Mandamon

Standard request for me. I'd like to do Ch 7 part 1. If we somehow go over the quota, I'll drop back.

Juugatsu--thanks for the response. I was wondering where everyone got to. You hit on the exact same points as the other critiques I've gotten, re. the use of magic as weapons vs. hitting something with a sword. I've got some other people confused on the layout of the fight as well, so I think this section is in for a big revision. I still like the outcome, but I need to describe it a lot better. You also hinted at something Robinski brought up, in that Aricaba-Ata (and Ilzi) feels like a bit-villain. I think I need to go back and add some more motive behind their actions to flesh them out as characters. Nice comparison with Belili and Kisare. I remember the Urza and Mishra story well! It wasn't intentional, but now you point it out, there are some similarities. I'm not sure I've followed up on this later in the story, so I need to check that. Thanks again--great comments as usual!

Mark--glad for any comments, even brief ones while reading. This gives me a good check against those who have to slog through week by week!

Mark--thanks for the comments! Good critiques. I'm always interested in the feedback on someone reading multiple chapters at a time, as you don't forget quite as much in between. Glad you're finding it interesting so far.

Hi all, Part 2 of chapter 6, in which we find out what happens to Kisare and Belili's peaceful life of farming. Let me know what you think.

Putting in the usual request to submit with the usual corollary of dropping out if there's too many people...

This ties in to what you imagine your audience to be. Generally YA books have a protagonist that's a couple years older than the readers. "Adult" books are more lenient on ages, but if you set the age too young, you tend to place yourself back in YA territory. Since the students are getting out of teenage years rather than into, I'd be tempted to see them as closer to 20 when reading than 16. Lots of epic fantasy places the young hero or heroine right around 18-22: old enough to act on their own, but still inexperienced. I don't have any problem with "X years old." You could define your own calendar and whatnot, but sometimes it's just simpler to use what people know, unless there's a specific worldbuilding reason not to.

(free rep for Robinski for the great comments in the other group...) Robinski's one week ahead of you all here, but it's great that you pick up the same things--even the same sentences--a lot. Juugatsu: I think some of the developing relationships here are a little shaky, especially with things that happen later in the story. I'll probably have to wordsmith this section a bit to bring it in line. Thanks for the catches. "Prince" is a status label, but I think I might have sort of dropped it later on, so that might not make the final cut. Maybe "Lord" is a better alternative ;-). I'm glad you mentioned the pruning skills. That's a promise I need to make sure I follow up on toward the end of the book. Don't worry about Aricaba-Ata (Ata is the personal name, btw, and Aricaba is the family name). He will pop up in the first sentence of the next submission! Thanks again!

Stormweasel, thanks for the review. Good suggestions throughout. I like your suggestion of "loose leaf," I'll try to work that in. I've also felt "by the other branch" was a little clunky, but I'm not sure what to change it to. I'll work on it.

Thanks Sprouts! Any and all critique are welcome, so I don't mind if you nitpick on words some. I do some editing as I write, so this gives me a chance to make those corrections before I forget about them. The "For now" phrase was also picked up on by a certain Captain of Pedantry who shall remain nameless ;-) The names are a little tricky, and you have a good point on going by description. You could make the argument that these people would be more familiar with their type of strange names, but that might be splitting hairs. Glad you are seeing the difference in personalities. That's one of the most fun parts to write. You have a good point that them working for 3 months would slow down the story ;-). Aaaaand I'll just leave that there.

There's interesting confict between Gin and "Mr. Hyde." I like that they talk back and forth through notes. It makes Mr Hyde more present, even though we know he's a monster of some sort. You also do a good job of showing how "normal" Gin is, even though he's possessed by some sort of devil. It boosts up the creepyness factor. You tend to repeat names a lot, mostly "Mr. Hyde." There were also several repetitions of "The flagpole corpse." It was constant enough to start getting on my nerves. Alex gives some interesting information both showing Gin is bad news, and that he's not as bad as some others that are possessed. You also have a good set up with Gin seeing his apartment, and then Alex using those same things he saw before, like the window, when he escaped. Really not a lot more to comment on. I didn't notice any glaring grammatical errors or plot holes. I'm interested in the story, and want to learn more about both Gin and Alex, as well as how Gin got his devil. This seems to be more of a character story than a plot story so far, and I'm satisfied with what I'm reading, but I am wondering what the eventual plot will be, and what is the "call to arms" that will out Gin and/or Alex out of their comfort zone. Looking forward to more!

This was easy to read, but I didn't feel like a lot happened. Most of the chapter, Ferox watches other people fight, while he plans. He only gets a few minutes of "screen time" while fighting Tenuis, and the rest is moping that he won't get picked. Then as the chapter ends, he doesn't get picked. There's no surprise to it, so it feels like you could have just told that. Further, now I'm more interested in Aurelia than Ferox. She seems to have some good skills or abilities. I don't mind if there's not a whole lot of action, but we also don't really learn any new information, except the names of the mock cohorts, which I suspect isn't that important, and some tidbits about history, which I suspect could be dropped elsewhere in side comments. We also don't get much character development about Ferox. He plans things, and wants to join a cohort, but I think we already knew that. I think this has to do with the Proactive/Sympathetic/Competent triangle that Sanderson talked about in W.E. a couple months ago. A hero has to have a good mix of these to work. In this chapter, We don't see Ferox as Proactive--he's just planning and reacting to getting called out. He's not shown as competent, because he's placed against a weaker opponent. He's mildly sympathetic, because he didn't get picked, but he still won the fight, so that takes away some of it. For example, if he was put up against an absolutely overpowering opponent, like a Brute, and then lost, I would feel more sympathetic to him. If he actually won, he would be more competent, and if he won and still wasn't picked, he'd be more sympathetic as well. Some bits and pieces: pg 2: "Once I signal the match to start you can do pretty much whatever you deem necessary " --In something repeated a lot, the excess words will have been taken out. I would think "pretty much" would be removed, or changed to "almost." It also makes the statement stronger. There are some of these words - "pretty much," "terribly," "try and stay," "somewhat," that could be removed to make the sentences stronger. This is nitpicky level, but it stood out to me. Pg 7: "this time" repeated in two sentences

Hi all, Chapter6, part 1: Kisare and Belili find out the villagers plans, and learn more about life with the Asha-Urmana. Let me know what you think!

Thanks Lerroy! I'll post as much as I can here, but Reading Excuses is a hard format to submit an entire book. Once I finish it and get through edits, I'll post it somewhere so people can read the rest. I do want to do a couple more chapters because there's a turning point I want people to comment on.

I'd like to submit next week as well, unless we get an overload of people, then I'll drop back a week.

Thanks Juugatsu--great observations. I'm glad someone finally commented on Kisare and Belili using nicknames for each other. That was part of trying to separate the POVs to give the reader a clue as to who's doing what. Great comments on everything, really. This helps me set figure out what promises I'm making to the reader, and since I'm now writing the end of the book, it will help me make sure I try everything together. Especially your thoughts on how the Asha-Urmana and the Nobles view each other. There was another comment on that as well, so I need to make sure I follow through.

Thanks for the feedback! Both of you and Robinski all commented on the "savages" line, so I definitely need to change it. I meant it ironically, but I guess need 'savages' in quotes or italics. I might just rephrase the sentence entirely. @Stormweasel: You actually picked up on many of the exact sentences Robinski did (in a different writing group). Interesting, and good feedback. Comparing clothes was a good catch. I can expand that a little to show they all wear similar clothing. @Sprouts: Good catches. On the weather/warmth, I think I meant she was comparing to general ambient temp that time of year. I can clarify. I think you're correct that no one shows enough emotion when seeing the box/seeds the first time. I feel like the "old forgotten story" is a little abrupt, so putting some more wonder in there might help connect it.

The WE crew is doing a masterclass this year in writing, and the first month has exercises on coming up with ideas. So we don't overwhelm the forum (or give away all of our ideas!) lets limit this to one or two for each, if they're the full 150 words, or more if they are less. For anyone who wants to try it out, here are the prompts: Writing Prompt 10.1: Write down five different story ideas in 150 words or less. Generate these ideas from these five sources: -From an interview or conversation you've had -From research you've done (reading science news, military history, etc) -From observation (go for a walk!) -From a piece of media (watch a movie) -From a piece of music (with or without lyrics) Writing Prompt 10.2: Using last week's five story ideas (or five new ones): -Take two of them and combine them into one story. -Take one and change the genre underneath it. -Take one and change the ages and genders of everybody you had in mind for it -Take the last one and have a character make the opposite choice.

<Hijacking and running...> Good thought, Stormweasel! I've been looking for an excuse to do the exercises (I assume you mean the recent ones in season 10) and this would push me to complete them.

Okay...sorry for more negatives than positives. I didn't like this chapter as much as the last couple. I'll let my notes speak for themselves: Pg 1: "His hair tore off the ground as he moved" --this took a couple read-throughs to understand. There's several other places where the "grittyness" makes it hard to understand what the sentence means. Pg 1-4: There's a lot of good description here, and we learn about Taras' determination, but there's almost too much. Every paragraph is a major hurdle. I know you're trying to show that Taras is wounded, and struggling to live, but I think there's too much blow-by-blow. For example, the entire paragraph about Taras tearing off strips of cloth from his jacket and binding his chest wound could be reduced to something like...well like what I just wrote, rather than a whole paragraph. Pg 8: Alph is a horse, right? Why isn't Taras riding him so he doesn't collapse? Pg 10: By this point, we know Taras is wounded and in pain, so we don't need as many reminders. I'm sort of skipping them to get to what happens next. Pg 11/12: I get something's happening with Taras and the animals, but it's pretty confusing. Seems like Taras is in the wolves, and the bruskil, and then in his body again doing magic at the wolves? I don't have enough context for how the magic works to understand it yet, or even make a guess. You have a very visceral style, but at times it can overwhelm what is actually happening. Especially coming off the excitement off the last chapter, the slow pace at the beginning of this chapter tends to drag. In the end, not a whole lot happened, except Taras got out from under the bruskil, treated his wounds, then did something with wolves and another bruskil and got picked up by a Hand. Which, looking back, is actually quite a bit, except the exciting part happens in 3 out of 13 pages and the rest was just Taras trying to stand up. Anyway, still looking forward to next week. I have a feeling things will pick up quite a bit with the Hand threatening to burn him as a sacrifice!

Brevity from Robinski! I think I saw a pig fly by. ;-) Very cool story. I can see lots of places this can go. Oddly enough, I thought you were talking about the most recent episodes of Writing Excuses (10.1 and 10.2) which also have exercises in 150 words or less. I think this nails the writing prompt. It gives a very good sense of tension, sets up the problem, and even gives us a brief glimpse into characters. The use of names helps that a lot. We can tell the flight members came from many sources. I had a little confusion with the arithmetic. At first I thought they were dying from old age, but you contradicted that in the first paragraph. So I assume they don't know the cause, but they leap to the solution of breeding new crew members. They going to have the same trouble with the new members if they don't fix the problem. I've now gone over 150 words in writing a response, so I should probably stop. Well done. This might work as it is in the "flash fiction" format, or could easily be expanded into a short story.

Part 2 of chapter 5, in which Kisare and Belili find out more about the Asha-Urmana, and the box. Let me know what you think!

I'd like to submit again. I know I've done a lot of weeks in a row, so if we go over, I can drop back.

It may have been on the first read through back in May. Can't remember.

Lol--that's great. Now I'm going imagine PacMan as I write! On the capital/non capital front: when I submitted the first few chapters originally, back in May, I had Apples and apples, Oranges and oranges, which was confusing for readers, as well as potential listeners. I adjusted so the only magical Fruit that existed was the capital ones, but kept the capital Fruit when referring to them and regular fruit when referring to non-magical ones. That part might still be confusing if read aloud, but I've tried to limit it so it's obvious by context. (I think Robinksi still disagrees, but I'm going to claim artistic license on that one, so there!) Good comments on the opening. That part is still rough. I'm nearing the end of the book, so when I go back and edit afterward, I should have a clearer idea of what to begin the story with to mirror the end. Glad you like the magic. It's been fun to play with as I write. I think I did eventually start using "juice" instead of "fruit juice," so I'll go back and adjust that. I've a few similar comments on Kisare's reaction to Hbelu. That part will need some edits as well. Really, what you've read up to now was re-written a couple times, so the characters still have some personality quirks I hadn't worked out. From here on, it should be smother. Thanks again!