time stamps would be handy. Otherwise very helpful episode, thanks!

very good

good

In several videos, I've heard both of you talk about the four-question structure that a novel's opening needs to answer: Whose head am I in? (POV) Where am I? (Setting) Why am I here? (Incident/Initial conflict) And a hook. I have problems with "Why am I here?" I would like to know if you think there are some cool ways to omit a real answer. Do you think it's possible? In the live edit, it kind of worked; I would have liked more connection to Rayner's feelings, but I kind of filled in the blanks myself when she took her gun. I'm thinking of an episode of "Black Mirror" (I know it's a series, not a book, and maybe that's why it works), "San Junipero," when Yorkie enters a bar and meets Kelly. You don't know why she is in the bar or what she is doing, but you feel from the start that something is "off," and the mix of that feeling and the connection with the characters' emotions makes you keep watching until the plot unfolds. I know you need a solid foundation to break the rules. I'd love to hear you discuss, perhaps in a podcast episode, how to break these rules effectively, or analyze openings that succeeded despite disregarding them and explain why. Thank fo the video, i love the podcast!

Line 9 and 10 are rathercontradictory. She's unaccustomed to the feel of the gun after so long apart, yet in the next sentence she thinks "seems like yesterday"?

49:02 Southern girl, here... I hate the word dragged, too. It pulls me out every time. I can overlook a multitude of sins, but not dragged instead of drug. 😂 I laughed and nodded with Drake through this whole portion. GIVE ME DRUG OR GIVE ME A THESAURUS!!

You are the only person who has ever mentioned the order of adjectives aside from a PBS show I saw back in the late seventies.

Revisit this topic.

A metaphor is a symbolic example of an idea or action. A simile is just a metaphor using like or as.

:)

Revisit this topic.

I don't get it. Why would you need a magical device, for your character to look at their memories? It's called memory XD

cool

I agree that first person is too limiting. Then again, I prefer to write multiple-POV stories, so maybe I'm biased. Hard to write multiple POVs in first person.

LOL pvp server of the world

I drew out the map for my current WIP years ago with a friend, and kind of trusted their gut on a lot of things, but going through and googling things years later was a big help (ie, there's a swamp here near the desert, does that work? Oh yes, but I need a strong water source on the edge of the desert). I did something similar with chatgpt in figuring out the rough physics for two moons

What if you know about deserts but you're making it a desert anyway?

min 49:39 The sentence "The Sun did not set in the Empire" was created and used first by the Spanish Empire, extending through America, Europe and Asia (Philippines) xD so that, like everything else was also taken by the british from someone else.

funny start

min 31:05 I think the gender roles come from defense capacity but not just that. I think it had a lot to do back in the day on the "value" of life itself. In a world where 30% of women died in childbirth and very young; attachment, powerstructures based on women and so on are more problematic. In a sense, a man unless at war, would have a higher chance of surviving than a woman, thus more trusted to inherit and keep stuff together for longer. Women also had to tradicionally spend more time caring for the kids and men were more free to do other things (such as pursue education, art, crafts etc). So women were seen as more dispensable and less worth it than a man in many cultures due to this. I hope I explained this correctly (its my explanation on why this gender roles came to be).

26:26 Europe isnt really that small. It measures 10.12 million km2 while Continental US for example is 7,5 million km2 but this is a common misconception. I mean in truth the continent is really Eurasia in which case it would be gigantic xD.

I build the world, then I adventure. I draw out pretty much everything first. Workout all the mechanics, even animate them and build simple JavaScript engines for proof of concepts. Then I adventure and see what kind of stories happened in that world with those rules. All in first person present.😅 And yes you do have to do the research because there's always somebody out there who knows Klingon and can tell you when your grammar is wrong. And technically they'd be correct, which is the best kind of correct.

Live edits are my favorite! Even if I'm watching the replay. Always learn so much. Looking forward to watching this 🍿🥤

hello

can i send my first page plz

the best video of its kind.

@47:03 #7 seems as though it is saying Ursa is very glad the stars ignore her, gives an example of the stars ignoring her/not helping and the stakes(the feed and starving chickens), then ended with her belief that she survives on her own strength alone. Seems to me 'divine gifts' means 'help from the stars, which people pray for.' "Everyone else prayed to the stars, looked to them for help... Ursa was more comfortable with the stars just turning a blind eye. Like now... No, as far as she cared, she and her family got as far as they had without any divine gifts." The feeling I get from the paragraph is that those stars she dislikes so much will suddenly interrupt her life sending her on an adventure. Her belief that "she and her family got as far as they had without any divine gifts." is probably her misbelief and her journey will help her become appreciative of the stars/divinity.

"OM-NI-SENT"?? Don't you mean "omniscient"? I'm sorry, I can't listen anymore. My ears hurt. Too bad, because otherwise there are some good ideas here.

#8 here. Well, dang, I've been trying to figure out what was wrong with my opening and why it felt so different from the rest of the book - even the couple of friends and family that have read it say the first couple pages are rough to get through - but I think you nailed it. The rest of the book actually is in 3rd, but I think I was focusing so hard on the prose in the opening paragraphs that I not only made it too purple/obtuse, but accidentally slipped into omniscient. Need to ground the reader much more quickly as well. Watching you two experience it for the first time helped me see what I was actually putting my readers through (tbf, I wrote the first draft of this chapter, set it aside, then decided to finish the book 20 years later, so I have trouble seeing anything but my head-book with the first chapter). I think my answer is to start with a blank page and just completely rewrite the opening so it has the correct POV, and fits in tonally with the rest of the book. Would it be inappropriate to submit it again once I've done that? Also, not a big deal, but I double checked in my sent email folder, and that was originally submitted as an attached Word.docx, so I'm not sure why there were formatting issues. It didn't even like my apostrophe, so something was clearly up. I know Office 2024 finally came out recently, which you'd be on if you have MS 365, while I'm just on Office 2019, but you'd think things would stay consistent between those two, so I honestly don't know what happened there.

To address the intro, the deathknell for me with first person is that I will always compare every first person prose book to The Catcher in the Rye, probably the best work in that perspective, and the chances or an author creating a main character as fun as Holden Caulfield is basically zero. Filtering an entire story from your mind through the mind of a person that exists only in your head is madness, I respect anyone who can do it well.

Apart from the editing issues mentioned in story number one, I find the story itself and the world of it quite alluring. I would like to read that novel.

Really good and informative video! It was worth every minute and made me look at my own script in a completely new way. Subscribed! 🙂

I might send you guys like 5 or 6 first pages. But one of the things I hard agree with is fast action requires short sentences.

How do you organically jump forward in time in first person present limited omniscience so you don't fall into the trap of feeling like you account for every waking second of the main character? Do you just embrace the horror and write something like, 'The next few weeks at sea were relatively uneventful and routine...' or 'Day in and day out we trained until the moons passed through their thirteen cycles and the Eve of the Dead is once again upon us.''?

Hello Marie and Drake. I am the author of story number 6 in this session and thank you both for looking over the first page of my very first story. I understand your critique on my use of first person point of view and will continue to work on this part of our craft. This story would sound better as a third person point of view will make those changes and send it to beta reader. Thanks again!

I have read this chapter 8 or 10 times. I love how Drake becomes his characters.

You can tell Drake loves to teach.

Help they give, mabey i one day write gooder /s

"Be aware that there are people who won't read present tense" is pretty awful advice... ngl😬 Like, it's all about what's best for the narration of the story. In this case, present tense i think fits perfectly. If a reader picks up a book, it's because they're interested about the setting or better yet, the characters. I wouldn't be so picky as to not read a book because it's past or present tense.

I definitely knee jerk against "people don't know pov's" but having had to explain both the three branches of US government and the color wheel (specifically primary/secondary/tertiary) I'm unfortunately aware of how much people get taught and then promptly forget. For the question of "why this pov?" Is it genuinely a pure "idk" or just that's what felt natural? I can't wrap my head around writing in 2nd person, and I personally find 1st person very hard to maintain, so the choice of 3rd person makes itself. Though that does still leave the choice of free indirect/true limited/omniscient still needs to be made

Thanks for posting these videos. I’ve learned so much from you guys 🤩 I can answer your question. I write in first person present tense. Why? Because it’s what I love to read 😁

The smaller hose might hurt more but the larger hose will deliver a larger volume of water that is more likely to knock someone from their feet... Just found this podcast and I think it's for me 😁

Спасибо!

Hi Marie and Drake. I am the author, and I really appreciate your kind feedback and the time you took to review my work. I certainly don't believe the "camera" version of "show, don't tell", but I do tend to use introspection and internal emotions sparingly. Probably too sparingly. I learned a LOT from this video, for this chapter and my writing in general. Thank you!

I think the smaller hose would have more water pressure as the water has to shoot out faster and the pressure is more centralized. The bigger one may be more likely to knock you over though. Imagine a cat sitting on your lap. If they sit up straight, or stand up, they feel heavier since their weight is more focused on a smaller area, but when they lay down on you, they feel lighter, despite being the same weight.

Soa charms?

@38:43 Perhaps using feeble is a way to tap into Ven's emotions. The thing that caused her pain in this humiliating situation is feeble. Feeble to describe the hose brings a sense of Ven grasping for a thread of more power now.

You will have higher pressure and flow rate on a larger hose. Higher velocity with less pressure on a smaller hose. "Bernoulli's Principle: This principle explains the relationship between diameter and pressure; as the diameter decreases, the water velocity increases, leading to a decrease in pressure." More of an argument of stinging pain vs blunt force pain.

"it's an echo if it sounds the same when read aloud" thank you! that is a great way to put it. My preferred reading method atm is audiobook, and sometimes I worry that makes me picky in a different way during editing, but I feel like an echo is and echo.