Well, not a productive weekend but a useful one. I got some critiques back on Chapter 6. Notes were sparse but overall positive. It was interesting what people like and what people were confused about. The pig slaughter scene confused some but most got the symbolism and liked it. Strangely, no one seemed to think it bogged the story down. That's strange, in a sense, or possibly good. It may be that they were engrossed enough in the story to not mind the delay in the 'get out of here' impulse.
That feedback was interesting because I'm still looking for places to cut, even more so after the hour + conference call Dave Wolverton put on yesterday. I got to ask a question about pacing. He said that the 'initiating event' needs to come in the first 10% of the novel. So I grabbed Robert Jordan's Eye of the World, which is wonderful but sometimes paced like a glacier. Damn it all, sure enough, less that 80 pages into his 800 page novel, he has the Trolloc attack on the farm, which propels the kids out of the Two Rivers and into the larger world.
If Jordan/Rigney is doing that, then I should be to. My problem, again, is what to cut and where.
A contrary view is that the discovery of Jael is itself the initiating event. If that's true, then I'm ok. More or less. Hmm. More analysis needed. And trimming, I suspect.
I also got another critique back on the third draft of the third chapter. Mostly positive but some of the stuff I added/changed, looks odd to me now. But that's a matter of trimming individual words, not chapters.
Grr. Rabble. Back to work, but not tonight. Last IM gaming night tonight for a few weeks. Less than ten days until I leave for World Fantasy.
That feedback was interesting because I'm still looking for places to cut, even more so after the hour + conference call Dave Wolverton put on yesterday. I got to ask a question about pacing. He said that the 'initiating event' needs to come in the first 10% of the novel. So I grabbed Robert Jordan's Eye of the World, which is wonderful but sometimes paced like a glacier. Damn it all, sure enough, less that 80 pages into his 800 page novel, he has the Trolloc attack on the farm, which propels the kids out of the Two Rivers and into the larger world.
If Jordan/Rigney is doing that, then I should be to. My problem, again, is what to cut and where.
A contrary view is that the discovery of Jael is itself the initiating event. If that's true, then I'm ok. More or less. Hmm. More analysis needed. And trimming, I suspect.
I also got another critique back on the third draft of the third chapter. Mostly positive but some of the stuff I added/changed, looks odd to me now. But that's a matter of trimming individual words, not chapters.
Grr. Rabble. Back to work, but not tonight. Last IM gaming night tonight for a few weeks. Less than ten days until I leave for World Fantasy.
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