Bacis blurb:
Evolution is a tricky subject, especially when you throw in religious fundamentalism. No doubt Henry James as a history student and former seminarian struggled with the duality of the subject, but he never thought to throw Elves into the mix of discussion. Yet, neither did he think one of them would pull him in either.

I'm not sure how this works, but post your e-mail address and I can send you the manuscript electronically. Its in Microsoft Word.

Here are the first 13 lines of the Prologue:
Prologue

“Why?”
“You know why Fenril,” Garron responded gazing up at the night sky and breathing in the salt air.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, I tell you. I was making real progress in the east,” Fenril said.
“And I in the South,” Greggor added.
Garron sighed and turned to regard his four companions. Each of them looked withered and impossibly old though their strength lay not in their limbs. This discussion was pointless and each of them knew it. They had their lifetimes to try and avoid this night and those lives were at an end now.
“Before you all start chiming in, tell me your ‘progress’ lasted any longer than it took for you to leave and try elsewhere?”
Eyes shifted at that as the men went through varying stages of denial and finally glowered at one another. Greggor seemed to gather his thoughts.

By the way...posting only 13 lines is WAY lame!

[This message has been edited by ChrisG (edited August 01, 2005).]

[This message has been edited by ChrisG (edited August 01, 2005).]

163,000 words is a pretty sizeable work. You're asking for a lot of commitment from a reader to give you comment on something that size.

What concerns me is what you've posted here. Your "bacis" (I assume you mean basic) blurb doesn't work for me; the three sentences don't seem to actually connect to one another. "throw in religious fundamentalism" - how? "No doubt" - well, as the author, you should KNOW, don't share your assumptions. Just tell us whether he did or didn't struggle with "the duality" of the subject (what duality? Do you simply mean the conflicting ideas of Creationism/Intelligent Design vs Evolution?). "pull him in" - pull him into where? How? What?

Then there's your prologue. You've got Fenril, Greggor and Garron talking (plus two others, nameless), but we don't know what they're talking about, or who they are. Sure, Fenril "knows why", but we don't; we don't even know what he was asking about, let alone the answer. You then tell us "the discussion is pointless", so it's asking a lot for the reader to stay interested in it.

For good measure, there are some punctuation issues - missing commas ("You know why, Fenril", Garron responded, gazing up...), inconsistent capitalisation (east and South), incorrect tense use (They'd had or They had had, not They had - the correct form is ugly, so you might want to break up the repitation - "They had each had a lifetime...").

I can sense a response on its way about all the stuff that we dont understand yet will soon be revealed, but it comes later than the 13 lines. Make sure to have a read of some of the other posts on here before you do though.

Have you received criticism on any of the book before now? Any comments and feedback as you've been going along?

I'm trying to figure what stage this book is at and how much rework you are willing to do after receiving critique. Is this the final version, apart from a bit of a tidy up re: spelling / comma placement etc. Or are you still on first draft stage?

Your "Bacis blurb" is enough to convince me I don't want to read or critique.

Your sentence structure in the blurb doesn't make sense, and that is all I need to know that probably there are issues throughout your manuscript.

You have roughly 13 lines to convince an editor to continue reading. If you can't accomplish that in 13 lines, you might as well forget about being published. Sentence structure, spelling, grammar... if you don't have the mechanics mastered the editors won't move past that first page, which is what the first 13 lines amounts to.

I'm getting a touch sensitive regarding all the new members who recognize the 13 line rule yet choose to disregard it because they think it's "lame." It seems rude to me to come onto a board like this and thumb your nose at the established conventions. If you don't LIKE the established conventions, I'm sure there are other places that don't hold 13 lines as a requirement. However, if you would do just a little research on "first 13" using the "search" feature of the board or better yet, the FAQ section, you would find that there are solid reasons behind the rule, one of which is to protect your copyright of your manuscript. Gee, it's not such a "lame" rule if violating the rule causes you to lose your right to publish, is it?

I still consider myself fairly new on the board, but I wouldn't have dreamed of violating a clearly stated restriction when I first joined. Yes, the first 13 seemed odd to me at first, too. But instead of thumbing my nose, I spent time trying to find the reasons. I was grateful that I learned some things I didn't know about the publishing world, like the fact that if you release too much of your manuscript electronically, you may find yourself shut out from being considered by any professional publishing firm.

Now I might mention something else. When I first joined I stated how I was looking forward to the commentary everyone could give me. I was told clearly by a couple of people, "Don't expect to get without giving." In other words, offer your services in critique to others. Develop relationships. Establish your presence.

Critiquing a novel the size of yours is a daunting task. I have a WIP that will easily rival yours in size, yet I wouldn't expect a single person to critque it in one sitting.

I suggest you join one of the Hatrack groups that offer critique for each other, and feed the book to them about 3 chapters at a time. It will take a while to get through the whole thing, but the advantage to you is that as you critique for others you will begin to understand what works and what doesn't, and why. Nothing like seeing someone else make the same errors you make to become clear on why they are errors.

You might ask for a reader for the first 3 chapters. You are far more likely to find someone willing to critique a couple of thousand words, rather than 160,000+.

Second, I put my "bacis" (typo for basic) blurb up there and my off the cuff bit about evolution and such because it was at the end of a VERY long day for me and I wasn't in the right frame of mind for putting a lot of thought into it. That said, I probably should not have been so hasty and done it at all.

Lastly, and this is for tchernabyelo:

I understand the need for rules and I didn't break them on purpose, I didn't count what I pasted. Also, your criticisms are unwarranted and unfair becaue if the entire page were to be pasted, your questions wouldn't have have been asked. They would have been answered ON THE PAGE!

No, I have not recieved any feed back at all. That's been extremely difficult and is the reason why I have begun to enter online writer's groups. I really need the readers, but 163,000 words IS long. Not only that, but its the first book of a completed trilogy. Total trilogy length is 910,863 words.

Long book length being frowned on by publishers is discouraging and that's another reason why I need help with Earth Stone. Its been sitting cold without my looking at it for about 6 months, but I'm TOO close to the work. That's why I need help. Also, a few chaps at a time would be good.

quote:

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Lastly, and this is for tchernabyelo:

I understand the need for rules and I didn't break them on purpose, I didn't count what I pasted. Also, your criticisms are unwarranted and unfair becaue if the entire page were to be pasted, your questions wouldn't have have been asked. They would have been answered ON THE PAGE!

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Yes, but would I have continued reading to find out? I am not suggesting that the first thirteen lines (oh, and regarding your (perhaps ill-advised) sarcasm to the board administrator - perhaps you should check the definition of "13 lines", which I'll freely admit I misinterpreted when I first submitted here) need to explain everything, by any means. A certain amount of confusion is no bad thing, so long as the reader's curiosity is piqued as well. You are trying to convince a reader that they want to find out what's happening, and my points were that for me (and naturally the criticism was purely my own opinion, with which you are entirely free to disagree - I'm just trying to explain how I reached that opinion) I was not convinced that I wanted to read further to find out. There wasn't a single clear character to "latch on to" as a reader; the subject of their conversation was unclear; and they themselves admitted that it was pointless, which really doesn't encourage the reader to think "well, they may think that, but I know better so I'm determined to find out what's going on".

You are entirely at liberty to reject my opinions, in precisely the same way I am entirely at liberty not to be entranced by your writing. However, before you complain, perhaps you should consider, as Beth has hinted, that ultimately what you are asking for here is for other people to use up their time to assist you. As you may imagine, I certainly feel less inclined to do so in the future.

What I really want to know is do I even NEED the dang prologue? I'd like to send the prologue and first 3 chaps to ANYone willing to read and comment on them. Two things I need from such a read...1. is the writing good. 2. do I need a prologue?
Also, whatever comments any of you would care to make.

Look, I went on another board (critters.org) and did a "request for dedicated readers," which meant, "read my novel." I don't think my novel sucks, but I got 0 takers. It's not just you. To get this working, I strongly recommend you do one of the Hatrack Groups.

We can swap our first chapters and go from there. In fact, I have gotten readers for my novels from Hatrack, but basically by offering the first chapter and letting those who were interested request the rest on a chapter by chapter basis.

That would be great. As for wbrigg's comment "For novels, here, we usually use the Hatrack Groups (see the main page)." I thought that's what this forum was for?!?!?!?!?

"I strongly recommend you do one of the Hatrack Groups." HUH??? Isn't that what this is???

VERY confused here. (Maybe just dense though too, so be nice )

If it's less than about 3,000 I might be willing to give it a go.