Andres’s Comments (group member since Jul 29, 2020)

Andres’s comments from the Gathering Of Dedicated Scribblers group.

John Spartan, you are fined five credits for repeated violations of the verbal morality statute. [grabbing the tickets] "So much for the seashells."

So, did your MC lose her husband and in her grief use her government job to sneak into a military establishment where she used the highly illegal time traveling device in order to go back and see her husband? Only she entered the wrong code as her eyes were blurry with tears and when the worm hole opened it also created a mirror hole that brought your male character into the future?

Now she's falling for him but knows she should send him back to his family only if she does that means she returns to the future and faces punishment for disobeying the law in her time.

@Beata,

Of course, i pm'd you the info.

@ Beata, and of course you are all more than welcome as members of the GODS to use this form/site in any way that it helps you achieve your goal. If you need any help from the moderators just ask.


Also, you don't have to wait to move on to act 3. If you finish your entire book, you can get feedback on a completed story rather than parts. Some plot holes might be filled in act 3 but if there is only act 2 to review, you will receive mixed criticism.

It's going to be a little longer than expected with holidays around the corner but since Tomas isn't ready for a review at the moment, I could review your current work for you if you'd like?

The greatest thing is that your story doesn't have to focus on the exact details of colonization, if it takes place afterward. This isn't, The Martian, where you're describing how life maintained/survived or started. You're story takes place afterward as a western setting in an sci-fi world. A lot of the particulars you can skip as long as you have basic references to world living as opposed to world building.

Most food could have started from Algae/fungi but lets assume you're story takes place two or three generations from that point where an older man is saying, "You're lucky. Back in my day we had to survive on Algae and Fungi farms. None of this, Little Dipper Burgers!"

In fact, to add to your Western theme, you're robbers could be settlers trying to appropriate an older pre colonization biodome. You could say the Taurus mountains or Crater Littrow are now basically abandoned as technology improved it was financially more feasible to build anew than to update. This happens with many missile silo's in the USA. You're settlers win a lottery, acquire a big farm on the moon and thinking their luck has finally changed, they inherit biodome three.

Now distraught at the government, having spent their life savings to relocated to what they thought would be their dream farm, they makes plans to steal what they believe should have been given to them. The sheriff trails them from the major metropolis biodomes to the outskirt 'country farms'. Farms more self sustainable than the tunnel connected newer settlements.

Blah, now I'm rambling. I apologize. lol.

The Easy-ish Way to Create Believable, Unforgettable Fictional Worlds

https://writerunboxed.com/2021/11/20/...

Exercise #1: Write down everything you already know about your story’s world.

Set a timer for five, 10, or 30 minutes—however much time you think you need—and write out everything you already know about the world in which your story takes place, stream-of-consciousness style. Focus on the parts of your story you’ve either written or can picture clearly in your head. For example, if you know a critical scene in the climax involves an escape from a desert prison, write, “There’s a prison in the desert.” Do not consult Wikipedia’s list of desert flora and fauna. Even if you list things that are contradictory or illogical, write them all down anyway. Give yourself permission to let your mind run free. Important: This is not the time to make up new things about your world. If new ideas come to mind as you’re writing, don’t stop to examine them—just write them down and keep going.

When your time is up, read back over what you wrote. What are the things that are intrinsic or critical to your story and/or characters?





Exercise #2: Pick one thing about your world that you want to explore, then ask yourself “why?” Ideally, this would be something you listed in the first exercise—something that you already know about the world your story takes place in. Whatever it is, make sure it affects your plot and/or characters. Again, this isn’t the time to noodle on weather patterns, unless weather is a key player in your story. Once you’ve chosen one element of your world, ask yourself how that element came into existence. Then set another timer for a period of your choice and free write on that “why” question.

Example: Say your book’s protagonist comes from a culture that’s organized into a confederation of different kinship groups. Why are they a confederacy and not, say, a monarchy? Well, they’re also semi-nomadic, and the families herd livestock between summer and winter pastures every year. It’s hard for groups to unite under a single monarch when they spend half the year on their own, resolving their own conflicts, developing their own unique practices, etc. Since they herd, their livestock is the most important thing they have. Livestock means power. Want more power? Steal more livestock. Thus they developed a raiding culture. But they also discovered that it’s hard to protect yourself from external threats if you’re always fighting, so they created a council of all the families to resolve unresolvable issues. Now your protagonist might be forced to marry a total jerk to keep the peace between two families…

When your time is up, see where your explanation took you. Is there anything you can use to deepen your plot or characters?




Exercise #3: Now pick ONE thing that you know about the world of your story, something that affects the characters and plot. Then change it. You know the drill. Set a timer and free write for however long you want. Pick ONE thing to change, big or small, and summarize your plot, scene, or character background (whatever is affected most by the change) with this ONE thing different. Make your monarchy into a commune, or have that critical heist scene in the tower take place underwater. Be as big or small, realistic or absurd as you want.

Is it basically impossible to change one thing without changing everything else? Good—That means your world is probably pretty cohesive already. But try anyway, and see if you get some more insight into what makes your world tick.
Not much else needs to change to make this new thing work? You may want to revisit the “why” questions in Exercise #2 some more. Why does this thing exist if it’s not integral to your plot?

I think you could use buildings such as 'Biosphere 2' to outline settlements on the lunar surface. These could act as a capitol in your story. The building is created, then the biodome is established providing food and oxygen since the moon has no atmosphere. Now you could integrate miners/engineers that would begin carving your 'cities' through tunnel systems under the lunar surface.

On the lunar surface you will acquire a great scifi, environment while actually in the mines/shafts/tunnels you could see how that environment relates to westerns. Domes underground linking tunnels together. Rail cart tracks used as locomotives, tunnel lighting throughout. Lava pockets under the lunar surface would provide large carved out areas for farming that would only require artificial grow lights.

So you kind of have a, Mel Gibson from the Patriot meets Sandra Bullock from Demolition Man thing going on?

Wow, that's amazing Beata! That's the best thing you can do for yourself. First, write write write. It doesn't matter if its any good. Then when its done, do your second write and make your story sound like you knew what you were doing the entire time.

Remember when you submit your reviews you can leave a link to your page on goodreads so that writers that appreciate your criticism can ask you/thank you or even become peers with you.

Welcome aboard Russell. There are approximately 2.2m books published every year and yet trying to find 5 people to remain in contact with seems more difficult than finding time to write.

How's your scifi novel coming along?

https://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Thesau...

The bestselling Emotion Thesaurus, often hailed as “the gold standard for writers” and credited with transforming how writers craft emotion, has now been expanded to include 55 new entries!

One of the biggest struggles for writers is how to convey emotion to readers in a unique and compelling way. When showing our characters’ feelings, we often use the first idea that comes to mind, and they end up smiling, nodding, and frowning too much.

If you need inspiration for creating characters’ emotional responses that are personalized and evocative, this ultimate show-don’t-tell guide for emotion can help. It includes:

Body language cues, thoughts, and visceral responses for 130 emotions that cover a range of intensity from mild to severe, providing innumerable options for individualizing a character’s reactions
A breakdown of the biggest emotion-related writing problems and how to overcome them
Advice on what should be done beforedrafting to make sure your characters’ emotions will be realistic and consistent
Instruction for how to show hidden feelings and emotional subtext through dialogue and nonverbal cues
And much more!
The Emotion Thesaurus, in its easy-to-navigate list format, will inspire you to create stronger, fresher character expressions and engage readers from your first page to your last.

Check out these titles that can help with your writing.

Get helpful feedback on your story arc
Once you’ve looked over your plot and are satisfied that your story develops compellingly, share your work with other writers for helpful feedback. Start outlining and develop a story now using Now Novel’s easy story outlining tools.

Ask yourself key questions about story development
Once you’ve written the bulk of your novel, ask yourself these questions about your story’s development:

How have the main characters changed in the course of the story?
Why have they changed?
What have the characters (and readers) learned about the story’s central situation or premise that they didn’t know at the start?
What are the core themes of the story? (For example: ‘Triumph over adversity’, or ‘the danger of obsession’)
Once you have answers to the above, keep them in mind while revising. Is there any point in the story where a small tweak could make these elements more apparent?

Perhaps your main character’s growth isn’t as clear as you would like. Or else there hasn’t been enough change or development to illustrate your central theme. Keeping track of your plot – not just what happens but the reasons for plot events as well as their consequences – will help you create a more satisfying story.

Use character-driven and action-driven arcs
‘Change’ is what propels a story forward. It’s brought about by character-driven and action-driven scenes.

In a thriller novel, for example, character-driven scenes show reader the stakes (the main character’s loving relationship with their child, for example). This makes action-driven sequences such as high-speed chases all the more nail-biting and intense since we are aware of all the personal, cherished things driving the main character’s will to survive.

To develop your story satisfyingly, make sure you balance character-driven scenes with action driven ones.

Even if you are writing something less dramatic and violent such as a regency romance, the same applies. Show scenes where your main characters undertake mainly action-based activities – a carriage or train ride, for example. Use these as points of transition between scenes that deepen and grow your characters.

As you write and near the end of your first draft, it’s useful to ask questions about story development so you can decide whether or not your story shows enough growth and change:

Learn how to develop a story using subplots
A subplot is a secondary or subordinate plot that supports your main story arc.

To use a well-known example, in Harper Lee’s famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the children’s fascination with their mysterious, reclusive neighbour Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley (and their eventual encounter with him) is a subplot to the main story (a trial exposing race politics in which the children’s father Atticus is involved).

In Lee’s book, events involving Boo Radley support the main arc. The children receive a practical lesson through their encounters with Boo. They learn that inventing fantastical stories about others and turning them into bogeymen is a dubious alternative to confronting fear of the unknown and getting ‘the whole story’ about a person. In this way, Lee uses her subplot to underscore the issues at heart of the story’s central legal trial.

Outline scenes to create a storyboard
Whether you use index cards, software or a cloud-based story planner for writers, a storyboard is a useful device for developing your story.

Try to summarize the key events of each scene in as little as two lines, which of your characters it will involve, and what the scene’s purpose is.

You can do all this in the Scene Builder tool in the Now Novel dashboard, and import it to view alongside your working document using our free Google Docs plugin.

Now Novel Scene Builder - Cinderella scene summaries
Example of outline in progress of scenes and chapters for a Cinderella retelling.
As you plot your novel and plan your story development, you can reorder scenes as your story dictates, until you have a sequence of scenes that makes sense to you.

Sometimes you’ll find the order of two or more scenes should be reversed. Other times you might find that an early scene might be better shifted towards the end of the story due to its content or mood. This process will help you make your story flow and develop smoothly.

Make each of the ‘5 W’s’ change
In novel-writing and journalism alike, a ‘story’ is made up of the ‘5 w’s’ – ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘where’ and ‘when’. Who are the important characters in your story? What is the situation they find themselves in and why? Where and when does the story take place?

How to develop plot - example - infographic | Now Novel
A great story doesn’t just contain satisfying answers for these five questions. It also shows some development in each of these areas.

Your main character could be a trainee policewoman living in a rural community, for example. She’s considering giving up her career path because she finds small town life stifling. Suddenly, a local triple homicide ropes her into the most daunting (as well as thrilling) elements of police work.

The ‘who’ can change: Perhaps the trainee toughens up and becomes highly competent in her job as a result.

The ‘what’ (her goal) can shift: She realizes her calling is serving her community, and this could be because of new, meaningful interactions and relationships she forms in the course of doing her police work.

She might eventually leave for the big city, too (a change in ‘where’), wiser and more experienced.

If you make each of these elements of plot change convincingly, you’ll take the reader on a journey and will have developed your story.

One way to make sure this development happens is to storyboard your book:

Make characters develop in intriguing ways
Once you’ve done all of the above, it’s time to start thinking about how your character(s) will develop.

At the start of writing a novel, identify each primary character’s main goals.

Start brainstorming how these coupled with personality traits could lead them to develop.

A shy college student who wants to become a leading scholar, for example, might encounter a lecturer with whom he establishes an uncommon, lasting friendship. Obstacles to the character reaching his goals could include scholarship woes or false accusations of plagiarism.

You can create detailed ideas for characters simply by following the prompts in the ‘Character’ section of Now Novel’s story dashboard.

Whatever your story idea, make your characters develop in interesting ways. Show how their wants (or fears) affect their choices. Show the consequences that lead from there.

Create a timeline of your novel’s plot events
Developing a story is easier when you understand the ‘when’ of your story.

As an exercise, create a timeline of your novel’s plot events.

Make each branch in your timeline a chapter, with a summary of the most basic plot details. For example, ‘Main character learns identity of parents, prepares to try find them.’)

If you don’t intend to plot your entire novel in advance, create a timeline all the same. Fill it out in summary form as you draft so that you have a condensed visual reference. It’ll make it easier to recall where your story has lead you so far, and what the overarching flow of events looks like.

Having a document such as this helps you to navigate between the detail-oriented process of drafting scenes and chapters, and the necessary macro process of seeing the greater picture.

Use a plotting process to shape your story
Great plots begin with curiosity and good ideas.

It helps if your story begins with an intriguing hypothetical situation (for example, the premise of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four: A tyrannical political regime has criminalized independent thought as ‘thoughtcrime’). A good story idea should be fleshed out through a focused plotting process that will shape your story, however.

Use Now Novel’s story outlining tool to brainstorm quick story ideas and grow them from start to finish.

Now Novel dashboard - the Scene Builder writing tool
Developing a detailed summary is a useful exercise for letting your ideas for characters and plot points grow and settle. You might depart from your outline substantially while you draft. Even so, it will help you start thinking about your book as a connected whole.