Creative Consult

[Buster's Uncle]

If this were a Wonder Woman fanfic, failing it would be a definite sign that something was wrong.

[DrazharLn]

There are a couple of woman-woman conversations in Pyrebound:

Darun talking to her sister (which might pass (can't remember what they talk about))
Darun talking to Ram's mother (which I think is not described to the reader)

There are all those kids and the more experienced witch at the start, too.

Even in a patriarchal society, women will have interesting things to say to each other.

Obviously, most of the conversations in the book involve Ram, but I would be interested to hear about women's experiences in the world too. Women's experiences are often elided from histories and I think it is interesting and valuable to see women characters and their world a bit more realistically.

Thanks for your other thoughts, too.

[Elok]

Sure thing.  Spoiling everything plot related in this since I don't know how far The Avuncular One has read:
I can agree that it's interesting to tell women's stories even in a man's world.  I do, however, operate under constraints.  It's a serial, and it has to move at a certain pace with minimal digression.  If an update's too long, or I go too many updates in a row without the plot moving, I risk losing or discouraging readers.

(click to show/hide)

It's a big world, and you could tell any number of stories in it which are not related to Ram's.  One example would easily pass the Bechdel test--that of Darun and her sister, which I probably won't do much more than hint at due to so much of it being so unpleasant--and also secondary to the main event.  But it would make an interesting, if ghastly, tale.  I might make it one of the appendices for the print edition a year from now, IDK.  But there are other stories in there too.  All four of the other Damadzus have (potentially) interesting stories to tell; I just won't get to them in any detail.  Okay, maybe not Ushna, it's not really surprising that he would end up a blackband and I envision his backstory as being almost exactly what you'd expect.  But the surviving Damadzus.
Ram's lack of curiosity re: indwelling is totally a case of Homer nodding.  You're right, he should express more interest, it's just that I have a bunch of storytelling balls to juggle and each update is written in spare hours snatched during a single week.  It totally slipped my mind that he'd be curious, because I'm not curious about it at all; I know exactly what it means and why it's happening.  It's all a rough draft, more or less.

EDIT: typo

[Elok]

Posting in this thread so we don't have two Elok's book threads: it's all well and good to say I should update my FB page, but what with?  The only thing that really changes WRT my writing life is that I update PB every week.  Do I turn the page into an endless cascade of update notices?  Seems kinda pointless, since 90% of my fans are on r/rational where I post update notices anyhow.

[Unorthodox]

FB isn't for your existing fans. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Excerpts - a random paragraph/page/partial sequence/conversation from anything, labeled as from what.  Maps and other story-related art, when you have something, like when you posted the Nadula art I worked up.  Glossary entries.  Passages you wrote and liked, but couldn't use for some reason.  Any stories relevant to/involving writing and being a writer you want to tell.  Throw out story ideas/elements you feel have promise, but haven't gotten workable yet.  Never leave any comment alone and in peace - conversation threads happening are better than likes, almost better than shares - you seem to do this one pretty well.

-I realized as I was writing that paragraph, that I was describing the contents of a couple Larry Niven random stuff compilations, N-Space and Playgrounds of the Mind, and there's at least one other - they're good reads, and people paid, I paid, for a bunch of the same crap I thought of trying to come up with writer FB-post-content.  If you keep it up no less than twice a month for a couple years -I know, but you're autistic; patient labor should come naturally- your audience will find you.

I've been making a post a day in the JKStudio page since the 5th of June; I've gotten the enthusiastic, reliable support of exactly Rusty, who 'likes' everything about once a week.  Otherwise, ten friends, including you, I think, have 'liked' the page … and over the last three months, and so have nine strangers.  My audience is finding me, albeit agonizingly slowly.  -And that's mostly pics of me having played with unpainted strips of newspaper, if well.  Who cares?

-Well, the few who do will find me if I don't run out of pics or optimism too soon.  The FB posts do better on search engines than the actual JKS website of organized, designed stuff.  The FB posts ultimately lead back to that website where I plan to do the selling, ultimately...


Check this.  Imagine as a FB post w/ no intro:

   The heart should be right between the breasts.  He stood as close as he dared, levered it onto its back with the blade, and rested the point of the sword in what he thought was the right place.  It moaned, and thwacked at the blade, but the blows were weak and only moved it an inch or so in either direction.  Ram took a deep breath, and thought of the child dead in the raid.  It had been a girl, barely past her first bloom.  Her father had only found half the body, and not in one piece.
   He leaned down on the sword, putting all his weight into it.  The body resisted for a moment, then gave, and the point went through until it jarred against the stony floor of the passage.  The resh let out a whistling gasp, flailed its limbs a moment, and was still.  It was finished.
   No.  Not finished.  Now came the hard part.
   Setting aside his shield, Ram bent over, and reached out with his left hand for the resh’s right.

-from Raiders of the Dawn Company


-MY interest would be piqued, especially in the presence of other excerpts that gave away it wasn't all uncomfortable violence...

[Buster's Uncle]

I've finally caught up on webpage projects for the moment, and have made it up to Chapter Six; if you mean for it to be unclear whether Kamenrag is dead, it is.  -IRL, one would assume a trauma severe enough for unconsciousness would be fatal, but in an adventure fiction?  Mmmaybe.

[Buster's Uncle]

Part way through 6.2 - wait; the sword's talking to him?  Somehow it seems like it was doing that all along, but this is sudden, and seems late in being made clear.

[Buster's Uncle]

Seven: A Beggar at the Door

HoHO!  "Five tetrads and three days" travel just plain skipped.  Sir, I just want to say

[Buster's Uncle]

8.2 and caught up.

I don't know if I have a complaint about Bal similar to the one about the sword talking or not - in all of the previous version I was shown and here up the incident in the mines, I didn't catch that there was anything 'off' about him - just big mute fighter-type.

ISTR something like you denying the En development before - at least I'd swear that was one of the sorts of things I suspected when SOMEthing mysterious/important happened at the previous version of the indwelling ceremony.


I must say, this time the pacing feels more satisfactory/quicker, and Ram's increased agency and powers, the winning a few fights along the way and making more decisions for himself, while nothing has really changed … gratifies that nerd affinity for power fantasies better.  We all know feeling lost and powerless and crapped-upon in a world we only dimly understand entirely too well, and don't really need that much realism in our escapist fictions.  You've found a better balance, letting him kick a few nuts and knees while he doesn't know what's going on and gets crapped upon.

[Elok]

As I recall, what happened was that I asked you, when you'd read all the "first half" of the original version, what you thought would happen next, and you said, "he'll become some sort of super-Ensi, maybe?"  I neither confirmed nor denied.  I more or less expected that a lot of people would see the twist, if only because the only male, magic-associated figures we're given are the en/ensi.  Not a lot I can do about that, though I tried to chuck out some red herrings this time to muddy the waters.  What annoys me is that at least a couple of people guessed the twist by making a completely invalid set of inferences.  No that does NOT follow from revealed lore RAAAAAAARRRR

Bal unfortunately doesn't have much to do here; I wish I'd found time to show more of him.  I tried to hint that he spends a lot of time staring into space and not appearing to notice or care what's going on.  It's probably easy to skim past, given his minor role.  He and Shazru are going to be the losers this time around, I think.

Kamenrag ate a diagonal cut across the torso from a medieval-sized steel sword.  He is very much dead.

[Buster's Uncle]

Yeah; do work the word "dead" in there as soon as it happens next time, if you intend it to be clear.

[Unorthodox]

Yeah; do work the word "dead" in there as soon as possible as a general rule.

Fixed. 

[DrazharLn]

FWIW, I thought Kamenrag was very much dead.

[Elok]

Well, that's good to know.