Timewaster's Guide Archive

Aw, I saw the word "feed" and thought you were talking about M Anderson's dystopian book from a while back. Got me all nostalgic/excited, though I've heard Grant's is good too.

I'm currently trying this thing where I read a classic for every new fantasy book I pick up. So I'm combo-ing China Mieville's Kraken with Dorian Grey.

Yeah that shouldn't be too hard. I'll just play it safe and split it, then – assuming I'm on the list, of course.

I think I agree with most of the first comments, especially that it took him a while to realize he'd finished digging.

A few thoughts on voice:  there's a definite poetic sound to your writing, and I think it works well with the style you seem to be going for in your introduction. However, you have a lot of "two-beat" sentences. You'll have two clauses to a sentence, with the first almost always the dominant and the second acting as a descriptor or modifier (my grammar terminology is probably off, so bear with me). Here's a few examples:

He awoke under the pillar /and the sun was high and hot.
His throat was dry /and a great pain tore at his head.
He tried to stand, /but his leg was trapped.
He couldn’t feel it, /he hoped it wasn’t broken
He awoke by a fire, /dirty and wet.
He lay on his back, /staring up at a night sky gone almost wholly dark.
The pain in his skull had receded/ and his thoughts were mostly clear.
His body was sore and stiff, /and he felt a great hunger.

It sort of works with the poetic tone, because it gives a rhythm to your prose, but it also makes the writing monotonous – especially when they all start with "he." Maybe that was intentional style choice, but when an entire paragraph has the same sentence structure, it starts to get a little jarring.

Nitpicky, I know, but something to keep in mind for the next few chapters.

Hey there, you can call be hubay, if you want. I'm a junior advertising major at Marquette in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I've been trying to get as much writing done over the summer as possible, since my schedule will get pretty hectic come september. I'm having trouble staying on track though, so I'm hoping this helps my productivity.

The novel I'm writing is secondary world  fiction that I've tentatively titled Fathers of God, but we'll see if that sticks. I'm fascinated with the ancient to medieval middle east - not that I'm remotely middle eastern myself - and it shows in my writitng. I'm less interested in the sort of "arabian nights" style of story so much as the older myths of the semetic peoples. I'm also intrigued by early gunpowder warfare, so when that all combos together you get a world influenced pretty heavily by the ottoman empire.

I enjoy writing about politics more than straight warfare, though war definitely takes a prominent role in my stories. I spend more time working on the causes of war - when it's more than mere aggression - than the war itself. Anyways, I'm about  17,000 word into my novel but a lot of that isn't connected. I'm looking to start churning out words on a regular basis, and maybe improve my critical eye along the way.

Edit: After perusing the forums for a little while, I realized that the name for god in my book is EUOL (variant on judaic El) Don't tell Mr. Sanderson.