Reply to Review from Stinium_Ruide · 3:39pm May 8th, 2022
Overall, I am beyond impressed. Stinium_Ruide (can I call you Stinium for short? Or SR?) just but a heck of a lot of preparation and focused thought into his Review, and I just have to say…
Wow! I am honored that you gave it so much time and effort, so I need to give you a humble thanks. Thank you so much!
So I have a few things I want to mention in my reply. In order, I want to mention the following:
- A few peculiarities about the story’s origin
- Who I am as a writer
- The need that this whole story had for an editor from the get-go 8P
- Where I plan to go from here - if not right now, soon
I’ll post this reply in blog form, so here we go.
First off, this story was hatched while chatting with my fourteen year old daughter (child #5 in my clutch of six kiddos - three boys then three girls). This daughter was already a prolific artist and even while she was early in her learning, she had a penchant for capturing emotion in her renditions and especially character faces and eyes, and she was always endlessly creative in coming up with OC’s.
Art example - emotions, faces, and eyes... Tillie-TMB, published December 30, 2016 just before launching first pages of comic for The Amulet of Shades
After acting in a Shakespeare play in May of 2016 (The Tempest), she named one of her OC’s Tempest. Note that this was BEFORE the My Little Pony movie came out — what, don’t believe me? Check out her Deviant Art page and scan to the bottom of the gallery - look at the publish dates for the first year of her comic.
Anyway, her Tempest was one of her favorite OC’s, but her plans and ideas were all over the map (all creativity, no consistency, and lots of Mary Sue-ishness). If that’s a word. So I helped her nix a few things, helped her develop backstory and motivation for some characters, and with some help from a character on DeviantArt named ReachNetwork, really solidified more backstories, motivations, and world building. Reach was indispensable then.
Why?
I had never done anything like this before!
I had never written a story, are you kidding me?
The longest thing I had ever written was a research paper in my senior year of university. Funny thing with that - I had just had a repair of my blown out my ACL (knee ligament) and was on Percocet while trying to revise my rough draft. Wife helped by perching the monitor on the edge of my dresser while the keyboard was across my lap and my leg was elevated with ice on it after surgery.
Outcome? The revised draft made no sense at all. Stupid drugs.
Hardest thing I’d written? The research paper while in Grad School - I’m a physical therapist.
So… I tried to write quite the far reaching epic tale: to entertain you folks while inspiring my daughter to do big things. We teamed up and made a go of it, and Amulet was the result.
But it’s also why the beginning was so darn convoluted. I launched the thing before I really knew what I was doing. I’m still learning, really - I have all kinds of respect for good authors. And I hoped to find someone give me the right kind of feedback to not fall into a lot of traps.
Stinium…. Heh, I could’ve really used you back in 2017.
So the story launched and kind of fizzled before it began. So I pulled it, re-worked the beginning, and re-published it on March of 2018.
But…
It was only window dressing, as Stinium was able to ascertain. I tried to draw the reader in with some fun banter between Mavis and Tempest (Mavis being a character my daughter wanted to use), but there needed to be some deeper changes.
Stinium has left some excellent ideas I’m going to chew on for a bit. I love the idea of kicking off the story differently either with the Celestia/Luna Scene playing a larger roll to set the stage, or diving into Tempest’s initial attempt to take down Celestia, which would certainly be captivating. Really in the initial concept of the story, it was to take place over three books with all the ancient history stuff in the first book. I nixed that idea (no time) so I mashed some scenes and ideas from what would've been book one onto the main story.
Anyway... Doing a fix like that would have a ripple effect throughout the story, so we are talking about major overhaul.
LOL… Stinium, you were so accurate in the examples you pulled out. Just so you know: I had an initial story line, but then backed up and put Tempest and Mavis out in front… and then backed up yet again and added the Celestia/Luna prologue. Convoluted? You have no idea. Or maybe you do have a good idea, you pulled those exact things out and said "These don't mesh together all that well, and there is too much exposition!"
Yup.
The realities of my life are that I am supremely busy, full time position as a PT and raising six kids. But now? Five have moved on out into the world (my artist cohort, daughter #5 is currently in Mansfield, England) and only my youngest is left home.
The story really does have the weaknesses that Stinium describes with some convoluted plot elements and too many scenes disjointed from each other. Something that would make it awfully hard to follow if I publish chapters too far apart (which I do - like I said, busy!).
Positives?
I am so happy you enjoyed my writing of the character’s personalities, dialogues, and actions. I try so hard to make each character, major or minor, genuine and real, not a paper cut-out and trite. The story itself needs telling, because it’s a good one and there is certainly a plan for how the crazy thing will end up.
I'm also happy you enjoy some of my efforts to integrate the fight seems and bring them off with some originality and flare.
So… I want to fix it. I might have more free time on my hands to do exactly that, as well. I know that would divert time from publishing the next chapter… Hm. Need to make a decision.
To sum up:
I need to fix the beginning to draw in the readers better.
I need to tone down the crazy perspective switches I’ve been doing lately. At least group them up better, but maybe drop some things. Like the bridge of Luna’s airship.
In all honesty, I'm going to be referring to Stinium's guidance a lot... Thanks for the assist, Stinium? Where do I leave the tip?
Got my work cut out for me...
I'm glad you found the review useful. Seriff often jokingly chatises me for my reviews, especially for the review I wrote for his story.
Feel free to contact me if you want any editing help. And yes, just call me Stinium. Weird name, I know.