Timewaster's Guide Archive

It’s nice to get another Kajsa chapter again, her pov was fun to read the last time and it still is now. I’m going to echo the others saying this was a great chapter. There were a couple grammar issues here and there, such as fragment sentences, but those are pretty minor issues.

Fragment sentence:  “The cool strength of his support fortifying my will.” It should either have a verb, making it “The cool strength of his support fortified my will.”, or be either merged with the preceding or following sentence.

The one real issue I have is the lack of descriptions. I’d to see a little more description on where she is. Right now I’m imagining something between a cave system and a typical fantasy-style dwarven city. It’s her home and all, so she might not note those things consciously, but it’s been a long time – surely she’d notice something. The last Kajsa chapter had more descriptions of the forest she was in and she knew that place too.

The note you made on the length of the days surprised me. So each day is equivalent to five of ours? Does this mean that these people are awake for 120 hours straight? I'd assume, adapting and evolving for this world, that they can handle such a thing. A human goes three days (seventy-two hours) without sleep and they're considered legally insane. I went five days without once. Was hallucinating and incomprehensible until my roommates finally forced me to conk out...

The way I'm reading things now, since that note, is that the time of one of our days is a 'huuk' and the people go to sleep every 'huuk'. Though I might be wrong about this as I've completely missed the 120 hour daylight and 120 hour nights before. Wow, this actually means a full day is 240 hours. What I'd like to know is if a year is actually 36 of their days or some other number. Jin being fourteen has a completely different meaning if it's not.

By clichés I mean the setting.  Nice quite, English or French village with cobblestones and bar wenches.

I wrote the almost stereo-typical, archetypal kind of village of Thorn like that on purpose. Being what it is it has to be that way of necessity (yes, I know that sounds really vague). The nature and some of the town’s aspects will become clearer later.

Shannara, really? I hadn’t looked at it that way yet.

again, must voice agreement with LTU on the switches in personality. Was a bit odd in some spots… I think it would feel significantly stronger if the description was woven more tightly with the narrative - perhaps Rosalin almost slipping on the stones to show that they're wet and slightly hazardous, or nearly being splashed by the mud.

You’re both right and that's a pretty good suggestion. Those bits do have more of a feel of ‘telling’ rather than ‘showing’ come to think of it. And like Recovering Cynic also noted there are ‘tell’ bits I can, and should, get rid of as well.

Unless she's under twelve, she should probably understand this. She'd have to be pretty naive not to.

She’s around that age, but she’s also pretty naive in those matters. I can’t really go into why she’s so sheltered yet, but it should become clearer in time – though a full revealing will have to wait a number of chapters.

I think the change in perspective is fine. While it is a bit confusing, it shouldn't be a problem if an explanation for it comes quickly in the next chapter.

There will be somewhat of an explanation of what happened in the next chapter, though it won’t cover everything. Nevertheless I’ll rewrite that scene a bit to make things clearer. The prologue was also confusing in places, so getting the confusion out of the story is really one of my biggest priorities.

Thanks guys, your comments are really helping me out.

By the way, day on this world (for newer readers) equates to 5 of our days before the three suns actually set.  Night lasts just as long.  So everyone goes to sleep at the end of the huuk, and wake up at the start of the next one.

Really? I didn’t know this, when did you show this, because I might have missed it. I’m going to jump on this little revelation about your setting for a moment, so indulge me

The effects of three suns, other than the heat, is not something that jumps out at me in your setting. So far I didn’t equate a ‘huuk’ with a period within a day that takes five of ours. We see the world mostly by ‘day’, not night. Knowing a night takes five of our days as well it makes the fear of the darken more understandable, but it also makes apparent some problems.

I’ve looked back at Anaiah 1:5, where it’s also night. The tribe has a campfire and torches. I suppose the fear of darken will make them want to keep the fire burning all night...which means for five days straight at a time – what are they using for fuel? How many torches do they have? Is it wood? But weren’t they in a desert? Now I realize there are many types of desert, but there can’t be that many trees or bushes around to keep fires going for so long.

I’d like to see and know more of the setting, because such small things like day and night make the world come alive more.

I feel like I'm missing something that could make this chapter really awesome.

Onto the chapter itself. I think I can see what you mean by something being missing. I hate to sound like a broken record, but what it’s missing in my opinion is action. The chapter is some 6700 words long and what happens is basically Jin going from the arena to a manor. Nothing happens, it’s all passive.

First we get long descriptions of some of the other fighters and their gear, of which I can remember next to nothing. By the time any of those guys has to fight you’ll have to mention the weapons and armour again.

Also, nothing happens during dress up other than Jalean’s kiss, which I felt was too sudden.

All her displays of affection, in this chapter and the last, are too sudden and different from how she acted before. Now if this had been going on longer, some glances here and there, some stray touches, a little late night training, more touches, and then the kiss, this chapter would work better for me. Such an approach would also create a conflict for Jin if he feels uncomfortable with it. Your story needs more conflict, not misery mind you, but conflict. Something the characters can deal with.

Then we get to the manor, where Jalean is surprisingly absent all of a sudden. This is one of the worst places for Jin to be because the chances are higher of her losing him somehow. Why isn’t she supervising the affair, or getting in the girl’s way? Why didn’t she warn Jin that telling the truth about his sponsorship was going to cost him? You’d think she’d have thought of that.

There are a number of things that could spice up this chapter I think, but they all amount to nurturing conflict.

• Repercussions of the dummy. The only one who really suspects is Durm and he’s not telling anyone. Destroying the dummy should have more of a buzz, in Jalean and in her watcher Herme especially. If Jalean suspects it was Jin she should be very worried.
• Whether Herme suspects Jin destroyed the dummy or not (he has no reason to), he might take Jin aside and try to glean from him what’s going on between him and Jalean (as a follow up on last chapter). Such an aside will worry Jalean, and if she suspects Jin is more than he seems, the worries will mount. Worry creates a sense of urgency and that’s what I’m missing mostly.
• Cut down on the walking and the dress up. Nothing happens so it’s not important. You should be increasing the pacing, not slow it down.

With Jin at chapter six, and a similar projected number of chapters for the other three main characters we’re at 24 chapters, averaging 4000 words each (this is generous, because Anaiah 1:5 was around 7000 words and this one 6700).

That’s a story of 96,000 words of ‘beginning’. That number is my biggest fear for this story. Being generous (again) and splitting beginning, middle, and end, in three equal parts that’s a story of 300,000 words before the end. That’s going to be a hard sell, I think.

Interesting. I don't normally write science fiction, but I if I come up with something (and now that I have a reason to I just might) I'll probably go for it.

Here's the first chapter for The Citadel of Thorns. Enjoy.

That Black is just an alias Jimmy used. After killing his commander and taking his suit Jimmy also took his name; he wouldn't want to advertise his own name when hiring thugs and 'Black' sounds more ominous than 'Jimmy' anyway.

This chapter follows nicely on the previous one. There’s the mystery of how the whole Ziphoa tribe was murdered so easily and it ties in with the witches and their songs. I’m reminded again of the God prologue and the temple order in the first Jin’Cathul chapter. The magic system you began to reveal there has been long absent so far and this chapter reminded me I’d like to see it again.

What I’m getting most from this chapter is actually two problems, one an enduring one and the other purely local.

First, I still don’t see the main plotline. From the prologue and the title of the book I’m getting that God’s name has to be discovered and returned to him. I’m assuming Jin’Cathul, Anaiah, Guli (with a ‘G’, I remember this time ), and Zulbane are going to have to do it somehow because they are the main characters.

These assumptions I’ve made from the prologue and the title alone. If it is the main thread it’s still obscured in all subsequent chapters, but by the end of this chapter Anaiah is moving to the bazaar. This means we can finally get two of the main characters to meet and that feels like progress.

The second problem I had was the believability of the chapter. Reading about the aftermath of the Ziphoa massacre bothered me all the way through and I think it’s because of one thing: acceptance.

I had to look back a chapter to make sure I got the impression right, but Hilva and Glubon seem to feel what most of the Ziphoa feel or should feel – an uneasy and tenuous acceptance of Anaiah. On one hand she’s part of the tribe and expected to marry Amoz, but on the other she is and always will be a witch. Their whole culture is based on how evil witches are after all; they’ll never see her without also seeing a witch.

In chapter six, though they aren’t friends, Hilva and Glubon follow her rather easily. Now the three of them are the only ones left. While I get that necessity can create strange alliances the underlying bias against Anaiah should still exist. In fact, it should be at a boiling point right now. As far as they know it was her father’s fault the tribe was killed.

Then you have parts like this:

Anaiah nodded.  “You are correct.  I am not.  At the Bazaar my father had a friend, a witchborn man.”
   
“He was friends with witches?” Hilva asked.  Her eyes were wide.

“Not when he fought,” Anaiah retorted.  “My father was the best warrior I have ever seen.  The Apara killed him because the witches seduced him with their ways.”

Anaiah is a witch and her father consorted with witches and witchborn – why isn’t Hilva exploding in anger? Why isn’t she trying to beat the tar out of Anaiah? Don’t the Stones demand justice, and wasn’t it they who warned against taking Anaiah in in the first place?

Witches bring nothing but bad luck and now the tribe is dead. Instead Hilva’s fine with violating all their traditions, follow Anaiah willy-nilly, and find a witchborn man. It doesn’t fit with what we’ve been told about the Ziphoa.

I was expecting conflict between Anaiah and Hilva and Glubon in this chapter. The combination of grief and anger in Anaiah, and anger and retribution in Hilva and Glubon, could make a hard situation even worse. How would Anaiah convince the other two not to abandon her; can she focus enough through her own raw emotions to make a convincing argument?

That would have been interesting, but instead we get some unhappiness and then it’s on to the next order of business. The chapter doesn’t feel natural to me, it's all too easy. You can really spice things up here, even though in the end Hilva and Glubon are still going to follow her. If Anaiah has to work hard to keep what little she has left together it can make this chapter that much more powerful.