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@rochellaine @valtmy @seekjustice @alia @ariel-ashira @jenwriter17 @anyone
I think I’ll try to hack away this plot hole a bit. How are y’all doing? 🙂
You can pronounce it however you want.
Well, it definitely doesn’t follow the conventions of a romance novel, but there is a lot of romance…
I think I’ve fixed the dystopian problem actually. Hopefully. I’ve read a lot about the expected conventions, and been working on worldbuilding, and it actually fits a lot more snugly into those expectations than I would immediately have thought.
But back to the romance problem…a lot of it is going anyway. I had a good conversation with one of my betas, who’s very anti-romance 😛 about whether Chessy could admire Justice in a more hero-worship sort of way, and then fall in love with him toward the end, when he’s less cranky and more human. So I’ve been trying to implement that a bit more as I plot out the third draft.
INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
There isn’t a link?
Hello. I’m working on my WIP. Got stuck for a while before I realised that it does not make sense for the scene I am writing to go the way I had planned so I am doing backtracking.
@seekjustice It took a while, but I found it! 😛 You said you had no idea where the pairing between Rain and Kendall came from? Here’s the quote from your first draft:
I felt myself drifting off to sleep, the grass prickling my neck and tickling my ear. Then I smiled. “Hey, Rain, you’ve got a thing for Kendall, don’t you?”
“Kendall?” Came back Rain’s teasing voice. “Not as big as your thing for Justice!”
“I don’t think there’s much danger of that going anywhere fast!” I retorted. “But you and Kendall? Stop trying to change the subject!”
Rain wiggled. “Why not? Why not you an’ Justice, I mean. Why can’t you ‘ave a thing for ‘im?”
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
@valtmy Sounds tedious. 😛
I’m doing more fan stuff. As usual.
You can pronounce it however you want.
I do that everytime. I even went and copied the link, just never pasted it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T-tYVuU9CwMBJJgt4MIpkXj9fScSA3Z06DttCofZShk/edit?usp=sharing
@dekreel Hey! We’re just discussing myNew York Times BestsellerWIP.INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
Ah, so she does actually say she likes Kendall? Hmm…I didn’t know that
*wonders off to ponder for a while*
INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
@seekjustice Which one?
Oh, and sorry I never came back to beta-reading SFI. I lost the notes page you emailed me and then life happened annnnd. . . yeah. So sorry. 😛 🙁
You can pronounce it however you want.
No, I completely understand. Life has been mad for me too.
And yeah, we were talking about SFI. 🙂
INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
@seekjustice I’ll have to read it later tonight. I’ve got to go now for a while I think. 🙁
"Sylvester - Sylvester!"
Yay, I think I like this prologue much better. It introduces the central conflict and immediately sillhows what the story will be a modern, futuristic retelling of Les Mis, which I think will be what a reader that picks up your book will be expecting.
A few points:
#1: Since the POV is meant to be omnescient, the shift in focus is fine to me. However, I am not expert on this as POV and focus issues are major struggles for me in my own writing so don’t rely on my judgment for this.
#2: I don’t understand how Jean escaped. He threw himself into a “dark opening”? What is that “dark opening”? Why did Caderousse and her guards not follow? Caderousse barked commands to the other guards… but they don’t seem to do anything later so what commands are these? It doesn’t seem like they are putting much effort to try to stop Jean.
#3: So what I understand is, the woman at the counter hacked into government records and somehow changed the identities of Jean and Chessy? How does she know for sure which is the right record to change for Chessy without scanning her barcode? (Sorry, this is an influence from my line of work. To me a name match is not sufficient and the woman should have at least two unique identifiers of Chessy)
#4: The woman says that she’ll “take care of everything else” for the changing of the records… but she’s clearly not going to be able to do that since by the end of the scene I imagine that she’s been arrested. Unless your idea of hacking comes from Hollywood movies, I think you can agree that it’ll take more than the hacking the woman did in the short amount of time before Caderousse showed up to completely change their identities in all databases and come up with forged records. If the identity change is incomplete, shouldn’t Caderousse still be able to track and find Jean? Also, what’s stopping the woman from divulging the new identities she gave Jean and Chessy after getting threatened/tortured by the guards (which I assume will be happening)? You did say that she has a good “business-like” reputation so maybe she’s really that professional and would refuse to answer to give Caderousse a lead. But since she’s a minor character only and so does not have much characterisation I am not sure that this is very convincing.
#5: What is the reason for Jean telling the woman to put down the name ‘Chessy’. Isn’t ‘Chessy’ a nickname? I don’t know if it is different for other countries but nicknames are not put down in official records. Also, if they are going to be on the run, shouldn’t Jean try to leave as much of their past behind? Putting ‘Chessy’ down on their new identity record just because of some emotional attachment just strikes me as a really stupid, pointless move. If the purpose of this line is to inform the audience that the girl’s nickname is Chessy, that was already done with the locket.
#6: Also, I find it really strange that the new names chosen for their identities are similar to their real names (starting with the same letter and all). I understand wanting to keep the whole ‘Chessy’ thing but again, shouldn’t they be trying to put more distance from their past?
I know, it’s not entirely perfect yet 😛
Concerning #4, I hadn’t even thought of the woman being arrested, but you’re right. She would be, 😛 I’ll have to fix that up.
#5 My idea was that he had her name “legally” changed to Chessy.
#6 And this is where I run into problems. Its all very well for Jean to change his name and hide so well that Caderousse can never find him. But what about Errol? Jean has just come from the situation described in the second prologue, where he’s told Errol to tell him as soon as he’s found Dr Manly and he’s probably not expecting that to take seventeen years, so he needs to make sure Errol can find him.
The only way I can think of to change this, is making his real name completely different to Jean Verde…say Charlie Baker, or something along those lines, and him telling Errol Caelan that he will be known as Jean Verde and to look for him under that name?
Plot holes really drive me over the edge 😛
INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
#4: I think my issue is that it’ll actually be really, really easy to find the new identity Jean is using unless literally every single government database storing identity information is compromised. Caderousse knows that Jean came here to get a new identity so she knows that a record change has been made. To identify the false record, all the Guard has to do is to compare the current database to a backup of the database that was saved at a previous time (I imagine a daily backup for any system worth their salt. If you’re telling me the government doesn’t even have this then I am not convinced of the level of control the government is enforcing in this dystopia) and identify all the records that do not match. After removing all the legitimate new records (e.g. new births) that were added between now and then, the remaining ones can only be those inserted by a hacker. Once they know the new identity Jean is using, it is game over because the Guard can track and find him.
Haha, as you can probably tell, I’m having lots of fun trying to figure out how to screw things up for Jean. It’s sort of related to my line of work, you see. 😛
#5: So… there’s no more Chelsea?
#6: Yes, Jean can tell Errol exactly what new name he is planning to use. I think that will work.
*cue despair*
Well, the only thing I can think of now is that he fakes his own death and goes to live in a convent.
INFP Queen of the Kingdom commander of an army of origami cranes and a sabre from Babylon.
One solution I can suggest is that instead of a completely new identity, Jean buys an existing identity for himself and Chessy so there’s an existing record already in the system. Maybe there is a real John and Charlotte Whitehall or something but they are dead and their deaths were not reported so the government is not aware of it so they are still alive according to the records. Then Jean buys forged documents (their identifier tattoo must be removed too and they must get new ones!) from the woman.
In that case though I wouldn’t know how Jean would know what name to give to Errol since he wouldn’t know what identity is available for him to take until he gets to the store. But I think that can be solved by rearranging the sequence of events a little.
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