Mandamon

Thanks @Ace of Hearts! I'll sort of reply to the last three chapters of feedback here since the other ones were shorter. Agree. I think putting a longer call with D will help to have more action happening. Yes, it's the same person. I'm interested what you think of him going forward. I completely understand this. I wonder if I need to amp up the social tensions more. I feel like partly this becomes more "slice of life" as the book goes on, and I may need to introduce more tensions. Looking forward to what you folks think! This is all really good feedback! Yes, the mushrooms are certainly not the only antagonist, but then I tend to write mostly gray characters--not totally good or bad. At any rate, I'm very eager to see if you think the larger story holds up. As with most of my stuff, there's a lot of setup in the first half so the second half can have free reign.

Yeah, maybe have that on the ship and switch back to real meat when they land. Although I'd imaging that's going to cause some squick with characters as they find out what has to happen for them to get meat...

I'd love to submit chapter 5 on the 28th. It's about 5300 words, so if people don't mind if I go slightly over, I can submit the whole thing.

Similar thoughts to @kais on this. The prologue is coming along, but the first chapter dumps us into a lot of people I don't care about with politics I don't understand. I don't have much connection to I, and so I don't care about what she's doing. In fact, having read the chapter much further on, I would expect it to only be 3-4 chapters after this point. You could even start with I fleeing to another country and telling this part of the story in brief flashbacks, and cut out all the slow politics in this section. Notes while reading: pg 1: Definitely a better start! Good first sentence, and the second paragraph sets up some of the conflict. pg 1: "dragged before the magistrates and the gods" --are the gods physical in this world? Because this makes it sound like they are. pg 1: there's still a jarring disconnect for me between expecting the children and having one stillborn. You might replace the paragraph about Ket. with a sentence about the days leading up to the delivery? Pg 2/3: the thing that's missing here is how hard it is to cast spells. We know the consequences of it, but is it like where any lapse in concentration is immediately fatal? Or does the spell have to be interfered with a lot? I don't know how worrying the midwife's meddling is and how hard this will be for B. How close is he to actually messing up the spell? Does he feel it slipping? pg 5: "The woman was joyful. Relieved. Foolish. She had no idea." --is this the same person he just yelled at? Because it seemed like she got it the last time, so I don't know why she would immediately do it again. I still don't have a feeling of how hard this is as the spell gets away from him, which is where I'm losing the tension. Prologue is much better! Just need more connection with how the spell feels to B, and the actual birth, and I think it will be set. Pg 6-8: and we're thrust into politics that I don't know or care about. It's a big drop in tension from the first chapter and I struggle to keep my attention on it. I'm ready for I to do something instead of insinuations about what she would or should do. pg 8: "So much for goading him into revealing something she could hold over him if political dynamics required it." --This sort of line really sums up the first few pages. It's a mental strategy for political control, which I actually like reading, but I've got to have the connection to the characters and situation first, which I don't here. pg 9: "It wasn’t an outright accusation of treason, but it was close." --This catches my attention, but also means I have to go slog back through the last few pages because I haven't been paying attention. pg 10-12: Pretty much skimming at this point, because I'm trying to find something that's important in here and I can't identify what it is. Pg 14: I think they've stood in the same place the whole chapter so far until she starts dancing? pg 17: Yep, I can't find anything to latch on to in this chapter. The prologue gives the promise of something going on with the birth and forbidden magic and then the first chapter is just talking about countries potentially invading? Maybe? pg 17: "She refused to be the weak point that they used as leverage to topple him." The last line is not very strong. The thesis of this chapter is that she is NOT doing something, which is a lot weaker than if she IS doing something.

Thanks @Sarah B! If you're finding nit picky things rather than overall problems, that's great! Good point about zero-G meat. There are some issues with that and the transfer to the ground. I think I need to add a booster for muscle mass, or have the cows doing workouts or something! I can expand this out in the story to answer this question, but basically the populations did expand, but they also had ways of getting resources from space (water, minerals), and were pretty good about efficient recycling. So even if they expanded 2 or 3x, they added more space for agriculture and divided up living sections while controlling population growth. By this point, they weren't depending on any stores from Earth, as they had already been traveling many times longer than the original voyage was supposed to take.

Thanks @kais! I'm sure there will be many more fungal inaccuracies... Great feedback. They use suits later, so changing this up to respirators, with only some that keep out the microbes, would work. I'm adding respiratory masks to the things that got crushed in the crash... I'll be adding more emotion to the next draft.

Thanks @shatteredsmooth and @Mythranor! Great! Glad the character investment is better in this one. I try to have one touchstone with Ag. each chapter to give a sense of continuity. Plus, she'll be more of a main character in book 2. Great feedback! I usually have problems with emotional connection on the first draft, so this is helpful to know where I need to add some more in. Noted! Thanks. These are all the POVs in this book (except for one very brief one near the end). This one is about 85k, and it's the first of a trilogy, so total wordcount will be about 250k or so. This is a new approach for me, and I'm replicating some of the 70's and 80's scifi I used to read, showing progression in time, or across an event. Anyway, all that to say, let me know what you think as the book progresses!

Thanks again, @Mythranor! Yep. I'm aware of this. Thanks for the info, though. I was intending this name as one of those things that gets a name because it marginally affects a system, even if that's not the extent of what it can do. That said, it sounds like it's tripping people up, so I'll likely do more explanation and/or change the name. I did enough basic research on it to be dangerous and then ran with it. You'll notice the concept evolves a bit going through the story, so I'm going to keep writing (I'm on book 2 now) and come back at the end with a more definite name/explanation for what it does. *mumblemumblescifihandwaving...*

Thanks @Mythranor! Great! This is probably also a function of me figuring out what the heck I'm writing. Yep, this one will get a good revision when I edit. I like the shape of it, but it needs some fine-tuning. Good feedback. Also something I'll look into on edits.

Thanks @Asmodemon and @Mythranor! This one seems to be about half and half, with people who read scifi not having a big problem with it. I mentioned something about this in the sub1 thread. Basically higher accel/decel and it's unmanned. Yeah, this was intentional, as I wanted a different societal setup from what we work with. The entire crew is focused on a singular purpose, and so time tables are a little different. Good catch on the time-based words. I'll adjust. Yeah, it's a sci fi thing. It's basically the points in a solar system where things tend to stay where you put them, due to competing gravitational forces. It's a good place to set up stations etc. Oops. Good catch. I'll check for those.

Thanks @Asmodemon! I'll probably need to mix this first chapter up a bit, and add or change out a POV to Ag, rather than Al, as she's more of a main character. I've already made some changes that address some of the things here and there, but you have some good catches in your "misc" section on some word choices. Yes, there are (unspecified) time jumps in here, mainly because they don't really pertain to the story. I'm assuming the probe can accelerate and decelerate a lot faster than the ships, and also move at higher speeds since it's unmanned, which is how it reached the planet so fast. Yes, this one does start a little slow. I'm going to hopefully ramp that up a little in the next edit, but also, this is the first book of a trilogy, where I'm planning to released them pretty close to each other, so the story overall is longer than what's just in this book.

This is a good idea. I can change to make the effects come from the shockwave instead. Bleah. I always hated fluid dynamics. I'm much more into kinematics, so I'll lazily admit you're probably right... Pretty close. I sort of handwaved it at this point, assuming things would generally Go Bad. Always great to have another engineer's (or two's) input!

Here's the second half of chapter 4, dealing with the reaction to what happened, as well as...some more bad things. Let me know what you think, and as usual, any and all comments are welcome: plot, setting, character, grammar, etc.

That's a great idea and I will likely be stealing it for edits, as well as while writing the second book...

Oops...Also thanks @shatteredsmooth! I thought I'd replied to your already. Yep, I think this is going to be what turns some people off from this book. As I mention with @kais above, I regard Ag. as my main character. She's not in this half of the chapter, but she is the "reaction" scene that's coming up next. Let me know what you think of that next week. Agree. I need to add some more character connection in this one. Yep, in the first chapter. She was the one who decided to land. Oop. Yes. Will rephrase. Thanks again!

Thanks to @C_Vallion, @Silk, and @kais! I might just change this to "metallurgist and engineer." Ah. I don't think I put in the size of the plate here. I can add. I'm imagining a 1-2 cm thick sheet that's probably 10-20 meters long, falling from 1/2 kilometer in the air. I didn't actually do the calculation on terminal velocity for a planet with about 0.8 Earth gravity, but I'd imagine this still makes a big blast, even landing on edge. Oooo. Good point. Need to add this in too. Yeah, I thought of this when writing, but decided the ships would have to be optimized for 100+ years of travel, resisting mini meteorites and other forces in space. The actual landing and conversion is supposed to be fairly quick and the support structure is being removed at the time, so there's no real way to guarantee structural stability, thus it can't really be in scope for the design, except to make it easy to remove parts in the right order. Okay, so my thought process on this is that the errant sheet compromised the skeleton of the ship on one side, causing it to list. Then the top structure didn't have enough support and sheared off about 1/3 of the way down, so a third of a kilometer of ship is falling, hastening the shear. There's some description of the damage in the next section, so let me know if that clears it up. Thanks for the engineering talk, @C_Vallion! Ahhh...thanks. Will clarify. Yep--completely unmodified. They're basically the monkeys running the ship until it lands. Uh huh...I'll just back away from this one. I need to put in the size of the total arcopolis somewhere in here...I'm thinking the burn-out space is 8-10 kilometers in diameter, divided into 8 radians. I'm assuming some sort of ramscoop to charge the batteries in space, but I didn't actually say it. This is what happens when I write the first scene after the second scene... Heh. Just wait. You're picking up on a lot of the conflict coming later, so that's perfect. Thanks @Silk! The section right after this is a section with Ag. and Da, so I'm hoping that will serve this purpose? Let me know what you think. Ag. has a scene in every chapter (oddly, except the first chapter...) so I'm regarding her as the main character. Good point. I'll try to clarify. I'm sure there will be some frustrating lapses through the book. I may need a science pass from you, if possible. See above. Also, I'm interested to see what you think of the next section. Lol. See above #2... Will add some things. And again...I probably just need you to tell me all the things I've done wrong... Chapters are weird in this book. I may convert them to sections, and have a bunch of little chapters within them. I haven't decided. Thanks @kais!

Thanks @C_Vallion! Good points. I was wondering what the reception would be on this, but doesn't look like there's too much confusion overall. At any rate, no you don't need to remember their names and part of this is the to show this is a beg meeting and give triggers whenever one of the Admins pops up later. This is partly why I have the Dramatis in the beginning, for reference, but also I'll note the individuals when they show up again. I guess let me know if it's confusing the next time one of them shows up. It isn't a proper name, just a specialized description, so no, not capitalized. That said, I haven't actually named it in the text, but I'm not completely sure I need to, at least yet. I'll ponder. Good points. I'll see if I can make it a bit clearer. It will become clearer later on...

Seems pretty quiet here lately, but I'd like to submit the second half of chapter 4 on Monday the 21st

It's not that it isn't coming across. It is. I understand that I has to get information from H, get her wound healed, and so on. The problem for me is this isn't tied to a second objective for the chapter. All these are hypothetical. IF this happens, THEN something might happen to I. That isn't enough to interest me. I want something to actually happen to I. Have her be recognized. Have her fail to get the information. THEN what does it mean to her and how does it push her character or the plot. This is what I mean when I say have the chapter do more things. Yes. Have the thing happen rather than giving us possibilities IF it happens. The point is she's NOT a good spy. She's a girl out of her depth in a foreign country. If you literally have a quirky character say, "Welcome to Neri- where we hate the king more than anyone in the world" I will be much on board because it shows that character is someone I want to know better.

No, it doesn't really come across that well. I can tell there are political machinations, but I don't really care about them because I don't know how/why they are important to the characters, so I'm not paying that much attention. I feel like all the points you made above are driving only the setting. So when I (and Kais) harp on "the arc," what we're not seeing is how this progresses the overall plot or the character. You're taking a whole chapter to tell the reader how the people at the school (which I bunch into one mob of "secondary character" in my head) sees the protagonist. This is fine for a B-plot, but we don't have any A-plot. You're only doing one thing with this chapter, but every chapter needs to do two or more things. We need to know how this accelerates I. to success or failure, we need to know how this changes her as a person, and we also need to know how this changes the world. You're only building the Setting here, but not the Plot or the Character. Tension usually feeds off changing two of these three things at once. (Also, a good way to think about this: if you have to explain background context, then you haven't made it clear enough) Except I don't see the risk. She thinks about it, then leaves. I want to see one of the students, eyes narrowed, point a finger at her and say, "Are you the princess? Why do you look so much like her?" before she leaves. No, literally just do this. It will make the point loud and clear. Turn up each point you want to make to an 11 and scream it at the reader. Then it will be enough. Hope this helps...

Overall, I'm not really sure what happened. They fixed a dress, and I stood in line for a while and talked to a random person. Aside from her wound getting worse, there wasn't really any tension because nothing happened. I wanted to at least know more about the school when they started talking about greens and blues, but the only thing we learned is that greens are healers. She doesn't even get to see the person she's looking for (even after being told directly not to stand in line) because she ducks out and wanders off. I think all this could be a couple pages really, with some character moments from I, L, and M (though I don't know if she's important), and then a couple sentences to say she tried to stand in line before she thought better of it. Notes while reading: pg 1: I think the descriptions of the dresses go on a bit too long. Could be shortened into about half a page. pg 2: so we know greens are healers. Do we know what blues are? Or is this something I've missed? pg 4: "immediately send for a healer." --I think this is also something I've missed, but why isn't she seeing a healer? pg 6: "painfully mucking out the inn’s stables" --with a side wound? How much is she getting done? pg 9: There's a lot of words spent here on I STILL figuring out what she needs to do. I'm ready for action rather than thinking at this point. pg 10: "Just. Stop for a moment" --uh, yeah. What does all this have to do with anything? Why do we care if I is talking to the random person in front of her in line? Pg 12: I'm not sure what was achieved this chapter.

It's a little hard to judge these two chapters if you're planning on changing ch 1 in such a dramatic way. I think you could pivot to having lots of hints about A's identity without the reader knowing for certain, but you'll have to fill in the background of what happened for it to be a significant reveal when it happens. I'm also not sure if three different people potentially revealing A's identity is any worse than just one. We don't know the consequences for A's identity being known, aside from "people will look for them." It could be anything from an annoying fanbase, to A wearing themself out by doing too much magic, to the government capturing them and experimenting to find out how a MUP works. There's a lot of description that could be pared down in the first chapter, and I'm not sure what it adds yet aside from showing the bad day. The next chapter gives us some good insight into A and J's characters, but there's not really any decision, so I'm not sure of the stakes yet. Focusing in on those things will help. Notes while reading: Pg 1: Long first sentence... pg 1: Do we know who/what B or PPG is? I think this is WRS on my part. pg 1: Where is the chaos? The vending machine? pg 2: "kinds of technology that don’t get along..." --"didn't" pg 2: so the ethernet is magical and the internet is not? Also, I'm not sure how the college could function without access to the internet. pg 3: I'm not sure yet what's going on in this chapter. It's a lot of description of school facilities and what A's work schedule is like. pg 4: "one seemed to move " --the eyes or the crow's feet? --also, where/why did J pop up from with this person? It seems very sudden. pg 5: what is PPG again? pg 5: "This is my first semester back in school in seventeen year" --okay, this answers some things, but I was very confused why a colleage of a teacher was showing up as a student again. I guess she never finished college? pg 6: again, a lot of technical discussion of what the paper is about, which I assume doesn't actually mean anything for the story. pg 6: "just how far-reaching the repercussions of that day were. " --huh? Why? pg 7: "The injury" --what injury? I think there's a few things missing in here. Is she writing a paper about the event where A failed? What does that have to do with studying healthcare? pg 8: It's a bit unclear when A's reading the essay because it's talking about writing style and grading, which I don't care about, and making vague references to evidently what happened on The Fateful Day. Maybe if A mentally filled in some of the gaps earlier, that would make it easier to follow? pg 9: Wait, is R a healer, or is she being healed? Also, I thought this was about civil engineering? I'm confused as to what R's project is for and what she did for the last 17 years before coming back to school. pg 11: I had a hard time following a lot of this chapter. I think part is that we're experiencing anxiety with A, so it makes the experience jumbled, but I also think a lot of the description of grading and tutoring can be cut out. We don't need to know the mechanisms for how grading works. The focus is A meeting R again. Putting a little more emphasis on that could draw out the characters more. pg 11/12 maybe a bit too much infodump on how magic works, right at the start of the chapter? pg 13: “Well, if the three already know then there is no point hiding from them" --isn't this, like, sort of a national emergency level reveal? I thought the whole point was that A went into hiding because the world was looking for them. Are they in danger of government types looking for them if something gets out? This is a cause for anxiety, but also, really a big deal. I feel like there should be more reaction to this. pg 15: “Someone looking for me might feel the magic" --Yeah, I'm wondering if not enough attention is being paid to The Secret Is Out! pg 15: "have so much healing ink beneath their illusion..." --Confused. As in they have tattoos that heal them? pg 16: "if they wanted physical contact with Jess. Because she was allergic to magic." --did we know that before? Pg 16: I think there could be a stronger arc through these chapters. I don't think any decision was actually made, and A is just assuming they'll break the curse? Also, I'm not sure how much the extra plots of R and J figuring out A's identity matter, if they are already revealing themself by breaking the curse. I also don't know the consequences for it aside from "people will look for them."

Welcome to the first half of chapter 4! In which the colony has its first troubles... Let me know what you think, and as usual, any and all comments are welcome: plot, setting, character, grammar, etc.

Thanks @Silk! Great catches on the grammar and other misses. I love all the comments on the bureaucracy. That's pretty much exactly the responses I intended so I'm glad that's coming across. I think I realized this when I did a read-through and still didn't correct it. All the Gens have been awake the whole time. Vagals come in a out of sus-ani. Probably. I think I was assuming exercises would be standard procedure for everyone, but they probably need extra exercises too. I'll make a note of it. Doh. Will adjust. Basically, yes. Interesting on the light observation. And yes to the last point! You'll see one in a couple chapters! Thanks! I keep waiting for something to be really wrong with these chapters, but they seem to be alright so far...

Thanks @Mwindaji! Yep! I haven't really decided, so whatever you like! I most just imagine readers sounding out a name and going, "waaaait..." Yes. Well. You will... Good catch! I'll change that. yup.