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Messages - Andrew the Great

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61
Writing Group / Re: NaNoWriMo?
« on: December 14, 2009, 02:09:03 AM »
You should be able to get yours on the NaNo page. I've already claimed mine. I think the specific page is called something like "I wrote a novel: what next?" or something like that.

62
Rants and Stuff / Re: Windows 7
« on: December 14, 2009, 02:00:14 AM »
Thanks for the tips! I'll keep them in mind if the problem pops up again.

And the whole thing with the dual boot makes sense, though I really hadn't thought of it at all.

As to the problem "solving itself," I'm hoping that it's something that I did that fixed it. Thanks again!

63
Reading Excuses / Re: Email List + Submission Dates
« on: December 13, 2009, 10:54:55 PM »
Again? Really, it can't be that difficult to crap out a chapter, can it? You can always fix it later....

64
Rants and Stuff / Re: Windows 7
« on: December 13, 2009, 10:50:34 PM »
Well like I said, the problem seems to have solved itself, but since you asked/ if you still want to try to figure out what went wrong:

HP DV6000 Laptop
3 GB RAM
160 GB Hard drive
Clean Install of Win 7
Yes, Dual-boot with Ubuntu
AMD Turion TL-60 X2 Processor (2.0 GHZ clock)
AVG Anti-virus

And nothing particularly "special" about my system. I haven't made any modifications to it since I bought it.

Like I said, the problem seems to have solved itself. I posted here more out of the need to rant than to actually get help with the issue.

miyabe, It might have been updates, but they were one of the first things I tried, so if so, then they took forever to install.

65
Brandon Sanderson / Re: **SPOILERS! The Shards of Adonalsium
« on: December 13, 2009, 07:40:29 AM »
Well it could be, except the Mistborn Shards themselves were Ruin and Preservation. Ati and Leras were the beings that were attached to them, as I understood it.

No r or p in Adonalsium. Although I do like the idea.

Also, I think I remember hearing an approximate number of shards, and while I don't remember exactly what it was, I think it was more than ten (ten letters in Adonalsium).

66
Rants and Stuff / Re: Windows 7
« on: December 13, 2009, 07:36:18 AM »
Yeah, I did that too, but the problem was, it started working after I'd given up completely and had just started to use it in broken mode since it was more annoying than anything else (I mean, while it's annoying to have windows explorer crash again and again, as long as I can still access my files, it's not that bad). Then all of a sudden, everything started working. I'd done so many things to try to fix it, but none of them recently (like, not even within an hour) so I had no idea what finally did it.

67
Rants and Stuff / Re: These Stupid Titles IX: Still Without a Title
« on: December 13, 2009, 07:30:14 AM »
Hey, I get to be a spell test subject now! Not sure if that's a good thing or bad (I mean, it really depends on who exactly is testing spells on me, right?), but it's got to be an improvement from scretch bait.

68
Rants and Stuff / Re: Final Elections for the New Hero of Ages
« on: December 13, 2009, 07:29:04 AM »
I'm ok with it. As long as Ruin and Preservation, who apparently have other names as well, which they do not want to share with us, are also ok with it, anyway. Not that my opinion even matters anymore, since I'm no longer Hero of Ages.

69
Rants and Stuff / Re: Windows 7
« on: December 13, 2009, 07:26:01 AM »
I agree. And with Ubuntu, there's even extensive support for most problems. I've never spent more than a half hour fixing a problem, largely because I can google the issue and there are fifteen other people who had the exact same issue and fixed it, kindly posting how they did it online for all to see.

With Windows 7, it's been like me googling the various things I could find, and everybody saying, "Hey, I have this problem too! I wish I knew how to fix it." Then you go to a page that supposedly has a solution, except it's actually unrelated to the problem. There's no support on the issue to speak of from microsoft, and actually calling them results in a lot of holding and no results. So then I have to start going through Windows Error logs and trying to figure it out on my own. This is not fun, trying to isolate one system crash error from another, figuring out which was caused by what. Especially since they all claim that different things caused the problem.

Then, after five long hours of essentially screwing with everything that I could think of to screw with, my system suddenly begins working normally again. And I have absolutely no idea why.

I'm not particularly happy, but I figure that there's some random issue that caused the problem, and I still do like windows 7 quite a bit. I'm just not particularly eager to go back to it after my happy little adventures yesterday. I almost just reinstalled windows, since I really don't have anything important directly on that disk. It's all on a external hard disk. But then I decided I wanted to know what was wrong so that if I ever had issues with it again, I could fix it. Dumb idea.

But yeah, this fun little adventure is hopefully over for a while.

70
Reading Excuses / Re: Email List + Submission Dates
« on: December 13, 2009, 07:00:48 AM »
Excuses, excuses. I expected better of you, Silk.  :'(

71
Ok, now that I can think coherently:

I did really like this chapter. It has a much more immediate sense of conflict than the previous chapters have. It also gives us a definite idea of what exactly this story is going to be about (though of course, we knew that already from what you've told us).

It reads really really easily, which is a very good thing. There wasn't much to pull me out of the story, and a whole lot to pull me in. This is also a very good thing.

I have to agree with Chaos, this would make a good chapter 1, though you would have to slip in some tidbits during the chapter, like what hound venom is, etc.

I still am wondering how exactly Baltier survived, and why it was he ever thought he would be able to get into the city and not be suspected with an exile mark still on his head.

While Reading:

The brackets for the conversations with Bathsin are really annoying. Just use italics, and they work just fine as long as you don't have Jagoth thinking to himself too much in here as well as her talking to him.

So Jagoth hires a bunch of criminals to get into the city, thinking that they'll be able to pose as noble servants, and he as a noble? That was dumb of him. Furthermore, why don't the soldiers notice anything weird with these random thugs who don't really look like noble's servants?

Jagoth comes across as really hard, and yet he's musing about how he doesn't kill women and children any longer? Why not have the Baltier alter ego think these thoughts, as they seem more appropriate? It seems a little odd to have all this stuff going on in his head, all the potential for internal conflict, and not make full use of it.

Jagoth is no longer human? I guess that makes sense with the hound thing, but still. Since we don't know how Bal survived, I'm getting this sort of zombie vibe, which I'm fairly certain is not what you're going for.

Again with the annoying formatting! Underline or italics, not both! Particularly not underlining, italics, and italics with brackets....

Totally random, but it just occured to me that if Baltier survived, is it not possible that his family might have? Apparently not, since he still wants revenge, but still...

The line about how it never hurts to flatter a soldier, calling him Captain instead of Lieutenant, is one of the most overused in fantasy, in my opinion. If you must use it, use it in a different way, since it comes across as really cliche.

You call the lieutenant a captain several times, even after everybody knows that he's only a lieutenant.

How close together are all of these soldiers? In the first description of them you gave us, it seemed like they were all really close, letting only a few people through at a time, but here (Where Jagoth kills the lieutenant, then the other soldiers start attacking) it seems like they're on opposite sides of an extremely wide street. I guess the really question is actually how wide the street is, since you've mentioned they're on opposite sides of it.

Jagoth has a holy crapload of daggers! Where is he keeping all of these things? He kills like fifteen to twenty guys, and never once retrieves a knife that we see. I'm not really seeing anybody carrying around that many knives without some of them being visible, let alone easily accessible. For him to get to them and throw them that quickly, I'd say a maximum of eight or nine knives unless we can see how he does it. Otherwise I'm assuming they're within a coat, up a sleeve, etc, and I can't really think of that many places he would have a knife.

I love where you compare Jagoth to a social butterfly at a dance. The stark contrast of the metaphor made it really effective, in my opinion.

Once Jagoth is holding the sword, I imagine he would stop thinking of it as the officer's sword. It would just be, "the sword," or maybe even, "his sword." Not that this is a big issue, and may not even be the case, but just a thought.

Again, we've seen that Jagoth is cold and hard, and Baltier is not. I don't see why you have Jagoth hesitating or feeling sad that he's killing people. I'd much rather see Jagoth be cold and hard, and the Baltier alter-ego takes some measure of control. Like Baltier couldn't bear to do the stuff he has, so he formed a completely hard alter-ego, but sometimes takes control again, you know?

When did the soldiers multiply? Didn't we start with seven, and yet we have, "eleven men died" right after he's already killed  several of the soldiers. Jagoth only has five guys to kill, and one of them didn't die (charles). That leaves us with seven soldiers, the same number (including the lieutenant) that we had before any of this started. And where exactly did the crossbowmen come from? Were they already there and I just missed it?

Why exactly did the guard try to deflect the bag with his sword? That's kind of stupid. Furthermore, why did Jagoth think that he would, since it seems like if someone threw a bag at me, I would either catch it, or if I suspected it was dangerous and get out of the way. It seems more like Jagoth would make a small cut, then carefully throw it that way so that it sprayed venom on the guy. Or he could just kill him in the conventional way....

Why doesn't Jagoth just try to blend in with the crowd, instead of posing as a noble? It seems to me that in a throng like this supposedly is, it would be easier to blend and/or sneak in than if you were pretending to be some pompous noble.

*****

Well, if you look at my comments, they're mostly fairly small line-level type stuff, so I have very few complaints. Since I caught most of my line-level stuff here, I won't bother sending them to you.

I like this scene. A lot. And thinking about it, I think I like knowing that Jagoth is Baltier. It does make it more fun to read. You could still do the parallel storylines thing, though it wouldn't have quite the tension this does.

You now quite thoroughly have my attention. I look forward with great anticipation to the next installment.

72
Well if you're going to go for foreshadowing that they're the same person, you need to tone down your hints a bit, since it's possible to easily deduce from the first paragraph or so of this chapter that they are one and the same.

I was going to critique this, but then I realized that I can't even really remember what I just read (yey sleep deprivation!), so I'll give you a full critique tomorrow, which this particular chapter deserves (at least I seem to recall thinking that it did....)

73
Reading Excuses / Re: Reading Excuses is one year old
« on: December 12, 2009, 08:07:59 AM »
I don't know, Silk, postage isn't that expensive. Besides, we all like stale cake, right?

74
Reading Excuses / Re: Please please, do your worst. [critic a prologue]
« on: December 12, 2009, 08:06:19 AM »
It seems more random than anything else. It doesn't really elicit a shocked reaction at all, but it was kind of like, "what exactly was the point of that?"

The sword from little stick thing was pretty awesome. I liked it.

The fight scene was disappointingly short. We got like three sword strokes, and then the Itako is "dead," Jeb is bleeding profusely, and the other Samurai are all dead. There are five samurai here. You give us quite a setup. I'm expecting more action.

When you'r fighting, you don't stop to say, "Heh heh. Looks like you really did get me this time." You're either a) busy trying to screw your enemies left and right, or b) screaming as you bleed profusely (apparently the more likely of the two here). Now, he may be some sort of super-warrior who doesn't scream, but even then, you'd think he'd just be silent. This comes across as like an egotistical wimpy wanna-be.

Yeah, the whole thing where his master saves him, then he's killed by an arrow from someone who he's apparently already killed seemed a little odd, and almost contrived.

You give us a few intriguing things here. For instance, I want to know who "he" is, who is better with the sword thing than Jeb is. This is good.

Jeb is kind of an annoying name to me, but that's just personal preference.

I will say, it had its good elements. It has real potential too. It just needs a little more development. Also, I'm not really sure I like the way Jeb died. I much prefer random new enemy appearing with crossbow than person who's supposed to be dead.

Ok, I think that's about it for now.

Oh, also, FYI, the normal method of submitting something is to post in the Email list and Submissions thread, then wait for approval, then send it to all[squiggly at thingy]readingexcuses.com. We'll all get it, and then it's not posted here for all the world to see. Though this way, people who aren't on the mailing list can comment on it too, if that matters.

75
I also really liked the relationship between Jin and his father. However, I did have some gripes with Jin. You can't charactarize him as a super-intelligent little kid, then have him not know the word confused. My six year old brother of fairly average intelligence knows that word. I understand that it's an attempt to make Jin more childlike, but you can't do it this way. I think the use of 'daddy' was very effective for that.

The first half of this was really choppy. It was kind of difficult to read at times, though it was interesting. It also started to get fairly infodumpy about the religion and such. It's not a bad place to do it, but try to be a little more subtle about it. Show, don't tell. Instead of having the characters talk about it in the form of "lessons," why don't you have Jin, an observant little boy, notice some things? If he can't get them on his own, he could always ask questions. All of this makes it less infodumpy and more interesting.

You told us what Jin and his father were wearing at least three or four different times. I really didn't care that much after the first. It's interesting to see what they're wearing, as it adds to culture and our understanding of the characters, but after we were describing their clothing for the fifth time, I was going, "I don't care what they're wearing anymore!"

Also, I found myself wondering, "How many times have these characters changed outfits?" Now granted, they probably didn't ever actually suddenly gain new clothing, or anything like that, but my first thought was that if they had been wearing these clothes when you first described what they were wearing, you would have described them then. It led to me thinking they had changed clothes somehow.

The second half, where it starts to get into a lot more dialog, is much better written. It flows fairly well, and was much easier to read. However, once we get to this point, I found that there was very little actually keeping me reading. The conflict at the end with the sparks and the pain they cause Jin was very good, as were some of the interpersonal conflicts there, but in the middle of the scene, it was long and boring, and I really couldn't see why we needed the scene at all. We didn't learn anything critical in their conversation with their guide, and it started to get interesting again as soon as she left. I'd say you could cut or trim a large portion of this middle scene and be just fine.

The research, while it may be important, is really not that interesting yet. We don't understand enough about the world for it to be. It would be decidedly less confusing if we weren't throwing around so many jargon-ish terms, though granted you covered a few of them in the prologue. I do like the jargon, but I don't know if you can go into it in chapter 1. That, and there isn't any real clear goal for the research. It's just a vague idea in our heads - "research."

I do like that we finally get some more insight into the gender relationships, though I probably do still have as many questions as ever.

Overall, it was a fairly good submission. Just a little tweaking, and it will be great. I would definitely keep reading, once getting to the last few pages of this chapter.

Line edits are in your inbox.


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