Robinski

Heh, so here I am, feeling like I have really got to grips with Hold the Bridge (you mad fool!!), going back to The NEU Oblivion to do an edit in the hope of submitting to slush piles of the Western world. To that end, Mandamon, what would you call... Arrggh, I think I just hit on the answer to this, but I'll ask it anyway. What word would you use instead of pier for the different sections of an airport boarding area extending from the main terminal? Concourse? Gate?

Big boat, big boat... <shudder>

I'm gratified to hear that, thanks for reading again, much appreciated. Those are good suggestions. I will take those into the fourth edit, after which, I really think I will try submitting this story.

Spieles, you describe my own strategy almost exactly. I'm just not sure I want to make another committment on the scale of NaNoWriMo again in the same year. What I need is a faster-than-light ship so that I can go out in the morning and come back in the evening with 10 novels and 20 shorts stories.

Welcome Wayne, nice to have you onboard!

Thank you, Carcinios, it's really pleasing to get such great comments. I know I'm not supposed to 'rest on the laurels' of positive feedback, but I feel okay in enjoying the positives, because there are some really great pointers coming back for ways to improve yet further. Your second comment is a cracker, something that had kind of fallen off the apple cart, and no-one else has picked on it yet (that I can remember!). So, to answer that, I feel that I can touch on a handful of Spieles' comments at the same time in terms of Harth's background by better addressing how he deploys his troops so effectively so quickly. Thank you so much

Thank you, Spieles. Wowza, some really great comments there. Looking at the length of your post, I was properly worried at first, but going through it, I'm really confident I can drag the story up another level or two by addressing your points. I think I can 'solve' most of them without knocking the thing out of shape with too much extra detail or backstory, those are all good question to pose. Your sterling effort in getting caught up did not go unnoticed. Having been behind by 3 or 4 weeks myself in the past, I know that it's no small undertaking to make that ground up - well done!

Thank you, Kaisa, for reading again, and for those very helpful comments. I must admit that I was feeling trepidation as I opened up this thread, so I'm relieved that thing words better after the revisions. Take your share of the credit for that! Your points of detail will really help me refine again. There are some great comments coming out, but I'm so glad we are talking about what I think is fine tuning. On your question, I'm reluctant to get into specifics about the horde or the story might morph out of control in terms of word count and form. That said, I'm sure I can give you a little more. Fermarald's comment about them are supposed to pain an unreliable picture, but I don't think I have quite landed that idea at the point of pay-off. Great comments, thank you so much

Yay, Mary’s ABCs! I can work with that. Awesome: A; Bores: B; Confuses: C; Disbelief: D; Grammar/typo: G I continue to enjoy your story and I look forward to each submission as it drops in my email. I think you’ve got good strong characters going through the story. They all have issues going on, and these are grounded in family or personal life, which just helps to make the characters more believable. I had some grumbles here, but nothing major. I think there are some strong emotional beats and I enjoyed the reveals, apart from one, which is that we have yet another very important person hiding in plain sight. I plucked this out of my detailed comments to put it front and centre. (D) – “She’s the niece of Elizabeth Clarington. Clarington is the Council President.” – That’s your third, this-kid-who-you-thought-was-a-regular-Joe-is-actually-offspring-of-a-really-important-person reveal. Now, I'm just going to assume every nonspecific kid is the secret son or daughter of the president of the world. The set-up emerging for coming chapters is pure Hunger Games / Divergent / etc. kids-go-through-arduous-training-regime-and-end-up-bonding. It’s sooooooo familiar BUT, rather than being a cliché, I think it’s an absolutely essential ingredient for constructing this sort of YA dystopian fare. In summary, keep it coming, I'm enjoying myself here. <R> ---------------------------------------------------------- (D) – “Siegfried Aerworks is the inventor of the modern oxygen mask.” – Really? The surname is just too convenient, to the point of being cartoonish. For me, it’s not the right tone for this rather dark story. It would be like Miles Dyson being called Miles Skinnett. (G) – “Her frosted pixie-style borders” – I think this form needs a hyphen. (G) – “points at the women in heels before me” (D) – There are two teacups on a tray. I don’t see anything about her pouring tea, so I am lead to believe that the cups are full, BUT nobody pours tea to sit and cool waiting for someone to take a cup. (C) – “I’d be a fool to trust any of them” – why? You’ve not sold his reaction to me. (D) – “My experiments wouldn’t be necessary if your Brides” – This is not a valid scientific reaction, but maybe that’s okay if she’s not a scientist. Even if the Brides wiped out the Rex, a scientist would still pursue a cure against the possibility that the infection could recur. (G) – “Midge’s lips press,” – compress, I think. (C) – “Because I knew better than to trust anyone from this city” – Again, is it WRS on my part? I don’t recall where his cynicism comes from. (G) – “but it’s not much worse than riding a bike” – any harder, I think, but it’s dialogue, so maybe Oz just has poor grammar ;op (D) – “By the scalding sensation on my palm,” – Again, without seeing the tea being poured into an empty teacup, this does not convince me. (C) – “and then higher blood cell counts” – red or white? This, for me, is imprecise. (A) – The paragraph where Siegfried describes how Oz came to be, and the less fortunate subject is quite a gut punch, well done, then there is the double whammy of the virus being created from his bio-stuff!! Wowza. The following sections of Oz going to the loo and exploring his background worked really well for me. (A) – “If anything, I’ve mastered the opposite: to obscure, to evade, to turn trash into tools.” – great line. Indeed, this whole self-examination where he measures himself against his father’s goals is very well done. You’ve built up a strong enough character for Oz that I am totally convinced by his assessment of how he ‘fails’ in this comparison. (C) – “And we couldn’t blow it up before,” Krieger says accusingly at Midge. “Women and children were there,” Midge says.” – I got a bit lost here. Blow up where? Why were there women and children not ‘converted’? Also, how does natural booby-trapping work? Not sure what was meant by that. (C) – “If he dies, the Council will have free reign.” I forget what council this is, and are some of these people not on it? Maybe it’s WRS. (D) – “For a second, I don’t grasp her meaning” – Oz is a pretty smart cookie, but not following their line of thought is really dense. I don’t believe he would not see where they were going with this. (G) – “easy workarounds” – Spellchecker tells me this is a word, although I was heading to commenting that it should be hyphenated, imho. (C) – My WRS is kicking in again. So I get that it’s the Citizens’ Council, but what is this the Board of? (C) – “an elaborate ruse for Eleanor to face her own son” – I'm confused by the use of the word ‘face’ here, does it mean ‘meet’? (C) – Bah, more WRS, I can’t remember who the Greens are. (A) – “but Midge is already interfering on my behalf” – lol. (D) – “I assume that friend is Fara Pascal” – Ooh, weird. The way you have been calling her Pascal from the start, I had that fixed in my head as her forename, but it’s her surname? It’s a bit crass for Oz to refer to his best friend by her surname. (A) – Great zinger to end the section, as if I needed a hook to keep reading. (G) – “we’ve identified some of the reason’s” (G) – “We’re trying to run tests to sort it out” – Are they running tests or not? I feel like ‘We’re running tests to try and sort it out.’ would be a more likely sentence. (B) – “Oz, there’s something you need to know–” – I'm just presuming now that Violet is his sister.

I feel like you're building this up too much, and that it will only be a disappointment :oD I however, am merely anticipating quietly in the sure and certain knowledge that NeonGrey will not drop the ball here!

I gather it is basically the same as NaNoWriMo? Although maybe there are more defined groups? I dunno, I've done NaNoWriMo plenty - I think it's four years now, but never the Camp. Do you participate in November? I'm so darned competitive that I find it a great motivator. Is it still 1,667 words a day for a month? So, on this subject, how many people here participate in November? We should set up a NaNo thread for encouragement and pep talks, etc.

Maybe there are some new faces who did not see this last time around, or maybe one or two of the old hands will be up for reading it again - there's a different ending for one thing :-D If you've read it before you'll know what the main issues were, and if you haven't - I'm not going to tell you! The usual what works, what doesn't stuff would be much appreciated, and basically anything you care to say about it is fine by me. Thanks for reading, in anticipation. Cheers, Robinski

I enjoyed this submission right from the first line, which I love. I was a loner myself for a long time, and can really relate to this; also I love to hear about people writing letters, I think that ups the classiness quotient of your story; third, dreaming in columns and numbers is something that I very much recognise as an engineer! But it's not like I'm not on board already. I think some of the phrasing could be tidied up. Mostly in the dialogue, which I did not always follow the logic of. The verbal sparring between Lasila and Eshrin is well done but, perhaps because I was lagging behind a little on the logical of it, when she gets to the point of deducing that he's an chull, I felt like I'd missed something. I like that the machinations and plotting appear to be starting here, or at least more overtly visible to the reader, and we can start wondering about peoples' motives, like the priestess and Eshrin (is he lying?) - maybe his brother too. Good job. I'm still having fun. <R> -------------------------------- "A little after noon on the day of (??????), Lasila was" "Thus, I would not advise the use of the deferential." - I would suggest 'advise against using the deferential'. "her cheekbones came out far less sharp, her chin wider, forehead narrowed" - I'm perfectly happy to believe that Nalira works wonders with cream and powder, but the problems start when you describe the specifics. These words, to me, make it sound like Lasila still has sharp cheekbones (ok, if you like that sort of thing), a wide chin and a narrow forehead. I other words, she wounds funny-looking to me, because I don't have a starting point. I would leave out the specifics and keep it general. I'm happy to accept some telling here. I would not normally quibble about this, but you are going into detail on every step of this process. Lasila was told to 'strip to her slip' originally, but puts the new slip on her 'bare skin'. Seems to be a step missing. (I'm not a prude, so this stuff does not phase me at all, but it's impossible not to feel voyeuristic during this section!) Is comfortable not an overstatement rather than a 'strong word', that phrasing sounds odd to me. "She was so bland about the notion" - I would say the word is blasé, or maybe understated. I love the phrase 'precise disarray', but less keen on the repetition of 'precise' shortly after. "Regardless, Lasila, of house Vahendra." - I think 'House Vahendra', as the name, should be capitalised as it is the name of that particular house. Also, the grammar of her follow-up doesn't seem to fit. "Why should I wish to break things that are rightfully mine?" - Again, I don't really understand this reply, which does not seem to fit the context. "There's much to indulge in, this evening, and just as much" - indulge in this evening, and just... - don't se the point of the first comma.

I enjoyed this submission in large part, as an action scene, but I'm not sure if it supposed to be a stand-alone story or part of something else. I only went to read your email after I had read the piece, which then told me the context. Generally, I found that the language flowed pretty smoothly, although some editing would benefit it a good deal to improve flow where certain wording and phrasing is a bit awkward. I found it a bit difficult at first to connect with Death as a character, as he is no sooner introduced than the narrative veers off into description, but that is a detail. There is some background but really not very much. My main problem is that the piece has no real context. I don't know whether I'm supposed to sympathise with Death or with Telyan, but regardless of that, I don't know enough about them to be especially interested in what happen to either one. I think this probably would work quite well as an action scene in a larger story, but I don't think it works particularly well as a stand-alone piece. Thanks for sharing!! <R> ---------------------------- "a sort of in joke" - I would have thought 'in-joke' would be hyphenated, otherwise the tendency is to read it incorrectly, I think. "their meaningless compounded by the things that would rise to replace them" - should be meaninglessness. "Just like Death would be." - I think. "followed Death as he moved up." - 'they moved up' - I think, to remain consistent with the plural. "grasping for desperate light." - it's not the light that's desperate, is it? The phasing around the section where Death's skin is being burned seems awkward and repetitive. "once perhaps providing a people to sit" - a place for people to sit, presumably. "raising a few feet’s length off of the hard floor" - this is all kinds of awkward. Why not just say, 'rising three feet above the floor.' or something like that. "They were struggling against the ropes that tied them there." - Hang on, I've sort of got over the weird pluralising of Death, but wouldn't others be in the normal singular? "tornadoes that flung off in every destruction" - in every direction, i presume. "He held a sword at its side," - at his side. "breaking his concentration" - their concentration.

My story only has two parts so, if at all possible, I'd like to submit the second part in the following week. (i.e. next week)

Goldfish?

I'm presuming if he wins, DC will be renamed Trumpton* (*kids TV show in the UK in 1967) ...and if it distracts him from destroying the ecosystem of the East Coast of Scotland... ...No, I'm kidding.

If they've got wi-fi up there, sign me up. Should be safe enough until President Trump decides to build a golf course in the Sea of Tranquillity.

18th September 2014 - but the Brexit vote changes the landscape.

Yeah, what he said. As a Scot, I now fear another referendum on Scottish Independence from the UK. Although the Scottish National Party do not have a majority in the Scottish Parliament, they may well be able to win a vote on another independence referendum. While the UK may well be able to operate effectively in world markets, political structures, etc. on its own, I have no doubts that Scotland is not equipped to do the same.

Interesting submission, it starts rather slowly with Lissa’s scene. We get some further background, but I'm not entirely enthralled. I feel that this could be thinned out. The next scene with Savae confused me at first because I had a moment at the beginning where I thought she was the dress-marker, I think because of the similarly of their names. I don’t see a reason why their names cannot be my recognisably different. Some physical description also would have marked them apart. Saying she has an Envari face means nothing to me that I can remember. I did like some of the reveals in this scene however, which show some really nasty goings-on behind big events that have happened to date. Certainly, there is the implication of more dastardly events to come – which is good. Back to Lissa and her scene with Varinen. There was some real emotion here, and I suppose it works all the better for the antagonism of their earlier encounter. Some might say it was melodramatic, and they might be right, but I was okay with it, I thought it fitted the style of the story. If it is slightly ‘soapy’, I don’t think it suffers unduly from it. A line that did bother me somewhat was this one “She supposed she'd need to get some friends of her own at some point”. I put it up here rather than in the detail below, because it seems to me it goes quite fundamentally to Lissa’s character. Does she really have not friends or even acquaintances outside her brother? This seems awfully unlikely. I know that is not the same as saying she has never had any friends, but now I'm moved to ask what happened to all her childhood friends. In summary, I still enjoyed this. A hidden threat was revealed and there was an emotional scene between Lissa and her brother. I'm still on board. I would note that, the more I read, the more I think that taking a good 15% other words out through tidying and judicious trimming would really help the story. <R> --------------------------------------- “the lot of them made her feel as though she was the most important” – I would suggest ‘every one of them’, or something similar, and less crude than ‘the lot’. “at least in the districts near enough to her” – This read awkwardly for me – something like ‘close to home’ would be clearer. “A few public houses seemed to have events planned” – You use ‘seem’ twice close together. Currently, I'm trying to train myself not to use words like this. They are imprecise and lack confidence and directness. Did the pubs have events planned or not. I think clarity reads better. “quite likely the last time he'd see his friends alive” – Eh? How so? Have I forgotten something? If it’s Varinen, then he’s not going to see his friends when he’s dead, so it must be the friends. Is this because of the impending threat of war? I don’t think you’ve trailed the danger enough to drop in a comment like this, I have insufficient context for it. “Lasila tossed Mekesh the ears” – I found the description her unclear. I thought she was considering what animal to buy, then suddenly she already has it and is cooking it? Also, I found all this talk about the cooking unnecessary and disjointed. I'm willing to swallow all the detail about the dresses and the minutiae about her training, but sometimes I think you go too far and could cut out some elements. “The bastard didn't even open his eyes.” – This is too far, for me. I feel it’s out of character for her. “You know I can't stay here. Not and do my duty to the family in the only way I can.” I’m struggling a bit with the vehemence of her reaction to her brother. I can understand the reasoning, but as an only child, I have a hard time identifying with such hatred for a close family member. “They laughed to themself themselves, thinking of a joke.” – No? There is an implication of the singular here, I think. At first, I confused Savae with Sirie. The names are very similar, the same in form. I fell this is unnecessarily confusing. “He smiled at her, of course, and got back to his feet, sheathing his sword. "Of course, Lissa," he said,” – repetition. “It probably said something about her that the their intricacies of them did anything something other than bore her out of her skull” – even this simplified phrasing still seems awkward.

I'd read that.

Excellent, although I fear you are Number 6 (...cue 60's cult TV show quote!!), but I'm sure Silk will be able to sort it all out

Is it the next installment - starting where you left off?