Timewaster's Guide Archive

I'm not getting Renoard's posts, but I have to disagree with his assessment of the situation. RE is not just an alias to TWG. www.readingexcuses.com is a 301 redirect to this forum; all the MX records point to google. A DNS check produces this:

Your MX records that were reported by your nameservers are:

1   aspmx.l.google.com   74.125.43.27 (no glue)
5   alt1.aspmx.l.google.com   74.125.155.27 (no glue)
5   alt2.aspmx.l.google.com   74.125.155.27 (no glue)
10   aspmx2.googlemail.com   74.125.43.27 (no glue)
10   aspmx3.googlemail.com   72.14.213.27 (no glue)
10   aspmx4.googlemail.com   209.85.229.27 (no glue)
10   aspmx5.googlemail.com   74.125.157.27 (no glue)

Now, I don't generally give Google a lot of credit here (I really don't like them for anything but basic searches), but I'm pretty sure their system is set up right. They have millions of users, after all. I talked to Chaos about this, and got the forward for your email. It looks like your mail server tried contacting a Google server that is NOT hosting RE's records (74.125.95.27). To me, this looks like either opentransfer.com has stale DNS records, or they're getting magical data that's grossly wrong. Either way, it's not anything on RE's side.

Also, the system RE is using is just an alias redirect to send out to all addresses on the list. It is not a true listserv.

When I said fleshed out, I meant that that particular viewpoint doesn't really have a whole lot going on. Showing  a few people meeting and plans made is good and all, but all it does is give away the other side's plans too early. It seems like what you want to do is get Felix to open up to Sareneth, yes? And I'd imagine that'll happen throughout the story. So just get on to that. It's like you're starting the scenes in the wrong places, which puts emphasis on the wrong things, and doesn't give us enough to latch onto for the character (and yes, it does seem like I didn't finish the sentence I had started. Sorry, got distracted).

The reason why I don't like seeing overlords as active roles is that they're usually the driving force behind a side. If you see them making the decisions, you know what's going to happen. You have no mystery surrounding the why and the how of that side. For instance, I already know that the Queen is toying with the magistrate. That pretty much ruins the arc for me, since I have little doubt that he's eventually going to get the ax. There's the little bit about not knowing why she's keeping him around, but it's just not enough. If she remains hidden from view, you gain a lot more questions that the reader wants to find out by reading the book. Of course, the Arbitrators themselves seem very powerful, so I might have a problem with that later on, too. Powerful characters are just very difficult to make believable in active roles because they should have the power to get out of most situations very easily, so if they don't, I wonder how they got this powerful to begin with.

My my my, two days late, eleven thousand words... you're just breaking all the rules. You deserve a sound talking to... okay, I'm done.

I'll be honest, my first thoughts as I was reading this were ones of "oh no, nothing's happening. Please don't give me this much to read with nothing going on." But then I remembered that you're one of those silly people that likes short stories. This definitely isn't novel material. Not that you couldn't do more with it, but the way it is now is definitely short story-ish.

With that in mind, it went a little better. Yes, very little outwardly happens. You build up a lot of characterization with Aryl and Janna, though,  and show a lot of internal conflict. These are weak points in my own writing, so I really can't be certain if it's truly good or not, but it certainly sounded good.

Your setting ain't all that bad, either. It was a little rough visualizing some of it (the entire city is a bit foggy in my head, although individual parts of it stand out better), but then again, most people wouldn't spend a lot of time doting on the city they lived in, even if they were transforming it into something much better. Still, it could be good to give a few more visual cues as to how much things have really changed.

One of the bigger problems I have is that some of your "sections" go a long time without me knowing exactly whose section it is--Janna's or Aryl's. The second section of both Aryl and Janna (Janna moreso) are troublesome, since it goes almost a page each time before "she" is given a name. Most of the rest are fine.

Your writing is very... stylized. There are a lot of sentence fragments, which I would normally get after someone for. However, I know you're capable of speaking in complete sentences, so I instead took it as a more personal inside-the-head-of-the-character type of narrative. People think in fragments all the time. So, not really a problem, except there were a few places it made reading a little bumpy. Those have been noted in the line-edits.

Overall, it's an interesting story. I would certainly have liked to see more external conflict... maybe more of the resistance that was mentioned, or perhaps some uppity sailor who didn't like the cut of their jib... it would have been interesting to see how someone like Aryl or Janna handled the situation. I guess I'm looking for it because it just reminds me of my own life: too much responsibility, no time to myself, etc. I envy Aryl.

So... okay, apparently, while having another of my wonderful (not) restful naps (I don't really sleep, merely nap, considering they don't last, and I'm such a light sleeper that pin drops awaken me), my mind decided to add a huge chunk of flesh to the skeleton of a story. Is it one I was already working on? Of *course* not!

And what do I do? Write? Foolish mortal, how boring that would be. No no no, instead, I spend upteen hours *modeling* one of the characters. So, I give you, in its mostly complete rough form, T'Garin.


His real name is Tarynissigarin, which roughly translates to "the sky's reflection" (literally, "sky's clone of color"). His mate, Aramel (Arameldrith), will come later, once I get wings and more features on T'Garin. They're about lion-sized, so pretty much unable to ride (I suppose a small child could do so, but they don't and won't; the added weight would make it very difficult besides).

I'm very slowly progressing on Heartglass. The next chapter would probably be done if I actually sat down and worked on it for more than 10 minutes at a time. But DRAGONS!  (it's my oooh-shiny). I'm a bit torn, because this new story would be far more... exciting to me, but honestly, I'm a little scared of actually writing it. Dragons are also a very touchy subject around me; if they aren't done right, they absolutely suck, and I don't want my precious imaginary animals sullied. So, am I up to it? Dunno. Heartglass I have a lot more of the actual story down, too. With this other one, it's more like a lot of scenes, and one main arc.

And then there's my work. Ever present, and very needy. If only I could count code, I'd be a published author in no time.

That markup system hasn't been used since the days of the typewriter. We should all have editors that can do .doc files, so you can (and should) use the real thing (italics, underlining, etc.).

Also, double dashes are considered an em dash, which is exactly what you should be using for  parenthetical notation, provided you can't use an actual em dash. Word and Openoffice auto-replace it automatically, provided you're using a closed set (no spaces). If you use spaces between, it becomes an en dash instead.

Yeah, and a lot of the new blood around here hasn't been, because she's still stuck in January.

Just to chime in here (didn't notice this thread had gotten responses):

The reason *I* download the actual files and store them is because you can't add line-edits otherwise. Well, sure, you *can* (although my email client opens any file read-only, so technically I can't anyway), but then you can't save it to email it back to the person. And then I keep the files around, just in case someone wants to question an edit in the future. It also lets me go back to the earlier version when someone asks "Did the changes I made help?" So being able to pull up the old version with my edits, to refresh me on what I was thinking the first time I reviewed it, can be very helpful (and yes, I *technically* could pull up my Sent folder, find the person, and pull the file from there, but hey, I'm a digital pack-rat, and not all people may keep their Sent history like I do).

I could care less about how the files look on my server, as long as your email subject lines say the working title  and part name/number. I can run sorts and filters and searches galore to find certain people if I need to.

I think the real issue here is that rules (no matter how loosely defined) are still rules, and it's only common courtesy to follow them.

As per the document format discussion, .doc files are  supported with Wordpad in Windows Vista and later, so it almost should be the common denominator. Yes, RTF can work, except some people get mangled RTF output when they try to save it as such, and it's worse than no formatting at all. Plain text is just not an option for people-- most people don't even remember the days when you formatted text by doing things like /italics/ and *bold* and _underline_. Not to mention the fact that you can't set line spacing with .txt files. I send all my line-edits back in .doc format, with the notion that if someone really can't read it, they'll let me know. I have yet to receive any complaints.

So that's my 2 cents for today... man, I need to quit spending so much money.

Zealous, eh? I can probably do that one.

For the most part, I did not have a problem with the characters. They were distinct, and they felt like they actually had personality (annoying ones, mostly). Of course, I'm horrible with characters, as everyone else has pointed out to me in the past, so grains of salt are necessary.

I had a problem with two major points. First, going into so much detail about the Kingdom and Thomas' past right away. Yes, it was quite telly. I understand that you want to give the reader some understanding about things so that when your other main character goes and mucks it all up, the reader will know that. I don't have a problem with that. It's all about your delivery. You lament about Thomas' past off and on for about three pages. Would Theodora really be thinking about all that at this time? I'd wager that, since she's been around for at least a little bit, she wouldn't care much anymore, so you really are just telling us for our sake. I would suggest showing as it becomes relevant. The part about him and flutes, that's good to show here, where there's music. The parts about the process of choosing kings and such? Not so much right here.

Second, I have a problem with the beginning. Usually, when you introduce a new character, you have a sort of mini-hook to get the reader interested (or detesting) that character. You can show off one of their skills, or put them in a dangerous situation, or something. You have her just sitting around, listening to some music and trading banter with the King. To me, this indicates a bit of a boring character, which makes me want to skim through her sections. Honestly, when I read the first sentence, I was hoping that somehow the music was going to be special (magic, or perhaps some eerie Twilight Zone stuff, or perhaps even a lonely person singing about their love that they'd lost and the MC was just hearing in). Instead it's just a performance. Sigh. And then a thief, who goes through a "trial", only to be butchered in a completely one-sided battle. The justice system doesn't bother me at all, really; it's the fact that nothing really happens to the character you're trying to introduce other than being pestered by the whiny Queen. If her conflict revolves solely around domestic disputes, I'm going to find it very hard not to start skimming her chapters looking for the words "died in a catfight" so I can celebrate.

The ending... it seems to just trail off, too. I like her wit, but why end it right there? What about the harlotry charge? That seems to have been thrown in the background... ironically, I'd be more interested in how *that* trial went, given that the King seems to have a bit of a problem in that area--at least, that's the impression I got.

Don't get me wrong, this is certainly not bad writing. Your sentences flow pretty well, you have some good description... I just don't feel much actual story in it (which Chaos has already commented on, looking back through the comments). Keep it up, though. I'll keep reading.