Clebs

I guess in terms of posting small snippets of a wip, or short stories, a closed group has the advantages of privacy, and control over who sees it. Where-as a public post in the Forum will prob get more feedback, allow you to interact with members you dont know as well, but you still have the option of deleting the topic if you want to.…[Read more]

The Place Where You Fell

This is the place where you fell. Your bright swords and old shields faltering. All your angers and all your courage turned the soft earth to mud and the valley must have echoed, it must have echoed to your cries. In the cool dawn, in our houses we can still hear you shouting, and if we come down into the fields, if we…[Read more]

I quite like the idea of a more generalised private critique group for shorter pieces. Groups for each WIP work with novels, but I feel might be a bit unwieldy for shorts, as you’d have to round up new critiquers every time

Thank-you so much for your comments, everyone. They are so helpful. Oh wait, I should tag, right, else you might not see it? @jd73, @daedalus and @sandradavies, you are ace. Thank-you. I love the word stochastic too!

@philippaeast – no this isn’t the one with pub/agents, it’s one of the next two and I’m trying to decide which one to throw out…[Read more]

Closed groups is what we used to do on the Word Cloud, and it seemed to work okay. With a communal password-protected area, how would you keep the password secure and at the same time make it accessible to those who want it? With a closed group per WIP, the owner has complete power over who can see it. and it’s easy enough to find if you click on ‘Groups.’

Well done, that man! We LIKE outward facing books…especially when we know the author!

Mandy, it was so wonderful to see you up there. You spoke beautifully: so honest and with such heart. You were a complete credit to yourself and to Jessica.

I brought a friend with me to the Festival, a fellow writer (Cynthia) from my local critique group. I have been encouraging her hard to pursue her writing dreams. I think for her, hearing…[Read more]

Brilliant, well done John. Please put a link in the Podium when it’s published? You’re on a bit of a roll, there

Oop – crossed with Jonathan.

okay, might be waffling on a bit here, but it’s sparked a load of thoughts.

In general I like the opening couple of paragraphs. It paints a strong and immediate picture of character and place.

You set up the omniscient narrator with the phrase highlighted in bold below.
“When the lights went out across Europe, Lina Stephenson did not notice at…[Read more]

Hi Raine,

I love the sound of this story. A literary apocalyptic novel? YES PLEASE!

I definitely like the idea of having scenes from various characters’ lives, i.e. to have sections in different POVs. I think it serves the genre well because it creates an epic, global canvas for your story. Basically – how is the human race as a whole going to…[Read more]

Dammit autocorrect! I’d not spotted the domain thing. Gah.

But thank-you for the vote of confidence. I’ve been vacillating back and forth like you wouldn’t believe!

Personally I like it. The narrator-y bits make the transitions into a sort of PD slide. If you’re going to introduce a range of geographically dispersed characters in a short piece of text, this seems like a good way to do it. And I like the voice

‘This was a Sunday, the day it began was a Thursday’ – comma splice?

‘Domain’ – Demain? (French for…[Read more]