Desiderius Price

Divorce (after all, marriage is the #1 cause)

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First, chapter 7 isn’t going hot, it’ll have to be rewritten, which means a week delay from the usual schedule. First, thanks for the review, they help! (Okay, there’s more behind the spoiler guard which will spoil a bit of chapters 5 & 6).

epoxy

Knots

hanging (Maybe I've been listening to too much of the Fallout 4 sound track, when that’s the first thing I think of with “tree”...)

Chapter 6, “Deep Cover” is now posted, enjoy! - DP

Naked

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Yep, I had that same lack of confidence, still do, to a degree. I was very shaky with that first chapter I had posted, very shaky on the nerves. While I’m better, still am.

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Hmm… I generally had good luck with LibreOffice, but then, I typically kept it to one file per chapter, so 50kwords is a bit much. Though, I’m on Gentoo Linux, and I’ve had an unstable build or two of it, so those unstable ones would crash. And anymore, I’m typically using a simple text editor using Latex as a post-processing.

I use the generators as a starting point because my mind doesn’t work well with blank sheets of paper, and the amount of time I fuss over it depends on the size of the character’s role. If I’m filling out a family tree, next to none. But if the character appears in the story with any appreciable role, I do spend time on them. The generators I deal with typically give lists, so it might be 50 names, and I’ll scan the list to see if any of them works, if not, I hit the “refresh” button. For characters with significant story time, I do try to make sure that the names are phonetically different, where possible, because names can mash together to the reader if you’ve got lots of “Jaimie” and “Jaden” and “Joe” and “Joey” and “Josephine” and “Jarred” and “Jefferey” and “Julian”, etc…. I know some people might dis on random generators, but to me, those are just suggestions, not like I’m saying “the next roll of the dice is...”, because it is my character I’m creating. And, as I work with characters, writing them, I’ll frequently change them anyway, adapting them to the circumstances, and how they write out on the story. (As I’m building a world, my DB is a couple of thousand characters, some more thoughtfully considered than others.)

Random name generators help out a lot. (With some selection for balance and having it sound right.)

You know, I kinda like the ocean wildlife, I’m not in the mood to poison those helpless creatures.

Morris was unrelated, a different gossip rumor simply because I don’t like the “I turned on the TV, and what just happened to be on….” type of thing.

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Yep, pretty much the Lori/Dale date (with a mispronunciation ) I threw in the Morris bit so that it was clear that Dale wasn’t the only one being gossiped about. The girls chatting was a good way to get some ofthe rumors back to Dale, and I’m overall happy with that mechanism. (After all, Dale, like most teenagers, cares about his social reputation.) The basketball wasn’t in the original outline! Funny how things occur to me as I’m writing…. Bit more about the embarrassment factor to Dale. His classmates mostly aren’t his friends nor enemies, it’s kinda more of a reflection of his perceived social status, when it’s good, they’re nicer, when it’s bad, they’re meaner, and they will help if it’s in their own better interests. Here’s a though I didn’t consider at the time, the basketball was very likely not cleaned when it went back to the storage rack…. BTW, thanks for the review. - DP

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