(I Also Write Children's Books!)

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

A Writing Test

When I have an idea for a book, I usually write up a page or so to explore it before I get to hardcore planning.  In theory, this could be the book in Penny's continuity, but not about her, published before book four.  Working title:  'I Did Not Give That Spider Superhuman Intelligence.'

Here is what might or might not be the first chapter.  Think it has potential?

50 comments:

  1. I like it! I think it's fun to have a different viewpoint on that same universe, and now I'm really curious about the Doctor - not to mention the hint at the origins of Spider in that title.

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  2. I would like book 4 first, but the chapter was pretty good, and the book does have potential. However, I would like a book that took place during the beginning of the Audit's career, so maybe just shift 1980 to 1990 or something?

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  3. Looks good especially if this was just the first draft. It has potential but the main problem I see is that Goodnight looks like one of those zany characters that can get very annoying very quickly if you’re not careful with her. It could be your problem if this is the story you said you are having problems with.

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  5. For a first chapter of a first draft there are a lot of good things going and showing much promise. The story doesn't feel like it will be forced on to a single track and can remain as open as you want it to be. Obviously they will go after the lair, but what they do, find, and how they get there will be up to how adventurous you feel like making them.
    Goodnight has a bit of a split personality case. She started off as an immature child then shifted to adult level. Probably a result of not being sure what you wanted from her until being put to paper. That said, adult Goodnight was very enjoyable to follow and more of her would be better.
    The only con in regards to the characters is that none of them stick out due to Goodnight being such an overwhelming personality.

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    1. to be fair, its implied goodnight is immortal and or perpetually seen by those around her as a child. If you had to live with most people (humans especially) assuming your a kid wouldnt you act like one when you could?

      Also this appears to be pre-truce as she had to hide her identity to drop out of heroing.

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  6. I tried throwing my credit card at the screen, but it didn't download the finished novel.

    -j

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  8. Goodnight reminds me a lot of Lucyfar - I thought it was her at first.

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  9. I really like what I see so far. Following a team of superheros instead of villains gives a lot of "the same but different", in a good way. As for Goodnight I'd be really excited to see more of her. She seems really carefree and fun most of the time, but is capable of becoming serious when the situation calls for it. She's so different from Penny and it would be interesting to see how her dynamic with her teammates differs from Penny's "barely reigning in everyone around her from doing something stupid/rash."

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  10. Frankly, you had me at "this could be the book in Penny's continuity".
    But yeah, I'll take a look at the first chapter, why not.

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  11. Psychopomp, one more superhero I wouldn't want to meet on the battlefield. Fighting the Grim Reaper is bad enough, but having to strike a (somewhat creepy) child makes it even worse.
    I have to say I really like the darker, grittier and more dangerous style of the earlier years of superhero-dom as portrait in the compendium and this first chapter.

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  12. So... Claudia's mum, Morning dove, a litteral Foxy lady and a grim reaper walk into a bar... wait wrong joke. The Fox girl and the reaper sound like a couple of characters from "Gate: and so the defence force fought".
    I really like that it was morning dove the fox girl brought back to life (if I read that right)

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    1. I'm guessing the fox girl is Marrianne. And or the fow lady who was there when Bill and Goodnight got back together.

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  13. What I do like about this chapter is how much fan theorizing can be done by it in such a short time. While I was as work I realised.

    We can assume that even though Goodnight is the main character, that the fox kid they rescued is foxxy as a kid, and the cyborg girl is probably Morning Dove, meaning this is Morning Dove's origin story. But since she is meant to be the same height as Goodnight/Psychopop that means in spite of being called a vampire or a zombie by people in the TIM books, she is not in fact undead.
    She is clearly a child here (same height as a 10yo) and an adult later which means she ages.

    Hence, Morning dove was probably a dead girl who was brought back to life ala "The Borg Way" rather than being made undead, and the descriptions of zombie is in regards to the patchwork girl appearance, and of vampire in regards to whatever magic she uses.

    So if this story is going to be about Goodnight and Psychopump tracking down the mad doctor who made Morning Dove and giving him a peace of his mind. Then does this mean we might also get to see Apparition's origin?

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    1. You folks are usually really good, but I am going to shut you down on several points here.

      Foxxy is already more than 40 years old and has a daughter at the time of this story, which Goodnight mentions is set in 1980.

      Goodnight is passionate, impulsive, and loves adventure. In Book Three you see her at her sedatest moments, being responsible about her child. She and Bull fell for each other because they had a lot in common. I'm not surprised if she seems childish sometimes.

      Psychopomp is not Mourning Dove. There are a number of dangerous and crazy heroes and villains who have always had a reputation for culling the least desirable elements. At the time of Penny's story, Psychopomp is not in America and I don't think Penny has ever heard of her. She is still 10 years old. If your curse has lasted 361 years, it's not going to be shifted easily.

      Mish-Mosh is just herself, not any character you've heard of before.

      You folks are right about one thing. Mourning Dove... uh, originated in 1980.

      I am delighted by how much interest this idea is getting, and am planning out the rest of the book as fast as I can. I'll try to give you a couple more chapters to speculate about when it's practical. There are definitely hints at larger things you should know about here, but I don't want you misinterpreting the characters in front of you.

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    2. It's not letting me edit my last statement. Psychopomp was cursed 351 years ago. She'll mention it in chapter two, so no big spoiler! She is 361 years old, but stuck in the body of a 10 year old.

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    3. I didn't think psycho pomp was morning dove. I thought mush mosh became morning dove. Our will become. Tenses are weird. Actually this is something I need confirmation on cause the way I read this there were six people in that alley. A fox girl a cyborg psychopomp and Goodnight. If not then the scene is confusing cause I got the impression that the cyborg was pretending to be more dead than she was and the fox was trying to heal her.

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    4. Psychopomp reminds me of Rory from the Gate anime I mentioned. Rory was an 800 year old priestess in training to become the god of death and looks perpetually 15.
      Psychopomp sound like the same class of character.

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    5. By my count, the alley had the two thugs/hoodlums/stooges, Goodnight (narrator), Psychopomp (child with scythe), Bluejay (healer with pale blonde hair), Mish-mosh (fox cyborg, initially injured). The way I read it, the stooges turned themselves into zombies with an injection in the hope that they could kidnap Bluejay (despite Goodnight, Psychopomp and Mish-mosh) and bring her to "the doc".

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    6. Okay, bluejay seamed to be where I was getting confused. I had the same number of characters, two stooges, psychopomp and goodnight. But I misinterpreted bluejay (the healer) to be a fox girl and mish-mosh to simply be a cyborg.

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  14. I wasn't sure if this was relevant (I'm still not sure): I can't actually tell what I might think of the story because ordinarily I'm primarily interested in the course the plot takes, the handling of the setting, and things like that.

    The perspective character is entertaining and would be fun to follow (which is essential for first person narration), and Psychopomp has obvious potential, but the most interesting bit for me was the title and the story possibilities it suggests.

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  15. So after reading the chapter, I stand by my first assertion. The book will certainly land near the top of my 'To read' list.

    Team Tiny looks really interesting and more stories about Goodnight (sadly sidelined in the Summer of Lob), will be a treat.

    My only complaint (if it can be called that), is that it's YET ANOTHER interesting team, instead of one of the existing ones. I'd love to see some more info about the origins or early adventures of Team Lucyfar.
    Apparition's background is the most intriguing to me, but how the group ended up with a magical-demolitions-expert is a close second. Any chance of something like that?

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    1. I personally am grateful. We know from past experience that Robert's ADD means he doesn't like doing the same concept twice let alone reusing things. I mean look at the Machine. It barely got a word in edgewise last book and is acting less and less sentient each time. I think we're lucky to get a book in this world.
      In fact that's actually a nitpick I have with the TIM books. There are sooo many heroes and villains in such a small area. In DC supers occur like 1 in 1 mill. In Robert's books of feels more like 1/100.
      Too many new faces not enough re-use.

      Same with Penny's weapons. Most of them get used once or twice then lost, destroyed or just never seen again.

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    2. Yeah, but in the last book, the main idea was that they were trying to hide their supervillain sides, so they couldn't use their weapons as much. But I have to admit that Vera or Ray's purple-ball-thingy gloves could have made an appearance or two.

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    3. Maybe before Evolution, supers were less common?

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    4. That is hinted at in the books, sortof.

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    5. The stories in DC/Marvel generally hinge on the fact that superpowers are rare and grant special abilities that warrant dedicating a whole comic book title to the actions of relatively few people, who tend to show up over and over.

      (To be fair, Marvel has (or had) Attilan, Genosha, a city of Eternals, Atlantis, and a large number of Deviants somewhere, and that's just on Earth. Not sure what DC has had along those lines, but really what were talking about here is a sparse distribution of superpowered people per ordinary city).

      On the other hand, both parodies and pastiches often have numbers of superhumans that are comparable to Penny's world. I'd say this place is on a par with the movie The Incredibles, for instance, or the web-published story Worm. I have a sense that PS238 has a smaller metahuman population than this, but it still seems larger than DC/Marvel, and the movies that ripped off the PS238 idea seem to have had plenty of superpowers to go around.

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    6. DAYUMN!!!! I was just using google map to look at the various places the TIM hit during the first and third books when doing jobs. Everything is so close together! By car they could have visited every location within a day and gotten home for tea! I was trying to figure out travel times for something like Bakersfield to Downtown LA and it was only 2 hours!!!

      It takes over an hour just to drive across my home town and we have a fraction of that population!
      From their homes to Santa Monica or Long Beach is nothing! I've traveled that far to order Pizza!!!

      wow... distances...

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    7. From personal experience, I will tell you that it is two hours from where Penny lives to Santa Monica pier. However, TIM definitely have restricted themselves to close to home most of the time. It's a function of the restrictions and small world of children.

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    8. As for how common super powers are, would you really be surprised if there were 200 active superhumans in LA in either DC or Marvel? What those comics do is pretend that superhumans operate in very small cliques, because that keeps from stepping on the toes of other comic creators. Both worlds are lousy with minor super-powered characters.

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    9. I haven't read Marvel comics regularly for a while, but based on the the stuff I used to read, I could easily imagine 200 superpowered individuals active in New York City and nearby areas.

      A population of 200 in a large city is tiny for most purposes, though. Even if a majority of those are explicitly costumed villains, that wouldn't populate a Chinatown gathering (which I pictured to be on the scale of a medium-sized swap meet or a small farmers' market). Populating the super-powers club in Penny's school from 200 adults is arguably harder, unless the entire L.A. community lives in that school district, and there's a reason for lots of them having a kid at roughly the same time (a super-baby-boom event). The whole "everyone is used to super-powered people running around in costumes" vibe in downtown L.A. suggests more than 200.

      Based on Wikipedia (and another comic-related wiki) I gather that Marvel was increasing the numbers of mutants for a while (hence Genosha), which would have made being superpowered much more common, but then they had the "decimation" event, after which there were only supposed to be about 200 mutants left in the whole world. I figured they did that because being "super" was getting too commonplace.

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    10. 200 in a single city would blow my mind. I'm sorry but I always ran the assumption with mainstream comics that maybe a few heroes in a single city at most (teams counting as a single team) and a rotating list of villains who come in and out, with maybe a running if 20-30 lower tier villains at most.

      The idea of 200+ costumed heroes or villains in a single city. Mind blowing. Ignoring x-men (which has a lot of supers just trying to be regular people), in the DC and Marvel universe I always assumed it worked on a state for state basis with the assumed 1-3 heroes per city, but other heroes going around within their state or tri-state area.

      For example on the flip side. I assume Spider is the crime lord for all of California, and the Seven and a Half Men are A or B list villains who operate multi-state and or multi-national.

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    11. My assumption with the weekend party was that the huge influx of villains included villains from other cities. Driving two hours for a party every weekend seams normal. Even as a teen that's normal. Doing it with super powers / flight / speed. I assumed villains were dropping in from all over the state for the party!
      Even Penny and Co with their powers and tech could go at least 20mph if not faster.

      No wonder her parents never suspected Penny. With all the targets so close together she could get there, do the job and be back in only a few hours.

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    12. @ Roberts, In my city the whole city takes about 1.30 to drive north to south, about 2.30 to drive east to west. The entire city only has four pizza shops, no 'malls' as you would know them, no sky scrapers, and only open air markets.
      The whole town here is a mining port / fisheries town. We're the same size as LA give or take but we would probably only need one hero due to our small population.

      Again. Distances, scale... It blows my mind.
      I've been to our state's capital, it would probably be about the size and population of LA. But I can't even imagine it needing more than five heroes.
      Although I suppose I could imagine 200 villains if the majority of them were d list.

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    13. ie, thugs, minions or regular everyday criminals wearing capes.

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    14. Remember that in Marvel/DC, most superpowers go to villains (a given hero or team gets a whole rogues gallery to deal with), so 5 heroes could mean 50 or more villains, easily.

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    15. Also, in Marvel universe, super-action tends to be uneven, and it gathers at points of activity and interest rather than scaling with population. World-scope heroes would pick New York for a base, and villains would attack there. That means that 200 superpowers in NY city might mean 250 in all of New England, and 300 from the southern coast up to Newfoundland and northern Quebec.

      I also recall examples in DC/Marvel of having the pattern of one hero (and a few minor powers or unpowered allies) exclusively protecting an entire city from a steady stream of minor villains plus a few recurring major ones. When the location wasn't an explicit superpower hotspot, it was often one team per city. They'd have crossover events to get their audience to read more comics, but the relevant heroes always went home at the end.

      So again, Chinatown suggests a larger population of superpowers compared to the Marvel/DC I recall, even if all of SoCal shows up.

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  16. I am mad. Just mad. I recently created an original character called 'Malbeni'(a loose translation for cursed in Esperanto). He was this guy who drank waaaaaaay to much dragon blood and turned into a creepy guy. He had a scythe and this big cloak, and mist was always pouring out from under the robe. Underneath he was a mush mash of muscle and sinew (think Davros) and didn't have legs that you could see. He just floated towards you in this cloud of mist. His powers...
    1) Fire spitting (because he's a dragon dude)
    2)He can use his mist to make it hard for enemies to see him.
    3)He is immortal/undead
    4)He can turn into a skeleton dragon.

    I have an image, but I don't know how to post it in blogspot. If anyone knows, tell me and I will post it.

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  17. are any but the first book going to be in audio book format?

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  18. After some consideration, I have to say that the sample was somewhat interesting. I do not wish to disparage it, but I cannot say there was much to it either.

    I am again reminded of the chapter in the first book of the series where Penny presented Claire with her friction-less insoles and they then confronted Sharky. They chatted a bit before the fight, and you were able to get some idea of their character. However, there was no depth to that battle, they simply trounced him. Nothing significant happened for or to them in that scene (however traumatic it was for Sharky).

    The scene that followed however, their “grude match” with Miss A, and dealing with her new and much more serious allies, was deeper, had more meaning, and better highlighted what made them interesting. The three of them showed the teamwork that would become their hallmark and they had some interesting interplay with Gabriel, and Ifrit. Penny and Claire ‘acquired’ their villain names. Ray showed his growth as a fighter, as he learned to work around Miss A’s training. You were able to infer more about them, their potential, what each of them were about - all of which was all much more interesting than their short battle with Sharky.

    This short story felt more like the battle with Sharky than the team’s rematch with Miss A. Not bad, per say, simply... less.

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    2. Additionally, it introduced or highlighted their issue with clearing their name, which continued to the end of the book. Essentially, it introduced that theme, which was significant.

      Unless something similar develops from what was introduced in this short sample, I would have to say that it is merely, somewhat interesting.

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  19. Yes, Yes, Yes, YES...this sparks so many little thoughts in my head, it’s just a tiny ember really, but OH the places it could go...any world is like a Funhouse Hall of Mirrors, with every person’s view point being one uniquely twisted mirror, reflecting the reality of the world in their own idiosyncratic way, so the more mirrors the more you get to see...

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    1. He's saying he's a fanfiction writer.
      :P

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    2. Oh, that makes sense. I searched his username online and couldn't find anyfanfiction. It's kindof a generic username though... Ron.

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  20. Read this FanFic blog. It's the only one I could find. So far.
    http://mysuperpoweredlife.blogspot.com/

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  21. I know you probably have the full series titles worked out but just a thought. You have Please Don't Tell my Parents I'm a Supervillain, PDTMP I Blew up the Moon, PDTMP I've got Henchmen. I have no idea what you have planned for volume four but I thought for volume five, "Please Tell My Parents I WAS a Hero." lots of ambiguity surrounding the past tense. All good for making us tense.

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