introvert_girl

@seekjustice Perhaps.  I’ve heard that the British do not excessively display flags either except on national holidays, though, so I kind of think it may be just an American thing.  Not that Americans are necessarily more patriotic than others, just that we more outwardly and excessively display and rejoice in our patriotism. 😉

To clarify: I d…[Read more]

@bluejay Nope, I don’t have it.  Sorry. 🙁  But that sounds like an interesting business to have!

@seekjustice That sounds like a fun game.

Yeah, we’ve got flags everywhere.  American flags, state flags, sometimes other flags as well, for organizations, always placed under the American and state flags.  And if you go down South you do have the…[Read more]

@catwing By eight words! 😛 Congratulations.

@bluejay Cool, what’s the business?

@catwing I got 241 words.  How about you?

@bluejay Ah, that makes me feel better for Australians.  I’m glad you have the alphabet game. 😉  That’s funny though, that you find X to be a hard letter.  We can easily find it on all the “Exit” signs along the highways.  X is one of the absolute easiest letters to find.  I’ve never heard of “quote” signs.  @seekjustice do you have any idea…[Read more]

@seekjustice Ah yes, Bottle-o was mentioned in the video as well.

The alphabet game is a game played in the car where you basically look at road signs, license plates, or anything you can see to find each letter of the alphabet in order.  I believe it’s one of the most common car games in America.  Since “q” is one of the least used letters, w…[Read more]

@catwing I’d love to word war.  (It might help us both with our procrastination. 😉 )

@jenwriter17 Hi!  How’s it going?

@seekjustice I’ve been watching a YouTube video on the differences between American, British, and Australian English.  😀

The difference that really stuck out to me was that the Australian person in the video said you don’t have “Liquor stores” you have “bottle shops.”  Is that true?  And if so, how do you play the alphabet gam…[Read more]

@seekjustice

Good to know that my comments have some basis then 😀

@seekjustice

Why not? The retelling is modern (written in modern times) though the setting is not. 😛

@seekjustice

I thought you were going for ‘a modern retelling of Les Mis’? 😛

@seekjustice

Haha no pressure. As I said, I have no right to torment others so long as I am tormenting them with my slowness with QOD.

Right. It goes back to what (I think) I said before about whether you really want to market your book as a dystopic novel (though you can certainly set your story in a dystopic setting) because the term brings…[Read more]

@seekjustice

Ah, I thought that may have been the case. Guess it fits with the rest of the backstory.

But I suppose you’ll be working on NaNo instead of SFI now. 😛

@rochellaine

Haha stupid fugitive characters right?

I suppose a way to justify it would be to have the government ban/restrict people from going abroad. So going to another country would be just very risky. He would definitely be flagged out and arrested during the border checks.

And maybe he did relocate to another city (where the Verde family…[Read more]

@valtmy I see.  Yes, regarding worldbuilding that makes sense.

Well, in that case I think Jean would be stupid to be living still in the same city instead of relocating to another city or country.  The world is huge, and he can go anywhere he wants to, as he has a lot of money (I think that was established, right?) so why would he stay right t…[Read more]

@rochellaine

Oh, and regarding the Sapphire and Caderousse interaction thing… It does not make sense for her to be on the lookout for some pretense to arrest Jean. In this Fugitive!Jean situation, she should already think that Jean is guilty of some crime and she would be going straight to arrest him once she’s found him. No pretense necessary.…[Read more]

@rochellaine

I agree a letter would be the most appropriate form of communication in that situation. It’s not about that. It’s that letters appear to be the only form of communication available in this supposedly futuristic society. Even when people are talking about safe, non-revolutionary stuff (which granted, the characters don’t often do but…[Read more]

@seekjustice Oh, and I don’t mean that Caderousse herself is necessarily a spy per se.  Just that she seems to be acting like one in the hypothetical you proposed.  If she’s targeting one particular person for one particular reason, rather than crime in general, she’d likely have some sort of spy system looking out specifically for what Jean is d…[Read more]

@seekjustice

My first thought on reading your question was on how that would impact the original confrontation between Caderousse and Sapphire.  If Caderousse had been observing and examining the Verde family for years in attempt to find a pretense to arrest Jean, (or something similar, I’m not sure exactly what you’re intending here, but the…[Read more]

@seekjustice

Oh, speaking of the odd lifestyle of the Verde family, it randomly occurred to me why you might be struggling with wordbuilding more compared to other dystopian writers.

Most dystopias use an average Joe type of character as a POV to show how life is like for an average person in the dystopian society. But since your POV characters…[Read more]