neongrey

Ahaha, my work schedule's been a pain for me to both do things and write things on, and this chapter's been a pain in general; part of the solution just ended up being 'well i don't think it needs to be as long as the others'

I've finally got the new 4 finished. I'd like to put it around.

The thing is, even if you can do a good editing pass on your stuff, other people will always look at your work differently than you do. One gets used to certain errors one makes, and things you think are fine will almost certainly not be to other people. There's no replacement at all for a second set of eyes, no matter how good you are at doing your own typo clean-up.

That's cool, then yeah, about the scholarship (though I have mixed feelings about having more disposable income essentially creating a lower bar to entry, but that's far from unique to something like this). I'm not against the idea of retreats or events like that, just the weight they're given. I just know I don't even get one big trip of the year, and I'm far from alone on that.

Yeah, and I know it's something they're aware of and do their best to deal with, it's just, augh. e: like, a scholarship isn't going to make someone able to afford to take time off, and isn't going to cover things like flights, (I wouldn't think). It's not nearly as bad as something like Clarion, but it's frustrating to see so much weight being placed on things like this which are so very non-trivial.

Honestly (and I'm not ragging on you at all here for being able to go), it's really sort disheartening to see this sort of event held up as The Thing To Do (ditto with cons for preliminary networking). It's a pretty inherently exclusionary sort of event, limited to people who either have a certain amount of disposable income or the means to get together a pretty substantial amount of money, and afford the time off work for it. They set up a good rate for it but even then, it's not an insignificant cost at all. Now, these are barriers that aren't as strict as they once were, the internet being a a fantastic tool that it is, but there's still a lot of emphasis on this sort of face to face thing, and it's... I can barely even afford to go walk around local cons for fun, and I can't afford to take time off for them, so if it doesn't fall into a time when I'm naturally off work, I don't even get that. Lots of people don't even have that much access, either cost or by location. So the notion of something like a (foreign!) cruise...The sheer amount of who-you-know-in-person... ugh.

No, it won't appear that way at this point; it's more of a premise-level thing rather than uniquely portentious. I just pointed it out in that case because yes, she's not supposed to be bothered. The fact that she doesn't perceive that she should be beyond a momentary 'ehh' does matter, but not in a way that should be hammered on.

Ughhh I have no time to do anything at all this week, let alone read or write. I'm gonna try and play catch-up on people's stuff from this past week but if I haven't gotten to you yet that's why.

Doing that sounds way more unnatural to me than just navigating the conversation to a name earlier, honestly. That's one of those things that would probably make me just drop a book cold.

I'd advise against it; it's generally a hallmark of poor-quality writing, that sort of epithet. I'd work the name in sooner somehow, rather than dance around it, then.

You know a bit of my history with the subject so it shouldn't be too surprising when I say that pretty much no level of explicit detail bothers me. That said, my concern is far more with how it fits contextually. Some stories work best with a fade to black, and I think a lot of authors do best with a fade to black. I'm sure we've all come across scenes that seemed like they were written, shall we say, for the author's personal gratification. And outside of erotica that can feel weird. That said, absent that feeling, you know, whatever feels best for the story.

oh, hmm, it is Lasila who doesn't need the assistance there but I can see why that'd be confusing. I'll make a note.

Yes, and I foolishly forgot to give a recap. But yes, she's quite dead and has been for some time. This seems to be a bit of a problem line; I can find some other way to convey the required sentiment. Lasila as a POV is rather strongly concerned with her presentation, and not without cause; this matters a lot in her society and she's not in a position where she can dispense with the formalities of this. It's not strictly intended for a female audience but Lasila's perspective draws heavily on female coding and very strictly applies the female gaze, and as a rule the generalized cisgendered heterosexual male audience does often find themselves uncomfortable with that. I have no particular interest in catering to that demographic, and while the intent is not to turn them away at the door, that demographic rather notoriously interprets 'not being catered to' as being explicitly excluded. This is very much not YA; it's adult political/economic fantasy. Not epic, not heroic; if urban fantasy weren't so strongly tied to the real world, I might be ok with it being considered that. I'm not sure I follow which sentence you're referring to here. There'd be no anxiety, no, and in fact the extent to which Lasila isn't bothered by this discovery is itself quite significant. (she is certainly an antihero on several levels; the shudkathra aren't secretly the good guys or whatever nonsense. they've got their reasons for keeping up their half of the war, but they're not terribly pertinent at this point) Still, it does seem the surrounding bits are somewhat too grounded. Thanks!

That certainly is the plan! It's mostly just a very bitter aside. Lasila's relationship with religion thus far has been very... ambivalent. It's non-critical if it's a problem. Yeah, I can work on that some. Lasila by nature grounds herself pretty thoroughly so even when she's feeling out of it there's going to be a bit of an anchoring going on, but it sounds like there's too much of that as-is. Thanks!

This one wholly devours the original chapter 2, and compresses this particular aspect of the plot quite a bit. Maranthe is rather less generous this time around, and there's a significance to the bells in Maranthe's hair if you haven't read the previous chapter two weeks before, lol (perhaps there still is, but it's the sort of detail that I would expect to get lost with this gap; regardless, it's more of an if-you-catch-it rather than a need-to-know). I have no specific needs on this; I think it's probably a bit rough overall since I've had to work at it in fits and starts just due to time issues on my end. But let me know! Thanks!

If I'm doing my math right, I think that's 4... so could I take the fifth for the 12th? I should have this bit done by then.

Well, that's more something I can work with. Thanks!

Well, this is definitely a story about machinations rather than an action story-- I'm trying to avoid markers of both the heroic and epic subgenres, because this is solidly in the political/economic fantasy area. Which is not to say there's no violence, not at all-- it is a story about blood magic, after all-- but no character who drives the storyline is particularly eager to find themselves in an action scene. If I'm giving suggestions of those other subgenres, I do need to scrub them but I think in this case your preferences simply lie outside my subgenre.

I notice with the cats at least that all their eyes are pointed in the same direction... so that seems like food or a dangly string or something like that to me, hehe

Okay, yeah, looks like we're pretty much entirely in streamlining country here, which is a good place to be! Thanks~

Okay, I tend to go by page because that seems to strike a happy medium for me between literally spending hours going over it and h and giving what I hope will be useful. Just before going into it, yeah, I am not a huge fan of prologues either-- either they're information that really doesn't need to be conveyed in order to understand the story or it's just a first chapter in a funny hat. If you don't need to know it you don't need to include it, and swapping in a more normal hat for the chapter just makes things a bit more palatable overall. It's a bit of a shame if only because I always like things that reward second or closer reads but especially on an opener, you want to open off with things that are both pertinent and will attract readers. This So yeah. P.1 There's not a lot grabbing me from the outset; I'm reading and rereading the first paragraph and I keep sliding off. The prose just feels out in general here; a lot more distant than it should be for wanting to be immediate and blowing snow and all that. Some odd redundancy with 'mind still imagined'; not much else does any imagining after all. So many questions that are effectively rhetorical right off... definitely not loving those. It's a clickbait headline technique and it's a truism that the answer there is always 'no', rendering the question effectively pointless. The same holds true with how you're using them; it's not meaningfully adding tension. The overall impression I'm getting from the first page here is that it doesn't really mean a while lot as-is; without familiarity I'm not sure why what's going on uniquely matters. The attempts to build tension toward the end of the page that don't use rhetorical questions don't really do their job without the narrative having previously sold us a reason to care. P.2 So I see you've killed some women without ever showing their faces, for the sole narrative purpose of raising stakes for the viewpoint character and to make the reader feel bad for him. On the second page. Please do consider the message this sends about the role and value of women in your narrative, and realize that this is a hard dealbreaker for many readers. Such as myself; I won't be continuing past this point with this submission.

Definitely seems like this bit'll need some streamlining, but that's easy enough to deal with. Their largest city is Envariden, which is quite distant; Var Bandor was theirs too before the shudkathra took it, and there's probably still a substantive population there. Inedra (much closer to the border) might have more of a refugee population but Ilidria's human expat population would be quite small, with few if any refugees. Ilidria is ultimately both quite xenophobic and white-man's-burden-y. (in the end, art is never apolitical...) So, primarily in their own country. Savae demands attention be paid, while living in a society that only cares performatively. Probably just more clunk. Fixable.

The problem of the middle book pretty much always comes down to plot. If you've got people reading that far, they're already interested in knowing what happens to your characters and that is probably more than half the battle. The trick here is that we're now at a point where what happens to your characters needs to be compelling. Second books are tricky (eg, a continuous story broken up into three books, but longer series has this apply too), and in a different way from standalones within a series(eg, babysitter's club, to pick the most facile of options). Very recently I read a book, second of three, where I definitely walked away feeling a) that I liked it quite a bit but b ) it was very definitely a middle book. So what starts off is the big question, and, I think, the one that differentiates these different needs: do you expect the reader to have familiarity with the characters, concepts, and plot that you're dealing with? When all is said and done, is the expectation that people will be reading your multiple books as a single unit, or will they pick one out? If it's continuous, then please absolutely do not spend more than the minimum amount of time recapping. If not, you need to devote more space to it. From there, assuming continuity, the needs I would look at are twofold: a) does the book itself have its own plot that stands on its own strengths? Being weaker here isn't a death sentence, but it is the primary cause of middle book syndrome. This is because everything is being subjuncted to the needs of b ) does the book further the over-arching plot? I mean the reason this one's more important is because if the answer here is 'no' then you absolutely must rework until it does. Or you're working on a series of standalones. Now, b ) in middle books is very frequently a lot of sliding things into position. It's Frodo getting nearly to Mordor, and so on and so forth. It's important stuff and it's stuff that can't be neglected or skipped over, so the task is mostly concealing that this is what's going on. Note too that as often it's not physically moving into position, it's emotionally, or in terms of knowledge or etc, etc. The alternative, of course, is for everything to all go to hell (see: The Empire Strikes Back)-- and this is frequently more satisfying, though not all plots permit this. And it often sacrifies the conclusion to some extent... So. The answer, as far as I have to say, is plot. It's plot.

Not the biggest fan myself, but I'm not a fan of much of anything that squishes the lumpy bits around ("but a really good one isn't supposed to be so bad" "they said that about spanx too" etc). But Savae is used to it, and Savae has much stronger objections to being read as definitively any gender at all than I do, so. I guess the gist is that if the lumpiness isn't causing an urgent issue I'm content to leave it as-is with only some minor surrounding tweaks for the next pass because it's a valid source of bitterness and it's not something that's going to be left hanging.

They're probably the chestiest one of the entire cast (Iluya would be the biggest out of the aelin, followed by Maranthe, but if I ever get a big fandom and creepers start asking the answer simply becomes me making fart noises), to be sure, though they typically bind flat, which hasn't been mentioned... but is liable to come up quite shortly. So I guess the question is if you feel like a chapter plus a bit would be an unreasonable wait for this to get defined further, or if it's the sort of thing that needs to be laid out asap.