Robinski

Ooh, whereabout in Scotland were you? I'm frae Glesgae (Glasgow). Or where in England for that matter? (Presently I'm on holiday in Falmouth, not far from Plymouth and Portsmouth, or Portland for that matter, all navy places.

Hey Silk, seeing as we're getting close to WorldCon 2019 *cough*, I wondered if we might pin this thread for the next 14 months until REcon #1. What do you think? Then, I thought it might be easier for peeps to find it, and we might post up a 'sign-up' sheet (unofficial, of course).

Yup, I'm with the other half of you.

Yay!!! We'll need to hire a hall at this rate... or at least a medium-sized cupboard.

Lots of bits and bobs in the LBLs that I emailed separately. Nice close when you might not have had much to close the chapter on, given that it was a 'down' chapter. Good tension, although I wanted more, but I guess you are still teasing, relationship-wise. Progress though. I enjoyed this chapter, but then we all know that I like a slow chapter 'now and then' Good chapter length, easy to read and to remain immersed in the character relationships. Good to see the powder (granules?) in action in a different way, and nice to take a break from the plot, and guilds and missing masters, etc.

Hello @AviatrixAway, and welcome to Reading Excuses! Great to have your comments, thank you. On the timeline, yes, the outline doesn't really present that too well, but I am conscious of taking too long to get to the heart of the plot. It's very much something I'm trying to improve on. Your comments on G, J, Ch are very interesting. I'm not yet sold on coding vs. actually just showing clearly that G is gay from the outset and letting the sexual politics plan from there. We will see. All cool, and very helpful. Thank you p.s. Can I ask you, if you wouldn't mind, to edit your post and abbreviate the character names? We've been doing it informally for a while now, but the guidelines have just changed to make it official. p.p.s. Great to have you on the forum

Ooh, that is an interesting question. Here's my opinion. I think if it was me, I would transcribe it exactly then have a digital original preserved before editing. (I guess I would change any obvious errors, grammar issues, typos, etc.) But that's just my opinion. I can see the merits of making a compelling change in case one forgot (which I would be likely to, unless noting said change down for later). That's my 2 cents (or is it 5 cents these days? can never remember).

Thanks, Kais. I am indebted to you (again) for this advice

Wow! I feel like that trumps (no connotations intended, it was a word before it was a president) 'engineer'. Thank you so much for editing your post. Much appreciated And again, great comments on my outline. I was just collating all the comments. I just love how I can feel my story getting better when you guys feedback on this stuff

Thank you, Kais, for your comments--always challenging and always on point.

Please may I have a slot, but will drop back if not. I presume that @Jorville still wants to submit(?), after holding off last Monday in order to critique.

Hey Jorville, Many thanks for looking over the outline. Hey, interesting suggestion. I think maybe I dug a whole for myself using the term neutral-good, which has a lot of connotations of course! Your suggestion is interesting, but might be a bit more involved than I'm looking for in this story. I completely agree with your comment about the monarch, and that's a potential source of conflict in later stories, if it goes that far. Hmm, this is very interesting. I totally see your point, and like the style of you're thinking!! (You're not an engineer, are you, by any chance?) Today's task for me on DH is to flesh out the magic system (excuse the pun ), so I'll be giving these things some serious consideration. The way I have it now, there would be a fair bit of faffing about. I need the magic system to have a cost, because it's industry best practice ( ), but if that cost is time, it could be detrimental to the story. I'll mull on this: thank you! Yeah, I haven't been back through the outline to tidy it up, so some things evolved as I went, including G* (see footnote). Also, I've been a bit free-and-easy with terminology again, I suspect. I was sort of imagining him as a 'straight man' (oh, the irony...) to J's more morally ambivalent character. But then as the outline shows, G's motivations turn out to be different from expected anyway. So, it's more of a set up than anything else, and good spot that it doesn't hang together. My readers in general will suspect him of something more. Excellent!! This is exactly the sort of thing I always hope for on the forum. Great spot, and I do agree. It is something of a stereotype, isn't it? I'll need to work on that. Thanks for the suggestions too. Thank you for this, and good point. Never heard of the gentleman, but sounds like and interesting story. Difficult if the coincidence is between two things that could be contemporaneous, different, potentially, if there was 10 years between them, maybe. Anyway, I'll need to think about this I'm 99% I'll change mine. Very grateful to you for point this point before I got any distance into it. Cheers! Thank you again for reading, and for your very helpful comments. Again, big welcome to Reading Excuses. Looking forward to reading some of you stuff soon. <R> * I should have added to the welcome message--and try to remember, but don't always--to ask that people don't use character names in critiquing my stuff. You will see that several other submitters on here ask that too. It's related to publishing, and the possibility that, if your work does get published, people might find these forums by searching for character names, and that see all this material which, clearly, would not be good! So, can I ask you, if you wouldn't mind, to edit your post here and abbreviate the names of the characters, places, etc? I should have asked in my original post, sorry. You'll see that same thing on other threads, certainly with both Kais and Mandamon (who are published). It's a good habit to get into, and I think it is now our default. (Hey, @Silk, do you think you might consider amending the guidelines to highlight the desire to have character and any other unique author 'created' names abbreviate?)

Many thanks!! Great comments, as always <R>

Okay, so, something different this week. Also, something incredibly late, I am so sorry. On the plus side, I hope, it is pretty short and only in note form, as it is an outline for a novella that I am going to write for the Tor.com July submission window. Some of you will have read these characters before in the short story that I submitted in September 2017 (called Open Their Eyes--involved robbing a coach), and I think they were pretty well received at the time. The point I am going for here is of course to stand out, but also be compelling. Also, I am trying to be much less in discovery (pants-ing) mode, and have a much more tightly-plotted story, as that is very much (I think) my biggest weakness at the moment, ending up letting things spiral out of control in terms of complexity, and therefore confusion (see the last eight weeks' submissions!!). Any and all comments welcomed. Please slaughter me if this sounds like anything else you've read, or is close to anything anywhere

Is this clearer later in the story, or should I spend another line on it here? I got it well enough before, in terms of a country being fragmented and becoming powerless due to the loss of guilds. My difficultly was with the concept that the country would cease to exist. So would neighbours claim the land, the towns and cities, the buildings? Maybe WRS now, but I'm not sure it was clarified later.

LOL. And love the sea monster thing

Huh? Did I win something?

LOL - love a good pun.

Go for it. No problems here.

Heya, comments with LBLs by email. Headlines: - I'm disoriented. I don't know if they're moving on the flat or still climbing vertically. Things like earth and people reaching out make me struggle to orient myself. - "using some of the sturdier plants to climb" - I don't believe this. That thing must way tons, not to mention there are four humarnoids on it. - If they are going vertically up the wall, but they are sitting on the beetle, gravity will constantly be pulling them backwards. The physical strain must be tremendous. This doesn't seem to be dealt with at all. - "picking one of the purple globes that hung sideways on the tree" - But no, it has to hang down, because gravity... Except the tree will grow up, because, gravity... The description of things relative to others things is really disorienting. Everything should be relative to gravity, I think. Am I really on the only one hugely confused by all of this? - "We all passed our ropes forward" - I'm still struggling to understand the blocking; who is where and how are they attached to the wall. - "...their loping pace up the platform" - Arrrrrgghghh. A platform, by definition (I believe), is flat. Ergo, imho, you can't go up a platform. Apart from the orientation problems, I enjoyed this just fine. The discovery was a nice surprise, and handled well, I thought. There is a fair amount of world-building and orientation going on here, but it does not slow things down too badly. Also, there is still a promise of tension, because Wal's motivations are still somewhat shrouded and suspicious, and there is still the matter of how they get down.

I'll be happy to submit something. By this point I am trying to write enough to have a chapter to submit, but it's good motivation for me, even if the material is perhaps a bit rougher than I would have liked. So, yes, please; but it will be tomorrow, methinks. Hope that is okay.

Comments. LBLs sent separately. “M’s head shot up“ – I don't believe this. She's got long experience in court, and as a kind of officer/soldier of the state - surely she would not react in such a transparent and revealing way. “Unbound guilds are still guilds…” – This is pretty maid-and-butler; would the woman not know this well enough? “We have to leave after lunch tomorrow…” – Isn't this incredibly late for travelling? Unless of course they have something to do here, but I'm not aware of that (or haven't remembered it). “It’s been this way for years. The guilds are dead” – Hmm, I struggle with his a bit. Would such news not have found its way back to the capital, in the space of a whole five years?! Yes, I am enjoying the story. There is tidying to be done in some of the language and word choice, I think, but the pace is good, and I enjoy the shorter chapters. The absence of any attendants still bothers me: it’s so improbable, to me. I think you might tackle it by showing M arguing with a minister back in the palace about going out alone, or have her relate the argument to S once they are on the road. Maybe S questions the lack of attendants. If she had a couple, she could send them back to the city from here, or still lose them in the fight. <R>

I have had some fantastic notes on trends running through many of the chapters submitted so far that I have to fix, but at this stage (Draft 1), I continue to try and press ahead and get to the end of the book, because the first task/challenge, always, is to finish. I deeply appreciate all the comments that you guys have put in, and for bearing with me as some of things perhaps do not appeared to be fixed as we go forward, but please know that all are being recorded and will be addressed in the second draft. In that spirit, here is another chapter of TCC (the 11th, in case your hexadecimal isn't what is used to be), in which our various characters make varying degrees of progress towards Yellowknife. Thank you in advance for anything that you see fit to comment upon. Best, Robinski

Well, if it's light, I will step in a take a slot, please.