Timewaster's Guide Archive

Mythos would have been my vote. Imagine the gameplay of Diablo with things like crafting, pvp, duels, and an overworld sorta like WoW. It was an amazing game, but is currently in limbo with the ownership now in the hands of some korean company. Alas, it may never return to its great glory again, but I'll keep playing Torchlight and waiting for their MMO to come in a year or two. That will be awesome!

Quote from: Andrew the Great on December 13, 2009, 10:50:34 PM

HP

FOUND IT!

That made my day.

2009 was a disappointing year for my favorite authors. Rothfuss: delayed. Lynch: Delayed. Martin: Delayed.

God Bless Brandon Sanderson and Jim Butcher. Without those two, I wouldn't have ANY of my favorite series to read.

Man, I saw your post, and was headed to answer it. Then I read the replies and realized they'd already said everything I could. I'll condense my points into two numbers.

1. You need more conflict. That's what will make those boring parts better, and therefore easier to write without falling asleep.

2. As for outlining, I used to hate it, but now I'm a big fan. I've found that if I outline each scene with a reminder of who the POV is, What the conflict is, and what that character's reaction to the conflict is, (AKA Scene and Sequel) things move along much more smoothly for me. Everything I learned about the absolute basics of scene and sequel I got from Dwight V. Swain's book Techniques of the Selling Writer. It's old as dirt, but the basic formula for writing a scene and a sequel is priceless for the first-time novelist. It's part of what I like to call the Holy Trinity of Noob Books. It's in there with Characters and Viewpoint by Card and Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Browne and King. You really can't go wrong with the Trinity in my opinion.

If you're looking for great critiques of this, you might try getting on the Reading Excuses email list and submitting it one week.

I would highly suggest checking out John Brown's blog. He's got an excellent section for writers. Short of it: Writer's Block is a gift. It's like a spideysense that you're doing something wrong, so it can help you be a better writer. Check out the article on trance breakers. Maybe it will help you to push through. http://johndbrown.com/writers/the-writers-trance-the-four-trance-breakers/

Thanks. And no, I rarely enjoy the cold weather Wow, I always seem to run into people that live in the same town as me on the web. The entire world must be staling me   

Thanks everyone for the awesome feedback. I'll obviously have to return the favor with some in depth stuff of my own soon. I especially appreciated getting multiple opinions on the third person to first person switch...Looks like I need to find a way around that mess.  I honestly haven't produced much of this story, so you got about half of what's available so far. I think that with your guys' feedback I might actually get there, though. You honestly don't know how much that means to me, so I'll keep it short. You rock!

In talking with my brother and wife about the novel, I think I've decided that I don't want to completely play the religion card in this novel. I'm not going to have God or Satan as a character, and that leaves me with some serious decisions about how deeply I treat the back story of this organization that Mateo's working for. Who are they really, where do they get the powers, etc. Brainstorming these things on a 6 hour drive really helped, so hopefully I'll have some new material to submit soon.