Jack the Halls

I like this idea. You get the action hook, then the explanation for the action right away, which hooks you even more into subsequent chapters.

Oh, also. This story does NOT stand alone. Misleading!

Interesting use of candles. I have a few questions right off the bat. Would candles be far more valuable in this world? How rare is candle wax? Does the wax need to be a special wax? If they are rare, does it make sense that he would "waste" one to sleep if he didn't need it? First sleep? Makes me wonder about their society, which his good. I think the entire story could have played smoother. For instance. Why do we have almost a full page of him thinking about the plot, when we could just see the letter he is writing? Show vs. Tell and all that, even though the letter is a bit of a cheat. Still you can accomplish in a couple lines what it took a page to put in train of thought. "Dear King, I believe there is a plot to kill you... Yours Truly..." Then you can jump into the assassination attempt and end quickly with him either going back to the letter or thinking he doesn't need it now because he has proof. As for the assassination attempt. It's too long, especially considering the framework of the story. I don't want to come away from a story about a fight scene, which is what this one amounts to. With two professionals like this, I think it would not only be more entertaining but also more more realistic if you showed us two really cool exchanges and then ended it abruptly, like an assassination attempt would actually play out. Right now, it reads sort of like the description of a fight sequence from a Final Fantasy cut-scene. Don't get me wrong, that's perfectly fine, and I thought it was the best written part of the piece. But... Hm... I think it was the most recent Sanderson lecture posted about fight sequences. If you haven't seen it, basically one of the points he makes is that while blow-by-blow is fun in visual media, it doesn't translate quite as well on the page. I think, due to the nature of your descriptive fight sequences, the blow-by-blow is important. But in this story it feels more like a blow-by-blow-by-blow-by-blow-by-blow. Give me two good blows and leave me wanting more. I knew the last sentence was wrong even as I typed it.

Hey guys, This is the first chapter of my current novel tentatively entitled Touching Metal. Now, if you all would be so kind as to tear it apart for me, I'd be much obliged!

The premise is great. A mother and son traveling through time on a timey-wimey highway in order to save their father? I'd read more based on that premise alone. I think you could have hooked with the Socrates stuff, but it was just too short and too dumbed down. Don't use the fact that you are writing YA as an excuse to dumb it down. Kids are smarter than you think, especially kids who would be reading a time travel story about meeting historical figures. I'd say write it as smart as it would be in real life, at least first, then go back and clearify whatever your YA beta readers didn't understand, if that makes sense. I think 8 is believable based on the level it is written at. I think possibly, your other readers were thinking that he was smarter than any 8-year-old they knew, but he's not a normal 8-year-old is he? Look at Orson Scott Card's children. They're all geniuses and it still works out. A child in this situation would be smarter than a normal 8-year old. Even at 8, I think he would know some technical terms and phrases even if he didn't know what it really meant. It would be more imitation of his mother, a need to understand for her sake. Personally, I'd prefer you leave him 12 and boost up his know-how and vocabulary about ten fold, but maybe only because I have a 12-year-old in my head already. Right now he seems like, Oh, I'm just along for the ride. Which is fine, if you build it in such a way that the Mother doesn't involve him in stuff. But that isn't who Mother is, in my eyes, ya know?

Thanks for clearing that up for me, Chaos!

Great podcast, guys! Are the the different worlds different physical worlds, or parallel worlds that overlap ala string or m or what-have-you theory?

Oh! I misunderstood. I don't know about everyone else, but I find them hilarious and even funnier upon re-reads. Sometimes the humor is subtle, and sometimes it is in your face, but it's all in good fun and I think it's impossible to dislike it, ya know? While I don't think you're missing much with Gaiman, Hitchhiker's Guide is a must read for any SFF fan. My $0.02.

I was also bored silly by American Gods and stopped about halfway through. Another one I didn't like was Anansi Boys. There is just something about the tone of those books. Nobody is likable, and while I've heard so many people talk about how much they love American Gods, I've sort of noticed that few of them are avid readers. In fact, working at a book store, I've talked to so many people who name that book as the best book they've ever read, only to admit how infrequently they actually read and like a book. Just an observation. Otherwise, his stuff is decent to good. Some of his short stories blow my mind. The episode of Doctor Who he wrote was absolutely brilliant. Sandman is one of the best comics out there. How is the 42 joke not humorous? lol

I think book 10 is written in such a way that you could read it and be confused all the way through, but then know enough to read books 11 - 13 and still enjoy them. However, the series is so darn good that you'd just be doing yourself a disservice.

If I remember correctly, the other two prequels were going to be about Tam and one that took place in the Age of Legends, right? I would love to see one about the AoL. I agree with everyone here in that I would like to see the prequels written and published. Personally, I loved New Spring. And I think Brandon and Harriet would put them out... If Jordan had had them completed (even in outline form). So the fact that they both seem against it makes me think Jordan didn't have them anywhere near completion. Otherwise, I say leave the world alone.

Too hard to find the most helpful, but I can think of the least helpful right off the bat. "Treat writing like a job." I've heard this before, usually by bestselling authors who write 2-3 mediocre books a year. In this case, I think it was Kevin J. Anderson. I tried doing it that way, and it cost me about 10 years because... I have a job. I'm not going to go to work, then look forward to going home so I can... Go to work? Then it feels like, obviously, work. From this, I came up with my own advice, though: "Treat writing like something you love to do." If I'm not writing, then I must not love writing as much as I want to believe. But if I really love to write then... of course I'm not going to have trouble writing every day. Right? Okay, I also just thought of the most helpful piece of advice. Kill your babies. I worked on one story for almost a decade. In February, I scratched everything and started over, and I now have more written in my new novel than I ever had for that one I worked on for 10 years.

I don't know if it IS random, but it definitely FEELS random. First there is common flight. Okay. Then there is stuff about elements combining into one force. Okay. Then there is a well from which all power is drawn. Okay. Then it feels like the One Power with all the strands and stuff, but none of the strands really make sense to me as the reader. THEN we have someone using pagan/religious magic (pentagram) to summon a daemon. THEN there are other words, which are apparently really easy to get to. THEN there are dragons. THEN there are magical swords. Any time the story or characters start to take over, we're hit with another new aspect of the magic, and with every new aspect of the magic I become more and more bored because I start expecting a story where anything can be explained by some new and random act of magic. For instance, I found myself skimming through the spell on pages 5-7. I said, No, I have to be good and read every word because this is a writing group, and I went back and read every word. When I got to the end of the spell, I didn't understand any better and I didn't feel like I had missed anything by skimming. They could easily set up laws that limit the use of magic. Anyone caught using magic is put to death. They are obviously not above executing an entire world for the greater good. That would use very little magic. Because this prologue tells me that any aspect of magic I have ever seen in any book is fair game, I can't help but think... Why don't they just lock the well and give a select few the key? The elder can mask her ability to use magic, which tells me they could find all magic users in the world pretty easily and keep them from using magic. Yet, later, the sister talks about how the Gods taught her her healing powers. Why are they teaching more people to use magic when they don't want anyone to? Well, I guess it's because there is a battle raging and dead and blood and stuff everywhere. There is a great daemon who even the dragons know is a bad guy. Somehow the two siblings come together in the heat of it all and then... Have a conversation. Fight. Pause. Talk. Fight. Pause. Not only that, but like Asmodemon pointed out, their conversation doesn't seem to add anything. Why is she so surprised he's using evil magics? What makes one magic even and another good anyway? In Writing Excuses they talk about how the bad guy sometimes ends up being the most interesting character. This is very true, I think, in this prologue. I don't know if I found it difficult to follow so much as impossible to believe. What it makes me think of is a character written in such a way that they can not only track in the woods, but they are also a sword master, and they are also a political genius, and they are also a great lover, and they are also the forgotten king, and they are also very humble, and they are also the most powerful magician in the world, and they are also... You see where I'm going with this. No need to apologize! I think my comments are more general than usual because while you are obviously a competent writer, the problems with this prologue are general in nature. Every page introduces a new aspect to the magic system, even if it's just pointing out that buildings can be forged with magic. It's almost like we don't even have one magic system here but many. The One Power. Religious. Elemental. That can work, too (I mean, we're all Sanderson fans, right?), but it's too much too soon. You talk about not wanting to info-dump, but this is a magic-dump. I think every time a magic is used, the limitations have to show themselves in some way. When Vin is burning metals, she is always aware of how much she has left. When Rand draws on the One Power, he is constantly aware of the impending madness. Here, the only time we see a limitation it is people criticizing others for using magic while using magic themselves. If Enthisa realizes that she is being a hypocrite by flying but then thinks, "Well, who cares? The world's already over anyway." That is more character development than she has in her whole section. What I personally think you need to do is go back into this prologue and make it about the characters. Cut out any magic that isn't necessary (leaving probably the world destroying weave, the summoning, the dragon meeting, but nothing else). This way you can at least HINT at those limitations you were talking about while cutting your page count down dramatically. I hope this helps a bit more! If you have any specific questions that you want answered, I'd be happy to try. I don't know how helpful specifics would be at this point, though, because the prologue is so vague in and of itself that I don't think it would help to point out that Enthisa should have noticed the wind when she was flying through it rather than when she landed, or that the dragon hall is far far too small for creatures so huge (it should take her much longer to get anywhere), or that you say the city is going to cease to exist, but not not in the same way it usually ceases to exist rather than it won't exist in the same way it has until then. Stuff like that can be caught and dealt with in another draft, after the more general problems are dealt with.

The magic system is all over the place. I found myself skimming through the magical stuff around page 5, and by halfway through the prologue I was officially bored by the magic. Everywhere I looked, there was some new and random aspect of the magic. The only limitation that I could see was that using so much magic hurt the world and the Gods had to destroy it. I hate the Gods. They are the most powerful magicians in the entire world, with enough power to destroy civilization, and yet they are so incompetent that they couldn't prevent this? They warned everyone by telling them, "If you use too much power, we will destroy you!" But couldn't enforce that? I found it particularly amusing that she is thinking out it is everyone else's fault for using too much magic as she flies over the city. Ha! Really, from everything I can tell based on this prologue, the Gods are the entire reason too much magic is being used. I have no idea who is on whose side, or who is fighting in this war, or why the war is being fought, or why the daemons matter at all, since world was destroyed like 10 pages before. The final fight sequence reads like a 1970s comic book. Your mutant power is no match for my mutant power. Let us have a 2 minute convo when only a few seconds should have passed. Magic needs limitations. There is way too much thrown out way too fast, and I don't feel like I will understand the magic system any better as the book goes on. If you're going to have such a magic system, the characters need to be more original, and they aren't. I'm not sure what Enthisa's purpose is except as a pair of eyes. I've read the story about the brother and sister before many times. Basically, I need something to relate to in order to be drawn in, and I was pushed away by all the random magic far more than I was drawn in.

Okay, I'm a for sure for the 25th! (Not sure if I had to let you know, Silk.)

The main difference is that where his solo books seem to be primarily humor, this one is primarily serious (thought I've still gotten a few good laughs). It's still at the same level of brilliance, and it still has all the quirky goodness of Discworld. I'm only about 1/3 through it so far, but I'm already thinking it might be the best book of the year. Also, the front cover flap says it's the first novel of the collaboration, or something. I wonder if that means more books to come?

Has anyone tried a grilled cheese sandwich dipped in hot dog chili? Yes, it's the opposite of fancy, but my god is it delicious.

Anybody else reading this one? At first I was thrown off because it has a completely different feel than anything Pratchett has done on his own, but after switching my head out of Discworld mode, man did this book click for me. I'm only about 100 pages in, but I already love it. I also want to mention just how good it feels in my hands. I work at a bookstore. I pick up and a LOT of books. Most of them feel cheap. This book feels and looks like what a book is supposed to feel and look like.

I'll probably be shot for this, but the Kingkiller Chronicles. Sometimes I find it absolutely amazing and I can't believe just how good it is, but there were times when I had to force myself to keep reading the first book, and it took me way longer than most books I read of that size. I LOVED the first half of Wise Man's Fear, and I kept thinking "I finally get it! I finally get it!" but then there was about 120 pages (the Felurian sequence) that pulled me so far out of my enjoyment that I put it aside and haven't come back to it yet. I'd also add my vote for Hunger Games. The first one was less than mediocre while the second was a step up to mediocre. I might not even read third one even though it would only take a day.

Hyperion - Dan Simmons (audio book) The Long Earth - Pratchett/Baxter (My god is this book amazing!) The Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury

Page 1 - Having the word pace three times in three lines is distracting. - It reads like he has only met the scribe once before. - I don't buy that walking the street has NEVER failed him. In fact, I'd say that a lot of times walking the streets himself would specifically keep him from learning things in many cases. Page 2 - Get rid of both "in"s in this opening paragraph. - You've now used three possible descriptors for who I still think of as the scribe. - Were you reading a Sam Vimes book when writing this scene? - Redundancy: You don't really need him to think about how he doesn't know what the summons are about on two separate pages with other stuff between them. - Okay. This guy is a guard, right? He's a career guard. And he doesn't know how to stand still? I'm the type of person who can't stand still on a regular day, but having been a rent-a-cop, even I know how to stand still in a situation like this. Nitpick. Page 3 - So the single chair is on the side closest to the door? - XXX closes the door once XXX is through it but he's on the outside while Alberic is on the inside? - Zen immediately makes me think of Buddhism. If this was your intent, then cool, but if this isn't our world and Buddhism doesn't exist... Page 4 - Why wouldn't the thief gang at least consider the glass beads were crystal? - I like that you hang a lantern on the fact that the beads shouldn't have been stolen so easily. Page 5 - Thieves took something that was not theirs? No, really? - Offer a reward. That's brilliant! I'm glad it was the first thing he thought to do. Despite the description as a man of action, I see he is actually more a man of thought. - When your dialogue carries to the next paragraph, there should be an opening quotation mark. I had to go back and re-read twice because I was like... Wait, this is still dialogue. Page 6 - I don't see why the Lord summoned Alberic at all, except maybe so that he could see a crystal for himself. - I like that the Lord ignores his pleas to crack down on thieves until something of his is taken. - He SKIPPED? I'm sorry, but that picture is too ridiculous! I think this was your strongest chapter so far. You're starting to have different plot lines coming together into one Plot. My only real fear is that it's too much like Vimes goes to see Vetinari (or, you know, a non-Pratchett equivalent) only there isn't any funny. I forget who said it, but more and more I think this story could just start with the latest robbery.

I agree with Yados about no hook. I doubt those agents got past the first page, to be honest. Get rid of the disclaimer. If you're doing your job as a writer, the reader should be able to understand who these historical figures are based on clues in the text. Right now, it feels more like name dropping than anything else, but then to outright admit that you didn't know who they were either? I do like that they seem to treat their trips like road trips. It's really great that Mother wants to make stops along the way, like sight-seeing stops almost. In my opinion, this was by far the most interesting aspect of this entire opening, and it only got a paragraph. I know English, but I couldn't go back even a few hundred years and communicate effectively with people speaking Old English. Now imagine Greek versus Ancient Greek from thousands of years ago. How could Mother possibly communicate with anyone, much less multiple people from many different backgrounds? I do not like how ignorant Isaac is. He is far too stupid for a 12-year-old who has been traveling in time and space with his genius of a mother. "Something about the way our house travels through time." "The STUFF that made the time machine work." In fact, I think he would know more and, because he is so young, possibly brag about all the big terms and scientific stuff he knows. Plato and Socrates feel like caricatures rather than actual people. I very highly doubt that Plato would speak in the same way he had Socrates speak in his books. What is this, the WABAC machine? Why break the dialogue here just to have the narrator reintroduce himself? Mother's had how long to think on these things? This trip to Plato must have been supremely disappointing. Now that I think of it, why is she bothering with philosophers when she should be traveling forward in time to talk to scientists? She causes Plato to doubt himself in less than a page of dialogue? If either one of these people was going to convince the other, it would be Plato convincing Mother that the form couldn't be changed. She spent 9 months just to win an argument that solves nothing? The concept of trying to change time only occurs to her now? Wouldn't that have been the FIRST thing she tried before anything else? Pretty sure Plato wouldn't run from a philosophical discussion right when his own beliefs were being challenged. That goes against everything he (or Socrates through him) taught. Is there a direct correlation between how much time it takes to travel through time. Like a year is a minute and ten years is ten minutes and so on? The door to their house opens into a cell. Where is the rest of the house? Is this a bigger on the inside TARDIS thing? Why is Mother even trying this? If she's so learned, she would already know that Socrates had plenty of chances to escape before this night and he chose not to. Assuming the stories we know about him are correct (and we don't know that). You can't have a time travel story about Socrates and then have a few lines of mediocre dialogue. You could probably just start the chapter with them stepping out into Socrates's cell and combine the dialogue you had with Plat, expand upon it a lot, and maybe have one good chapter. The second most recent episode of Writing Excuses is about Time Travel. You should check it out.

Hey, Silk. Can you pencil me in tentatively for June 25?

Page 1 - I'm having a little trouble picturing his fall/jump. How does he land on top of the person if he caught the person with only his right arm? Isn't the crowd pretty dense? Do people see him and move out of the way? If anything, I'd imagine, he might knock the person down, but he'd spin toward his left and away from the person. Small thing. Page 2 - Description where there shouldn't be any. Example, the dagger's light brown sheath. I doubt he's thinking about the color of his sheath in the middle of this action scene. Also the character that really jumped off the page, description wise, was the guy Dais killed. Page 3 - Dais sure can't keep a grip on his dagger! I keep expecting him to be stabbed by it, or at least lose it in the crowd somehow. - There were times throughout that I stumbled because of alliteration or just awkward sentence structure, but rather than listing them I think if you just read it aloud to yourself, you can fix these spots pretty easily. Page 4 - What is this noise, and if it's so loud as to knock out an entire street of people, how come he can still hear anything at all, much less the conversation? Or is this one of those things that's explained earlier (or later)? Page 5 - I kept wondering why he was the only one who seemed to be making any effort to survive, and I'm really glad you had Acer notice it, too, and reward him for it. - Are these subsequent booms further away? I mean, I know they have to be, but nothing in the text outright expresses this. - Like, SD, I also felt like the missing words in the dialogue were distracting, but it might simply be that I need to read more for the dialect to click. Page 6 - After he's healed, he just lays there and doesn't say or do anything? I felt there was a missed opportunity here for at least some sort of exchange between them. Or at least a reason why he doesn't do anything once healed. Perhaps the effects don't take place right away? Except that they do... Hm... Page 7 - So Acer heals him, and then just... lets him run off? I took the "I don’t think he’ll squander this gift. Will you?” to mean that Acer was saying to recruit Dais and therefore use Dais' gift, but perhaps I misread? - This last action sequence is very well done. I can see it happening perfectly. Why does she keep him from falling only to take him to the ground anyway? Page 8 - Does the assailant land on his back or his front? Does Rosalin turn him over or does she lean down and open his eye because his face is planted? I look forward to reading future and past chapters!

Keep in mind that you don't HAVE to describe the characters physically right off the bat. In fact, if you can make the characters interesting without describing them, then you can add little visual cues as you go. But, like G & A pointed out, the characters don't really feel real. And I'm not sure a physical description would help at this point. Also, the bath scene has been bugging me. Why are they bathing together? Nothing in the chapter explains this.