shatteredsmooth

If we resume subbing next week, I'll have something ready for Monday the 19th. If not, I can wait until the following week.

I trimmed a lot this yesterday. I went through and removed the vampire, alien, and god references. I alluded that there might be something more powerful than an average ghost, but didn't say what it was. That will reveal will come later. I took the sage out. I also didn't use the word "agate" and am just describing the necklace as a dark stone. It's not super significant to the story. Your explanation of sage was interesting. I get very fed up with google very quickly when I'm trying to research metaphysical stuff. I'm not sure how much of it I am actually going to keep / use in this manuscript because I'm more likely to get it wrong than right. Sometimes when I write speculative stories with a contemporary setting, it's easier to just have made up tools when it comes to the paranormal. I'm thinking about ways to reorganize the information in the chapter. If I do move things around, I'll try to get to this right away. Yesterday I went and trimmed that so they get into the store much more quickly. Thank you all for reading! Your comments were very helpful.

Don't worry about it! I wouldn't be able to focus on reading submissions if someone I knew had disappeared like that. And I still need to read yours.

Thank you! I hadn't see that one yet. I'll check it out. I hope your relative is found soon.

I'm not there, but I'm also okay with skipping the subs.

I'm having a hard time finding the right words to say what I want about this chapter, so bear with me. I'll try to make sense. I almost feel like I am reading two completely different books. I know that the stuff from the other POVs will be related to Q's case in some way, but right now, all I have to go by is my trust in you as a writer and a few snippets here and there describing the election / campaigning. Both before and after those chapters, when you described the election stuff, I felt like you were throwing a spot light on it. Before the POV switch, I felt like you were saying "reader, you must pay attention to this, it is important and you will learn why, but I'm not going to tell you yet." After, it was "Reader, do you get it now?" And both times, something about it felt forced, though I'm not sure there is a way to make it not feel forced. And right now, as far as I can see, this is the only thread connecting the two, the only obvious hint, other than the fact that these chapters are happening in the same book, that these stories will cross paths at all. I love your writing, so I trust you to make the connection happen in a meaningful way as the book goes on, but if I had never read your work before, I'm not 100% sure if I would want to keep reading or not because the narratives feel so jarringly different and disconnected. However, since this is a 2nd book in a series, I'd guess anyone reading it would be invested enough in the characters and/or trusting enough in you as a writer to keep reading. Maybe part of my problem is that I came in expecting Q & M to be the main characters, but so far, the other POV characters have had all the action and high stakes. We opened with Q & M wrapping up a case, then they had lots of quiet time to pick a new one and talk to each other and eat food that really made me hungry. It's not until the end of this chapter that things that to get moving for them. I am also a little confused about this. I haven't read book 1, and I feel like I am supposed to know certain things but I don't know what they are. I had this feeling too. Part of it, at least for me, was because so little happened with Q & M before a whole lot happened to other people, but that isn't all of it. As I read: Page 4 You are making me want breakfast. "R arrived today, and Q knew..." I completely forgot who R was. However, this might not have happened if I read the whole book over the course of a day or two. Page 9: "Creston ideal for practising with real drivers, being remote enough that most people still had U-drive cars." Something about this sentence is confusing me. On the end of 9 going to 10, I feel like the narrative is throwing a big light on the election, begging me to understand that everything I just read from the other POVs will be connected to Q, even though I have absolutely no clue how. Page 11 Because of all the description of election related things, when I saw the flashing lights, I thought for sure Q and M were driving into the scene we had just left from the other POVs. Confession: I may have skimmed the time/date stamp at the begining of each chapter. Maybe that would have been enough to tell me whether or not they actually could be driving into that scene. I was almost disappointment and felt a little mislead when they didn't. Page 17 "He’s called the Old Man because he is one hundred and sixty-three years old. He was born in nineteen thirty-six. He’s a truly despicable human being." I liked how this not only gave me a sense of how old the character was, but also really grounded the setting for me. Aside from that disconnected feeling, I did enjoy the chapters. I love M, and thought their agreement to swap information about each other was fantastic! I'm looking forward to reading more and seeing how it all comes together.

Good point. As I reread more of the ms, I'll rethink how necessary or unnecessary this is and revise accordingly. The story is currently about 35K, but for the genre and age category, it should be closer to 45K. I have notes about a chapter in the middle I may or may not add, and everything that happens after the moment they turn people back is summary (which I will change before sending it to the group). The "hidden content" is kind of an explanation of the story being complicated, but it is a spoiler, so feel free to not read it unless you want to. felt like slime... maybe this isn't the best simile. Thanks for the feedback! I hope you have a good time at WorldCon!

Yay! Good catch! I think your comments are spot on regarding where the voice seems too old and where is age appropriate. You're not the only one who brought this up. I definitely need to reassess what information is revealed here and how it is revealed. This might be a detail they learn from A, not from some document. I agree with you and the others that I did not handle that reveal right. I appreciate your insight on it. More breathing room is definitely required. LOL I'll revisit this. I have the version of word for Mac that the community college I teach at gave me for free. It may not do everything it is supposed to. The program as a whole is a little glitchy and might be made for an older OS than what I'm running. Google actually caught things Word didn't. Thanks! It might get rocky in a week or two because we're getting close to a point in the manuscript where I have as many questions and notes written for my self as I have story, but then it gets better again Scooby Doo vibes are totally appropriate. This story is a hodgepodge of paranormal tropes and weird things I made up as a kid. Thank you so much for reading and critiquing!

Hi All, Sorry this is a little late. Last week, I thought it was ready, and planned to proof read it Monday morning after not looking at for it a few days, but instead of proof reading, I made a bunch of big changes that may or may not improve the chapters. This morning, I read through it out loud and ran both Google Doc's and Word's spell check. There are probably still plenty of errors that I missed, because this is me. Please don't waste time correcting them in case the content feedback prompts me to rewrite or delete sections of text. I'm curious if the characters sound more kid-like in this section, and if I did better with emotion. I tried doing a scene related exercise from a writing excuses podcast, but I had trouble staying focused on the exercise, so if the scenes are still a problem, I'll try again on the next revision. If there seems to be some overlap between the research in the library and the research in this scene, it's because I might to trim the library scene a little and add a little more emphasis on feelings about Mom and not getting in trouble with the librarian. I'll probably be tweaking the balance of information between these two scenes for a while. Thanks! Sara Last time: Ch. 1-2: E's mom gets turned into a mannequin in an antique shop. A haunted doll helps E's and the shop dog escape the same fate. Ch. 3-4: E gathers supplies from Junk Junction and does research in a library. Then they venture out to find food and a psychic. They meet D, a 13-year-old psychic whose mom is missing. They think D's mom's disappears is related to E's mom and Mx.R getting turned into mannequins.

I had been wondering about this. Thanks for the insight. Good idea! This will be a great way to up the tension. I guess if the librarian does ask, it would put E in a situation where they can choose to be truthful and leave or be lie and stay. If I do rewrite so the librarian asks and E lies, I need to make sure E is very uncomfortable with it and the narrative voice isn't endorsing it. That said, I think it could add more tension. This makes a lot of sense, and is some thing concrete I can focus on when revising. Thank you! @industrialistDragon Thank you for all the great feedback. :-) This manuscript has a long way to go before it gets looked at by editors. I'm thinking that @industrialistDragon suggestion (which was posted after your comments) of a suspicious librarian looking over E's shoulder, and knowing when the library closes, might put some pressure on E. They might not know how long they have to save Mom, but their time in the library should be limited. Getting kicked out and/or having Dad or police called would be a good threat to have looming over them, at least in that scene. @Ace of HeartsThank you for reading and commenting. Your feedback is very helpful. :-)

Thank you. I was overtired when I saw it, and since I was in college, I've had people assuming I didn't make an effort to catch errors simply because they were there. I'm sorry if I blew it out of proportion.

@hawkedupThanks for the encouragement. I'll try to be clearer in OP next time. I'm probably over reacting to this anyway. I just kind of melt down when people say or imply they think I need to proof read something that I spent a couple hours proof reading. By now I should just accept that there will always be someone who will see the amount of errors and make assumptions, but every time it happens, it makes me more frustrated instead of less frustrated. It is a huge chore, and no matter how much effort I put in, I will still miss things. I'm trying to find a balance between editing enough so that readers don't get too distracted by the errors, but not so much that I get distracted from more important elements of the piece.

@JWerner I just put it in Google Docs and that seemed to focus more on the types of errors I make than word did. Next week's submission should be cleaner. I didn't realize how much Google Docs had improved its spell check.

I have spell check on in Word. It doesn't catch missing words or pick up on when I said "too" instead of "to" or "loose" instead of "lose." Is it supposed to? Maybe something is wrong with mine? It only seems to catch actual misspellings, not incorrect forms. The grammar function is good at catching fragments and some wrong sentence constructions, but it also sometimes labels things as fragments when that is not the case. It would be nice if it actually caught that stuff, because I could read the piece ten times and not see a missing word or an extra "o". I really don't want to pay for something like Grammarly. I looked this over twice, one time was out loud, but reading out loud is almost useless for me. If I spend hours editing something and post it here only to find out I need to do a major rewrite, I fell like I wasted a ridiculous amount of time. It's funny, because I can handle rejections and major rewrites, but it's my inability to see errors that sometimes makes me doubt whether I have any business writing. I can work on the pacing and put more emotion into the piece. If my Microsoft Word's spell check isn't doing what its supposed to, I can try a different word processor. I can't change the way my brain, eyes, and ears communicate (or fail to communicate) with each other. I'm sorry this was such a mess. Thank you very much for reading in spite of my malfunctioning brain and malfunctioning spell check, and for pointing out all the things I missed. I truely appreciate it. I'll try putting my next submission in Google docs and Pages next time and see if either of those catch more than Word did.

To the mc, dolls and mannequins are not the same. If I said something about turning into a doll, then I probably used the wrong word. Believe it or not, I've actually two or three old vampire hunting kits in antique stores. There were periods of time when people actually believed in vampires, often because they didn't understand how disease spread. Sometimes, outbreaks of tuberculosis had cause vampire scares in small, rural towns. This is something I feel like a 12-year-old with an interest in the paranormal might know about. The following article doesn't mention anything about specific kits, but it does go into detail about a time when people actually believed in vampires. However, since I've seen kits that appear to come from the 1800s, I can assume that kind of panic/mentality is what lead to them being made in the first place. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-new-england-vampire-panic-36482878/ However, I might take the vampire hunting kit out because I think it is a little misleading when it comes to world-building. Sounds good! The notes you made so far were helpful. Thank you. :-)

Sorry. I have a deep seated dislike of pink and blue, so I tend to write characters who dislike those colors, and then sometimes try to counter them with one who appreciates them. If it is any consolation, the mc doesn't dislike the ponies, just the pink. And D loves both pink and ponies. I'm very conflicted with A and what their voice should be like. They died as a kid, but they've been a ghost for a very long time. So do they still talk like a kid? Or do they talk like someone who is very old? I was thinking that to an extent, their voice and personality matured while they spend so much time thinking, watching, and plotting. Maybe that was the wrong choice, and I should go at from the perspective of their spectral self being stuck in a more kid-like mindset. Thanks for the feedback! I'll definitely be working on framing scenes and adding more emotion to the chapters.

Fantastic! I thought I had seen you link transcripts before, but I could find which thread it was in. Now I see the transcript button. Thank you.

I'd like one too, if there is enough room.

You make a very good point here. When I draft, I don't always think on too technical a level. I'm typing things as they play out in my head and sometimes I think in terms of scenes, but often, I get too caught up in figuring out the story and background. That may be what is happening here. One revision technique I've used in the past on some of my manuscripts is to annotate each scene by describing the what the character wants in it, what is stopping them, what are they doing to get it, how does it advance the overall plot. I'll try doing that with this and see if it helps. Thank you so much for bringing this up. Thanks for recommendation! Do you know if there are transcripts for the podcasts? I didn't see one on the page, and I cannot absorb much information just from listening. Podcasts and my brain are not super compatible. Thanks for reading and critiquing!

Yes, this is more or less what I was trying to get across. This is like a contemporary fantasy setting. Like in reality, some people believe in ghosts, but many don't. Beyond that, most don't believe in magic or paranormal things, unless like D and her mom, they are among the few psychics who can actually communicate with ghosts. I was trying to describe occult type books one might find in an actual library, though I think before I get to the final draft, I need to go peruse a couple libraries (or at least look at the online catalogue) to see how true to reality the section I am describing is. As I revise, I'll try to make sure this is clear from Ch. 1. Good idea. Yes. Her mom's wife. Yeah. Digging on the internet, I found one or two obscure ones that sounded really awkward, and at the moment, I can't remember what they were. I talked to a couple other non-binary people about the aunty thing and they thought it was fine. Thanks for pointing this out. It sounds like I was definitely rushing things, like I trying to just get it out on the page without making it thoughtful or realistic, and was sort of oblivious to what I was doing until I read this. Your comments about the way information is revealed and how that affects the tension are also very very helpful! Thank you!

Oooh I'm the first one this time! I didn't make any comments as I read the first part. I was very engaged with T's POV. The sections was oozing with tension and emotion. Initially, I was a little annoyed that it took so long to learn what M actually said to her, but I wouldn't change it because the emotion in the part, her reaction to what he asked, was so compelling. Plus, not knowing what it was motivated me to keep reading. Trying to figure it out before it was revealed kept me engaged. Plus, there were enough hints that I kind of already knew what he was asking. However, for some reason, I thought had been the topic of the phone call T had in the previous chapter...of course it wasn't. T didn't have a phone call scene. I was confusing G with T. They are very different characters, but there have been a lot of new characters introduced over the last two chapters, so I'm not surprised I'm struggling to keep track of who is who. With the second part, I did make a few notes as I read. Page 14 "What scared him was the cost of failure, the systematic dismantling of his entire life. Social standing..." I had to re read this a couple times. I got the gist of it right away, but something about the structure muddled it for me so I had to go back and reread. Page 15 Here, I'm starting to get lost in M's internal thoughts. It has a sort of stream of consciousness feel, but I found myself needing to back track and re-read to make sure I was following everything. Page 16 "Surprising he wasn’t dead already." Is M surprised this guy isn't dead because he knows the beasts are loose? I'm a little confused here. Page 17 “As I knew they would when you outlined your plan. Don’t call again until everything’s fixed. I mean everything.” Wasn't the plan to let them out? I'm a little confused by this conversation. Overall, I was engaged with M's section. He's one of those characters I enjoy hating, and I hope he gets eaten by something or caught by Q & M and sentenced to a long time in jail. I thought most of the bits of his backstory were well integrated, but for the last few pages, I was following the gist of the story but getting confused on some of the specifics. I'm looking forward to the next installment, but I'm also hoping that there are not more new characters and that we get back to Q and M soon.

Hi all, Thank you for all he helpful feedback you gave me last week! Here are the next two chapters on Junk Junction, a middle grade paranormal (and maybe horror) novel. I'm worried Ch. 3 drags a little even though the first person who read it thought it didn't. I can't pin point where or why I think the tension lags, so at the moment, I'm not sure how to fix it. I'm hoping something will click after I get feedback. Otherwise, I don't have any specific questions. Whatever feedback you have will be appreciated. As far as editing goes, I read aloud again but didn't go over with a pen and paper since it seemed like last weeks submission was readable, and at the moment, I'm more concerned with content that grammar. Thanks, Sara Last time: E's mom gets turned into a mannequin in an antique shop. A haunted doll helps E's and the shop dog escape the same fate.

I might post the rest of Act 1—I want to test the waters on some new characters—but beyond that, I don't know. I'm also trying to re-evaluate how I want to tackle my writing projects right now; it's a confusing mess. I'm torn between doing more editing of Scarlet Saber, revising 'Confederates' and kicking myself into finishing my third novel, a project I've been trying to figure out how to write for years now. I completely agree with @hawkedup here. I think even if you are getting tough feedback in the early chapters, that it is good to just keep pushing through as much as possible. I also recommend just picking one project and seeing it all through until you finish a complete draft or complete revision, then moving on to the next while that draft rests. Last summer, I tried putting a novel length work through this group. I had a skeleton of a draft that had big chunks missing in the middle. I thought I'd revise, and fill in the gaps as I got to them, but I got so hung up on perfecting the begining that I ended up deciding to put it aside and work on something else. I still haven't come back to that book, and I'm not sure I will. I truely think if I hadn't kept back tracking, if I had made changes I agreed with and then just sent the next chapter and didn't keep resubmitting, I would've finished the book in the time I allotted myself to work on it. Over the fall and winter, I wrote another novel, the sequel to my published book. I only sent the first chapter through the group and instead, sent the whole novel to beta readers after I'd revised on my own. This was what more or less what I had done with the four books I wrote before joining this group. One of those is published, two are shelved, and one will hopefully be contracted soon. The process worked, to an extent. It was what I needed to do to get through those books and not get bogged down, but I know my writing could be better. I want an agent and a larger, more established publisher. So for Junk Junction, which is my 7th, I'm sending it through the group, and promising myself that I will keep pushing through it and not get hung up on the early chapters. I encourage you do the same, whether it is with Greek Confederates or Scarlet Saber. I was enjoying both of those stories and would love to read them through to end. Additionally, if you want a beta reader for either, I'm happy to read through the whole thing and give you more general feedback on the whole thing instead of on individual chapters.

Surprisingly, I actually didn't think of that. I'm not entirely sure I'm to keeping this title any way. I have about five different titles in mind. This one was the shortest, so I thought it would be easiest to use when submitting. I don't mind the Conjunction Junction association with the shop, but I don't think I want it with the title of the whole book. I'll stick with the current one for the purposes of submitting to the group, but it might not be the title I eventually query agents with. I was thinking about a carpenter ant and powder post beetle problem my spouse and I had when we first bought out house. But for me it was a very specific association, so it might be best to get rid of the bug reference. Interesting. I just used that because that was phrase my mom used in real life when it came to finding valuable antiques, but would probably be better to come up with something more unique for the sake of the story. There is already a lot in these chapters that are drawn from my childhood...maybe too much. I thought I had a line the toy section in there saying E was non-binary person, but I think it might gotten muddled or accidentally deleted because I kept shortening and elongating that paragraph. I'll work on clarifying it. Hmm I feel like that would be a rather very long chapter for a middle grade book, but it would probably work if I trimmed the first half a little. That's a good idea. I'm glad to hear it! Thank you so much for your feedback. :-)

The booths are not operated by different people. They are rented spaces within one antique shop. In real life, my mom and cousin both sell in shops like this. They pay a monthly fee and are able to put items in a "booth." The price tags on their items have their dealer numbers on them, so when people pay, the sales get attributed to the right person. At the end of the month, the rent is deducted from the sales and they get whatever money is left. If they don't sell enough to cover their rent, then they have to pay what they still owe. Blazer might not actually be the right word. I probably should have just said jacket? Specifically, I was picturing either Victory Suits or a WWII women's military uniform. It might be a US thing, but I don't know how widely the outfits I'm picturing were worn and I watch very little television, so I have no clue how often these show up in period dramas. I have a complete draft. It's a little bit shorter than it should be, but I have notes about possibly adding one chapter in the middle, and the end is very very rushed. Eventually, line edits would be amazing! Thank you! My mom and I actually found one of these in an antique shop once. In this story, it does get fired, but not at vampires. Explaining outright that people can turn into mannequins in this world would ruin the tone for too. In the opening, neither the mom nor E are certain whether or not the supernatural exists. However, I can try to sharpen the focus regarding supernatural elements and try to set up better for the grown ups becoming mannequins. Thank you so much for the feedback!