Beta 2, General Impressions
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@Icanrememberpito68decimalplaces
Can you give me particular characters that you think have lost their personality? That is a big concern of mine. The more characters there are, the harder it is to properly “shift perspective” so I need you guys to spot this.
The Jenn admiring guys is an example of trying to “extend” a personality, so in some sense it’s related to the above argument. Working point is to try to start to establish a more cordial and deeper friendship perhaps romantic relationship with Gastrope’
But there could be a number of places like that, worth flagging.
As far as the “book” you just need to wait a bit. There is a big reveal at the end. Plus big motion on Exador and friends vis a vis the book
I think the big thing has been “more Tom” I was a bit stymied going in because being trapped in the cave with those guys, I was afraid of over doing the internal dialogue thing.
Actually, I have been pleasantly surprised by how much people like the internal dialogue. It is something I really like, but have always been afraid would turn people off. “Heroes should crush foes, not think about the moral ambiguity of slaying them”
@Lhans
That final battle is a problem. See Beta 3 for that. I will be kind of punting the ball for the battle, but I think the cliff at the ending is going to be far steeper and deeper with Beta 3. I will be interested in feedback on that.
Well it is hard for me to describe on those terms, “today”
I don’t think of it as ‘adventure’ in that sense…
I have always thought of it as a take on classical fantasy as a whole, but written from the point of view of acknowledging all the goofy fantasy tropes that we all love and talk/complain about as but conveniently accept for the purpose of a story.
Therefore, you have a mix of
1) Coming of age
2) Character moved to a different universe and adapting
3) Giant battle fantasy (Paul Edwin Zimmer’s The Dark Border Series–>which had to be a huge inspiration for GoT)
4) Political Drama
5) Adventure
6) Maybe-lesser-RomanceInspirations for this would be a very wide assortment of “older” fantasy:
David Eddings
Robert Jordan (but this was started BEFORE Wheel of Time–much was written during the book 1 and 2 phase)
Stephen R Donaldson
Paul Edwin Zimmer
MZB
Roger Zelazny
Michael Moorcock
Glenn CookThe very real point of the Tom protagonist is/was originally that he is a big science fiction/fantasy geek who got stuck in a fantasy world/novel.
It would be if you took a typical person who read multiple SF/Fantasy books per week, played video games, D&D etc and stuck that person in a fantasy world. What would they do. I was tired of people being zapped to a magical land and being a complete idiot. I wanted someone that would react rationally…and then get in trouble because everyone else kept playing by irrational rules. That was the original motivation for the story. I.e. “what would a typical reader do.”
In that sense, I would have to say you are correct: It is an adventure story. That is how it started. Or at least that was the chapters 1->X vision. By the time we blow up Lenamare’s school, however, the vision had evolved and become more complex to be what I am talking about with the various authors.
And it’s gotten more complex yet in the intervening years.
While I would not disagree with what you said about Coming of Age trope. We started with:
[quote]Well, I think, historically it is hard to separate Coming of Age from Adventure in some ways. It’s also hard to take Adventure out of something like Game of Thrones.
[/quote]
Which I respond by saying that many Adventure books doesn’t use the Coming of Age, and that Game of Thrones isn’t something for adventure junkies. We kinda derail a bit with those tangential trivia.As for lack of adventure: then read textbooks, encyclopedias, magazines, articles and the like? It is not always about adventure why we read something.
Why are you somewhat so against me calling it Adventure? I can’t understand. Isn’t it what the whole story is for?
Also, isn’t archetypes about characters? You know, the Hero, the Trickster, the Mentor… Isn’t it?
As for it being classed as Parody… well isn’t it? Gulliver’s Travels was a parody and is poking fun of the Travellers’ Tales, that is common at that time. Well, instead of visiting exotic countries, you have Gulliver going from one weid world to another.
Yours poke fun on a lot of things. You poke of Demons (Tizzy especially), you poke fun of Wizards (Gastrope especially), you poke fun of Religion (Adam and Eve, and the Egyptian gods especially) and Myths (the Norse myths is especially notable here) and other stuff. That would make this story a Parody. A very similar form of parody would be the Diskworld series.
And I’m not just talking about Politics but Political drama. There is a big difference. While yours have politics going on, a Political Drama it is not.
@Pathologic:
It is not that I dislike the parts with Ruiden, it is just that I recognize that those scenes adds nothing or very little to the story. Even in the scene where it fights Exador, its primary role is a demon detector.
Therefore, you have a mix of
1) Coming of age
2) Character moved to a different universe and adapting
3) Giant battle fantasy (Paul Edwin Zimmer’s The Dark Border Series–>which had to be a huge inspiration for GoT)
4) Political Drama
5) Adventure
6) Maybe-lesser-RomanceEh?
1) Not the focus
2) Many Adventure books start like this. It a trope, not a genre
3) Another trope
4) This has not developed much yet to be any sort of political drama especially when there is no political power conflict that existed yet
5)Yes
6) You mean Jenn and Gastrope? Yeah, there is one that is starting, a somewhat lame one.Well, modern novels has mixed a lot of stuff, but generaly, they still focus in one aspect. Romance for example has fantasy or adventure elements mixed in. Still, it is focused on the Romance part so it is still romance.
Your book essentially is still an Adventure. It is still about excitement and danger. The main course of course is fighting. There would also be big bangs, bad guys, nuking the fridge, near death, etc. All the fun stuff.
Well, I think, historically it is hard to separate Coming of Age from Adventure in some ways. It’s also hard to take Adventure out of something like Game of Thrones.
The politics are not necessarily between kingdoms. It’s between factions of humans, elves, orcs, demons and gods.
Politics are huge:
We start with:
Exador and his allies vs Lenamare and Zilquar; then it expands to the whole Council, where there are politics but we don’t focus on that much.
We have Randolf who appears to be subservient to Exador, but is biding his time to stab Exador in the back due to Exador toasting Abancia.
We have djinn politics that will get more obvious later.
We have inter pantheon politics with the Nyjyr Ennead vs the Etonians; there are also intra pantheon issues on the Etonian side.
In the Abyss we have Lilith vs Sammael, vs Ramses, Exador, Bess vs it now turns out Orcus. The Courts of Chaos are all about political intrigue. We will learn more.
We have Lilith, Sentir and Aodh vs Orcus/Tommus;
The Grove is about to be split; we have already seen a split between Sentir Fallon and Tiernon. Do you think Tiernon is going to approve of Sentir Fallon working with Lilith? Or even Aodh? And what about the use of Antimus in the dagger? And the fact that the dagger has been corrupting the practices of the church?
Not to mention the alliance of Oorstemoth and the Rod? That’s tricky, and who are they against? Tom, but do you think Hilda or any avatars are going to be “good with” their followers invading the Abyss? That breaks a lot of longstanding rules and treaties between the gods and demons. There are various subtle references to this throughout both books.
Well, he does make a good cliffhanger.
i think a lot of the scenes written from the perspective of secondary characters should be cut out and if we lose some information on the way so be it. I am still not bought on the Asmeth scenes. Write them in book 3 and make a flashback like you did in book 1 with Maelen.
My impression is still generally the same. While there was some excitement and interest created by the fight with the dragons and the inclusion of Ruiden; it is still the same tiresome, overstuffed, fragmentary piece as beta 1.
Some thoughts:
-The fight with the ice dragons is a great addition. We are told what the Nimbus and the carpets are but seeing them in action really drives the point.
-While Ruiden becoming a golem is interesting, what Ruiden did are just a repetitious: appear to some person/people, person/people surprised/intrigued, Ruiden interviewing them, then Ruiden leaving. He did nothing exciting until he face off Exador. Adding its plain robotic character and bland dialogue, Ruiden ultimately add nothing but shock value.
It’s hard to tell how good the book is since i read the first draft and thous skipped a good part this time. However i tend to agree with rosver it’s a little bit better, but not good yet.
Unlike rosver i liked the parts with ruiden even though they are of no consequence for the story so far.
I noticed that you wrote succubae and incubae instead of incubi and succubi.
Thanks for the feedback. Overall, not sure I disagree but…
Ruiden becomes more instrumental in Book 3, once he’s in the Abyss with Talarius.
Exador’s and the triad’s part is moved up and should be more obviously important, thanks to Ruiden and Exador’s exposure.
I am not quite sure what you think I should do, Rosver? a complete restart with a completely different story?
[i]What would make it that much better?[/i]I get cutting down some stuff to speed it up. But from what I am hearing that would not be enough to make it “zing” I need more concrete suggestions, because I am at something of a loss given the constraints of begining end and the other volumes.
Asmeth parts are marked now as Asmeth, because I may still take them out. They do not change anything in the other stories so could go. But does that speed it up enough. If it improves the story, I will take them out. If it doesn’t make much difference, I would prefer to leave them in as I am trying to tell the story as much in chronological order as possible. I try not to ever flashback much before the previous few scenes, moving Asmeth to the next book is huge flashback.
But as far as saying, so and so doesn’t add to the story; I am uncertain of the validity of these arguments as I have always said, “Demons of Astlan” is one book, one story. It just has to be broken up. So saying so and so doesn’t add to the story is not really justifiable until you read the [b]entire[/b] story.
What do 70% of the characters add to the story in any one volume of A Song of Ice and Fire? Keeping in mind that each of my volumes is one half the length of a single GRRM book. So break everyone of those books in two and then judge the merits of the characters based on each half book.
If I were to make every character and scene relevant to what is in an individual volume, I would basically have to wait and publish the final Demons of Astlan in a single 2500 page book. Which was my very original plan.
So back to this; had to run to Starbucks.
OK, the real big problem that I cannot easily or maybe even possibly fix is that the overall story is in the “Epic” fantasy genre.
In almost every epic fantasy series, book 2 is the bummer book. By the dictates of the genre this almost has to be the case; it dates back to the trilogy and is clearly seen in LOTR; if you’ve read them; what do you remember of the Two Towers? I bet it is “Ehhh…” although that may be me.
Here is the thing (and this is purely in general):
First book is the setup, the revealing of the mystery/issue/quest. We are introduced to the protagonists and they are set with an epic task. Everything is new and wondrous and exciting.
Book Two though is where we have to get down to the brass tacks of setting up the “epic” part, expanding to show all the players in more detail, demonstrate their motives and significantly expand the world horizons of the protagonists. As such, it is always very much a “transition” book, and in some ways a proforma necessity with getting on with the rest of the story. It’s the first deep dive into the details and first true look at the difficulties.
Book Three (in a trilogy) is the battle, the conflict, the victory/failure
Book Three (in a multipart series) is the first battle, the resolution of the first of several quests (unless you are Robert Jordan–all bets are off then)
Book Four (if there is one) is the second quest/battle, possibly another expansion/transition book, like Book 2.
Book Five is either a final quest/conflict or the resolution or first half of the solving of the book 4 expanded quest/problem.
Rinse and repeat as needed/desired.
In short, the mechanics of epic fantasy make book 2’s a problem no matter who you are. It’s one of those things I have to deal with.
It’s the expansion of the story/world, the detailing of the complexity of the situation and the “full scoping” (hopefully) of the problem at hand.
Nothing is ever fully resolved in book 2 in a 3+ book series. And that is always the problem with Book 2.
I have to agree, at this stage the biggest problem is that the story doesn’t immediately continue onto book three, Which is more of a problem when it is one long continuous book split up into several smaller ones, The only way to get past this is to just start on the next book.
In short please write book three I must read more of DOA.
I know…I am itching badly to start writing, I really want to continue, but if I don’t want to get too far ahead if I have to go back and make substantial changes.
In many ways the going back and updating the past with stuff that is inserted earlier is much MUCH harder than always moving forward.
You have to check everything everyone says to make sure it agrees with the new reality…and this reality shifting sort of distorts conversations because now people may know things they did not know of before…perhaps knowing the new reality would shift the tone and meaning of the conversation.
That’s the hard stuff to fix, because you have to rethink a lot of stuff, and rethinking is harder than thinking.
No, not a restart, but a refinement; especially a drastic slim down.
Those comments about not adding to the story (which I am one) has truth. Its not that those story threads has no importance to the whole, it is just that there is just a lot of details in them that is just not worth knowing about and that we will soon forgot anyway. The roller coaster ride is the biggest sinner (though the whole journey is full of such stuff). The detailed sequence was just seems so inconsequential. Why is it there? Do the detail of the ride really has an impact to the story? Is not knowing about it makes the whole story illegible?
I actually think the the whole treck could just be summarized in a paragraph, or two… or three… and nothing much would be lost. You could also then focus on their thoughts and reaction of the journey which would have been far more interesting than actually experiencing the whole journey yourself.
Song of Ice and Fire is more of a political drama than adventure. A large cast is quite necessary to portray the complexity of the drama. After all, what is a political drama that just have 4 characters? A lame one. The more the merrier they say.
Yours is more of an adventure… so far. Political drama seems to be coming. Adventures seems to suffer when it has a large cast of characters. I had come upon adventure books with lots of characters. Often times the adventure part is soon forgoten and instead it will be laden with melodrama, convoluted events and cliche romance, adventure be damned.
Still, I have to see the whole of the story to really made a solid conclusion. There might actually be a bombshell in the future that all this things converges to.
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