battle scene follow up

How was that for a battle scene? I have mostly been posting the story pieces and not commentary on their writing, but battle scenes always take more work than the rest, and I'm never sure they come across to readers as I intend. How was the pace, the feel? Over dramztized, too little tension? Too quick to feel like a battle? One of the typical pieces of advice that is hard to successfully follow is to develop a fast paced scene in fine detail, describing every moment, and generalize for a slower scene. Another piece of advice is to avoid all narration, to provide explanations for anything that needs explaining before or after, but the line between detail and narration can become blurred.

It's not saving if you're spending

Sale's, specials, and package deals often push how much the buyer "saves". In reality, purchasing something on sale is still spending. Saving means putting money in the bank. Sometimes the deals are really good: if you think they are, do the math, consider if you would soon buy it anyway: but if you wouldn't, don't buy. It's still money going out that you would otherwise have kept hold of. The trick with package deals is that they often include something you wouldn't buy normally. If the deal is so good that the things you would buy, ignoring that you get something extra, too, then it might be worth considering, but if you still have to pay some extra to get the extra, there is no savings, only more spending than you would have done otherwise.

Some changes to E-ships

I've been revamping things in E-ships even as I post and now some of the changes are going to impact what you read here. Not a lot, most of the changes are in parts of the story that I haven't posted yet, but Kurgan Brown's name is changing to Kurgan Umbago and the chapter breaks are different so the numbering may be just a bit off for the next post. It's not that any of the story is missing or repeated, just that the chapters have been renumbered.

I've never noticed a set pattern for chapter heading, in science fiction or fantasy any more than other genres, just that some people will do more than one scene per chapter and some won't. I do, generally, and don't like to have 50 chapters in a short book, and that makes it a little more of a challenge to know when to make a chapter break, but when I noticed that various other changes had created chapters that went on for more than 50 pages, I decided it was time to rethink the chapter structure. It's still a tad on the arbitrary side, aiming for 15-20 pages on average and once or twice breaking what would otherwise have been a single scene, but it seemed appropriate at the time.

If this leads to too much confusion, since you won't have the previous chapters to check back against for clarity, let me know and I can send you a copy of the new version of the preceding chapters of the book. More of the changes, however, will be in the flow and polish of the chapters to come and I hope you will enjoy them. Let me know if anything I'm doing makes it worse! Improvement is always a desirable change in fiction writing, never making it worse!

Buy the Right Thing at the Right Time

Often, the right thing to buy is the more expensive one. Food, not so much, unless you need it for something special, like a fancy dinner or a hiking trip where every ounce of weight and every day it lasts is important. We go to the cheapest stores that carry what we need for our every-day meals. but when we buy things that are intended to last, we shop with something besides cost in mind. We've done the cheap route, and for some products, cheap lasts as long as the more expensive and does what it needs to do, but for many things, especially gadgets, cheap can be expensive. Cheap appliances have to replaced more frequently, cheap furniture doesn't stay looking nice for long, and cheap bookcases having sagging shelves shortly for anything but paperbacks. So we looked for quality, too, and if more expensive means better construction, we'll pay the difference.

On the other hand, we don't buy the better one when we have one that works. Chairs wear, but they wear slowly. Only when we see that over time a chair is beginning to wear out and it's not something that can be readily repaired (chairs can be re-apholstered if the stuffing beneath is still good, but sometimes it gets mushed beyond fluffing or decays, or springs give way and start poking through. Then it's time to start shopping, but not necessarily to buy immediately. Watch for stores that have regular or frequent sales. Study the options so that you're buying something you'll like for years, not just something that looks like what you have now or fits the current fad.

If you like brand names, look for brand names with a reputation of reliability and quality, not fashion, double for appliances and tools, which can look identical but are worlds apart in the quality of the metal and other materials and parts. For things that move, look for metal. If plastic is the only option, look for plastic that is strong, with sharper turns and steep angles. Gears and zippers that are rounded and shallow are more likely to become unusable quickly, because they are made that way when cheap, weak plastic is being used to make them.

Periodically, even long-lasting things begin to deteriorate or no longer served the purpose you need them for and expensive purchases will need to be made, but if the purchase is done with thought and care, it will be a long time before you need to do a second time.