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Messages - Justice1337

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Reading Excuses / Re: Feedback from the Gatekeepers
« on: February 28, 2011, 11:27:49 PM »
Dream/nightmare sequences are also something it's usually best to avoid until you are more established in your career.

It's important that you don't read this as "best to avoid until you get more skilled".  What agents like, what publishers will put out, and even what a reader allows himself to like is actually quite influenced by the author's name.

It could be that you're doing flashbacks very well.  You might even be one of the best flashback authors out there. (I don't know. I only read a couple of your chapters, and those weren't flashbacks.)  But as you tread into the business of the art, you'll find that a lot of really good stuff doesn't get published, and what you're doing is going to be more and more influenced by your appraisal of what the world will like.

And you seem to realize that not very many like flashbacks.

Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings was criticized for having too many flashbacks, and he's a great author WITH a name.

I wouldn't call the structure of the Name of the Wind to be flashback form either.   You have to understand what exactly it is that the reader doesn't like about flashbacks, a concept much bigger than just a label.  In A Name of the Wind, I'd say the ratio of young Kvoth scenes to Old Kvothe was at least 9:1, (first two chapters excluded).  What you have there is an interesting structual way of giving perspective.  Readers had few problems with it.

And when you think about it, there's a lot of ways to do things like this.  In Sanderson's Mistborn, the protagonists were translating the memoirs of the person they believed to be the Lord Ruler (antagonist).  Excerpts from the translation were added to the beginning of each chapter, and they added a nice perspective to what was going on that most readers enjoyed.  In Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, verbal dictations of the school supervisors were taken and added to the beginning of each chapter.  These were quite large when compared to the size of teh actual work, but still most readers didn't mind it.  Some distracting element wasn't present there, simply becasue physical description and traditional chapter structre were taken out.  You just got dialogue, and you were left to figure it out.

A LOT of fantasy/sff has this kind of thing, and I'd think about it when you consider how to improve your work.  Best of luck in the industry.

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Reading Excuses / Re: NaNoWriMo
« on: October 13, 2010, 03:44:35 AM »
I can barely write a first draft at a pace of 3k words a day when I do it full time.  And 90,000 words is a pretty low count for me.  Wave if you're the same way.

Oh, and I'm excited to critique people's peices who are participating.

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Reading Excuses / Re: October 4, Hubay, Fathers of Gods – Chapter 5
« on: October 13, 2010, 03:07:17 AM »
The prose is compotent.  The exposition is passable, a bit stretched over maid-and-butler in a few places, but decent considering you're working with a world of elementals that is completely original.

The real problem is with structure.

The scene opens with everyone "assent"-ing (which kind of reminded me of Power Rangers, tbh).  Then, there's some petty bickering.  I'm assuming that by chapter 5, everyone knows what assenting is and knows preliminarily the personal conflicts of who is stronger than who (if they don't, there's a problem).  But given that everyone knows this, the intro doesn't pose any dramatic questions.  I'm not asking myself what the eff is assenting, or what the H they're arguing about.  Furthermore, these dramatic questions are only really suitable to passages where you want to exposit detail, not chapter 5.  Chapter 5 questions are those such as "will X reach her destination?", "what is the nature of this obstacle?", "how will fact X that main character DOES NOT know impact her?", etc.  In sum, this is a bad intro to Chapter 5.

A good example of other structural problems is the scene break where it's announced that some people are attacking the castle/fort, and then the next scene jumps to dialogue about how it's more fun to have relations with the water elemental.  Then, the attack is thrown aside easily because there were only 5 people attacking.  I don't know what dramatic question I can ask myself that hasn't been answered already.

Another one is the death/ascension of Ristem scene at the end.  You've got the prose style of short dramatic sentences down pat.  But I can't put myself into the scene because Ristem's life/current existence/whatever was never at stake at any point.  There's just a few mentionss that the ascention will happen regardles of what the characters want or try to do to prevent/further it.  The mentions of the ascention actually interrupt the characters' dialogue about their day to day.  I actually scrolled up to see if I'd missed some hint that the characters were trying to prevent/further his ascension, but all I found was two people discussing why someone's getting a new servant assigned.  Accordingly, there can be no satisfaction for me.  No question is being resolved according to or against my expectations.

I think it would be helpfult to take a few minutes and outline the major dramatic question of the novel.  What do you want the reader to root for?  Decide, and then place as fearsome of an obstacle as you can to impede the outcome I'm rooting for as a reader.  Show me the rooted for outcome and make me want it too.  Show me the obstacle and made me feel it.  Then surprise me.

That's what structure is all about.

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Reading Excuses / Re: June 23 - Silk - Fall, Stars, Fall - L
« on: June 27, 2010, 08:05:24 PM »
This was a good read for me.  You've got the writing down well, well enough in fact, that I'm pretty confident in your ability as an author to accomplish what you intend with your work.  I suppose then, my comments are going to be more open-ended questions about what you intended artistically than they are open criticism.

1)   Conflict
Conflict doesn’t need to be external, of course.  It doesn’t have to be well understood from the onset either.  Certain people might have difficulty with these, but that only means that the story isn’t for them.  That said, there are certain things that must be present in every conflict, and I feel that some of them were lacking here.
The conflict should be distinct by the end.  On the first two viewpoint sections, the second really since I felt little was established in the first, the main dramatic questions I’m asking myself are: Will the city allow the Anchor be built? and Will Jana be able to complete her song?  What I actually got from the story was a solution to an interpersonal conflict with Aryl that doesn’t get introduced until ¾ of the way through.  This is a problem for the reader because he/she doesn’t know what to root for, and worse, still doesn’t know by the end who she SHOULD have rooted for.  Furthermore, I still don’t understand how being looked up to is such a conflict for Aryl.  People usually like being respected, and it’s hard for me to believe honestly that someone would feel trapped by it unless she’s successfully shown as a really unusual character in this respect (which I wasn’t shown).  My question is what you intended for the conflict, what you intended to show by it.  There’s plenty of fiction about artists looking for inspiration, people feeling trapped, etc.  A lot of these themes are common.  It just depends on what you were feeling as an artist when you put it to pen.  
There has to be strong opposition.  Opposition brings a healthy amount of doubt to the questions posed by the drama.  If the story makes you ask whether Janna will finish her song, her situation and her character need to be painted such that there is serious doubt whether that will happen.  There should be strong obstacles, whether internal or external.  Even in the most passive fiction, like romance, the best romance is that where the romantic interest remains mysterious, and there’s a strong chance that the person is just too distant to end up with the heroine.  There’s a short story called “The Cathedral” where the conflict is all about whether the protagonist is going to feel sympathy for a blind man, and it works because the author shows him to be insensitive in the beginning.  Whatever you’re feeling as an artist for the conflict, nearly all of your attention in the beginning of the piece should be about framing the issue, and specifically, setting doubt in the mind of the reader that the issue is to be resolved favorably.

2)   Structure
One problem flows into another.  Because they’re brief, short stories have much less license to deviate from their basic structure – introduce the conflict, heighten it, resolve it, reframe it.  In what I read, conflicts seem to be resolved at odd times and new ones posed far too late in the work.
About halfway through the short, the reader finds out that the Anchor was built successfully.  That’s one duck shot down, and the reader is spending energy looking for another.  But instead of either finding a new issue quickly or going back to old ones, the characters spent time watching things, walking to City Hall, Aryl and Janna both spend a page talking to a new character named Braeden, who contributes nothing to the drama.  And then ¾ of the way through, Aryl starts feeling trapped, seemingly out of nowhere.  This is a new duck, but there’s not enough time to shoot it down.  Instead, the reader is left with questions about why Aryl left.  Basically, you are going to have problems in any short story where the characters are congratulating themselves 2/3 of the way through on having solved a major conflict.  If you don’t want construction of the Anchor as a conflict, it shouldn’t be introduced as something the characters themselves are doubtful of, and if you want Aryl feeling trapped as the conflict, it needs to be restructured.  My question is what you want out of this story as an artist.  Perhaps you need to begin the story at a different point in time you did in order to key up the conflict you wanted, or perhaps end it after giving more explanation than you did.  Only you can know.  
Other problems with structure are that too much time is spent by characters watching things that don’t contribute to the drama.  Janna gazes at the city, watches people by the docks and thinks of her mother, etc.  Along that same parallel, too much of the dialogue is spent on welcomes, good byes, “There you are!”, etc.  It feels forced, like you realize that there should be something there but you don’t know what it is.  Principles of Structure will tell you what it is.  Trying to imagine what the characters would do in commonplace situations will not.  
  
3)   Character
Having read the short, I’m still asking myself why there were so many characters.  There are three that I wanted to care about - Janna, Aryl and Janna’s father.  The last is shown very little, and does little for the drama.  The second gets swept from under my nose without any explanation.  Even the third ends up being nothing more than an empty vessel from which the reader observes the consequences for Aryl’s decision to leave.  Good characters in drama are those whose decisions matter in the resolution of the conflict.  I see little decisiveness here.  It doesn’t mean that their decisions weren’t important, just that I didn’t see them making any.  The most glaring example of this is that Aryl just shows up missing.  She starts feeling trapped, but she doesn’t decide to leave out where the reader can see.  This is frustrating.
Another problem is that the characters do not appear distinct.  I understood by the end that Janna was an artist and Aryl a scholar, but I never quite grasp how these roles affect them personally, what’s the difference between the two, etc.  Both characters seem to speak with the same voice.  Even if the viewpoint is a distant third-person narrator who speaks with the same voice for all characters, the characters should then be given opportunities in dialogue to showcase their uniqueness.  All I got were hellos, goodbyes, thank you’s, and some teasing banter that avoids serious establishment of character by its very nature of being teasing banter.  Even cliché flamboyant artist/bookish scholar would’ve worked for me.  It’s something.  Again, you probably have a good idea of these characters’ personal traits, motivations, frustrations.  We just need to see it in pen.    

4)   Style

The change in tense was distracting.  I understand that you’ve spent some thought on this, but allow me to dissent.  I believe that there is a bright line between what you’re showing to a reader and how you’re showing it.  What you’re showing makes two stories as different as night and day, the real center of writing as art.  But how you’re showing it is simply an obstacle.  It’s an inconvenience that we have to use words to evoke images, emotions and people.  As artists, I think we shouldn’t make that any more of an inconvenience than we have to.  A painter should never paint with spaghetti sauce, for example.  I would not alter the tense of two characters unless there is a reason in the narrative for why you can.
Arabian Nights, for example, has a character shown in the third person viewpoint talking with another character about what he’s done in the past.  The stories this character tells are told in first person, as if he is speaking to the second character.  Other stories that pull this off are those that involve a character in the present tense, but once in a while she reads excerpts from another character’s diary.  Maybe Aryl leaves her diary behind when she leaves, and some of the drama is Janna finding out through her diary why she decided to leave.  You know what you want from your characters better than I do, of course.  I’m just saying that unless there’s a reason in the narrative for the tense shifts, it’s distracting instead of expressive.
Another issue with style is your viewpoint.  I’m never quite sure how deep I’m seeing into a character’s motivations, especially when I’m in the viewpoint of another character.  Also, a character will ask themselves a question in internal monologue that I’m not sure whether I should have an answer as a reader, or sometimes what they are even asking themselves and thinking about in the first place.  Other times the characters, even though they are so young, seem to know in perfect detail certain complex things.  For example, Aryl somehow knows exactly why the city has a certain attitude toward the Anchor – that sailors think scholars belong elsewhere.  If she’s guessing at things of that nature, that’s ok, but it doesn’t come across that way.  It’s too easy for me to get distracted by the realization that an omniscient author wrote this.

I hope I’ve been able to help some, and I wanted to say that I really enjoyed the read.  I hope to read more of your writing in the future.

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Reading Excuses / Re: May 24 - Justice1337 - TheodoraExcerpt
« on: June 17, 2010, 11:14:40 PM »
Ah, I understand about the pronouns having looked over your corrections.  And, it's my fault for not understanding the first time.  Work has been hectic, I billed over 60 hours last week.

The suggestions of everyone have been quite good.  I think I will show more of the fight scene, expand the early part of the dialogue to spice up the info-dump, and find a more solid ending that makes people want to return to this character.

Thanks to everyone who contributed. 

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Reading Excuses / Re: May 24 - Justice1337 - TheodoraExcerpt
« on: June 11, 2010, 01:51:01 AM »
Thank you, Silk.  I know it was kind of a long read

“I'm confused as to who's actually in charge here, the King or the Queen. Lines like "Kings were not valued for their opinions in the Planting Kingdom.  That was for the Queen and the Magnate" seem to suggest that the queen is in charge, while lines like "it was the King’s bidding that determined his subjects’ fate" suggest the opposite.”

The intent, and maybe I’ve failed in this, is that the allocation of power in this government be a bit confusing.  But I think, the line between showing a reader something confusing and leaving the reader herself confused is probably a bit thinner than I thought.  In the last line, I wrote “In love as in court, it was the King’s bidding…”  It’s because the King has basically two powers: one to appoint officers of government and the other to act as a judge over cases.  Both of these powers, like often happens with powers of government, bleed a lot into other things and get thrown around so much that it’s hard to tell where they end.  Likewise, the King, Queen and Magnate form the lawmaking body, and so, the Queen’s opinion has as much weight as the King’s.  The Justiciars have the executive power, police, war, etc.  As for the Magnate, the King appoints foreign nobles directly, without going through their government.  It would seem strange for a modern nation to do that, but medieval royalty did things like that all the time.  And it’s only Theodora that is used as a hostage because this particular King is a lush.  Blah blah, I’ll not try to save face anymore It’s enough that this is a chapter 4 and that I’ll just have to key into the potentially confusing issues more as I hint at them somewhat in previous chapters.  The art thing will also be explored in other chapters, and it’s enough to say that it’s nothing official.     



As for the pronoun issue, I’ve been told that I write my third-person limited viewpoint a little more impersonal than most, and it’s led other people also to question whether it’s simply a cinematic form of third person omniscient.  It might be clear after having read the first few chapters of a novel already, but adding more emotion to my narrative is definitely something I need to work on too.

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Reading Excuses / Re: May 24 - Justice1337 - TheodoraExcerpt
« on: May 28, 2010, 10:17:09 PM »
Specific Question:  Is Theodora believable as a female, or does her internal monologue seem male to you guys?

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Reading Excuses / Re: Your Background
« on: May 27, 2010, 04:35:43 AM »
Brigham Young?  Doesn't Brandon Sanderson teach creative writing there? 

A lot of people here seem to be from Utah, is that because of writing excuses?

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Reading Excuses / Re: Your Background
« on: May 26, 2010, 07:49:16 PM »
Woot!  A fellow barrister.

I got my JD from USF (University of San Francisco), and I've been a member of the California bar about 2 years.  What's your story?

Writing on the side is tough, but I think working in the public sector is a bit easier than being an associate at a law firm, if that's your bag.  Where I'm at, it's a traditional 9 to 5 with very little work to do outside the office.  And being able to open Word and edit while at work helps too.  Weekends are a gift from heaven.  I've gotten as much as 10,000 words done in a given weekend. Often though, my writing on the weekends uses a foundation in idea-workshopping that it takes the whole week to lay.  Oh, and writing quickly for me leaves a piece riddled with things to edit, which is maybe not as large of a problem because I find editing do'able at work.

But yes, it is slower than it would be if I had no bills to pay :)  Maybe one day we'll both be able to write for a living!  That would be nice (provided I can get my wife to undertand).

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Reading Excuses / Re: Your Background
« on: May 26, 2010, 03:45:23 AM »
I've been participating for just a couple of weeks now, and I like what I've seen.  I think I'll stay here for a while.

I grew up reading Fantasy and Sci-Fi, mostly the greats of the 80's.  I've spent most of my life in school up to this point, with a JD and one other graduate degree, but oddly I've never felt seriously enough about my writing to take any coursework on it.  So, most of my writing education comes from the old How-To's at the bookstore.

As for what I write, I like speculative fiction a lot.  Starting with your own world is really good I think if you want a blank canvas.  And that's really the only way I feel safe in exploring certain things that I like to write about, such as war, politics, prejudice, government, etc.  I prefer Fantasy to Sci-Fi because I find science to be often too intertwined with its own philosophy.  So, most of the Sci-Fi I write comes out really unconventional.

I also write Romance and what I suppose could be called "Mainstream", although the paranormal makes it feel sort of like Steven King, from what I've been told anyway.

I've entered some contests before on a small scale, but I'm working on my first novel that I feel confident enough to submit to the major publishers.  I've got a feeling I'll need a strong writing group to encourage me through the incoming tide of rejection letters.  I look forward to getting to know you all. 

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My bad on the fireworks thing.  I still don't like the simile though, and I'd avoid it even in a modern story, while this is fantasy.

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Reading Excuses / Re: May 24 - Justice1337 - TheodoraExcerpt
« on: May 25, 2010, 12:00:18 AM »
Thanks for the encouragement and the input, especially to Chaos for the line edits.  I fear I need those really often because I tend to read what I was thinking when I wrote instead of the actual text.

A lot of the reason I submitted this is because I felt it had this very issue with being telly.  The problem is that I've revealed the main character in the few chapters preceeding, and he's totally ignorant to the structure of government in his own kingdom.  AND he's on a fortress on the fringe of it where no one much cares about the King or the Justiciars.  The main character needs to be ignorant of these things because in Act II he goes to ask the capital to send their troops to this fringe fortress because they're about to be attacked.  Neither the Justiciars or the King really want to help him out, and in all his idealism, he can't understand why.  His ignorance of this complex government is a major piece, and it's been a challenge to find ways to let the reader know what the hero doesn't in a condensed sort of way that doesn't bog things down.   

This is just my best attempt so far at doing so.

I could show more scenes with Theodora to spread this exposition out.  I could have more maid-and-butler dialogue outside the presence of the Hero with the characters that are known to him.  But everything I've tried so far has either been unnecessarily slow or it comes off as a cheap trick.  I'm hoping that this latest cheap trick of mine doesn't come off that way, though it might always be spotted by experts for what it is.  Anyway, that's my trouble.  Sorry for jumping you guys ahead a half a dozen chapters to solve it :)

I do think that I will at least write more of a blow by blow of this trial by combat, maybe even include it in the final.  It's a sideshow to the main conflict, to be sure, but strangely action might serve as a break in the exposition for once, instead of the other way around.




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Reading Excuses / Re: May 24th-Drew P- Untitled Prologue
« on: May 24, 2010, 10:10:03 PM »
The word selection of that sentence is good.  It just needs to be split in two.

Example:
Though the sun splashed against the walls of the entrance, he was too far into the tunnel for it to warm his face.  Only the noise reached him from the outside, and that struck with an overbearing pulse that rattled the air from his lungs.

Or some such description that's maybe less dense.  The ideas are clear, you just need more words.





 

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Reading Excuses / Re: May 24 - Justice1337 - TheodoraExcerpt
« on: May 24, 2010, 09:58:18 PM »
Did everyone get this?  It's the first time I've submitted anything, so I'm wondering if I sent it right.

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I like your writing.  It's clear and lively.

I've only read the first viewpoint section to this point, but I will finish once I get back from work.

With the hunger and the danger of being killed, you establish sypathy and motive well in the first paragraph.  But instead of moving onward, I want more of the same feeling as a reader.  If the reasons this rival gang is trying to kill her are capricious, sinister, etc. there's more sympathy.  Also, if hunger is a primary motivation, there needs to be explanation for why food is scarce for her, which can build sympathy also.  I would rather read about these things than follow her through the chase, which was probably just one paragraph too long.

Another thing, try leaving the Toshu character unnamed to avoid confusion about the scope of his role.  After all, he's the second character introduced.   

Minor Things:
"If he had been beaten, that meant...."  Meant what?  It's not as clear as it might have seemed to you while writing, and I see little reason to leave the fact unstated that Toshu's loyalty is compromised.  I need more before I'm willing to be drawn into a chase scene.
"Like a rocket Phaylyn shot from her perch"  The rocket was invented in the mid-20th century.  Even if it does exist in this story, you don't want to introduce that fact by way of a simile.  It is also a worn cliche.


But overall, it's good enough for me to finish.  I'll have more comments to follow.
     

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