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Messages - Andrew the Great

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106
Reading Excuses / Re: Nov 23 - Andrew the Great - Lawless Ch 3
« on: November 25, 2009, 06:16:24 AM »
I don't have much time to comment now, but I will say that the back story becomes important later, so it's necessary. I'll agree that there's probably a better way to work it in, but since this is a first draft with virtually no editing, I'm not to worried about it yet.

Quote
are we talking harry potter here where everyone carries their wand 9mm in their robes?
Simply put, NO. In fact, I think any sort of magical item (with the exception of the book, which is kind of an exception for reasons that can't be explained yet) just sort of makes me cringe.

And I worried that the jargon would be a little painful, at first. You'll start picking it up pretty quick, I think, but I can see how it would be difficult (hence the Deviation infodump at the end of chapter 2)

Oh, and sorry to hit on the pet peeve with the luck thing. You are, in this case, mostly right. I'm still a little bit right, though, for reasons that I can't yet explain. RAFO :)

107
Reading Excuses / Re: Email List + Submission Dates
« on: November 25, 2009, 04:16:04 AM »
I find myself doing the most interesting things for motivation.

"Come on, Andrew, two thousand more words and you can go to sleep!"

"Just another 500 words and you can eat lunch!'

"Mom told me to clean my room. The only thing I can do and not feel guilty about not doing what she says is write. 2k more!"

"I'll start listening to music after 1k more!"

"Write 2k more, and then you can read something that's not crap!"

"YAY! I got to 30k! Only 20k to go! If I copy and paste the first 6 chapters onto the end, I'm done!"

Yeah, it gets interesting. I'm sure I've done weirder things, but those are the main ones that come to mind right now.

108
Reading Excuses / Nov 23 - Andrew the Great - Lawless Ch 3
« on: November 25, 2009, 03:22:57 AM »
Hey all. Me again. Sorry to submit this late, but I only just got back from Utah and now I have internet access again.

First order of business, I've tentatively titled the book Lawless. Anyone have any issues with this title that I should know about? If so, voice them now before I get too set on it. (And if it's stuff like "I don't like it" I'll probably ignore you. Unless EVERYONE says that. Then that's a problem)

So as always, I apologize for the NaNoWriMo quality of this material. I did a quick once-over, but this probably needs some major revisions before seeing the light of day.

Yes, I'm aware that the first several pages of this chapter are a large historical infodump. That needs to be fixed, and will be in the revision. So bear with me here, ok? I promise, it gets better.

This chapter is from the viewpoint of an expert Deviator, so you finally get to see the slightly more technical side of what's going on.

You also get a much larger sense of the world, though like I said, I need to kill the historical infodump.

That said, I would love to hear about what you guys think about the balance on internal thought (On the not-infodump sections, anyway.... I know the infodump is REALLY heavy on it).

Anyway, thanks in advance for the comments!

109
Rants and Stuff / Re: Grumpiness in New, Seasonal Flavours
« on: November 23, 2009, 02:03:54 AM »
Yes, my parents have paid my siblings' tickets before, which is why I'm just a tad bitter.

And no, I didn't expect them to pay mine, but it would most certainly be nice to not have to spend most of my paycheck on a ticket.

110
Writing Group / Re: NaNoWriMo?
« on: November 23, 2009, 02:01:12 AM »
I don't know, even 10,000 is pretty reasonable. You could still finish in 5 days. So that would be about 4 - 5 hours of writing for me (since I'd slow down a ton towards the end). More for some, less for some, but it's doable, assuming you have no life over Thanksgiving.

111
Rants and Stuff / Re: Grumpiness in New, Seasonal Flavours
« on: November 22, 2009, 07:41:58 AM »
Friday coming home for lunch I forgot that the city apparently decided to make the street I was driving on a school zone during lunch period (for reasons I still don't understand). Hence, I was going 35, and the speed limit was 20, and I got pulled over and given a $140 ticket. So not only can I no longer claim to have never been given a ticket, I have to come up with $140 as well (my parents are making me pay the ticket, which, granted, I deserve, since it's kind of my own fault. Wow, that's a lot of commas).

112
Brandon Sanderson / Re: Mistborn 3 Annotations Discussion *Spoilers*
« on: November 22, 2009, 07:37:45 AM »
Sounds fun! We'll have to ask him to write them after he finishes his 36 book arc (or however many it is, these days).

As to the "Can inquisitors pass on allomancy to their children?" Thing, my gut feeling was initially yes, but as I thought about it more, I decided they probably couldn't. Especially when we consider that the Allomantic powers leave when the spike does.

113
Brandon Sanderson / Re: **SPOILERS! The Shards of Adonalsium
« on: November 22, 2009, 07:33:26 AM »
Or not, since I seem to recall that Penrod's "spike" actually was a shard of metal, not a regular spike.

In Elantris, Raoden mentions that he feels the Dor being used when the Dakhor monks are doing their thing. So I would guess it's almost certainly a different aspect of the same magic system, or at the very least a different system from the same shard.

Not that that's any different from anything you guys have been saying, but....

I wonder how many shards there will be in WoK for there to be the 30 ish magic systems I'm hearing about. That should be lots and lots of fun.

114
Writing Group / Re: NaNoWriMo?
« on: November 22, 2009, 07:23:04 AM »
Well I didn't write much yesterday, so I'm now holding steady at 10k behind. I could probably catch up, except I have relatives coming for Thanksgiving on Tuesday, and I will be killed if I attempt to ignore them and write. So i essentially have to catch up 10k, then write another 10k or so to make up for the writing I'll miss during the week. All of this within the next two days. Sounds fun.

So yeah, My NaNoWriMo prospects are looking a little bleak. Though I do have this entire week off school, so that might help. I'll still be attempting to finish, but since i just hit 25k today, it should be interesting to see if I can pull it off.

115
Reading Excuses / Re: november 16- recovering cynic-oathbound-ch. 2 re-write
« on: November 21, 2009, 05:32:47 AM »
As to how to do a flashback, I would just say alter your phrase slightly so that it includes the word remember or something equivalent. It tags the reader for a flashback. Alternately, you could use italics to set it apart, but for long sections of text this gets really annoying, so I wouldn't do it here.

116
Reading Excuses / Re: New Title
« on: November 21, 2009, 05:29:14 AM »
I agree. The Chaos Within sounds more like a happy "We all have inner turmoil that gets resolved" than revenge type book. If you're trying to emphasize the redemption theme, it might work, but it sounds a little corny to me.

117
Reading Excuses / Re: Nov 16 - Andrew the Great - Still Untitled Ch 2 (Though now I have some idea
« on: November 21, 2009, 05:24:16 AM »
Quote
The way you describe your magic system, while slightly interesting, really seems more like a cop-out than anything else.  "It works, and no one knows why, and no one who can do it can tell anyone how it works, or why."  Really?   It's a little better once you add the qualifier that trying to do magic someone else's way ends in horrible death, but still.

Remember that this is an extremely basic description. Though it is entirely accurate, it's intended for someone who has never heard anything factual about Deviation.

Next Chapter you get the actual descriptions, and some of it will probably be more than a little bit confusing until I figure out how to do it right.

Throwing Quinn half a mile was a reaction from the magic, so I probably need to go through and reword that slightly to make that more clear.

What happens after someone yells, "Giant Fireball!"? Wow, that's weird punctuation. Moral of the story is, while they might get a warning out, the reaction would come before the character could do anything. The reaction is pretty instantaneous, you know. I suspect a large part of the reason it feels slower is that internal thought that Frog mentioned.

By the way, Quinn is by far the most fun character to write. By far.

118
Writing Group / Re: NaNoWriMo?
« on: November 20, 2009, 06:58:12 AM »
Managed to close my deficit to within 10,000 words today, finally! I'm pretty much psyched. If I get in some good writing over the weekend, I might manage to gain another 3 or 4 thousand on it, too, which would be amazing. 

119
Reading Excuses / Re: Nov 16 - Andrew the Great - Still Untitled Ch 2 (Though now I have some idea
« on: November 20, 2009, 05:26:24 AM »
Hmmm. Well since the first chapter apparently didn't have enough internal thought, at least I tried to fix the problem. It'll take a little time to get the balance right, methinks.

Quote from: Frog on November 19, 2009, 10:59:03 PM
I need to know what is going on in this word outside of these two characters as far as how they, as mages, function here.

Next Chapter :)

Quote from: Frog on November 19, 2009, 10:59:03 PM
And, without a flashback or excessive internal thought, I need a better sense of Khuyus, age, background, family that kind of thing.

*sigh* So do I, so do I. Well, I do know that biographical information you mentioned, but I still am having issues writing him because I really don't know him yet. I really need to sit down and write a character profile. That would most likely help quite a lot.

I'll try to work the info you asked for in a little bit, sneakily, and not using flashbacks and internal thought.

120
Writing Group / Re: NaNoWriMo?
« on: November 20, 2009, 05:17:47 AM »
I hate you. I'm still at 20,000.

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