Robinski

Hey Ethan, welcome to Reading Excuses. Straight away, I am indebted to you. As a lover of words, I had never heard ‘exurb’ before – a new word for me, excellent! However, I wonder if it is what you intended, or if you know of another definition. Online Merriam-Webster has it as “a region or settlement that lies outside a city and usually beyond its suburbs and that often is inhabited chiefly by well-to-do families”. Anywho, that’s not why we’re here – on to your submission. I’ve dropped a few line comments before finishing with my overall impressions. -------------------------------------------------------------- First section: “scale models of contractions” – Did you mean contraptions? The punctuation of the list is rather strange, does not lend itself to smooth reading. In general, I think the language could be tidied up for readability. “the Castle of the Delectus who’s the tallest towers of which trumped any other...” “half-drawn inventions”, “gear-based contraptions” and “mile-high walls” – I'm interested in anyone’s opinion on this, but I'm noticing it a lot in the last few submission, a lack of hyphenation of adjectival phrases like these. You’ll gather by now that I find it impossible not to comment at a line level. I hope that’s okay. I know that all this stuff can be polished out down the road, but I think anything that affects readability is fair game, especially if it’s a recurring issue. Wow, walls several miles high!! I'm a civil engineer, so immediately I'm asking myself, ‘Is this Earth?’, even if it’s not, the technology involved in building those is mind boggling and their structure starts to suggests to me alien technology or magic. This last line of this section is a nice hook. I know something about Victor from the trappings in his room, and a little about this character/temperament, but not a lot yet. I'm interested to learn more at this point, in part because it sounds like he’s something of an engineer, so I can identify with him straight away. You might think I'm a niche, but you’ll find at least one more ‘Eng’ on here ---------------------------------------------------------- Second section: “contraptions” – This word is coming up a lot. I appreciate that these section do not necessarily sit together, but I think it appeared (subject to my comment about ‘contractions’) twice in the first section. “with large blades and moving parts” – I think if you’re coming from a technical perspective for Victor’s character, you should consider using more technical language than this. Your readership in this genre is likely to contain a disproportionate number of scientists, engineers and other technically educated people, if you’re going for a steampunk or gearpunk-type setting, you will need the technical language to be convincing. “where Anna had began begun her effort to organize” “beam of light shined shone through” I don’t quite follow the blocking you’re describing with the wall and the hole, etc. “without the visuals” – This is a very modern phrase, it makes me think of Powerpoint. I could not help feeling that it was out of place. “passing street side cafes and shops selling various wares” – What else would shops sell? This seems redundant. “A black coach with two white horses came up the street with two white horses” – Otherwise it sounds like the street has two white horses. “each one enjoying the weather” – Given the playful banter, I find it hard to believe that either of them is thinking about the weather. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, over all impressions. I like the idea, Anna seems like an engaging character, confident, outgoing. Victor we seem to know less about, but I can see that he has big ideas. I am interested in reading more. The writing could do with some tidying up. It’s hard to see past obvious typos and phrasing that could be improved by a grammar edit, but don't get hung up on that, all that stuff can be fixed. Also, it’s rather disjointed not reading in sequence. Either a piece standards up on its own or not, but you’ll get constructive comments here either way, so I would dive in a make a more comprehensive submission, so that we can see the whole picture. Thanks for sharing!

Not 87 or 93

I would question Pratchett as high fantasy, but you can have Conan from the 1930s. Also, Jack Vance, who will always be my favourite author, wrote Lyonesse in the early 80s, which I think should replace King. Awesome question!

Palomino Arabian Shetland Lipitsano ...(Why is it you can only ever easily recall one fewer than the number you are trying to find? That must be Pratchett's Fourth Law or something.) Zebra? Mongolian! I'm not confident enough to put up a question yet.

Lol, youngsters. In my time, I've played: - Runequest - Rolemaster - Powers & Perils - Bushido (a little) - Ringworld RPG - Pendragon - Warhammer RPG - Aftermath - Harnmaster RPG Stuff the I GM'd, and that my closest friend GM'd was pretty much all original. In a way we were writing our own stories and playing them out rather than using pre-scripted scenarios from the RPG resources. It went way beyond numbercrunching to the point that we would rarely roll dice at all. Maybe for the occasional combat. It was much more about the story. I last played about a year ago. My best friend and I were the only ones left of our group from school (30+ years ago). We had been playing this one character of his off and on for about 15 years and only covered 3 years of gane time. I've got 740 pages of hand-written notes which I've started novelising. So far, I've written about 20,000 words from the first 15 pages. I reckon it'll be a long haul if I ever set aside my other writing and put my back into it.

I'm with Tony - "With great power..." etc. Also, ganging up on an old man in a tin suit, that's just mean, and don't give me that Cap and Bucky are 100 years old bull-hockey. Tony's have been hard years, not sleeping for 60+ of them. I suppose it depends on how they play the registration thing. They could present it as an evil plot from the start, this showing that Tony's wrong, and just doesn't know it yet, but that would be shallow and not worthy of most of the MCU movies to date. Interesting that this is coming in a similar time frame to Bat-man versus Superman colon Dawn of Justice. Once again, Hollywood managed to make two movies using the same themes at the same time. Once again, there is every indication that Marvel are going to do it better than DC.

Wye-aye, Mr. Fox - I've just noticed you're a geordie! Anyway, I see there are several comments about the rationale for Willow being something of a pariah in the village. My tuppence is that you've done enough to foreshadow that by explaining that she is a foundling, and found at the edge of the forest, no less. You've already set the forest up as being, if not bad, then certainly dangerous, so I have no problem in accepting the mistrust of many people in the village. This said, I may be influenced by the 7 or 8 chapters that I've read previously. In summary, it's fine by me.

It’s nice to be back in this world but, to be honest I would like to have kept reading last time, when I was immersed and had real momentum. Anywho, I'm hoping that we’ll get to read further than before, preferably to the end! I quickly became comfortable in Willow’s presence again. She’s a character that’s easy to like, I think. Probably because she is the underdog (it seems), with most of the village against her. I feel that you have cut down the number of characters / names flying around in the first section, which is good. I did not go back to me previous notes, but I clearly remember that one issue in particular. I also like that we get back to the village quickly so we can start learning about the environment. I think the setting for Willow’s sections is engaging (but no more so than the other POV because of the contrast). I easily could have read a longer submission, I'm certainly comfortable in the world and look forwards to reading on. My only observation about style, which is generally easy to read, is a tendency towards wordiness that is a bit distracting. It’s a bit of a hobbyhorse of mine at the moment, flow of narrative and cutting our extraneous words to keep the story moving forward at a good pace. I don’t think this is the same saw omitting description, just being more efficient. Very glad to have you back Mr. Fox!! More please. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- “Willow span, her stomach lurching in her chest” – the stomach is not in the chest. I know what you mean, but... “Lusera had not appeared to notice it” – appeared not to have noticed it, I think. “As if to emphasise her point, she tapped the butt of her spear against a Barrow” – to me, the presence of these barrows is just as significant as the footprint, and yet Willow was completely unaware of them (certainly didn’t describe them to us in her impressions of the area). “You weren’t supposed to touch the Barrows” – technically, ‘One wasn’t supposed to...’ I felt the phrasing was awkward for this reason. “she would probably have been left to die alone” I find some of the sentences rather ‘over-written’. E.g. “Lusera tilted her spear in response as the man Willow recognised as Joshua came lumbering over” – The extra words add nothing to the sentences (imho), other than to slow down the narrative. “The wall itself stretched from one cliff side to the other, enclosing the village in the space behind.” – Where else would it be enclosed? “Through the gap, figures could be glimpsed” – I would have though the priority in building the wall would be to complete the enclosure, and then develop the height. This sounds as if there is no date to allow them to secure the village and at least have a wall to defence, even if it was not as tall as they might like. Seems like a crazy strategy, OR it’s not a break in the wall, but on open gate? I thought in the last version the wall was defensible? “Slowing her pace, Willow pulled in a draught of fresh, resin-spiced air, savouring her last few moments of being outside with the Green Ocean stretching out before her” – couple of points on this sentence, for me. (1) – I always feel that using the word ‘pace’ conveys a person travelling quickly, which Willow is not, I think, to begin with, compared with, say ‘slowed her steps’, which I think allows for her strolling in the first place, before slowing yet further. (2) – I think her being outside is self-evident and could be dropped; the reader can imply that easily enough. (3) – At this point, I'm not 100% on what the Green Ocean is. I thought it was the forest, but is it the grass plains? Okay, it’s answered by the line about the vast forest, but I think it could be clarified earlier in the story. Also, I'm not 100% sure how far away the forest is, and it’s below the village, which is upslope? “She lifted her chin and sniffed at the sun-warmed breeze.” – I’ve seen quite a lot of this recently, and someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think an adjectively phrase like this should be hyphenated. “the torrent of noise and smells and human emotions” – Gah, I'm in hyper-pedant mode this morning. The thing that tripped me here was noise being singular (or rather collective), but the other two items in the list being plural. It sounded add to me when all could have been collective quite easily. “Gruff shouts and hearty laughter mixed with the shrill cry of a child as pungent odours wafted out of a nearby window - blood pudding and roasted caraway seeds - the tang of iron blending with the sweet smell of fruit leather being hung out to dry by a pair of old women who smiled at Willow as she passed, one of whom smiled at Willow as she passed, while the other threw her a look of faint mistrust.” – Huge sentence, I almost passed out halfway through (also, spelling of caraway) The repetition of metamorphosis is... repetitive!! “She turned to the familiar voice to find her friend Lywen waving at her” – If the voice is familiar, it seems odd that she ‘finds’ her friend Lywen. She must know who it is straight away from the voice. “seemingly unrestricted by her thick, white linen robe” – If Lywen us unrestricted, why mention it at all? The lack of restriction is a non-thing, it does not seem worthy of mention. You could just as easily find another way to mention the robe. “her bright-eyed friend” “Willow watched her friend hurry into the temple” - ? “Lywen was one of the few people who made no attempt to conceal her affection for Willow, but if she was chosen to become a Guardian then their friendship would likely be eroded by the sheer amount time Lywen would need to devote to her training” – long, awkward sentence. “Becoming a guardian of the village was a dream they had shared as girls” – There’s inconsistency of capitalisation of this word. I would be wary of over-capitalising. Caps for every single term with the slightest becomes tiresome, I think. “She had tried her best to keep up with Lywen, but the truth was that Willow struggled with any kind of written language (writing), and when it became apparent that this was a weakness few shared, a new layer of anxiety enshrouded itself around her efforts to understand the written word” – another unwieldy sentence. You tend to use these self-evident phrases quite often. “a kind of invisible shroud you could escape into” – I considered this again after my comment on the previous instance. Technically, it’s ‘one could’, but I can see how it could be read as Willow’s voice. It just tripped me up, but maybe it’s just me. “Willow stepped into the dark, low ceilinged kitchen where a fire guttered in the hearth, spitting embers onto the OR a cold stone floor.” “The air was heavy with the smell (OR just ‘smells’) of dried herbs”

We have a winner! Season 10 is airing in the UK right now. Personally, I'm enjoying it a good deal more than 8 and 9, it's been more strongly comic in places than any episode I can recall previously, and the most recent Episode 5 is pretty blunt in its depiction of islamic fundamentalism, which I thought was a brave move. Somehow the writing seems to have grown up in the same way that Mulder and Scully have.

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Of course, pardon my absence... Clue 2: This man has a partner (associate), but few if any friends. His superiours do not value his work.

Nope...but I like your thinking.

It's not the vocabulary as such, but the formality. I would imagine people in ancient times spoke just as crudely and roughly as many do today, for one thing, I'm sure a very small proportion would have been educated at all, and the rules of grammar were probably still being invented. There are ways to convey 'old fashioned' modes of speech, of course, such as not using contractions. Cool artwork on the Overlord thing, too.

"Rogues" ed. by GRRM and Gardner Dozois. Just started, so currently finishing Joe Abercrombie's 'Tough Times All Over' - interesting idea, still trying to decide if having '15' pov's in a short story is clever or super-annoying.

"I breathed, and breath came in. I looked, and my eyes beheld. They saw not what was *before me* (or 'in front of me'), they saw instead what *lay* beyond. I stared, but stare I did not (this feels awkward, 'but did not see'?). For *in the* end (at the end?), one should have a choice, and time should have a voice." Interesting. I like the feel of it, the tone. I don't find the 'usage' of words excessive, presuming that the whole piece would not follow this rather poetic and portentous tone, which would probaby get old quickly, and would best be used sparingly. It may or may not be a good foundation in that it's not clear from these lines alone what kind of story it is going to be. P.S. What is your new avatar? I liked the cat, but I can't make out the new image at all

There's a James Coburn (I think) film centred on Chinese plot to build a tunnel under the pacific and invade America. That was my first thought. I remember the prompt. I'm still catching up with WX, I'm halfway through Season 9 at present, so it's more recent for me! The idea's fine. All in the execution. My first thoughts are (1) What makes him think he can save humanity, that seems like a big ask, and (2) Why should the author be able to save humanity, just because he wrote the book? Seems clear to me that he needs some other major skill set to save the day.

Nope - but thanks for playing! (I'm always glad to get one wrong 'guess' so I know it wasn't tooo easy )

It's a fantastic movie, got some real depth, not just wham-bam, the stunts are awesome, to think that so much of it was done with practical effects. Great to see an 'action' film nominated - it's that good. Presumably George Miller will go on a do Babe In The City 3 now... Anywhooo... An investigator returns to the basement where he worked to find that someone has removed the furniture.

The only franchise nominated this year was Mad Max(: Fury Road).

Hey Geo, interesting post. I'm not sure how helpful this will be, I know absolutely nothing about any other packages. I use one novel-formatted Word doc (double-spaced; page number footer with name and title; margins; etc.) and a separate Word file for notes, ideas, excerpts, etc. plus (often) an Excel sheet if the time-line is especially important or complicated. If I might venture to suggest, it sounds a bit to me as if the package might be a block on your process, but it is not the thing that it preventing you from finishing. I would suggest joining us over at Reading Excuses (the strand next door), and submitting some of your work (up to 5,000 words per week). That way you will get free and friendly advice (okay, not free, the quid pro quo is to critique the other submissions - largely painless!!) from an enthusiastic and positive bunch, most of which are more perceptive than I am - who would be very pleased to offer impressions, suggestions and advice.

Pah - lucky guess ;op

Ah, hmm. I got that the cat was influencing both of them (I think?), but I was convinced that Baxter produced the roses. I think you could dial up the hints a bit, I like to think I'm not that obtuse, but I stand to be corrected

Just think..."What would Baxter do?" - he's a writer after all! (Seriously though, fair comment.)

Hmm...., intriuging!

I have been on a cruise, not in such a massive vessel, but a liner nonetheless, crossing the Channel from Dover to Le Havre to Guernsey and back. Pleasant enough, but the homeward leg was rough as ----. I'd like to try a retreat sometime, but I'll probably start on dry land. Does Wx still do those ones?