Timewaster's Guide Archive

I think part of the problem for me is that Jin comes off as such a failure that it makes him unsympathetic. He just seems like a loser. He makes all these escape attempts but always gets caught, he's the worst at fighting, the biggest whiner of the group, and wants to die.

This might be ok if there was a lot going on, but so far we are only getting to see how rough of a life Jin has. Every chapter he is tormented in some new way, which really just makes us not care about it I think.

I'm gonna second this. Show too much of how rough Jin's life in the pits is, and the readers will start to become desensitized to it. Add in that he comes across as very whiny, and it makes it rather difficult to sympathize with him.

Anyway, homework is all done, and I said I'd give this a more thorough review.

Thoughts while reading:

Agree with the clothing thing. Jalean's works, as it helps establish what's going on. This is an important event, and she should look her best. With the boys, however - excluding perhaps Jin - unless it's vitally important to the story that the reader know what they are wearing, these descriptions can be woven into the narrative where they're needed, if they are. Unless Burm's clothes effect how he fights, or hinders him, or does something interesting, it's not especially important.

The problem with the detail, as mentioned above, is that the reader will just scan over it. They won't be able to keep all that information in their heads, and are even less likely to do so if it has little application to the plot. Hit the highlights and move on.

Hehe... Burm. I find him amusing, and I don't know why.

Yes! Masei girl is back! Loving the interaction between the two. Easily the highlight of the chapter.

Done.

Yeah, it needs more conflict. The scene at the end is great, but the stuff before it needs some work. Prose is great, dialogue is great, but the events that happen need something to better push them forward. Repercussions for the dummy seem like the best option, although I can understand why you don't have Jalean finding out about it.

Jin's relationship with Burm, as noted before, is a strong point, as is the little mystery about the magic in his arm. Overall, I'd say condense when you go through after the first draft. Perhaps this was your plan all along - putting more than you need in the first draft works for some writers, and when they go through on the second draft it's much easier to trim.

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...

It worked for me. I probably wouldn't have clicked on a thread that just said something like "So-and-so's Interview with Howard Tayler".

Of course, I was expecting something along the lines of what the subject heading stated, and was thus pleasantly surprised to find the content being somewhat different than expected. It was a rather enjoyable and informative piece.

I'd have to agree with the assessment above, especially the ending paragraph. While I came out of this chapter wanting more, it wasn't the wanting of "I need to know what happens next" but the feeling of "something more should have happened here. My feeling was that there needed to be some kind of conflict to fully draw me in. The beginning felt like it was shaping up for something, but then petered out, and the very brief fight was not nearly enough.

I need something to carry me into the next chapter, some reason for me to keep reading on. As LTU said, the characters aren't enough for that at the moment. I don't care why this kid wants to become a professor, or why it's important. (As it is, I don't find myself liking him too much yet. What little I've seen, he strikes me as kind of whiny and depressing.)

Another thing was that the bulk of this felt, in some ways, more like a 'chapter 2' than a 'chapter 1'.  I don't really know why it felt this way, but it did. That's probably not too helpful.

It did flow rather well, however, and was pretty easy to get into. With that ability to draw in the reader, it would make sense to give them something stronger to hook them fully.

Well, obviously. This applies only to cuendillar that is not one of the weakening seals of the Dark One's prison. 

It can be found online, in its entirety. It's not an actual book, more of a short story, published in a fanzine by a sixteen-year-old scifi fan in the early seventies. It made it's rounds, eventually ending up in the hands of an actual author, who spread it around even further to great incredulity. The version online is actually incomplete, apparently, because much of the charm is lost without the illustrations that accompanied the original.

It's considered "one of the genre's most beloved pieces of appalling prose". The story has been used at scifi conventions as a party game, the challenge being to read the whole thing, aloud, with a straight face, without choking up or laughing. The grandmaster challenge is to do the same, but after inhaling helium.

Anyway, because you said ignore the prologue, I ignored it.

Thanks ^_^

Good start. It caught my attention.

You get into a rhythm with your sentences early on. Dependent clause-comma-clause. Dependent clause-comma-clause. Stifling a yawn...perched in the trees...Already lit were the lamps...I'd like to see more subject-verb-object straightforward sentence structure. The editor in me keeps wanting to yank things around, especially when you use passive. "Flanking the entryway were" vs. "Two sentries flanked the doorway." You do a lot better with this later on.

Try to replace every instance of the "to be" verb with more active verbs. How about "the servants rushed" instead of the "the servants were not idle?" that sort of thing. The lamps sputtered or burned instead of "were lit." "was glaring" to "glared."

Some of those were intended to be in the past tense, I think. I can't recall, and it's actually been edited since.

The Scar is an area in world of warcraft, I think. You kill bugs there.

That'd be The Dead Scar, actually. Had to look it up, since I don't play World of Warcraft. I should take this time to mention that all the names for stuff, like The Scar and the Blood Sand are placeholders until I think of something better. Although I am rather attached to 'The Scar'...

Why wonder how a maid feels about the blood sand? Probably don't need this info until later. As it is, the subtext/backstory is a little distracting.

Both Mia and the maid are Dronari, and of an age to have been alive during the Blood Sand, which is a currently-unknown-to-the-readers event in the recent past. It didn't quite feel right when I wrote it, I'll admit, and has since been cut.

Why would the magistrate need to tell them the "Last Resort" does not exist if she's part of it and undoubtedly does not want their organization name bandied about? And then later the Last Resort has no caps...a pun?

The Magistrate was stating, stupidly, three of the rules, and in doing so violating one. This may have repercussions... or not. I'm still working on that.

The first instance was a direct reference to the group's name. The second was a statement of Chivenier's situation, and is coincidentally where Last Resort get their name from. They don't offer their services unless all else has failed.

I liked it. I thought the character was developed enough for chapter one and I'm okay with an easy heist for a first chapter, although I'd like to see one last scare as she's exiting the house. The pacing is good. Good mini-hooks keep me interested in each section. The description could be tighter though, with stronger verbs. I wonder why your ninja girl fell asleep in the tree.

I don't understand the last sentence. Everyone likes easy money, or at least doesn't hate it. Hate is a strong word.

One last scare is actually being added in, having come to the same conclusions myself. I'm trying to avoid pruning and editing in detail until I've gotten to at least the third chapter. It's a bad habit of mine, but on the contrary I've found that editing what I've written the day before gets me in the mindset to write. That said, descriptions are becoming tighter, verbs stronger, and all that jazz.

Mia fell asleep in the tree because surveillance is boring. She much prefers the actual breaking in and thieving parts. That's also where the 'easy money' line comes from. She hates taking jobs where it feels like she didn't earn the money. These things are all points I may need to make clearer during revision.

I hope the shards reappear later in the novel.

Uh... I hadn't thought of that. But see, now you're giving me ideas....

Thanks for the comments! They are much appreciated ^_^

I'm slowly working my way through it. I do like Kail quite a bit, but I'm finding myself more interested in Ellie.

I have to agree with Cynic. This chapter needs some serious editing. I was, however, able to follow it reasonably well, which is something considering I haven't yet made it to the first Guli chapter. (I've made it up to Anaith 2; everything up to that, by the way, is very engrossing). There was a potentially significant plot development, however, at the end, with the discovery by the men at the oasis that there is a village of people to exploit. I'm going to predict that they'll attack, and people will find out that Guli told them they were there, and people are going to be pissed at him. Then, he'll do something to win back everyone's trust. That or get exiled from the village.

Now, please prove me wrong on that. If you can't, then do a spectacular job at proving me right.

Some things that confused me, and this might be because I haven't read Guli 1 yet, is that this chapter had some things in it that were quite confusing. The song he sings to himself while mining is from the real world; does this story take place in the real world, albeit sometime far in the future or the past? Or is Guli from "our reality" and has been somehow transposed to this one? Some of the other words and phrases he uses make me think something like this as well.

I'm still figuring out the various animals and names for things.

Again, hard editing is needed, but this has the potential for a very strong chapter. Looking forward to the next.