Robinski

Hey ID, thank you so much for reading. It does. I can see how that could be. I hope then that the pretty heavy edits of these same chapters (I think I've take about 3,000 words net out of the first ten chapters, but changed a lot more than that), will help with a good deal. Indebted to you all for the comments that have pulled me through that process Fair point. I'll need to come back and consider this before the next full edit, but this is a very interesting point. Good. And that essentially was the un(2nd)edited version. It's now a fair bit shorter and tighter, I think. As I said, I'm intending to sub chapters now after the second edit, because I feel like the changes get heavier with each chapter, even before I've read y'all's comments. Ahhhhh. Yeah, I see your point. I'll need to reconsider this once I can see the whole 2nd edit. Only three instances now in the whole chapter (one on first page). Thanks. Cool. They are edited and tighter now, too. Good point, and I think the whole edits of the chapters to date have tightened up on that idea. I will cut down the political speak more, because you guys are right on that point. I could be glib and say that your inclination to skim probably matches how a lot of people would treat the political speak in reality, and almost miss the 'wow' news at the end, but I'm not that clever... Agree: done! Yes, the whole mission from god thing is gone. Good call. Your impression or Q's opinion was not intended. Excellent comments, thanks so much, ID, Really appreciate them.

Thank you for reading, Mandamon, much appreciated. I appreciate that they don't talk about the case a lot in these couple of chapters. For one thing, they are not really in a position to interact directly, but I will insert more (passing) mention of the case, and objective. I've adjusted this. Good call, thanks. There's a bit earlier in K's POV where he considers the issue of Q and M's guilt. I'm not saying it's WRS, but it might hang together a little better on a complete read. And/or I might need to flag it better. K has come around to Q's position after getting the data from the hospital, and for that reason has not put out a full APB (as it were). Maybe this is too plotful. I'll reassess when I get a complete read down the line. It's gone already. The introspection is cut down a fair bit. Right, I'll need to keep an eye on this, Another one for the read through. Actually, this is a new kill site (as I've now called it). Having rewritten this bit, I think it's clearer. Thanks for calling. Reworded. Good point. Reworded. Kind of. I think it's flagged at points in the past, and shown by TOM's interference, so might work better on a full read through. Cool. I've cut a healthy amount of stuff in the earlier parts of the chapter, so hopefully it's much tighter, but I will cut some more on the next pass. Road train is actually a thing (big lorry with linked trailers. Used a fair bit in Australia. But anyway, that bit's gone. I think this section is more in tune with your comment now after rewriting it. Right. I was going for a reminder of her loss and root of her behaviour at this point. I'll consider again. It's not anymore. I think this chapter is a lot tighter. It's heavily cut; same framework, but with better choices at key points, I think. Many thanks for the comments. Very helpful.

I'm sorry this is so late. Good intentions to get an edit done, but it took longer than expected (what a surprise). Anyway, here is the chapter recap, many thanks for reading and comments if you get the chance. No pressure. 01 - In small town in British Columbia, Q and M close out the Not-All-That-Curious Case of the Stolen Art; 02 - Q and M decide on what to do next, all the options seem to have some issue or other. Q's ex-father calls; 03 - After some political machinations, we meet EM (the administrator) and TT (the scientist) who at Gen Ex Trick in Yellowknife, NWT; 04 - T is coerced by M into releasing the MTs. They are meant to kill her, but it does not go to plan for M. Now he has a problem 05 - Back with Q and M, they speak to R before going to meet him at the airport, but the plane crashes in 'unexpected' circumstances; 06 - Q and M are questioned at the sheriff's office then taken to the hospital to see R who they manage to speak to briefly before M appears and kills R; 07 - Q and M are in the frame for R's murder. M decides they should run. Car chase thru small town. They collect 80, 'borrow' N's plane and run; 08 - E discovers T's disappearance, is suspended by DM then goes to see the YK sheriff. He takes her to a kill site, but it's only animals, not T; 09 - After some chat about the past and Mor, Q dumps N's plane on the tarmac, QME are recovered by EMS and taken to hospital, where they escape; 10 - E runs the gauntlet of the press then releases the Vuls. Q and M progress to YK. Q gets a mystery call. K is on Q's trail and intends to make him pay; 11 - Q calls E and leaves her a message, the Five-Star gets wrecked by a bear, DM is travelling back to YK and speaks with TOM; 12 - Q learns M about a local church, Q and M encounter a bear, Mor talks to TOM; 13 - Q and M reach Golden, learn of the election's status, call EM and then learn that people are dead in YK. Their plan will get them to YK this evening. Cheers, Robinski

Hey Silk, so pleased to have your comments. Awesome I've edited this chapter since, reasonably heavily for the other comments. I think it's clearer know about the suspension thing. Another point of clarity that I think is better. Gen are trying to recover the MTs, I think it's clearer now. Thank you. Of course!! (Oh, I changed to executive washroom). Yes, I've changed this up quite a bit. Q says why should I trust you, and the caller gets all snarky a hollers a bunch of inside information at Q to prove 'his' deep throat credentials. Basically MC confirms Mor; the election plan; t/f are loose; more people likely to die; and Q's son is there. It kind of knocks Q for six, and there are some new inserted lines here and there in ensuing chapter with him trying to deal with the potential of seeing his son. VERY interesting. The downside of course is that you're reading unedited chapter, but I'm going to try and get into editing ahead of submission now, so I can at least let you guy read chapters that reflect some of the fixes I'm putting in now, supported and prompted by the excellent feedback. I'll try anyway!! Fair point. Well... er... okay, I just write that down... For what it's worth, I've cut about 1,500 words out of chapters 11-13. I'm cutting as much travel as I can, tightening up what's left. Since you're not at 0-B, 0-C and 0-D yet, @Silk, I could send you the new versions of those, if you are planning to read them in the next little while? Yes, hrm, that may well have been part of my cunning plan originally. As I say, I'm trying to cut out a good deal, make it more convincing, and make their progress feel more engaging. Right, see note above. I'm going to email you those news version of the chapters your coming up to. Which might confuse the comments thread, but will help me no end DONE! No rush. I'll be at this edit for a while yet. Thanks so much for the comments.

Good call. That's exactly what they are (after checking the internet). I don't recall them ever being used, but my memory for that stuff is not great.

Project 75192: Update 19 - Bags No.15, Part 1 - "Capping Off" These little units have the appearance of hatches, but I'm not so well versed in the minutiae of Millennium Falcom operation that I can remember what their function actually is, but they certainly were satisfying to built and attach.

I can see what you mean! Interested to see how some of these parts fit together. I should catch up with my Falcon updates; I've got some pix in the bag.

I would like to submit on Monday, please, if you guys don't mind continuing to read in the (potential) absence of other submissions.

Thanks for reading, folks. I just had a quick scan of your comments, but obviously will come back to them in detail. Going forward, I will aim to get an edit in of each chapter before I submit it. I think this will save you nice people some time and dead mileage in trawling through stuff that is really pretty rough. There's chaff here, yes, and I'm working on cutting it to the point of dropping at least one chapter of material in about here, more if I can do it on first pass. Thank you for your continued patience

So, I'm editing this these past two days and it's heavily cut. I'm verging on submitting it again, such was the poor shape it was in first time around. One point I should have made before, but was (rightly) off balance and defensive about, the mother in the vehicle is also a POC, hence there were 3 children and the mother, the 4 ---- faces regarding M and Q. The face that pale was M's, not the mom's. Untidy and unclear, but not the 'paternalistic' adoption scenario that seemed to come across. This chapter is changing so heavily – and I suspect 13 (OD) will get the same treatment – that I might be left with a single chapter that I might ask your forbearance to read again. Thanks for calling me on this one

Thanks for reading @kais and @industrialistDragon. Much appreciated. Dropped the ball pretty badly on this one. I think most of it will go.

Hey, thanks for reading. I guessed this is how this would go, in general terms, based on the last chapter. I have been through and edit before looking at the comments this time. I figured after last time this one would not find much favour, and so decided to save myself the time. I'm not sure I'll keep much of this at all. We'll see when I get into it. Hmm, certainly not the reaction I was going for. Well, he's not really an aggressive sort, but that doesn't mean he has to revert to childhood. I will review the whole thing. Might be able to cut it almost in its entirety. No, it's what I expected. I think I can lose most of this. Thanks for these. Probably mostly academic. Thanks for reading.

Gosh darn it! Coincidently, Mrs. Robinski and I watched North by Northwest last night, which is probably still my favourite Hitchcock, and involves a train. The issues between Hitchcock and certain of his female leads have come under scrutiny, of course, but I don't think anyone can deny the chap made some great films, many involving trains. You'll be pleased to hear, @kais, that I cringed at the gender politics in various places. Ooft, 60 years ago and it shows now.

I don't game anymore, but I've had my moment in my youth. My best pal and I used to RPG intensively through stuff like Diablo, D2, Doom, Quake, Runes of Magic, Mabinogi, etc. Now it's all office stuff, and writing, of course!! But there are always breaks. I do get some twitches, but nothing like what you describe; that's awful!

Hello all, Here we are again. Any and all comments greatly appreciated, if you have the time and inclination to read. Tagged for Language for the usual reasons, and for Gore, but only slight references, not 'on screen'. Chapter recap: 01 - In small town in British Columbia, Q and M close out the Not-All-That-Curious Case of the Stolen Art; 02 - Q and M decide on what to do next, all the options seem to have some issue or other. Q's ex-father calls; 03 - After some political machinations, we meet EM (the administrator) and TT (the scientist) who at Gen Ex Trick in Yellowknife, NWT; 04 - T is coerced by M into releasing the MTs. They are meant to kill her, but it does not go to plan for M. Now he has a problem 05 - Back with Q and M, they speak to R before going to meet him at the airport, but the plane crashes in 'unexpected' circumstances; 06 - Q and M are questioned at the sheriff's office then taken to the hospital to see R who they manage to speak to briefly before M appears and kills R; 07 - Q and M are in the frame for R's murder. M decides they should run. Car chase thru small town. They collect 80, 'borrow' N's plane and run; 08 - E discovers T's disappearance, is suspended by DM then goes to see the YK sheriff. He takes her to a kill site, but it's only animals, not T; 09 - After some chat about the past and Mor, Q dumps N's plane on the tarmac, QME are recovered by EMS and taken to hospital, where they escape; 10 - E runs the gauntlet of the press then releases the Vuls. Q and M progress to YK. Q gets a mystery call. K is on Q's trail and intends to make him pay; 11 - Q calls E and leaves her a message, the Five-Star gets wrecked by a bear, DM is travelling back to YK and speaks with TOM; 12 - Q learns M about a local church, Q and M encounter a bear, Mor talks to TOM. Cheers, Robinski

Hey kais, many thanks for reading. Much appreciated. Yeah, see responses above. I'm going to have a long, hard think about it, but there is more cutting to come. Hmm, that's a bit different. I thought I'd tagged that by now, maybe it's in the revisions I've made editing, but I thought it was clear that worked together, and M's role in taking Q's son away from his then wife. I mean, I think this pretty much sums up the whole middle section, and the major difficult I have presently in my writing. (Not that I've got everything else cracked, but I think it's the plotting that is my greatest weakness.) I think part of the issue is that I like slow scenes, I like quiet sequels with personal interaction and no plot, so I tend to write them, include them, at the expense of plot and momentum. As I say above, I'm going to have a long, hard think about it here, but more cutting will happen. Check. I've ramped up her reaction a bit. As noted in response to Mandamon above they are too far away still from YK for it to be an MT. Also, I'm pretty sure I see this sort of thing in just about every second monster film I see, but, I will be having a heart-to-heart with myself over this chapter. I've tagged this upfront now. Really appreciate that comments, thank you. Invaluable, as ever.

Hey, many thanks for reading, SSmooth. Always glad to have your comments. Possible that fact that it's Chapter 0 A is not helping you find it!! (Apologies for my affectations.) Chapter 10 Right. I think I've tidied up E's chapter (10) a fair bit, but I thank you for calling it out. I think it's better / more consistent, and I think that will aid the continuity of her POV, but we'll see the test in a complete alpha read, which will be the next step when I get through subbing here, which will be about January/February, I think ( ), without actually calculating. It's a gag that probably only works in the setting of dramatic performance, and is entirely reliant on timing, which it's pretty much impossible to guarantee on the page. So, maybe I'll cut it, although I think yours is on the only gripe about it, so far. If I ever have an editor (hah!), for this (HAH!), I'll let them call it. Good! I'm absolutely delighted, as this is pretty much exactly what that scene is there to do. It's a little bit shorter than it was before, but I'll certainly leave it in. Chapter 11 Yeah, see my response to Mandamon. But, yeah, I need to ponder this in a quiet room. I feel that I can't 'jump' them straight to YK. Well, I could, but I would lose the development of the situation in YK. There's no real difference in feel between Crest and YK, so that would become an issue. On the plus side, I continue to cut, cut, cut from these travel chapters, so this middle section will continue to get shorter and shorter. None at all. It's colour and it can go at some point, but it is now basically two paragraphs. Well, okay. As noted above. T was supposed to die at the jaws of the MT, so he has travelled thousands of miles and killed two people and that was never a part of the plan. He's in control, but the plan is not going as envisaged. I might have to clarify that in his POV, but I'm glad that it added something for you. It does seem that maybe there is a split decision on his POV here. That's great. As I say, there's more cutting to come, which will sharpen things up more, I'm just not sure I can lose them completely. Or I'm not ready to yet. Thanks so much for reading. Really appreciate the comments. Very helpful.

Hey, ID, thank you so much for reading, very much appreciated. Yeah, see above, I guess, for my response. You guys have consistently told me there was an issue here and I've cut and cut and cut each time I go through it. Still, the issue does not go away. I do want to create the feeling of them being on the road, and I think that can work, but it's difficult when there is no direct interaction with the plot. In relation to Mor, I'm tending towards just cutting his scene entirely, but considering the MTs were supposed to kill T and the rest would play out from there, he's had a lot of additional aggravation. I could hang a lantern on that, perhaps, if I keep his scene, which is unlikely. Thanks again for reading. Always helpful

Hey Mandamon, many thanks for reading. Yeah, it's always been the issue with this chapter. I'll sum up at the end. Okay. Geographically speaking, they are a long way from YK. It's the issue with using a real setting and real tech, I suppose. Mor is on a train, which is much faster. In the original outline, Q and M were going to be on the train with Mor in a kind Hitchcock-ian standoff, but I though there was more chance for them to get into scrapes on the road. Each time I edit this chapter it gets shorter, and it's shorter again. As to the bait-and-switch, for one thing they are just too far away to encounter an MT, for another, I feel like I've read--or certainly watched--such set ups many, many times. That wasn't the intention, but it was the intention put them in contact with real nature first. I read out on bear attacks fo the purpose of this scene. They are 15m away from the bear, Actually, I'll cut that to 10m, but still, that feels close enough for me that the bear would want to make a point. Again, I'll come back to the overarching issue with the chapter at the end. And this is my problem to a large extent, I think. Wanting to be true to the geography of the place (having picked the setting), wanting to show them getting in scrapes on the road (which I thought I could do by having E knee deep in the problem itself). So, stretching things out--I don't disagree that it does, but there is a reason, not that that's much consolation. Please, do not feel any guilt at calling these things. Honesty is paramount, and it's the strength of this group. I won't say its uplifting ( ), but it's heartwarming to know that I can count of this group for such constructive honesty "A wonderfully brutal writing group..." Overall - yes, I suspect I'm going to get similar comments from the others. I haven't read them yet, but I recognise the veracity in what you say. I'll look again at the Mor scene, I was showing his motivation, but there's a sense of it elsewhere, and this bit is really just background colour in terms of how E-C and Gen fit into society. I think I'm close to the point where I could combine this chapter and the next one by cutting Mor, and another 500 / 750 words. Many thanks, Mandamon. Invaluable comments, as ever, and no punches pulled. Respect.

I'd like to submit on Monday, please.

Ah, okay. Yes, just a bit of set up on this would be useful. Also, I had assumed the train came from behind them (for some reason)! So, yes, all that direction of travel stuff would be useful.

Hey, congratulations, Hawkedup! That's great We'll still be plodding along by the time you get back, no doubt. Enjoy!

Keep going! This is definitely the hardest part to muddle through. Also called "the great swampy middle" by Jim Butcher. I think the split in POV can work here, but there needs to be some more shoring up of reasons and worldbuilding. Nothing that can't be fixed in the next edit. I'm still greatly enjoying the story, and want to find out what happens. Yes!! Keep going. I am interested. I am kind of hoping for some more action, but I can do people talking in a room as long as there is tension / are stakes. I know there was a fair amount of concern originally about the number of POVs, but I think it's different when we've come to know the characters together before they split, as in this case. If there are particular things that make you think that readers might become uninvested then at least you can tackle those if they get flagged in crit. If it's a vague feeling of imposter syndrome then I definitely get that too.

The train is going to the Front, which is in the south. The city is to the north. Oh, so is there are fork somewhere, or a triangle? I've sort of assumed in my head that the pueblo is in the west and they were travelling east to the capital. Obvs, both capital and front could be east of the pueblo, and therefore north-south travel would be required between the capital and the front. Right. It seemed a very definite statement from him, I though, so I presumed he was stating a matter of fact.