Comments on: Available Darkness: Chapter 22

By: Trina

Trina — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:58:56 +0000

Not sure how I feel to be at the place you want me, sounds a bit sinister – J/K.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to ‘represent’ so to speak, and I trust you to do what works best for the series.
This was an interesting development, moral dilemna indeed… who gets to be the lucky sacrifice? I hope they are picking low-life scum…

By: Kool Aid

Kool Aid — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 12:22:42 +0000

I’m just thinking this is perfect for the month of Halloween

By: janice

janice — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:54:04 +0000

Right now, it’s you we should be sending to that room, you horrible men. What a position to put that girl in!

I’d love to be able to help out with the editing and buffing up, Dave, but right now, I’m allowing myself the pleasure of simply enjoying it, with the editing part of my brain as switched off as possible.

I disagree, though, about the cliffhanger bit. As long as there’s variety in the pace of each section and you use a variety of cliffhangers, I’m happy if section lengths are similar and end in cliffhangers. It worked for Dickens, and until he got lazy, it worked for James Patterson too.

By: David Wright

David Wright — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:10:02 +0000

Author’s notes: Thanks for the comments last week. I responded to them this morning. Trina was kind enough to provide some solicited thoughts regarding some areas she was feeling “meh” about. I explained what I could, without giving away future plot lines. For the most part, her concerns were exactly the ones we want the reader to have at this point. I would elaborate, but to do so may shed more light on what is to come than we’d like. One of her concerns which we did not intend regarded the dialogue where John says of Hope, “she must be special.” Trina felt that it seemed a bit less emotional than it should have.

To be honest, I’ll have to read the section over when we go in for the final edits once this draft is completed. My gut tells me that John is still in a sea of mixed emotions and he doesn’t have the full memories of his lover to draw the sort of emotional depth of his thoughts. But on the other hand, the reader sees things more objectively and because of that, Trina may be picking up something my mind has yet to spot. I will definitely mark this section for careful review during the process. Thank you, Trina.

As for this week’s: I love the moral dilemma that the end of this chapter sets up. This is the part of the story I mentioned last week that I was excited to get to. That’s the kinda cliffhanger I’d love to have every week, but obviously, when you’re writing a novel, you must allow the story to take precedent over a desire to end each section with an equally awesome “to be continued” which is one of the unique challenges to the serialized format, I’m finding.

Any thoughts, questions, feel free to comment. I’ll tell you as much as I can without revealing any spoilers of what’s to come.

as always, thank you for reading,
david