The Review Club Forum Discussion for Rob's (cdnsurfe..

This is the place to respond to reviews and for further discussion of Rob's (cdnsurfer) The Sound of the Dying Universe.

Thanks Chrissie for your thoughtful review. Yes, dialogue tags are a problem and an area that I always notice are jarring but am never sure how to adjust for it. I hate for dialogue to come across as script, but also I don't want it to bog down. I will run through the piece for those fixes. Just the right comments, Chrissie.

With respect to the sex of ego, well, I realize I don't have too many sex tags in here and I could drop something earlier on to make it clear. ;-) The using the men's washroom in the arts building I thought was enough. I'll think on that.

With respect to the commentary of telling the conversation in the cafeteria, I honestly thought I could get away with that to add flavour and character without breaking it down into an actual dialogue. I usually break out conversations into dialogue, but here I tried to slip it into the narrative instead. Perhaps I can do a fix with dialogue before and after, rather than an entire narrative conversation.

Cheers!

You've given me some very useful comments which I will use in cleaning this piece up.

Rob

Heheh! Jeff thanks for your review. You are bang on. The first paragraph was the flash. Once I was done that I felt the need to develop it out and away it went. As you can tell this is chapter 1. I'm currently exploring chapter 3 right now. Chapter 2 is up but still needs a bit of tightening before I'm satisfied as a draft. This chapter 1 opens up to the rest of the piece, especially Allison, but also all the other questions I've posed. Nevertheless, you're analysis was bang on. Cheers!

Rob

Well, cool, you've got a lot of great stuff to work with, here. I'd post it as a first chapter, because I think it'd make a huge difference in interpretation!

Thanks Julie for your commentary. Much appreciated. Now that I'm well into chapter 3 and this is about 9,000 words, I have to revisit chapter 1 again. I've had comments about that 3rd paragraph before feeling out of place given where things have since gone. That's probably correct and will need to be redone. The meeting sequence I'll look at too. All of this is good and useful to me.

Thanks!

Rob

Rob:

I hope it did help. You have such a wonderful way with words. 9000's huh? Do you have an intended word count? Novel? Novella? How long has it taken you to write this much?

Julie

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Hey Julie,

Yes, your comments were very helpful. I suspected as much because it started as a flash then to a short story, and now to a novel. The problem is it's waffling between short and novel after the 1st chapter, so it needs to be reshaped to broaden out those scenes to make it novel flow and pacing. It's definitely going novel at 9000 words to part of chapter 3 done. I started this about 2 1/2 weeks ago.

Cheers!

Rob

February 5, the day it went up here it was a one paragraph flash. I can't stop writing it. ;-)

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Aren't beginnings wonderful! I always think I can fly when I start writing a new book. Words flow so easily. Then the middle comes and I start thinking I better find a place to land before I fall out of the sky. Come the end, I'm soaring far above the ground, basking in the glory of the story. :)

Chrissie

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Aren't beginnings wonderful! I always think I can fly when I start writing a new book. Words flow so easily. Then the middle comes and I start thinking I better find a place to land before I fall out of the sky. Come the end, I'm soaring far above the ground, basking in the glory of the story. :)

Chrissie[/quote]

Hey Chrissie,

Gawd, I hope you're right! I'm kind of intimated by the thought of 100,000 words, especially when I'm just hitting cruising altitude at 10,000 words. I've started a novel a couple of times but have never gotten past 5,000 or 6,000 words; mostly, I've kept my stories down to 2,000 to 3,000 words. I'm in all new territory. The good news is I could make each scene and section longer, not shorter.

Cheers!

Rob

Hi Bill,

I got your review. Thanks for the comments. I especially appreciate your eye for structural problems I haven't noticed. I will get on those and fix.

Cheers!

Rob

I'm with you, Rob. Rarely is a story of mine beyond 3,000 words and I have many "great" novel beginnings, and a few endings, but no middles. I see people with much busier lives than me talking about one billion words a day and I sit and stare at the one sentence I've written in an hour and decide to delete it.

That reminds me of a story, I think about Oscar Wilde. To make it very brief:

He's living in a boarding house, comes down in the morning, is asked has he worked hard today. "Yes, I placed a comma." Then he comes down for dinner, they inquired what he accomplished that afternoon. "I took the comma out."

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What's made a huge difference is I'm writing a scene every day or two (making sure I do about 600 to 1000 words a day), and basically not getting fixated on every word like I usually do. Sometimes, I leave a scene with a few lines and come back to it later. Sometimes the right way to form an earlier scene arises later on, and I'll go back and touch it up. The other thing is I have the basic framework figured out for the whole work, even though I have no idea exactly how I'll get there. I'm pushing 11,000 words now. I figure the whole will be about 80,000 to 100,000 words.

Cheers!

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I hate agonizing over comma placements, so I throw too many down or rip too many out. Ack!

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Bill:

You've made my day.

Julie

Hey Loekie, thanks for the review. I will definitely need to open that chapter up and develop those threads, especially now since: (1) it was written uncertain where it was all going to go; and (2) with coming to completion on chapter 3, the threads are loose. Those suggestions are definitely going to help. I appreciate the time and effort you put into this.

Cheers!

Rob

Thanks Cam, those are useful comments which will be incorporated when I flow through this piece again, linking to build out the story. Those scenes certainly could use expansion now that it's running on a new rail -- a full out novel, especially as I now know what this novel is really about. Cheers! Rob

Rob, I don't say this lightly - just wanted to comment that I think this could be an excellent book and you've got a great start.

O, jeesh, as arrogant as that might've come off, it was meant to be a compliment. My writing skills may still be questionable, but I have complete confidence in my abilities as a reader. So there.