No typo shall pass your ever watchful eye!

'Not a lot to remark upon the text here aside from typos, since your overall writing quality is vastly improved with each submission. Presently, dialog formatting is fixed, although you could include some strategic indicators of who is speaking, just to ensure that readers don't lose track of whose turn it is."

I'll take note of that.

"I am delighted to see "(working on chapter 6 now)" as an author's comment on the submission of a Chapter 2, because that indicates that you are writing ahead of what you are publishing. I thought I was the only one who wants a lot of material "in the pipe" before pushing it into the limelight. (Actually, barring one exception, I don't post anything until the story is complete.) A healthy buffer ensures you can correct mistakes before they go public, and gives the text time to cool down, allowing you to proof-read it with less-biased eyes."

Certainly hope you've still got more chapters ahead in love lost. Absolutely love what you have so far :). I don't know why but I've felt pressured to publish my work every couple of days or so, I'll be sure to take it slower so I can reflect and improve on what I have written.

""Humans," you title this, but while a couple did appear, we the Audience didn't really learn anything about them. We got the "some trainers are pissy and ditch their weakmon" staple. (Even I, the great and mighty, fell on that trope in my first outing. It's trite but it can work.) We got the generic Any Joy is Every Joy Joy. We got...we didn't get the guy at the market, and have to assume that someone was there. I guess there could have been a collection bowl on the counter with a sign reading "AFK, please be honest and pay for what you take," but even then Blaze might have trouble breaking one of his hundreds."

The main point of this chapter was to show Blaze's confusion of humans themselves, not necessarily to show his interaction with them. I should also have noted that the mart was informed of what he had done.

1. Why humans grew less trusting of him. I suppose I should have done a better job explaining Blaze's back story (yeah yeah rub it in) as he has spent most of his life with his family so the concept of such radically different opinions is strange to him. While he lived in his pack individual opinions didn't contribute to survival so it was essentially a majority rules on everything.

2. Why humans saw value in things that had none, the hand bag, money, etc.

3. Why are goods deeds thought of as a rare occurrence?

There were others but I think these were the most important.

They pass, but they get caught eventually. I had a 't' that was not appropraitely majuscule in Nor Gloom of Night that I only discovered last night, many weeks after releasing it. Editing by evening is a bad idea.

As I hinted at in previous reponses, Love Lost Chapters 15, 16, and 17 are done, and I've opened a blank file for 18. (Not sure what's going to happen in it yet.) I've actually been sitting on it all for a while. I was feeling very uncertain about 14 and did not consider it for release until I got 16 to a full-length draft. As its 3½ star rating here indicates, 14's first half did not enrich the lives of my readership. I take solace that the second half fared better, but I do not excuse my failure. Now that 17 is ready to cool off and go to proof-reading and editing, I can begin to consider releasing 15, but it still has a problem which I have written myself out of but I still feel bad about because I should not have let it to happen. Sloppy, sloppy. In the long term, I have no idea how many chapters LL will run to. I have it broken in my mind into Acts; we're still in Act I. There were to be three, but I've taken to counting out at least four in my current vision. Coming back to the one pressing matter: your schedule----do what works for you. If the regular deadline keeps you going, stick with it. If your work is suffering, change it.

I didn't really read any confusion regarding humans from Blaze, and how confused can he be when he can brain-scan them?

No, you should not have noted that the pokemart (which apparently is integrated á la Gen V's T.M. vendors?) was informed. That should have been shown. e.g.: With a bit of a stretch, I placed two potions on the counter. The clerk leaned over and looked down on me for a split-second before recognizing that--. ¶ "You must be the good samaritan I just got a call about. I can knock twenty percent off for you; does that sound like a bargain?" ¶ With a grand in my purse, $1.20 off wasn't something I'd break a sweat over, but there were times in my past when having $1.20 would've seemed like a grand, so I nodded with an appreciative grin.

1. He must be famous and easily recognized for humans (which is a lot of individuals across the world) to "[grow] less trusting of him." Knowing how fussy the Charizard line seems to be in canon media, I doubt anyone would overtly trust an orange lizard with a flaming tail without getting to know it first.

2. The difference in values theme can certainly grow into something. Especially since you have established that he is familiar with and understands the concept of things that have value but no worth (bank notes), but despite his 5,000 IQ, fails to grasp why humans would agree on and sanctify the practice of assigning value to thinks of no worth. (Answer: Because it's a way of communicating worth that has no tangible form.) (5,000 you say.) (It's a good thing that Westwood the Fifth admitted that the Pokedex contains mostly anecdotes and things he made up or people might accidentally take that figure seriously.) (I'm waiting for Blaze to bend a spoon.) (Without using his tail to heat it until soft.) (Hopefully it won't become a hobby though.) (A cereal spoon bender. Breakfast would become the most awkward meal of the day.)

3. To me at this point, it reads more like Blaze doesn't understand that human culture considers a "good deed," voluntary or solicited, as a debt that must be repaid with at least a token gesture. That could arise from his socialist upbringing, where doing "good" for the pack is expected/compulsory. I see nothing in Joy's behavior that would indicate favors being seen as "rare," and since he's a psychic, there's little room for "he misinterpreted her" as an explanation, if indeed that was supposed to be implied.



Oh, and about the narration amongst dialogue:

>"I'll see that it's done, are you okay? You don't look so good." My hunger was starting to catch up with me. ¶ "I haven't eaten in a couple days but I plan to buy some food with the prize money I won."
("I'll see that it's done, are you okay? You don't look so good." ¶ My hunger was starting to catch up with me. "I haven't eaten in a couple days but I plan to buy some food with the prize money I won.")
You attached Blaze's narration to Joy's line even though it shifts the focus to Blaze.

(1) That part was more in a third person perspective, something I should have expanded on.

(2) I never said (or at least I didn't mean to say) that he himself had a 5000 IQ, he is still very much a charmeleon but he retains aspects of the mind of an alakazam. Maybe I'll make a chapter dedicated to spoon bending or that there is no spoon o_O, what a plot twist that would be! In all seriousness he hasn't had that much experience with humans, which leads to the confusion, and he generally only mind reads for something important.

(3) He wasn't talking about humans specifically, more people in general (still standing by that he refers to pokemon as people). This is all though his perspective and I guess I must have not conveyed it correctly.

The more I look back on this, the more I feel like it was a mistake to publish. This is the first story I haven't just deleted after a week of writing and I feel like I have something going here. But when I go back and see how poorly it was written, it discourages me from continuing onward. What do you think I should do? Should I just disappear for a month while I re wright and edit it all, or should I continue at the pace I'm going?

I know, the 5000 figure was in the contect of the troll-reference Pokedex, in reference to his progenitor, but since Mr. Chapter Z. Narrator, Esquire, did say (to paraphrase since the exact text is aching for adjustment anyway and I can't be arsed to flip back two tabs) "inherited the mind of an alakazam," and "5000 IQ," in rapid succession, We the Readers are left with little to assume BUT that he should be alakazam-smart, and since we have no context for what that means in your world, except for your re-asserting the Pokedex lore and remarking that he takes pleasure in debating philosophy at a level that confounds what would be apparent his peer group, we're going to be expecting a psychic in fire's clothing. Again a consequence of telling over showing; we never got a feel for what Blaze's mentality/mentalism actually is or means in the context of his relationships with others. We got a short paragraph blocking out in a very non-specific way that he is...atypically intelligent yet youthfully un-wise. That in itself is an inner conflict that can add interest to a character that would be difficult to write for otherwise, but your tyro effort left the range of possibility wide open. And, even in Narrator Reads The Character Bio mode, a small adjustment could have been made to the phrasing to make clear that the 5000 figure was likely an overstatement (perhaps even for actual alakazams depending on how you wish to portray them in your world) but that he was always ahead of the curve and that made him a victim of the isolation applied to people who are outliers from what would otherwise be their fellows.

I.Q. is a lot of hokum anyway. It measures one mechanical attribute of a brain; pattern recognition and re-application. An important one to be sure, but hardly a complete picture. Plus, different tests on one subject will disagree wildly, by 10% sometimes.



>"The more I look back on this, the more I feel like it was a mistake to publish."
Mistake? Mistakes have negative consequences. To what terrible fate has putting some words on a website doomed you? (I'm not seeing one.)

You're passing through one of the phases of exposure to my critique. IT'S JUST A PHASE. What you just told me is that you see "how poorly [Chapters 0 and 1 were] written," compare it to Chapter 2 (which elevated you from being subect to technical critique to content critique) and consider that much improvement over one week and three sessions to be DIScouraging? That's bullshit. What you are experiencing is that previously-admitted "delete after a week" habit nipping at your nipples combined with dizziness from the 360° spin I put you through: you wrote 0 and 1 while full of "inspiration" (inspiration isn't a thing, more on that later, maybe, since "later" seems to be in question), got serious with 2 (by choosing to learn how to format your dialog), found 3-6 in your My Documents, then here came cge all big and bad picking out all the flaws and hanging them from the clothes line like photographs developing in a dark-room.

Granted, it's an altogether new experience for someone who has never had a work thoroughly reviewed and critiqued before. I had to figure out how to do it to myself for myself. But something I've read is nagging at me...

Whence came this "this is the first story I haven't just deleted" came from? Lo, I suspect you have done this writing thing before, likely to plurality, and each time let cowardice put you back beneath the bedsheets. Afore you stated that "[my] story was the main turning point where [you] decided to give writing something a shot," but the other quotation I just cited indicates that that is a mis-statement; that rather my influence is what encouraged you to step into the limelight for the first time. And so you have.

It's amateur night at the Apollo. You're on stage. Rub the stump. Welcome to the show. You are the show.



First of all, as far as We know, you have no body of work. Okay, there may be false starts at writing in your past; but if you learned nothing from them then they don't count. So, you have 2524 words of verified experience so far. My first piece (A Tragedy of Impatience) was garbage on the technical scale at 4000, I didn't sense myself getting a feel for writing until surmounting the Great Writer's Block of C/E Chapter 7 (35000 words at that point), and after I released the completed story (48000 words lifetime) I took feedback, reworked C/E (brining it up to my new writing standards and adding over 10000 of content along the way), and went back to fix up AToI so it would be at least presentable on the same website. So, by the time I started my third piece and the first I approached with actual confidence rather than morbid curiosity at what would happen if I used a word processor unsupervised, Waterlogged, I had accumulated 60000 experience points.

You have 2524 and you expect to be writing at a level that you won't look back upon with disdain? Get real. Get over yourself. Get back to work...

>Should I just disappear for a month while I re wright and edit it all
(Re-write. How did that typo happen?)
People who disappear for (insert time period here) never come back, or do after ten times the period and only to flounder a bit then quit forever.
>or should I continue at the pace I'm going?
Difficult to say since I'm not a psychic and have no information about what "the pace" is, or the content of Chapters 3-6. If you've continued to advance (or at least not regressed) since 2, then the problem of 0 and 1 is really a matter of envisioning a stronger introduction to the plot and spending a do-over on typing out their evolved forms. Since you attest to having figured out your Narrator situation, that should be a quick fix.

*that said*

The choice to begin was yours; the choice to continue is yours. You can edit recursively, doing what has to be done to old chapters to bring them up to your advancing standard (as evidenced by the gradient from Chapters 0 to 2, a quickly advancing standard) to hone your clean-up and editing skills, or you can just leave your messes behind and work straight through (better for getting things done, but isn't attractive to prospective readership) and re-tool the story as a whole afterward, as I did with Can't Escape. Between these two options, the better route is the one that best serves what you feel is more important: getting material out of your head, or elevating your quality standards. Both will happen if you complete Blaze's story, so it's just a priority thing.

Or you can flick a match at your manuscript (yet again), tell the world you're still a big weenie who won't see-through anything you're not immediately great at, and tell me that I wasted my writing "free" time for the last few days reviewing and replying on these by-then-deleted webpages instead of just working on my own projects that I choose not to give up on, because you selected the "constructive critism" of the voice in your head that says little else to you but "give up, delete it all" over the detailed notes from someone who has cast approximately 265,731 words to the winds and from whom you've indicated you want to see more. Wouldn't be the first time, sadly----some people out there are so good at holding themselves back that they never find themselves good at doing much else.



Anyway it goes, anyway it can, the show must go on.

I've been really busy over the past couple of days, but in the time I've had to think on the story I've come up with a conclusion.

First off "You're passing through one of the phases of exposure to my critique. IT'S JUST A PHASE. " "...then here came cge all big and bad picking out all the flaws and hanging them from the clothes line like photographs developing in a dark-room."

Don't give yourself all of the credit, you can take most of it, but not all :P.

"You have 2524 and you expect to be writing at a level that you won't look back upon with disdain? Get real. Get over yourself. Get back to work..."

Fair enough.

Following *that said*

Having thought about it, it appears that this was just a small panic attack as a result of the mighty sledgehammering which I had asked for. So after giving myself a mental slap on the face, I started to take a deeper look into your advice. I sat down (in the time I had) and worked on coming up with ideas, and I think I've got something that could tie the story together. It might be a bumpy ride to go through, but if everything works out, it'll all be worth it in the end.

Finally, I'd like to thank you for helping me with this. It'll be a long time till I can write at "CGE" level, and all the help along the way really means a lot. Back to work :)

Your audience now awaits a continuing installment.