RE: Looking for a beta reader.
10-27-2020, 04:44 AM (This post was last modified: 10-27-2020, 06:59 AM by classicdrogn.)
10-27-2020, 04:44 AM (This post was last modified: 10-27-2020, 06:59 AM by classicdrogn.)
Okay! So, after approximately two hours of somehow getting sidetracked into messing around with fonts* and rereading the revised start, I'm at the new material. Let's see what I can shake out of the corners!
That was all I found for errors this go 'round. Backtracking a bit though, the school tour section (from "never seen a magical portrait" to checking the accounts) still feels really disjointed and unfinished. I must strongly recommend filling that out some more, with narration of the things they're walking by before the reaction to them, and actual dialogue rather than just Minerva thinking about what has been said and non-sequitur, unattributed quotes. I know you probably want to just get on with the story, but if it's important enough to put on screen, for crying out loud put the whole scene on the screen. It's the narrative equivalent of the big fight scene in an action movie's first act where the hero and a major opponent test each other out before before being separated to leave the outcome undecided, those five paragraphs could easily be doubled or tripled before you'd need to worry about them being too drawn out.
This got a laugh, but then I was confused for a mpment when I tried to scroll down and nothing happened. It's a great line, but you need to deliver the payoff with an outraged huff or hiss or whatever from Hermione, and possibly her father laughing, because it cuts off way too abruptly as is.
Or perhaps it pierces through to the side of the girl that energetically if not without complaint follows Harry along on his latest harebrained adventure and didn't spare a thought for stealing restricted materials so she could brew an illegal post-NEWT potion in her second year, and draws a laugh out of Hermione herself? That would be a good way forward if you want to have their relationship be a bit less antagonistic, even if she'll still huff over him contradicting the reference texts and he'll lament her inflexible faith in them just because someone went to the trouble of writing it down.
Though by the same token, if he can demonstrate he's right she'll probably come around... though it might take a few months of glaring and trying to disprove it, if HP & the Half-Baked Plot was anything to go by.
... Does Zorian know a way to quickly put words to paper? I could just see him presenting her with a bound volume of magical principles only to provoke further outrage when she realizes he wrote that book himself. "Of course I did. So did Addlepate Waffles, or whatever his name was - and I've included procedures to test everything for yourself rather than simply pronouncing them unquestionably true from the exalted position of the hand holding the pen." He would probably have set out to make it for Kirielle so she would have something to keep her from being led too far astray, but really it's too good an opportunity to pass up given the ability to easily produce a copy, whether by magical or mundane means.
* Better not to ask how that whole train of thought ran, but the result is that I now have my browser set up with Wojciech Kalinowski's Nova Round as Sans, while my system font is Nova Flat, with Severin Meyer's Oxanium instead of a serif font because I hate serif fonts and round vs. square is enough of a difference to tell them apart, plus Joshua Deakin's Monodeco as the monospace typeface, as it has at least some degree of matching curves and flats. All are legitimately free under the SIL Open Font License. As always, the checkbox to let web pages specify other fonts is empty, because far too many will go and specify "reliable stand bys" that make me want to gouge my eyes out, ie Helvetica/Arial/Liberation Sans/FreeSans/etc., Times New Roman, or totally-original-not-infinging-at-all-honest-guys clones of them. Also, I learned that <p align=justify> is a valid tag in modern HTML, finally letting us do away with the ragged-right web without having to mess around with CSS or scripts. Note that if you are like me, you'll need to turn that checkbox on temporarily to see the fonts on the linked pages, as they do not include sample images, just embeds them with... however that's done.
![[+]](/images/collapse_collapsed.png "[+]")
See the gremlins scurry by, how many of them can we make die?That was all I found for errors this go 'round. Backtracking a bit though, the school tour section (from "never seen a magical portrait" to checking the accounts) still feels really disjointed and unfinished. I must strongly recommend filling that out some more, with narration of the things they're walking by before the reaction to them, and actual dialogue rather than just Minerva thinking about what has been said and non-sequitur, unattributed quotes. I know you probably want to just get on with the story, but if it's important enough to put on screen, for crying out loud put the whole scene on the screen. It's the narrative equivalent of the big fight scene in an action movie's first act where the hero and a major opponent test each other out before before being separated to leave the outcome undecided, those five paragraphs could easily be doubled or tripled before you'd need to worry about them being too drawn out.
Quote:Do they repair the carriages after each journey or do they just drag away the wreckage?”
This got a laugh, but then I was confused for a mpment when I tried to scroll down and nothing happened. It's a great line, but you need to deliver the payoff with an outraged huff or hiss or whatever from Hermione, and possibly her father laughing, because it cuts off way too abruptly as is.
Or perhaps it pierces through to the side of the girl that energetically if not without complaint follows Harry along on his latest harebrained adventure and didn't spare a thought for stealing restricted materials so she could brew an illegal post-NEWT potion in her second year, and draws a laugh out of Hermione herself? That would be a good way forward if you want to have their relationship be a bit less antagonistic, even if she'll still huff over him contradicting the reference texts and he'll lament her inflexible faith in them just because someone went to the trouble of writing it down.
Though by the same token, if he can demonstrate he's right she'll probably come around... though it might take a few months of glaring and trying to disprove it, if HP & the Half-Baked Plot was anything to go by.
... Does Zorian know a way to quickly put words to paper? I could just see him presenting her with a bound volume of magical principles only to provoke further outrage when she realizes he wrote that book himself. "Of course I did. So did Addlepate Waffles, or whatever his name was - and I've included procedures to test everything for yourself rather than simply pronouncing them unquestionably true from the exalted position of the hand holding the pen." He would probably have set out to make it for Kirielle so she would have something to keep her from being led too far astray, but really it's too good an opportunity to pass up given the ability to easily produce a copy, whether by magical or mundane means.
* Better not to ask how that whole train of thought ran, but the result is that I now have my browser set up with Wojciech Kalinowski's Nova Round as Sans, while my system font is Nova Flat, with Severin Meyer's Oxanium instead of a serif font because I hate serif fonts and round vs. square is enough of a difference to tell them apart, plus Joshua Deakin's Monodeco as the monospace typeface, as it has at least some degree of matching curves and flats. All are legitimately free under the SIL Open Font License. As always, the checkbox to let web pages specify other fonts is empty, because far too many will go and specify "reliable stand bys" that make me want to gouge my eyes out, ie Helvetica/Arial/Liberation Sans/FreeSans/etc., Times New Roman, or totally-original-not-infinging-at-all-honest-guys clones of them. Also, I learned that <p align=justify> is a valid tag in modern HTML, finally letting us do away with the ragged-right web without having to mess around with CSS or scripts. Note that if you are like me, you'll need to turn that checkbox on temporarily to see the fonts on the linked pages, as they do not include sample images, just embeds them with... however that's done.
--
noli esse culus
noli esse culus