neongrey

Upgrading is an idiom I thought was fairly universal; it refers to going back to school for the purposes of improving your job skills and prospects. If it's not as well known as I thought or derivable from context, I'll look into swapping it out. The advances she's referring to, like the rise of computing etc, occurred in the 20th century, so that's why I explicitly refer to it there. The quantum physics line is actually me avoiding the dreadful cliche of Shroedinger's cat by merely obliquely referencing it (ie, the state of the cat is determined when the box is opened; what the state actually is is a fairy thing). Too oblique, it seems; I could do better there then. Troubles with science are definitely not the way that should be read, and using greater specificity would probably help a lot. I'll head back to youtube for research. :v And yeah, the ending was a bit of a trouble for me; I had sort of a moment of 'but wait, this doesn't have any plot' and figured I ought to at least enact some sort of action or decision on the part of the viewpoint character, so that's why it goes where it does. I can probably sell the ending harder by working it in better earlier on. Starting off with a job loss like Mandamon suggested is probably a good place to start with that, especially if it's loss via petty obsolecense.

And now for something completely different. Please forgive the wonky formatting, this is still very much an early draft and I write shorts in plaintext. Nothing should be unreadable, I think, I just hate maintaining separate formatting on multiple documents. Specific points on this one: a) titles- help, please? I had it suggested by someone who was reading it in process that stopping at the 'fairies are dicks' line might be better all around for the piece. I'm not sold either way, but it does cut out a lot of the most load-bearing dialogue (and there is a lot of load-bearing dialogue here) so I'm interested in second opinions on that. Thanks!

Yeah, I saw how it went this past week-- I didn't know it was automatic at the time. But seeing it work made it pretty clear!

I've got a pretty rough first draft I'd like to send out on Monday, too, please. After that I'll be caught up with stuff anyone can actually look at for a bit.

Okay, you guys have given me a lot to chew on; I think I'll probably hold off my next draft until after I get my next rejection slip. Partly for superstition's sake, but mostly prioritization; I've got other things to be working on too. This is gonna take a thorough think-over anyway, the trouble with allegory for history that's so recent is that there's so many people who are still alive and not very old who went through the real thing. It takes a really delicate touch, and while I think I can do that, in the end it won't be for me to judge. I'll offer more thoughts on comments in specific, if there's any I need to, when I pick up the piece again.

I'm not liable to be able to get to this until the weekend; I'll take a look while I'm at work then.

No I can definitely follow what you're doing there. And my own advice about shorter sentences returns to bite me! Haha, so you know I can't ignore that. But I'm still figuratively scribbling notes, so don't mind me for not saying much more than that yet. This is a huge help, all of you, thanks.

Okay, overall I have less to comment on here-- most of what I caught were typos, so I added you to the folder so you can catch them from comments at your leisure. (doc here) I too didn't feel lost or out of place having missed the earlier bits, so that's good. I have to agree about the relished the responses her appearance line-- I don't think it's terrible since overall you avoid most male gazery, but it does stand out. I would personally cut it. That being said, I have less problem than the others with how this played out if the point is that Cadmia is spoiled and impulsive. If this is actually a failure or at least a screw-up in the disguise of a success, I think it works nicely. Similarly, if Nurya's giving in so quickly I feel like there has to be a reason-- her position is inherently precarious, knowing ethnic/religious minorities and the foibles of nobles of the era, so I don't think you've got a hard sell to make there. The real trick is how cognizant Cadmia is of how delicate Nurya's position is. If you are trying to emphasize her spoiledness, I think you could get away with having her make direct threats, and how Cadmia feels about doing that (however that is) would also work nicely.

Jagabond: What I did was I saved the doc to my Google Drive and opened it in Google Docs, that converted it over to that format. And, hah, about the editor thing-- it's not my day job but I'm editing some RPG stuff for a Kickstarter. Very different from this though, I have almost free reign with that for reasons, haha. I think we're on the same page with a lot of this-- on my end I noted but didn't mention on the exclamation point and highlighted 'she was no exception' as a good line to cut. In general if something is that ordinary I tend to feel it's not something that needs to be noted. Re the information in Jester's chapter, I think we're not far out of alignment; most of it is fine, I just think there's some overly-lengthy phrasing there. Re Jaime I don't have a lot to say there, I definitely think it's the strongest of the three. I noted the attractive bit too-- I prefer to avoid couching description in terms like that; you can colour whether your viewpoint character thinks them attractive or not by how they describe whatever features you choose to note. I tend to feel that when you use attractive as an anchor word in a description, it's kind of objectifying, and you want to avoid that except when that's exactly what you're trying to do. Other than that, not a lot to comment on there. I made a folder and stuck the doc in there, I sent an invite to your mailing list email address, I can add people as I get emails. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BxMEKK9ljUSdRTFFWTNPOXhrNlU&usp=sharing is the link, just click on the doc in the folder and my comments will be on the right with what they pertain to highlighted.

Okay, like I said in my email, this is already making the rounds, but I could use some more eyes on it. Thanks!

Okay, I paused House of Cards to go over Jester's section. On the whole it flows and fits together a lot better than Emily's-- you've got some flow and back-and-forth that keeps things moving. Some off commas and homophones. There's a lot more information being slung around here-- some of it feels unnecessary, like the fact that the scrolls are tucked away safely; that's usually the sort of thing you can bring up closer to when it's immediately relevant. I feel like the information parses pretty well except when, again, you get some really big, weighty sentences. Things like "Distance did not exist in the void, that was true, but The Jester had never come into physical contact with a planet that wasn't some alternate version of Earth, and truth be told he thought the Sapphires who lied about extra-terrestrial travels were insane." and "If another Sapphire had made it out of the void four years ago instead of him, the events now recorded in the green scrolls, which were tucked safely and secretly away, would still come to pass." feel really overloaded. "Everyone knew he could do this because it was important that everyone knew he could do it." is a sentence that is kind of a chore to parse, it really sticks out. I also feel like some of this stuff that's conveyed via infodump-- what happened when the Jester found the aurora-- could be conveyed via a prologue or something where this actually occurs. One more instance of obvious witholding, "As the Queen laid out her plans, the Jester had to admit that while the plan wasn't original, he himself had entertained it many times in the past, it really could work, but only if they implemented it today."-- obviously you don't want to detail the plan in advance for later tension so I might consider starting that plans bit with killing the Professor and cutting out before the plan is detailed at all. Early on too, some of the perspective feels a bit wonky, you're bouncing back and forth between the Jester's and the Historian's thoughts/reactions, at first I thought it was in the Historian's perspective and then it went to Jester's and then it went back to the Historian's and then it went back to Jester and stayed there, most of this goes on really early in the section so it should be pretty simple to patch up. Annnd I'll do Jaime tomorrow afternoon before work.

Okay, first notes on 'Emily'. As an aside, I'm doing fairly detailed style notes in comments on a google doc, I can link it to you once I'm done the lot if you think it'll be of help. First off, I'm not that comfortable with some of the first thoughts (in a section, anyway, I don't know if she's had viewpoint before but this still holds if she has) being about a man, not like this. It's unnecessarily male-gazey and isn't really advancing the character. I would cut it or make it about something else entirely if you want to show her being modestly easily distracted. If it has to be about this librarian in particular for plot reasons, I think making it about a conversation or something that they had would feel more natural. Next, I am definitely noticing your infodumps, and I'm noticing them in conjunction with either very long or run-on sentences. I think if you break up those sentences more, that'll go a long way to concealing them naturally within the text. I think this is a problem that reading out loud, if you can, would help with a lot. Last big note for this section is that you are concealing information from the reader and you are calling attention to the fact that you are doing so. This doesn't read that well. Specific points where it occurs: the italicized 'he'-- your characters are very obviously avoiding using this person's name and the fact that it's italicized makes it clear that they're doing so. I would drop italics there in all cases. Next obvious point of concealment: "If what we foresaw has finally come to pass" is a very circuitous phrase, and it's very openly avoiding saying whatever it was that they foresaw. I would consider something like "if the rust is finally hitting the fan", it's within her affect, it still avoids saying what exactly is going on, but it doesn't carry the implication of telling someone something they already know. Last big point of concealment: "and bring out what she had hidden there." This is saying that there's something hidden there but that you're not telling what. I think you'd be good to just cut that part of the sentence entirely-- the reader can still be wondering why she needs to reach into her purse so quickly. The surprise of the gun is still foreshadowed that way. Style issues aside it's a pretty good and snappy scene, you're leaving pretty good breadcrumbs that something big and bad is going on. I will continue with Jester either later tonight or tomorrow.

Haha, I've had worse. Should it be mailed on Monday or before Monday? I can do either no problem, just thought I should ask before sending it in now, in case you want it then.

Grey with an e, please. And yeah, I think I will submit, I've got a couple shorts ready to be gone over. I wouldn't want to take anyone's slot who's been here longer, but it looks like there's plenty of space.

Hiiii.