Timewaster's Guide Archive

Silk, you got in 35,000 words in two days? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life, even if it isn't particularly great.

I thought it was pretty awesome. I actually laughed out loud several times.

Ok, a couple of things.

Firstly, how do you look at someone sitting on the edge of a cliff and reason out their age with no other information about them? I was a little bit confused when Caramoth looked at Anaiah and immediately went, "Oh, she's two!"

The main problem that I had with this chapter was that while there was potential for conflict, I never really felt involved in it. It was like when I walk past someone in the hallway and hear their conversation, but don't really care what they're saying. You need to do something to make me care about what's happening. A lot of this could just be being more descriptive, and try to include more thoughts that clue us as to emotions. We can connect with emotions.

I strongly dislike the prologue. It started out with lots of promise, but it quickly degenerated into a whole bunch of stuff that I didn't understand, and quite frankly, didn't care about. It's so abstract, that it's really difficult to follow, and since I have no reason yet to care what happens to God (I feel so sacrilegious typing that), I would either a) put the book down (the most likely), b) skip it (If I had a recommendation), or c) skim it (if I had a really strong recommendation).

When you move into the actual chapter, it gets much better. It's fairly easy to follow, though there were some minor grammar issues that threw me for a moment. It does feel a bit info-dumpy, but I think with this being the first chapter, that's slightly excusable. We do need a description of the setting. You might try to work it into other things, instead of talking directly about it, but it still works even the way it is.

I do have a suggestion, though. If all we ever see of Anaiah is her older self, I would just start with that part of her story. It eliminates your problem of these people basically just telling their gods that they are wrong, and quite frankly, I don't think anyone really thinks that this part of the story is that important. Do we really need to hear it? Does the rest of the story make sense without it? What does it add? Your other chapters have kept me fairly interested so far, but this really doesn't. If for some reason we need to hear this part of the story, you might consider having Anaiah think about it a little once her character is developed, or if Caramoth is still around, he could talk about it a bit.

Now, keep in mind, I don't know the story beyond what I've read (which doesn't include any of the Anaiah chapters), so this might not work. Just suggestions.

Sorry to take so long to get to this, but NaNo kind of ate my life this month.

Ok, just finished this one (sorry that it's so late).

Initial thoughts....wow. This is very similar to other books that I read and love, so very very good. Has a very gritty, Dark-Fantasy type feel.

This could be both a good thing and a bad thing. You mention that the rest of the book lightens up a bit. You want to make sure that you're not making promises in your prologue that your not going to deliver on. The prologue sets the tone as a strong dark fantasy. If you're going to lighten it up, I'd lighten the prologue just a bit too. Otherwise, the dark-fantasy crowd are going to be disappointed, and many of the lighter people won't get to the actual story.

If you're going to keep the same general feel, though, this is fantastic. Kept me reading straight through to the end, and I can't wait to get more.

I didn't notice any grammatical mistakes that really took me out of world, so I'll ignore those.

As others have mentioned, there was some confusion as to whether Cien actually had a flashback or not. The calm moments were good, but it also made it seem less urgent that they get out, which later seemed suddenly very important.

Quick question. Is this supposed to be in our world, or a different one? I was a little confused when you talked about dragons and all sorts of other traditional fantasy elements (like sorcery), and then all of a sudden we get Philosophies of Erasmus. You might consider making up the name of a philosopher from your alternate-reality/other world, since it kind of confused me as to the setting.

Other than that, though, I have very very few qualms with this. Thanks for a great read! 

Yeah, nothing from me this week. Last week's submission made me realize that I've got to go back and fix a lot of issues before moving on. NaNoWriMo has helped me develop my story in new ways that I never expected (42k words, by the way), but it's also resulted in a lot of crap that really isn't necessary.

I'll be attempting to fix chapter 3 this week once I finish NaNoWriMo, and I'll also be doing some extensive outlining. So the moral of the story is, if I submit at all, it will be later in the week, and will depend entirely on how well my outlining goes and how many other people submit.

Overall I liked this chapter. After the dark tone of the last two, it was nice to have a little lighter stuff, though I certainly hope it gets darker.

I agree that Mariana isn't completely believable. I think it's the simple fact that she gets virtually no development, and then we see her in a scene in which she's a fully developed character. This might be solved by having Bal reflect a little more about how much she's changed in the last two years.

The house seems like a convenient excuse for Bal to have survived. I'd much prefer it if he'd struggled hard through the first year with little more than a shelter, then had managed to build a house the next year. It makes us appreciate the difficulties of the frontier more. Plus, it makes the 'frontier' setting more believable. People don't find random houses on the frontier, or if they do, there's a good reason why they're abandoned. If the previous owner died, why didn't Bal and Mariana? I'm a little confused here.

Overall, it was fairly solid prose-wise, though I agree that last chapter was better in that respect. But then, that could also just be action versus setup.

I agree with Chaos, so far my primary issue is the time changes.

This chapter was less interesting, but you definitely haven't lost my interest yet.

Yeah, sorry on the roughness of that particular scene. I've decided that I'm moving Aedon's whole plot-line back to a scene earlier, so you'll catch a lot of your questions in some of those scenes, and this actual scene will come later in the story with much less of an infodump. That should fix many much of the problems.

Reading through, you're right, the power balance is really vague. I do know the answers to your questions, and some of them should have been answered here, I just wrote with some real clarity issues.

OK, so here's the first thing. Aedon has made the other Deviators in the empire swear loyalty to him. I didn't explain the way the oaths work because it's really, really complicated. I'll get into it a little later, but there's enough info dumped in this chapter already without me going into some really complicated Deviation.

I probably ought to delve into the lives of mages more, but in the future there's a viewpoint character from the Battalion, so I won't. In fact, I'll probably go with a little less here. You're right, though, I'm still writing this with the wrong perspective. You see, most of the population dreads becoming a mage because they've only seen a very limited side of the Mage Battalion and the way Deviators are treated. Once they're actually in the Battalion, people tend to like Deviating quite a lot, along with the power it gives them. Aedon should agree with the second viewpoint more than the first. This was a mistake, most likely due to the fact that I've been writing from Khyus' perspective before this, and Khyus doesn't really know anything about the Battalion.

Kreala = another civilization, currently at war with Aedon's empire. Sorry if that was unclear. It's gonna be kind of important in the future, though, so it is kind of important that it be clearer. Sorry for that lack of clarity.

Assassin-mages are in fact mages, just not Deviators (though their magic works in a somewhat similar fashion). And the Kreala do have Deviators too, just not in the same way that the Aedonians have Deviators. So wherever I mentioned the Kreala not having mages was a mistake. Sorry!

Yes, the mages coming to guard Aedon's study materialized without any backlash. Good catch. There is a reason for this, and it's not that they're super amazing or know something that the other characters don't know. It's actually fairly simple, and you'll see it later, so don't worry about this overly much.

Aedon uses Delren as a "glorified phone operator" because he doesn't know who is with Lenalt, while Delren does. Again, sorry for the lack of clarity.

Yeah, Aedon does sound a lot like Quinn. That's a problem. A big one. I'll work on writing him slightly differently so that he doesn't sound exactly the same.  And actually, there are a couple of things in this chapter that are completely out of character for Aedon. Like the whole thing with the rebel mages. He wouldn't do that. He'd just execute them and be done with it. He might briefly make an example of Rasheda (I think that was her name), but he wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much as he seemed to in the text. I think he probably wasn't entirely clear in my mind when I wrote this, which resulted in him being this vague hybrid between himself and Quinn.

Again, sorry for the confusion on the Mage Battalion. This is one area that was still a little vague in my head when I wrote this. Most of the magi have a specific "Squad" to which they are assigned, with the ranking system continuing all the way up to Relea, the First Chaosmagi. There are a few who have posts outside the standard heirarchy, though, which is what I was writing all of the magi as. Which really doesn't work. So I'll have to fix this on the rewrite, and in future chapters before I submit.

And once again, I apologize for the really rough writing. We're deep into NaNoWriMo stuff now, and I only did a quick once-over for editing, not really changing any of the content. So hopefully we won't have anything too rough in the future. I'm still 15k away from finishing, so I'll be doing some heavy writing in the next few days, but I won't submit anything this week if I can't get it polished up a bit. Well, a lot. It doesn't do much good anyway to submit something that bad.

Power balance....yes. This is mostly just a result of really really bad writing and me not being clear enough in my really really bad writing. It goes something like this:

Aedon is the most skilled Deviator in the world. He can do basically anything that other Deviators can, and a lot of things that others can't. He's a very good duelist, though, because his reactions are almost always exactly what they should be to stop whatever the other person is doing. He doesn't make very many mistakes. He also has around 300 Deviators at his beck and call, since all have sworn loyalty to him. Most of these Deviators hold no particular loyalties, but will come because of their oath of loyalty.

Relea is a very skillful Deviator. She is mostly happy with her position as First Chaosmage, but if she saw the opportunity to overthrow Aedon, she would. Her oath of loyalty prevents her from directly trying to kill Aedon, but Aedon knows that she will do anything she can to work around her oath if it means she gets the book. It is also important to note (which I didn't in the text, which is a big mistake) that Relea's oath of loyalty was not the same as the other magi. I should have explained this and how it happened that way, but I totally missed it in the text. I'll try to catch it later on. Anyway, once Relea has the book, Aedon thinks she will be powerful enough to break through the Deviation that makes her oath binding, and overthrow him. This is actually supposed to be Aedon being paranoid, guarding against all possibilities, but it came across as him being afraid of Relea. Relea doesn't actually rival him, but she could possibly beat him in a duel if she got lucky (sorry LTU [can I call you that? It's so much easier]), as she's skilled enough to hold her own for a few minutes, and random circumstances sometimes change the outcome of a duel (as will be seen later).

The power balance issue is mostly a clarity issue, and my current problem of not mentioning what characters can't do, making it sound like they are all super-powered.

On the re-write, I'll flesh out the Emperor's rise to power, but I'll probably do so a little more gradually than this "BOOM - 90 pages of backstory" approach.

And I just re-read this. Wow. It's pretty bad. Sorry everybody. If nothing else, the length of this post (all of which is explaining things that should have been clear in the text) is a testament to the quality of work submitted.