Hey, I'm way overdue. But here is mine. Sorry it's a shade over 300 words. I cut as much as I could.

@Mussri I finished the Hunger Games trilogy. It gets better but the ending was a bit weak. Overall I think the trilogy stands together better than the first book does by itself. So that's good. I enjoyed it. But I still wish it had been more fully fleshed out.

How about this?

Use this code: IHTA0-EDOEX-F0IMW

Looks like it doesn't accept multiple format tags (bold/italic+link) in one message; weird.

@ΜετάEd Dude.

Sweet.

Hey @Mr.Shiny new blog skin?

@KitFox yeah I got tired of the old one

Oooh. Intriguing.

I'm supposedly working on a new look for shinyandnew.ca too, but progress is slow. Once that's done I'm going to re-revisit the blog's look to make it match

Story, I mean.

It's 10% too long and it took me over an hour to cut it down so much :)

I would like to discuss them, but I've got a killer workload today. Maybe later.

okay

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 coughs Well, that one was actually a freewrite, and we decided to drop the word limit on it at the end of chat.

Actually yesterday I forgot about the chat; I had avoided SE chat all day to get more work done and the meeting slipped my mind. You have my permission to email me if you want to get in touch with me to remind me.

Oh. Thanks.

Are you up for some tea and scones when you have a moment?

@KitFox always

@KitFox, free?

@KitFox Mine went close to 500. But it's more like a minor scene that fits no where in my novel. It took me 20 minutes to write from the notes and the prose can be kind of crude sometimes.

@Mussri I found the dialogue a bit tricky to follow. It wasn't clear to me which person was saying what.

I liked the beginning but got lost toward the end. Is it fanfic?

The subject seemed deeper than usual.

I have a terrible headache after staying in front of the monitor for 10 hours. *Plays Ambient music*

@KitFox It's an 'offset' scene from my planned/in-writing 4-volume novel.

Damn. I really...I want to talk about this stuff, but I have to finish bug fixes today.

And "Armyed"? That have some kind of significance?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 And this.

@KitFox I'm just now starting to learn Python 3.3... It's gonna be a hell out there!

@KitFox The whole novel/serial/quadrology/whatever-it-turns-out is pretty deep and fleshed-out (I hope) and it should be since I spent 4 years dreaming/writing/taking-notes/etc... of/about/etc... it. It's really exciting especially since I think I could finish book-1 by my high-school graduation.

@KitFox And the names aren't 'absolutely' final ;)

@Mr.Shiny & @KitFox, So, on a scale of 1 through 10, where does it lie? Which part(s) is/are most unpolished and which is/are best?

I noticed that I tend to write the longest messages here. Boring, I know. Sorry about that.

Hello, @Matt!

hiya @Mussri

I can't find Black Crag. Is that in South America?

If I drift too much into nonsense or surreallity, warn me.

@Mussri My main issue is that the dialogue didn't flow well for me. It felt unnatural in spots and it was hard for me to keep track of who was talking.

It doesn't help that there are no up-front clues about which one is male and which is female.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I didn't want to have too much narration until the end. That included speech tags.

It doesn't help that there are paragraphs where one characters is talking, but the narrative only mentions the other character. At least that's what I inferred.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It was intended to be vague.

but not in south america

@Mussri Well, this part in particular:

Black Crag

@MattЭллен Brilliant!

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I don't it'd help to say that I parsed the grammar when writing that part...

One sec...

My problem is that up until then it's hard for me to know who's talking. Then when you have a paragraph that starts with dialogue, and has the first named character perform an action in the middle of the dialogue, I interpret it as that character's dialogue.

brb

"Quiet Ar," is easily identified as spoken by Myed. But "I came to save you..." the floor shakes as Myed blah blah --- this is Myed's dialogue in my opinion. Except that it can't be.

Oh, tears. Geez, I thought that was tears.

I thought it was kinda creepy.

Like he could see her heart through the tears in her chest.

Yikes.

continues beating dead horse

I can see how that would be confusing.

Hi @Matt.

Did you see that we had tea and scones earlier?

Oh, so you did. Were they good?

And I really need to stop chatting and w-rk today.

Yes, tasty.

@KitFox Oh dear!

@KitFox I didn't get that part. Do you mean a confusion between "tears (n.) eye-water" and "tears (v.) cuts sth" ?

@Mussri Well, the noun form of that last (a rent or fissure).

I knew that it was a noun.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It's Ar's. And I get complaints about this (all sorts of confusion in dialogues) all the time that I think I could write a book about it. Without a solutions part, though :p

Sounds like you could use some dialog practice.

@KitFox That's a whole lot creepier than I ever intended.

I was kidding. Well, a little. I read it with the wrong meaning twice, but I can't really understand why I did that.

I didn't read it quite so literally though.

I use movies as a guide. Knowing that I probably mean Hollywood blockbuster, I'm in big trouble.

I was thinking "torn up clothing."

Any other words for the intended 'tear'?

Probably because of the juxtaposition of tear and suit.

@Mussri You could mention Myed's crying sooner.

@KitFox I used "suit" as in "fit", right?

Or Ar's?

wait. one of them is a boy?

@KitFox I didn't want any earlier narration.

@Mussri Oh yeah, like I said, there wasn't any reason for me to get confused. "Tears suit you."

Except I didn't know that one of them was weeping. So I picked it up wrong.

@KitFox That could use some cleaning up in the piece.

But please don't let me hold you for too long.

Argh. Stoopid werks.

Go on... I'll just fall from my chair asleep and... Zz ZZzzZzzz _ZZzz

I think it's because I assume Ar is a boys name

but Ar is not a boy, so then there are two girls

Ar: Female / Myed: Male

I had that backwards then.

Or forwards then backwards.

I think the fact that you've confused the three of us this much suggests that you need to work on making things clearer.

Ah. I need to stop looking.

At what?

@KitFox Just sign out. That's what I'm doing in two minutes.

You're right.

Later!

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It's a hasty piece... Would clean it up for next week.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 @KitFox : Alone in the dark!

Anyway, @Mussri I think your story and characters are probably fine. But when it's so hard to keep track of who is who and who said what, it's something that you should address.

I'll be going now... Anyone needing anything? Besides coffee?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Prose. Yes. I need more English language practice.

@Mussri I don't know if its your English that needs work. There were some sentences that didn't read too well but an edit should catch those. But the flow of the dialogue was just too hard to follow.

Also the last few paragraphs, where it's all narration, sounds a bit too much like a movie trailer.

Or the back cover of a cheap paperback novel.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 That's because it's an outside narrator.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Now that worries :/

Anyhow, everything is fixable so tuesday?

@Mussri I don't know. In my head it reads like you've just seen a death scene, then the radio announcer comes in: "Coming soon, to a theatre near you... a tale of two twin worlds at war! Starring Matt Damon and that girl from Twilight."

Better to have a more neutral narrator.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I hate Twilight to the point where this's virtually offending and excruciatingly worrying.

@Mussri teehee that part was a joke.

Anyway, your narrator voice needs more control, I think. Your narrator voice probably shouldn't say things like "for what it's worth".

Unless your narrator is a character in the story, but in this short story there's no motivation for that.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Except if he's from a far faraway future...

I'm sorry but sleepiness's getting the best of me... Coffee? Anyone? No? Mára mesta, then.

well, I have to sign out, and you can take my opinions and do with them what you like. but there you have it. I am curious about the rest of the story.

anyway, toodles.

@KitFox ty.

OK. I'm eating lunch. I've got fifteen minutes.

Who wants to talk?

I want to talk about your lunch. I didn't have breakfast.

Nice Story @users 25571 ed

I got a good feel for the crowded nature of the platform

Have I mentioned how much I like your font, BTW?

I found the story intriguing. I keep wondering who the people are and how they are related to each other.

I'm eating really bad, overpriced pizza.

And drinking a coke.

@ΜετάEd I think you misspelt "you" in the first sentence, or it could be the Y looks like a T

@MattЭллен Thank you

Oh, I thought that was an italic Y.

ah, right. probably that then

@MattЭллен Oh, you mean in the second paragraph. The thought dialog.

That's an italic Y, yes.

OK

@KitFox You have. I use the IM Fell family. I love the old fashioned, inky feel of it.

But now I don't love the italic capital Y so much. :-(

@KitFox Mmmmmmm.

@ΜετάEd It reminds me of the books I used to read when I was little.

Sure. Alice In Wonderland, that sort of thing?

With the lovely line art?

Yes, that's the first one I thought of.

There's another, but I can only just get a little feel...oh, The Secret Garden I suppose.

@KitFox Mistress Masham's Repose

I haven't read it.

@KitFox From the book:

I should re-read The Secret Garden. I wonder if I would appreciate it more now.

That is me, I think.

I love it.

Sort of a cross between Cain and Lucien.

@KitFox Uh oh. I failed pop culture again.

Oh sorry. Probably most would miss that. I'm referring to Gaiman's Sandman.

Cain and Abel live there. Lucien is the librarian.

@KitFox Google made me smarter. I haven't read it though.

Cain is the guardian of um, secrets? and Abel mysteries. Or the other way around. I can't remember which.

@ΜετάEd If you like graphic novels and mythology, you'd probably like them.

It helps to have some background in the DC universe as well, but it is not necessary.

If you know Gaiman's work, you would know what to expect.

Ok! thanks.

I know just the place to look for it.

It has some great stories and characters in it.

It might be a bit dated now.

I haven't read the series in...oh, boy. Like a decade.

Or more.

@KitFox I'd love to, but I'm on a trip so I can't make it at that time. I'll gladly join you again on Tuesdays by about mid-September.

I'm looking forward to it.

nathantresch.com/?q=node/1

I edited it for 10 minutes

Also