Timewaster's Guide Archive

Q4: Japanese was fine, but I would suggest finding subtler ways to explain them then footnotes. They annoyed me a little bit. And all the different 'tongues' confused me a bit too (the references to switching from first tongue to another tongue and whatnot.)

Yeah, I wouldn't use footnotes if it had been the real story, but I thought it would be best in this situation. As for the flipping back and forth between languages, I've yet to decide how I wanted to relay that to the readers without coming out and saying it. If you guys have any suggestions, let me know. Hogosha has ascended once already, and its mouth has developed in a way that makes it difficult to speak the first tongue, so it uses it uses the first tongue sparingly and only when it absolutely has to.

As for genders...I think it will take me a long time before I get them down. Luckily I've already gotten used to referring to them as "it's" rather than he/she.

Oh, and Frog, QP is on my desk waiting to be read this weekend. I bought a crate of coffee, and set aside all prior appointments in hopes that I might be able to read the entire thing this weekend. 

This is prewriting, so I tend to jump back and forth with how long after this encounter An'Nainin wrote this, thus he now knows what Hogosha said then. But it is awkward relaying it this way.

Something I'm trying to get across is that they are "born" as adults. They have an adult level ability to absorb and apply knowledge. Because if this An’Nainin is already slowly picking up Hogosha’s language, and a few customs along the way. For that same reason Hogosha is trying to hurry An’Nainin back to their grounds so that it can be immediately put into classes for the specialty that “they” want him to study.

The creatures are also born with the physical attributes of an adult (that’s if you don’t count ascension, as I don’t).

That's weird because I keep everything I've ever written on one jump drive and I've never lost it. It's probably because I'm hyper protective of all my vast secrets and hidden knowledge. 

I'm going to go ahead and put up a thread now so I don't have to wake up early tomorrow (I'm not a morning person).

I have several questions for readers about the story. I would ask that you read the submission before reading the questions (I don’t want them to influence your responses).

Question one: the characters are none gender, did it feel to you as if one or the other belonged to a set gender? And if it did, which one?

Question two: An’Nainin has, obviously, just become animated. An’ has some child like personality aspects such as curiosity and being unable to think outside of the present. Did you feel this is overdone, or out of place?

Question three: Did the characters feel genuine? Did they feel correct to you?

Question four: Did I over use the Japanese words? (I read way too much manga…)

Feel free to mention anything else that caught your eye, but these are my biggest concerns. Thanks!

I suppose if you're going to twist my arm, I'll submit next Monday. But know that I did this of my own free will, and not because you begged. 

Rane, you want longer chapters? If so, as long as you're not titling each chapter, you can do what Ookla says. Although my chapters usually end up being about 3,000 words long, ideally each of them are a thousand words shorter because shorter chapters feels like I'm staying on task more even though I'm giving the same amount of story.

I found my answer in the far east, on the other side of the world...