Robinski

Thanks again for your comments, @Ernei, sorry I've been so slow in responding. I'm going for the gee whizz being the ability to link a human to an android the the extent that the human can experience the sensory feedback from the android as if it was the human's own. So, like a VR body instead of just the helmet. That was the reasoning for putting Dr. John Mills' perspective first, but maybe I did not convey that well enough - I shall see what the others say.

Lol (cough), been there.

In the interests of freeing up time for writing, I'm going to try a more summarised commenting style on some submissions. Apologies if this seems briefer than usual, but hopefully there is still something useful in here! I’ll summarise here, details below the line, and the separate LBL’s I’ve emailed. My biggest issue, I was disappointed by the short section in the thing’s POV. I think that has to have way more impact. The switch is disorienting, but the reactions and the description of the action, I think, is not ‘other’ enough. Put in terms of movie SFX, it reads like a man-in-a-hairy-suit, when I wanted it to read like the bear attack in The Revenant, if you see what I mean. I enjoyed the story again. The present tense gives it more immediacy, as you would expect, but I think you could dial that up a bit more with a judicious edit. Some of the phrasing is quite indirect, with more words that necessary and stating the obvious in places where the reader would be more satisfied by making connection for their self and not being told. Oh, and I think you need to mention his Cancer and his Heart problems much earlier. They seem like an after though appearing midway through the story, imho. But yes, still enjoy this. Good to read your work again. LBLs in the mail. <R> ------------------------------------------------------- “I keep my distance from the marker” – LOL “I lock eyes with the calendar like it’s a loaded gun pointing at my head” – This reads a bit like a cat fight between a metaphor and a simile. The calendar has eyes, but it’s a gun? At this point, I decided that tracking the minor comments would be the best plan. I’ll email you LBL’s separately. You've got a habit of describing things twice in the same phrase. By the time I get to “grunts under his breath” there have been several examples. Here, I feel you can say grunt and drop the rest. If nothing else, some judicious pruning would make the whole thing snappier. “more than I make in a month” – I have grave doubts that a senior staffer would share with an orderly how much more he earned in a month. I’ve worked at (almost) every level of my company (now a director) and I cannot convince myself that this would happen. “Nam” – Do real vets call it that? I feel like this is a cliché now. Imho, calling it Vietnam would resonate better. Sorry, editorialising, but wait till you see the LBL’s :| You know by now that I can’t help myself (like you’ve forgotten Scholomancer, right...) Ahem, in the LBLs, I started suggestion deletions of the word ‘but’ on the third page. You use the word ‘but’ 54 times by my count. 1% of the words in this story are ‘but’. I figure if I notice the preponderance of one word, it’s a real problem. There are some inconsistencies in the present tense – see LBLs. “but I know the sound of a camera when I hear one” – problem: it really dates the story if cameras are making a shutter noise. No need for this with today’s tech. “only made it twenty-nine days” – I feel that using this phrase twice on Page 10 telegraphs the issue too much. It’s a taste thing, I suppose, so I know you'll ignore this as required, but saying ‘about the same time’ instead of the second instance of 29 would be less obvious, although the information is still there. Maybe? “I survived cancer, a heart attack” - I think we got mention of these things much earlier in the first version - did we not? I think Page 11 is awful late to mention these, it feels like they drop in from nowhere, when we've been with the guy for nearly half the story. “It tears through the bounds which once kept it flat against the soft slab” – Roundabout here I get confused by the POV, because we seem to be in the thing’s POV, but it thinks of itself as ‘it’ – weird and disorienting. “happening near Matthews, Siodmak, or worse, Diana” – Why does he think of those two before his daughter? No way, a father thinks of Diana first.

That's great, thank you, @kaisa. Hear what you say about the dialogue and subtext. I think I am always so concerned about having characters just blurting stuff out that I err too much the other way. Having said that, this is pretty quick, dashed out dialogue, so there's be no real refinement of it. It's also only a part of the scene, so would struggle against the objective anyway. Thanks so much for the comments.

My process? Err, well, when starting out on a novel, I will usually start with what I think is a cool, but not necessarily large or innovative idea. It might only be what I think is a good ending, or a cool dynamic for a central relationship. I'll usually outline the fffirst half and have an idea of the ending, although not necessarily a firm idea. The character portraits come in about then. I will write a page or so of chr building material, usually including a mini-bio and perhaps a scene between two characters. Most novels I go into now (so the last three), I will have about 20 pages of notes which might include 3 to 5 character portraits, maybe some additional (shorter) character summaries. For writing them, it all stems from one initial idea, usually of the dynamic between two people, with more detail coming in as I write. Taking Quirk for example, I wanted a character who had the opportunity to deliver some cool, funny dialogue. I often end of with quite straight-laced m/c's, so I was determined to break that pattern with Quirk. He needed a foil, someone to create friction, hence Moth, the foul-mouthed and unruly teenager. There is some deep background (spoiler) to add some depth and room for growth (I hope), and a twist to force and keep them together, those notions came along soon after. In summary, my process is have the idea and write it down before I forget! Just write enough about the character, some dialogue for how they speak and and explain (to yourself) why they are the way they are - it won't go into the book, but it's the source for stuff that does go in. There are good casts in WE Season 10 about character. You've maybe listened to them before, but I'd recommend going back over them, if it wasn't recently that you listened.

No, my fault, I should have been more specific about the exercises. The idea of the first one (the 10 perspectives), as I see it, is to practice introducing world-building details about your "gee whizz" (your core cool idea that makes the story interesting). So, I guess I should have asked readers to confirm (I hope) what the core idea is, and to comment on whether the perspectives give a good sense of the idea without being info-dumpy and just telling a bunch of specific details. In the second one (the dialogue), the idea was that each of the speakers has a main motive going into the meeting, but also a subtext to their discussion. I would appreciate the thoughts of readers here on what the main motive of each of the men is, but also what subtext is there, as you see it, to the way they handle the conversation. If nothing presents itself on this, don't worry about it. It have a track record of being rather oblique in the way I attempt to deliver certain information, so if you come up with nothing clear, that will not be entirely surprising, and entirely down to my ineffective dialogue. p.s. - I was going for 3rd person limited, but I don't think I've ever used it, and didn't really consider how to before I wrote this, so feel free to have at that too.

Yup - as did I. I agree, but I think it fits Sira's mindset, that her grandfather is only out to humiliate and infuriate her. Yes. Thank you for doing the maths @Ernei! Even if the intended audience doesn't know how to do that math, there's a good chance that some of them will still think the timing feels wrong, without knowing why. I think youngsters see enough of the world, even if on-screen, to learn something about how it works. Consider some U-toob footage of a bungee jump, as an example in this instance.

In the interests of freeing up time for writing, I'm going to try a more summarised commenting style on some submissions. Apologies if this seems briefer than usual, but hopefully there is still something useful in here! · (Chapter 10) – “She ran her finger again along the smooth ceiling of cloud. It was firm, but had a little spring to it. It also gripped easily against her glove” – So, this seems odd. We know that clouds are formed of water vapour, and that aircraft flying through them, so this firmness is puzzling. I'm thinking the cloud must have been affected by the triangulator. · I'm a bit disoriented by the description of Sira’s movement. I think, from time to time, it could be clearer where she is and how she is moving. · (Chapter 11) – Ah, okay, she is solidifying the cloud – wow. · “Gee, if only I was at Alayna’s. We could be jumping on the trampoline right now” – This is a strange line, given that she has just proclaimed this the best afternoon of her life. Is she trying to be ironic? How is a trampoline better than jumping on a cloud? · “What she saw was the collision of two clouds” – This is cool. · I don’t like “desolidified.” I commented on this elsewhere, Vreeah’s submission last week in relation to aerified. My comment, which seems to apply here, was... “I’ve got no issue with made-up words, but there is a ‘proper’ word for this, I feel. Depending on what process is at work here, something like sublimate (solid to gas)...” There are other, less precise words, like ‘disperse’, of course, but I understand why you wouldn’t want to use that. · “Panic assaulted her brain” – not fond of the phrasing here. I feel that panic does not just target the brain. Even though reactions originate there, limbs could be shaking, she could be hyperventilating. This phrase is telling, not showing. · I find myself stopping and wondering at the end of each chapter. I'm noticing increasingly that the final line often doesn’t seem to land as satisfyingly I would like it to. In this instance, I cannot understand why she steps off. Is she supposed to be moving toward the figure, or just moving blindly forward? Or is she moving away from the figure? I think this goes back to earlier, when I was struggling a bit with picturing Sira’s movements between the clouds. · (Chapter 12) – “Then she wished she’d aimed” – Good line, but before that, as she is falling, I was thinking that I had no sense of panic or fear. Then, you say “ripping the baton from her fingers” – which makes me think that she’s freefalling, but is the line in fact still attached to her? To some extent that is WRS on my part, but a subtle reminder of the operation of the triangulator would be no bad thing in general, I think. · Her imagining of her fate is well done – just a cruel and gruesome as I would expect from a child’s imagination at that age, and nicely in tune with her earlier daydreams. However, see my earlier comment about not feeling terror from her as she fell. That earlier lack of emotional reaction (that I could see) seems inconsistent with her present condition. · Her reaction at the end of Chapter 12 is wining, but I guess that’s okay, as she is still near the start of her arc towards being a likeable character, hopefully! · (Chapter 13) – I like the opening image. I can picture this nicely, and when we get to “like she’d crashed her flying saucer in the woods”, I'm thoroughly onboard again after wavering a bit during the cloud encounter. · “Sira’s eyes averted the woman’s” – I don’t understand this line. · “just not this woman’s phone” – Ooh, ouch. You'll need to explain why she has instantly taken against this woman on the basis of her outwards appearance. I don’t get it. · “with Cal’s face leaning out” – not just his face, presumably. · “Doing some…shopping?” – ROFL, great line – I have taken in instant liking to Cal. · Good ending to the chapter. We can see that Sira has a long way to go in the hoped for conversion to decent human being. The ending of the chapter punches that home nicely. Good chapters generally, some issues note above. The main turn-off for me was the disorientation I had when she was moving up to and around then down from the cloud. I think the cloud scenes could really benefit from the blocking being tightened up so it’s crystal clear what the movements are. Overall, I am still enjoying the story. It’s moving at a decent pace and there are nice little nuggets sprinkled throughout. I'm hoping after that all that action and activity that we are going to get a certain amount of scene-sequel as Sira analyses, possibly in discussion with Grampa, some of what went on. Nice job. <R>

Hey there everybody! So, last time, I submitted the first 500 words (x3) based on different promises for a scientist, Q and M (S10-Ep14); these included the first 13 lines, ‘crammed’ with set-up (S10-Ep16); also incorporating (in theory) the “gee whizz” theme/idea in each case (S10-Ep17). This time around, there are two exercises in play from Season 10 of Writing Excuses. (S10-E18) Pick your gee-whiz, whatever it may be, and describe it in 150 words from ten different perspectives. Yes, that’s 1500 words. (S10-E19) Write dialogue in which each of the speakers has a different subtext and motive. Without explicitly stating those, try and make them clear to the reader. I should mention that I have not edited these much, other than to get them down (or up) to 150 words – in the case of the perspectives. No need for line-by-lines, as doubtless most of these will never make it into a story. In terms of the second exercise, you may have read a previous submission in which Paxton Grimes, from the colony on Grbr. 34A1, met Moth in a train station and was ‘escorted’ by her into the centre of Milan, where he was meeting with Ant di F. Well, here is the opening of that meeting between Grimes and di F. I will post up (as a hidden ‘spoiler’) the basis for the scene after I’ve had a few comments on RE, assuming anyone reads it!! Thanks for your kind attention. <R>

p.s. - In the spirit of absolute power corrupting absolutely, I'm going to go ahead and submit

So..., since it's 1057 hrs GMT on Monday 26th September, I think I will stick my neck out, if I may, and give my trombone a toot (is that what you do to trombones? I only play second trombone, so I don't know all the lingo so well...) Looking back over the posts, I reckon we have the following submissionaries for today - 26th September: @kaisa - top of the list after deferring from 19th Sept. @Hobbit @AuthorityHellas16 @Ernei @Robinski Also, as requested in the post above, the first name down for the following Monday, 3rd October: @M.Puddles Please throw brickbats if I have this wrong. <R>

I'm looking forward to reading your next submission. Is it the one about the girl Cassie who can draw the future, that you mentioned in Alpha Readers? That sounds really interesting.

Yikes @Ernei, don't sacrifice the messenger!!

Difficult second album syndrome, prep time reduced by a factor of at least ten!!!

Gah....! Eh, it sounds like you will come back stronger, but stories can be overhauled too.

Well, if there's a slot going, I wouldn't mind submitting a couple more Quirk-based exercises from WE Season 10 - if there's a slot for tomorrow.

Ooh, and I just started reading 'The Lies of Locke Lamora'. I was quickly engaged by the description, which I find intriguing and vivid in places, however the structure of the prologue and early section was really bugging me. There constant flashbacks to Locke's early life, which break up the narrative of the emerging sting. It may be more innovative than a linear narrative, but the constant interruption was irksome. Past Page 110, there is still the odd intermission. I feel that is more manageable, but the opening, to me, risked disengaging the reader. Further installments to follow, I hope. This is fun

Seconded

This is an excellent idea for a thread, @krystalynn03, just super. So, I'm going to say read David Gemmell if you want to see highly effective character development, side characters and mc's. It looks effortless, but no doubt wasn't. Very good plot hooks too. The thing about Gemmell's stories that really makes them cook, I think, is how he worked with the details that really make the stories come alive.

For me, the spider is still the product of children's dreams, so I don't think you want it to be too difficult. It looks imposing on first inspection, then it's dealt with. As I noted, I think the issue is actually that the snake at the end is not bad, dark, nasty enough compared to the spider. I think while 'we' were maybe just a bit impressed with the spider, we should be quaking at the description of the snake, imho.

I would suggest not going all Sandersonian on the magic system. There's nothing wrong with have magic that just works, and if you use it in a consistent way, you don't have to have a great big rule book behind it. As you show through examples of its use how powerful it if, and don't suddenly introduce something new to solve problems, I would be perfectly happy to accept it without huge explanation and exposition. One caveat in that, you probably need to explain where the magic comes from, deity, ethereal essence, whatever.

Sorry this is so late. Just doing a little light catching up, I hope that these comments are helpful. I'm intrigued to read this after your first submission. As usual, comments based on MRK’s ABCD method, yaddah, yaddah, (A) = Awesome; (B) = Boring; (C) = Confusing; and (D) = Disbelief (-inducing), plus (G) Grammar/typo. Detailed comments below, but overall, I enjoyed the tone and the vibrant descriptions. I think there could have been a bit more in terms of colours, but maybe I'm quibbling. The first chapter is a short and punchy, exactly the kind of thing that I like to capture my attention at the start of a story. It has an arc of its own and a moment at the end to catch breath, as the characters do. Nicely done. I'm full of question about what is going on as I got into Chapter 2. I like the scene-sequel feeling of this chapter, allowing me to learn about the setting and more about the people. I feel like it’s good form to have this quiet contemplation of what happened. I'm still engaged. Then , things ramp up quite suddenly at the end, which is good. The children are being take and there are some big stakes to get engaged with. One issue I have with the sudden build up is that I would have liked it to feel different from the children’s dreams. The tone could have been darker, conveying danger instead of childish exuberance. Make it clear that this is much more serious. Also, I would have liked to see something of the children being taken, rather can just being told by Sofia. In summary though, I thoroughly enjoyed this. I certainly think it’s more convincing and entertaining than Jewelled Songbirds, which I think needed more work and seemed to have a less sympathetic main character. Good work! Best, <R> --------------------------------------------- Chapter 1 (C) – “the nursery's white stone walls” – Visualisation issue. Is the stone white, like chalk (seems unlikely for building purposes!) or marble (also unlikely for a nursery due to the cost), or is it painted with whitewash or similar? (AAA) – “tore forcibly into the collage of childhood make-believe” – this is a superb line. (G) – “but couldn't pierce through the hardened leaf” – ‘pierce’ means going through something. (G) – “Ellis felt the impact push him back” – I’ve just mentioned this in another review. I used to do this too. Consider this sentence against “The impact pushed Ellis back.” You're telling us what he felt instead of simply showing us the outcome. Your phrasing is much less direct than it could be and therefore less effective, imho. (D) – “beaked wolf” – This sounds awfully like the trollocs in Wheel of Time. (A) – There are some nice images on the opening page and I feel a sense of exuberance and energy in the description. It’s nicely done. Wee bit of tidying here and there, typos and such, but I was nicely engaged. (G) – “squeezing them until their shapes collapsed” – again, directness of language, why not just say ‘until they collapsed’? (C) – “jutted into view and punctured the beaked wolf” – disconnect here, what was wolf doing when he was dealing with three other dreams? (A) – “She lashed out with the thin white needle in her left hand, shredding the figurines” – I'm really enjoying the description, it’s fun. I feel like everything here is in miniature, that she’s wielding an actual needle and her mantle is a leaf. (G) – “Strong heat washed over the atmosphere” – Not keen on this phrasing. I would think the heat is part of the atmosphere, rather than separate. Also, the phrasing could be more direct, the heat washing over Ellis, rather than it reading like he is removed from it, separated from the heat by the atmosphere. (AAA) – “drawn into a single creature... ...a silver spider, woven together from metal eating utensils, all of which were aflame” – excellent image, it was great before it was aflame! (A) – “Bait it, and I'll punch through!” – I like this snappy dialogue in a fight. People don’t have time to talk ‘properly’ in the heat of the action, but this clipped dialogue still conveys to me what she is asking. (G) – “The tips of its parts grinded ground together” (D) – “Her lance was the size of a cottage” – I don’t like this phrase. A lance is slender, a cottage is blocky – one if these things is not like the other!! (G) – “watched their quarry aerify” – I’ve got no issue with made-up words, but there is a ‘proper’ words for this, I feel. Depending on what process is at work here, something like sublimate (solid to gas) or vapourise (liquid to gas) or evaporate (liquid to gas) or disperse (gas to... nothing). Chapter 2 (G) – “the crowd of children currently gathered around her weren't wasn’t there” – it refers to the crowd, not the children, ‘the crowd wasn’t there...’ (A) – “dipping their food in the nectar. When the snacks were taken out of the pitcher, they were covered by crunchy crystals” – Again, nice imagery, I'm feeling comfortably absorbed into this (seeming) faerie world. (A) – “Sofia told them she can sugar-coat anything” – Lol. I like your dialogue; it has the ring of things that people actually might say which, in fiction, isn’t always the case. For example, “That's Sofia's philosophy, not mine.” I think one of things I'm enjoying about the dialogue is that it is not over elaborate. (G) – “then picked up her biscuit and stood from her seat” – Obvious and therefore unnecessary. (A) – “Uh," Ellis looked from Rima to the wooden tray. "Okay, then” – Another dialogue example. You show Ellis’s puzzlement at Rima’s demanding tone without telling. (B) – “He heard their footsteps echo as they strode on” – Having said that, here is an example that sounds like indirect telling, compared to, say, ‘Their footsteps echoed...’ (A) – “You wouldn't want wild dreams roaming inside here, would you?” – Excellent!

Well, this is spectacularly late. I am sorry, but I was interested to read the continuation of your story, and I got these in the end! I hope there are some useful comments here. MRK’s ABCD method, yaddah, yaddah, (A) = Awesome; (B) = Boring; (C) = Confusing; and (D) = Disbelief (-inducing), plus (G) Grammar/typo. In summary, I had some issues. (1) I'm not sure what the intention is, but from the start of the story I have no sympathy at all for two 'men' who come to the elder to try and get another man condemned. They don’t seem to have any authority for law enforcement, or any evidence. So they have not been at all competent in preparing for the interview, or considering the consequences. (2) – There’s a lack of description of the characters, I feel, which means that I don’t feel any great reaction when Aurem’s friends make a sacrifice for him near the end of the chapter, apart from the fact that I am close to taking against Aurem because of (1), above. I don’t think that they have in any way earned the strong emotional reaction that you are seeking with the coming-to-manhood thing. (3) – “That evening, Aurem would discover just how wrong he was.” – I felt sideswiped by this line, and put this comment up here because I think it’s the ultimate instance of telling, which I've mentioned in the detail below. If you delete this line, you allow the reader to work out that the second last line (Asking them was basically a formality - he knew what they would say.) might be begging the opposite to be true. I think that is much better than telling the reader what is going to happen, even if it is YA. Overall, I was disappointed by this chapter after the prologue, which was so much darker in tone. I have a much stronger feeling for Elias than any of these individuals, and reading about them coming of age does not fill me with enthusiasm, I'm afraid. I hope some of this helps, sorry not to be more positive, and very sorry for the delay. Best, <R> --------------------------------------------- (B) – There’s a lot of looking at people and people looking back at the start. (G) – “Aurem thought he seemed slightly amused, but overall pleased.” – I am more and more conscious now of indirect phrasing. In this example, consider this suggested deletion. I think it makes the sentence more direct, but doesn’t lose any of the sense of what is happening. Imho, you don’t need to state that a chr is thinking something, it’s obvious. (C) – At first, it seems very like Telethas is the elder, because we don’t know that anyone else is in the room at that point. (B) – I don’t find the first two paragraphs all that interesting. I want something to grab my attention. Having said this, if I was reading this as a novel, I would just have finished the breathless prologue with all that fighting so, in reality, this scene sequel (in tone at least) actually might be a blessed relief! “called the Garda on him” – Lol. All I can imagine at this point is Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle!! That’s a great movie. (The Guard) – Garda being the Irish police force. (C) – I'm confused. Would the Garda send him south? Wasn't it the Garda that put him in North Peak? (G) – “the Elder’s Circle” – This implies it’s a circle with one elder. If it is a circle of many elders, it should be “the Elders' Circle” (A) – “He drew his hands along the table again, feeling the curve of the irregular edge. It felt good to sit here. How many times had he sat at this table?” – I like this, the feeling of community that it gives, and the impression that Aurem has some standing and respect. (A) – “Aurem felt his face soften under the Elder’s praise” – I like the elder, he’s canny, clearly knows how to deal with people. (D) – “That’s pretty bad” – This feels wishy-washy to me. ‘pretty bad’ doesn’t sound like it warrants the ‘ultimate punishment’ - btw, is that not death? Unclear. (D) – “And it’s different from just stealing once. Or just doing it as a joke, though that’s definitely not good either.” – Again, this is weak. I have no sympathy for their position atm. (C) – “But Telethas hadn’t even said what many people in the village suspected, now that they knew about Helia - that Selnest’s two infant children hadn’t died naturally, as everyone had assumed, but because Selnest had harmed them” – confusing, and also dead children drops out of the blue, which feels like a low blow. Why are we talking about stolen food when there is this HUGE unspoken issue that they’ve known about from the start? These two are accusing a man of murdering his children, but we’re talking about stolen food?! Not convinced. (D) – “The cardinal offense. Attempting to perform magic” – Worse than killing two children?! I'm not convinced by this at all. Also, I think we could have got to this much quicker than four pages. (B) – Start of Page 6 feels like an info dump, somewhat maid-and-butler. (D) – “Now that everyone knew the truth” – but there’s no evidence about the children. (C) – “Kaltus, of all of them, was the biggest troublemaker” – I feel there are quite a few statements like this in the chapter. These facts come out of nowhere and somehow seem to have no context. I think it’s because it’s telling, not showing, so it’s inherently less interesting. Also, because I know nothing about these people, I don’t really care whether they get what they want. “He hadn’t realized until now that part of him had hoped they would refuse Kaltus” – I'm really not getting any sympathy at all for Aurem. I've seen no evidence of any positive traits. I suppose he showed some sense of loyalty to his father, but his desire to see Selnest punished seems purely to be for personal reasons. “But, Elder…” He looked the Elder directly in the eyes. “I don’t want to cross this year.” – I would consider cutting a lot of these statements. Where else would be look when addressing the elder? I don’t think it needs to be stated all the time. (D) – “His voice was wobbly. He couldn’t believe this” – I feel there must be a better word than ‘wobbly’, one that meant you could delete the second sentence. If you convey the emotion better through the description in the first sentence, you don’t need to tell the reader how to feel with the second sentence. At the risk of editorialising (sorry!), but to illustrate my point, I think ‘His voiced wavered.’ would do the job, and allow you to let the reader deduce the emotion, which is more satisfying. (D) – “He turned away and wiped his nose on his sleeve” – not very manly. (D) – “The Elder smiled at them all, his eyes shining like dark pools” – again, I'm not really feeling the depth of emotion, because I don’t really know these people. I'm not invested in them as characters yet. (D) – “WHAT!” the boys all said at once” – I'm confused by the tone of the story. The prologue was completely different, so much darker, and I preferred that, to be honest. (D) – “Won’t this set a precedent?” Barian asked” – I think this language is too refined and formal for these boys, it threw me out of the story.

Does the second character know his name, and just isn't using it? That would seem strange. I find that names are often overused. If there are only two characters, one male, one female, in the scene, then referring to the young man as 'he' for a good portion of the pages and 'young man' when you feel you need a reminder, would go a reasonably long way, I think.

Not for Waifs & Strays, only the novel itself, which is 166k words. You're welcome to read it, but I know that's not what you meant. @krystalynn03 has read it, and could testify to the fact that the magic system is not well-specificed or especially clear or consistent at this point. It's a first draft and will (hopefully) be revised in time. One of the first things I will do is write a paper apart about the basis of the magic system.