>I can't find a reason for Macy to like Ada. >they end up in cahoots We call that *conflict*. Hell, @KitFox, you are not in trouble, the essence of your story is directly in front of you! Use it!
The criticism I find most valuable is my inner voice. But to hear it I have to read the work out loud — to myself. Everyone else either will like what you've written or dislike various things about it. If you have to hear it from someone else, I don't think you're really ready to write.
@Robusto My inner voice deceives me sometimes. I didn't notice some flaws in my book until I was reading it to my daughter. That was when I was finally in tune with how the story should be. But it was already published at that point :)
wow on my LCD monitor the pale blue of my own messages is hard to distinguish from white on this site, and the background texture is almost invisble from my normal viewing angle
I'm usually flummoxed by requests for criticism of others' works, because I either want to be too kind or I back off because the list of problems is so great the only useful criticism I can offer is, "I wish you had written something else."
@Robusto Oh, I only meant you could read it if you like. It's not ready for criticism yet. I have had a few particular questions I've asked, but nothing more.
I fully intend to cut it to pieces when I get to the end.
@Robusto I have a friend who spent years working on a novel. He asked me for feedback and I was torn between saying nothing and saying "There are too many problems with this story, but let's just say I didn't like the dialogue, the narrative, the plot, the plot twists, or the ending, and I'm not even sure what happened at the end."
Either something works as a novel or it doesn't. I don't think I could be an editor, because I'm either swept up in a story or I'm not. If the former, no problem; if the latter, nothing will really help except to say, "You didn't sweep me up in the story."
So my original thought was to write a fantasy novel where the Ancient Magic was actually just primitive, and the Big Bad Guy from the Ancient World who was Too Dangerous to Kill and had to be Locked Away Forever was actually easily defeated using modern means
and I had a separate idea about a team of ... "wizards", for lack of a better word, being trapped in a cave during a war. And then hundreds of years later someone digs up the cave and finds a statue in the cave, which when exposed to sunlight transforms back into a person, the one member of the team who had managed to preserve himself as a fossil. And instead of finding out that the war ended well, he learns that there was an apocalypse that nearly exterminated humans.
And then I thought what if the whole 'big bad ancient evil' is actually a LIE promoted by the OTHER guy in the cave who escaped; he was believed dead but is actually still around after all this time, causing trouble
Also all the magic is just technology, but the apocalypse has left people with self-maintaining tools they don't understand and can't re-create
@KitFox No, he turned himself into a statue in a risky, experimental procedure, but after he did that, the other guy turned on the remaining members of the team, killed them and used their collective energy to escape the cave. Once free, he didn't have the resources to eliminate his statue-rival, so he left, and never got around to coming back.
I think I actually have enough plot elements to put together at least a short novel. But I have all these themes I want to explore and I can't figure out which ones fit best.
But if I spend enough time in the wizard school, how do I motivate the bigger story, which has things like a devastating war of imperial expansion, religious fanatics, etc
@KitFox Politics, yeah. Plus I'm not very good at politics. But I was thinking even student life: when students have things like "love potions" in their arsenals, how come rape isn't a major problem?
@KitFox well, still, the point is that a love potion doesn't equate to consent. I mean, they touched on this in Harry Potter, when Ron Weasley ate some chocolates that a girl had filled with a love potion, intending Harry to eat them.
How come that girl wasn't expelled, or brought up on charges? I mean, seriously
@KitFox well, it was intended for Harry. But what would have happened if Ron had been free to follow is "heart" and go find that girl that he was "in love" with? If he had tried to have sex with her, would he have been guilty of a crime? SHE was not interested in HIM....
@KitFox in the case I'm thinking of, the victim lost his personal agency, to an extreme degree, because he was "in love" with the girl. So he would probably obey her rather than rape her.
@Robusto I don't know what that means, but I just picked the font at random, really. I was playing with the layout and couldn't remember the original font
I know it says I posted it a year ago, but I wrote it at least a year before that. I'm not sure I can go back to it, I'm just not in that frame of mind anymore
@MattЭллен Are you kidding? Hot chicks say "What's with the box?" and you say "I'm doing some research for my latest novel." and they're all like "Oh hot, let's shag."
I see. Thanks. To be honest, the story had no direction. I was forcing myself to write something, so as to write something. I don't know if anything would have ever happened :D
@KitFox - In the second section, particularly the last para, I got a little confused about viewpoint. It was Macy all along, but I was thinking in a reader-panic that the viewpoint had shifted to Ada.
And this happens again when Macy is showing Ada the coffee cups. Even in third person, there's an implied character we're following around. If you're gonna say the collection is remarkable, maybe indicate that this is coming from Ada.
Macy and Ada are, once we get into the final scene, quite well differentiated. Interesting characters, well done.
The Overlook Hotel
The Overlook Hotel