my hair out on that one.