Aug 24-Frog-DR-Chp 4&5

[Frog]

Yay! I have received permission from Silk to be a ham! I'm so excited to go out and abuse my new found power....

Ages are a little flexible in my mind, but I don't want any of this to seem too dumbed down or anything. She's supposed to be a relatively sheltered/naive 15-16 year old, and the genie is supposed to have the maturity of  someone a few years older and a tad more educated (and cynical, so he'd fit right in). I will be going through it again (and again, and again and again) but if there are specific problems please point them out.

Thanks again!

 

[RavenstarRHJF]

This (I think, but it's just my opinion) is a good example of where "show don't tell" can be reasonably ignored.  Other than meeting Raven and liking her, and meeting Kylta and disliking her, nothing significant happens.  Aishia doesn't interact with any of the other students, not even to the point of having them stare and point at her or smile and wave.

I'd say, stick with "And there followed a long and tedious tour of the temples which she gratefully escaped from when she and Raven decided to go spy on the headmaster following [description of the lady showing up at the temple with the boy]."

You can describe the other parts of the temple complex when the story needs you to.  Let Aishia learn about the deities and their bearers in class where such explanations are not only given, but expected. 

Raven's morphing accent also rather annoys me.  No one else has an accent, so...

The Genie grows interesting... Ok so he didn't do much, not even "granting" her wish, but it seems there's a reason for that, and I look forward to seeing you develop that.

[Frog]

Oh wow, really? You'd rather have a classroom scene? I was actually trying to avoid those and thought this would be a small step up. At the very least in that it kills a few different exploration/infodump related maters at once, but obviously it needs tons of help if 'a long and tedious tour' is all you got from it. I don't know what all to tell you though as character development/interaction is always going to be huge with me. Everything else will come eventually (I hope) but it just isn't as fun for me so it might take a few more drafts.

Darn genie. He's just too cool for his own good and no one else can measure up to him yet. Ah, well he does carry most of the plot at this point, so what can you do?  More of him soon. Especially since I may be adding in another earlier scene to clarify some plot points with him once I figure out how to do it without confusing/boring you all further....

Thank you!

[RavenstarRHJF]

Haha!  It wasn't boring per say... but I didn't feel like it accomplished much.  If you did this for the character interaction, then that's fine and good, but it comes across as an info dump of all the various Gods and Goddesses and what they do.  A more logical place to learn that kind of stuff is when it's pertinent to one of the characters beyond "this is important and you need to know it."  More along the lines of "this is important, let's see if you can do something with it."

See what I mean?

[Frog]

I was attempting to do several things... and failing at all of them. But I am really not complaining. Or at least I am not trying to. I like all the honest input and am only really looking for clarification. I'm just trucking through right now, but I'm taking all this to heart and we'll see if we can find a better scene someday that actually does all it is supposed to. If only, if only....