Mandamon

Alright...I can do this. I figured out I just need to remove 34 words per page!

Welcome back!

Yeah, I want to submit, but the only accept up to 130k. Mine's at 137k and I have had no time with releasing Seeds to cut it down. Hopefully I can do so in the next couple weeks!

Congrats!

@Master OoklaJack Re. Fridging, @kais can certainly help you out on that front, and is our resident keeper of the Fridging Counter. But to get you started, here are two resources: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Refrigerators

@Master OoklaJack certainly not boring. The fact that you listen to our (sometimes overcritical...) critiques and learn from them goes a long way to showing your character, and I can already see your writing getting better. Keep writing and keep up the submissions!

@ICanDream, read through the "Welcome to Reading Excuses" here: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/1369-welcome-to-reading-excuses/ @Silk can set you up on the email list.

Well, this was more interesting than the prologue! I think this character does have potential, but the biggest thing that threw me out was how S.T. acts. You state that she's already a master in the first line, but then she acts like a teenager when confronted with her master's death. F.R. calling her "child" when she's 60--eh, I know this is standard for some religious institutions, but that combined with her age/mental discrepancy doesn't work for me. I would assume that someone with the training to be called "master" in anything would be more mentally composed when dealing with adversity. Some thoughts about exploring a 60 year old woman being a main character (most of these apply to an old man as a character as well): --What/how many things has she trained in? (I'm in my 30s, and have already spent 10+ years in at least 3 very different disciplines) What other skills can she draw on at any time? --Does she have a relationship with people other than F.R.? How insular are these sand master disciplines? --Does she have a family? Has she been pregnant? If she has a child, how old are they? Does she have grandchildren? How do these relationships affect how she thinks about F.T. killing off people? --Has she killed someone before? Why/how? --It sounds like she's part of the Council. How low has she been part of it, and why would they think she had anything to do with her beloved master's death? --Is she scared of dying? --You mention her getting too old to run around. What old injuries does she have? Does anything just not work right any more? How does she compensate for it?

I want to read that book.

Looks like I'm the first! And here I thought I was running late. As for POV, I didn't really get any significant attributes out of Denar. Seemed like a fairly standard young male protagonist. Sarrann has even less development. Why are they here? I'm not even really sure what the tests do, so I don't yet understand their reasoning. Right now, they both could be switched out for any other character. If you're looking for a POV, I'd ask why a reader would want to take a 80k-150k word journey with this person. Master FangTar at least had a reason for guarding the stone. Honestly, I'd rather read a fantasy about an 80 year old (female) master of martial arts at this point than another standard teenager. readability-wise, I had trouble getting into this submission. First, it was very hard for me to tell how many people and swords there were. Second, the blocking and situation just doesn't work for me. Why are people climbing up swords in a wall to escape a pit filling with water? Just float/swim up with the water. Or if nothing else, if the swords can find purchase in a wall, there's probably enough texture to get a fingerhold to hold a person up, while they tread water. If the water was poisoned, or freezing, or something to give more threat, it could also work better, but right now I can't suspend my disbelief enough. Notes while reading: Pg 1: some blocking problems in the first paragraph. It took me a long time to figure out they were climbing up a sequence of swords stuck in the wall. I'm also not sure the flat of a sword would support a person's weight, and sitting on the edge would be...uncomfortable. pg 1: "wrapping around a sword blade" --ah...this is important to know. Say this earlier. pg 1: "The boy on the rung below" --wait, how many people are climbing up these swords? I think there was mention of another girl as well--so 4? more? I thought there were only 3 or 4 swords total, but this seems like there need to be more. Need to say explicitly how many people and swords are here. pg 2: "water had begun filling the room around them" --sooo, stupid question, but wouldn't it take about the same energy (or less) to simply dog paddle in the water as it filled the room, rather than stabbing swords in a wall and trying to climb them? pg 2: "sliding off without a sound, slipping into the depths below." --so no one can swim either? pg 3: "pulled himself onto the sword" --this is still not working for me. Swords are not structurally sound pieces of furniture. pg 4: "had to cram onto one sword" --nope. pg 4: "There were only four of them" --There were five? I thought there were four.

No problem @Robinski! I know what you mean. Even though I'm not doing NaNo, I've been head down in finishing up Seeds this month. I think I'll have the last corrections done today or tomorrow, then a few last bits here and there before I can release it!

Welcome to Reading Excuses! I thought this was a good piece for a new writer. You kept my attention pretty well, by ratcheting up the tension. I think @Paracosmic_nomenclator covered a lot of the technical details, and I would add that I thought, like @industrialistDragon, that the fight perhaps went on too long without establishing more of why things were happening, rather than how. I was also intrigued by the magic. It reminded me a little of Sanderson's White Sand magic system, though it's certainly different. My biggest complaints with this were: 1) TonHar doesn't act like an 85 year old. His thoughts are much younger and threw me out of the story. Especially for someone who is supposedly master of an art or magic, I would think he'd be a lot calmer, from learning how to control himself. 2) Action vs. character building: This prologue does move things along and get us interested in the story, which is what a prologue should do. I'd still like a few more paragraphs to make us care about the characters. Why are we rooting for TonHar? Why is FangTar trying to rule the world (or whatever). Which leads me into the last point... 3) Old white guys. As far as I could tell, everyone in this prologue was a male. The focus characters were old white dudes with beards (at least the way I was visualizing them). This has been done before, and I'd be much more excited to see old tough women fighting, or maybe that one discipline is women only, vs men, or even just that some of the guards, or either T.H. or F.T. is female. Or diverse, or POC, or etc... Notes while reading: pg 1: "angled masks" --angled how? pg 1: "they send me four guards" --slight POV problem. This part should either be in italics or it should be in the third person. pg 1: paragraph 3 is sort of an infodump. You set up the scene well, and I want to see what happens, and see how the stone is used rather than getting told about it. pg 3/4: "TonHar yelled in frustration," "TonHar screamed and lunged forward" --Master TonHar doesn't seem like the type to scream and yell. He seems more calm and collected. pg 5: "I will not fail. I can’t fail! He told himself. " --again, this sounds like a much younger person, not an 85-year old. pg 6: "I have the Life Stone now, I have the powers of a Slasher, Thumper, and Swifter now. You are nothing to me.” " --eh, this is a bit moustache-twirly... pg 6: "He didn’t moan or whimper. He had heard people did that when they died, but he didn’t." --this is at odds with all the screaming and yelling.

Welcome to Reading Excuses, @WritingAubergine! I recognize this exercise...was it from the WX episode on the MICE quotient? In any case, I also think this was a fun read, but pretty light and fluffy. I'd like to see more framework around it. Is this actually an excerpt of the whole thing, or is this all you've written? In other words, I think the concept is fine, but I want to see more of the execution.Like @TKWade says, you could add more about how Mr. M tells the story, and Paul is just thrown in at the end. The last sentence is confusing, because we've been told this was "based on a true story" then told that Mr. M made up Bert, but then Paul (I assume) insists Bert is alive. It seems like a good thread to pull to expand this into a short story. Why are these people talking about Bert? Is he real or made up? Dead or alive? Why was a goat talking to Mr. M? I don't think anything particularly jarred me out of the story, just as nothing really made me LOL. I'd just like to see more of it. Also, I may be in the minority, but anything with well-done footnotes draws me in.

There's a good core to this, but you're dancing around the answers to questions the reader has. I think if you answer them, this will be a solid story. Right now, I was confused by a lot of it. Promises you haven't answered/resolved: 1) why is Lisa unfit for a job? 2) what condition/problem does the brother have? 3) why do the girls hate their father? 4) why is a college-age person able to freely mess with genetic code? 5) who/what is the brother? Is he a clone? 6) what does the CAG code tell the sisters? Notes while reading. As I said above, most of them are in the "confused" category because they deal with one of the unanswered questions. pg 1: confused with the sudden DNA code and then wanting to smash a random vase? pg 4: I feel like there's something I'm missing, and I can't put my finger on it. Why does Lyn have her brother's DNA? Why would no occupation work well for the main character? pg 7: You're getting into a very deep ethical dilemma area by now, talking about gene manipulation, clones, programmed humans, and repeated murder. I need something else before this to qualify these statements. pg 8: Wait--what has Lyn realized? I'm lost. pg 9-10: I have no idea what the number of repeated CAGs mean. pg 11: Wait--what? what happened? Does the brother have Huntingtons? Does Lisa have some disease? I really have no idea what's going on. There needs to be a stronger end to the story.

I'm probably going to skip it again. For one, I'll be doing final edits for The Seeds of Dissolution, and trying to get that released, and for another, I tend to only get bad writing I have to heavily edit from NaNo. But I will cheer everyone else on!

Awesome! Glad it's passed the @kais approval test--that makes me feel better about sending it out to 70+ people for the kickstarter... Yeah, I can definitely see writing some more shorts like this, to fill in space between the novels and novellas. Sam encountering a computer would be...interesting.

Thanks @TKWade and @industrialistDragon! Glad things are clearer. I'll focus efforts on the first paragraph and the house descriptions, and clean up those other places TKWade identified.

Hello all, Here is the third attempt at my short story. It got longer again, but the big changes are mainly at the beginning and the end (plus @Robinski's helpful pedantry corrections throughout....) so if it's too long, feel free to skim through the middle. And any other comments, of course. Deconstruct away!

Thanks @Robinski! I shall delay submitting the next version until maybe tomorrow, and edit for the issues you brought up. Yeah, this is a bit unclear--I need to do a pass in Seeds to bring it out more. There is the Grand Symphony, which is everything, and the individual Symphonies heard by the houses. They're all part of the same thing, but the maji make it a distinction because they can't hear everything. There's a different section of the Symphony for different places, based on what's nearby. Thus the box dominates the theme here, but if you went upstairs, you might hear more of the music of energy in the conduits, or something else. I took a note (ha) from Jordan here, where he described the male and female Aes Sedai working with the other half of the source, even though they couldn't perceive it. I'm actually glad you caught these points! I hadn't written from a POV inside the House of Potential before, so I was experimenting with how they processed things vs. the other houses.

Well, I've changed the short story again, so I could submit for people willing to read a third time. Mainly the beginning and end are different.

Personally, I understand what you're saying. My father does hand woodworking on the side, and I can see the difference in his pieces and mass-produced pieces. However, that transition is what--200 or more years past in our history? Any empathy with losing handworking as the main source of crafting is far lost in our history and probably 99% of your readers are going to say "so what" about that plot line. I think for it to be effective, you have to be very specific about what is being lost and what it means for the country. Make the reader feel that loss.

This is better, but I'm still not sold on the industrialization = bad. Also, S's revelation drags a bit. Could be trimmed. A) I'm not really sure what this interlude adds. We already know S's found the fungus. B ) It's better, but not quite yet. I have some notes below. I think we need to have the "thesis" of this dropped earlier in the story so that it makes more sense here and we can get t to the revelation quicker. pg 2: "Like a chemist. They’re not even a guild" --do you go more into what a chemist does? Is this something coming from the industrialization? pg 5: “It was more than one blanket, and all of them looked identical. Like they’d fallen from a pack of yet more identical blankets.” --This took me a couple reads to realize the importance--that if the blankets were exactly the same, then they were manufactured. I think this could be punched up. Maybe something more important than a blanket? pg 6: "I need to see those textiles!" --Next, on CSI Sorpsi... pg 6: Seems like missing potential that S refuses to interact with the lake and then Sam just tells M what she wants. pg 7: Sam makes a good case for the factories again. Every time I read this I have a hard time summoning any sympathy for the plight of traditional guilds, especially if the trained members can just switch over to using new technology. What is it that makes the old guilds special? Ornamentation? Finer fitting? pg 8: "If you wanted to save the guilds, you’d work with the new technology, not against it.” --uh, yeah. This. pg 8: falling into the lake is a bit plot-ful. pg 10: S's epiphany about magic/alchemy still seems forced. I'm not sure what it needs. Maybe some trimming to get to the revelation quicker? pg 11: "but they were both penalized by Iana when she took the kingdom. They’re the two unbound guilds. Their paths and histories are intertwined." --ah, this finally makes a lot more sense. Interlude: pg 13: At 16, would S still play these games? pg 15: "We can dance at night and the sailors will see our rotations as blinking." --confused by this. Do the mushrooms rotate? Not sure that this interlude adds a lot. We already know S discovered the elf's cup. Does seeing it add anything?

I need cis het male help here. What would you do? Lesbians (loosely, very loosely), but also your sister? @Mandamon @Robinski @TKWade @rdpulfer help! I would say engaging once, seeing they were "busy" and studiously and embarrassedly looking at something else until they were finished, but that's just me.

Thanks @kais, @rdpulfer, and @industrialistDragon! Great comments. Just this one. There was a second story farther down in the stretch goals, but didn't quite get there. Not that I won't write more Dissolutionverse short stories... Blame @Robinski ;-) Hmm...yep, I'll prop up the beginning a little more with some specifics about life back home. Also, thanks to @industrialistDragon for the v1 vs v2 mismatches. I'll fix those. Interesting. I liked how it was cyclic, but seems I'm missing something. Would it help if I added a few more hints at the beginning that K. has more relationship with the issue than he's letting on?

Welcome to Reading Excuses! I'm in general agreement with @kais and @industrialistDragon, so I won't belabor the point. I was a little turned off at the beginning of the story by the "perfect wife" syndrome with Suzie. Seemed to be taking it too far. I was also completely surprised that Suzie was dead, at the end. I wondered why she didn't wake up, but assumed something else was going to happen. I'd make this very concrete, as it's the point of the story (unless you can change it completely to get away from the fridging aspect). Also agree on the park/hobo thing being extraneous. Unless he takes another life this way, I don't see what it adds. The story does wander a bit in the middle, for being so short. You could note that he's "cursed" or "a murder" or something like that early on to prepare the reader that this will be a story about John fighting with himself. As to whether it's fantasy? I'd maybe go with magical realism at best, if not simply a story about PTSD. Not that those are bad subjects, just that this doesn't really fall under the "fantasy" umbrella. Notes while reading: You tend to write around John seeing parts of his own body a lot. You could probalby cut these down to make them more concrete. "The first thing I see as my eyes travel up is my chin, then my smile, then my happy eyes." "I notice out of the corner of my eyes that I'm no longer smiling." "I suddenly feel something cold hitting the palm of my hand. " pg 1: "I try to shrug, but her hands are clasped to my shoulders and her whole weight is pressed down on me." --that seems kind of oppressive. pg 7: "but there's only a small spot of blood, about as wide as my own head." --That seems pretty large.