Look like there will be a lot of actions in book 2. I think you should include time/date just in case some people might want to have a sense of time.

There is a lot of activity. Lots of quick scene changes.

There are some very big events but....

It's about half of where I thought book ii would go.

So in many ways, it will set a very big stage for Book III & IV. I now cringe to hear people groan as I type this.

Long and short of it, the events at the end of Book I were so huge (in terms of freaking out the observers) that I felt it necessary to go into pretty good detail on the reactions and aftermath, particularly since those actions and the aftermath were sort of like opening the door to Fibber McGee's Closet.

All sorts of crazy starts spilling out now and the motives of some of the players become much clearer.

In the first book some of the time was a little fuzzy to me as well...I wrote it over a very long period of time.

I have subsequently gone back during the re-editing and stuck dates in the Word Comments, so I know what is/was when.

In theory, Abyss and Astlan do match up. I did check that, but I get the fuzziness--I felt it too. If I were waxing poetic, I'd say that time seems to pass much more slowly in the abyss since there aren't a lot of reference points (at least as far as Tom knew) No day or night, no sun, not a lot of weather. There was a lot of boredom while there.

Now, of course, there is absolutely no reason that time should move the same in all the realms, particularly as you get farther out. However one would expect nearby planes to have a similar t axis.

Of course measurement of time varies by planet rotation and that is something that inter dimensional travelers have to deal with and starts to actually get interesting by the end of book ii.

Anyway, for all nearby planes delta t or the change in time as measured by an accurate device should be the same move the same. But other than Tizzy, who is to say how 'close' the Abyss is.

However, while delta t is the same, the time of day maybe very different because of the rotation rate. days on one planet might be 3/4 the length of another planet etc.

Actually, there is quite a bit of discussion on such things in book ii (in conversations) as it starts to get important.

As a hint, a lot LOT more happens in the Abyss this time.

Viewpoints will be doing that a lot.

I am trying to get Chapters under control. I am going for fewer/longer chapters, mainly because Chapter breaks in Dead Trees require wasting a page if you always want to start a chapter on an odd page...and the previous one ends on an even one.

So therefore I am using

~

Subheadings to show point of view shifts.

Because so much is happening at about the same time, there are a lot of these. It's designed even more like a modern TV show with scene switching, than the previous book.

It only indicates that in that interval roughly the same amount of time passed. The function, that describes the ...ehm... relative time passing, doesn't have to be linear.

As long as you don't make time travel possible, i wouldn't be overly concerned.

Edited by user Wednesday, June 3, 2015 12:02:12 AM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Astlan is a planet, with X rotational speed, gravity etc, so it should have a normal consistent flow of time, but the abyss is just a plane of existence so it probably doesn't rotate, also since its not a planet its gravitational force should be very different to astlan.

so for the flow of to even slightly match up. it should mean that magic effects the flow of time in the abyss, but it might not be that consistent, so could that result in tom experiencing annoying time skips e.g. one day in the abyss equal ten in astlan or vice versa?

just a thought.

One possibility for there to be some inconsistencies with the passage of time on Astlan vs the Abyss is that there isn't an actual disparity between the two, it just seems like it to people in the abyss. You could theorize that the fact that Astlan is constantly summoning demons has magically linked the planes which would cause them to become synchronized in time. However, when plagued with boredom and an inability to sleep time could feel like it isn't passing at all, I would expect to feel a little bit of fuzziness about the time if I had nothing to do for days on end, couldn't sleep, and there wasn't a day/night cycle. Honestly I'm fairly certain that the majority of people would wind up rather similar to Tizzy after a month or two if they couldn't find something to occupy themselves with. Maybe thats why he is insane? He went too long without having anything to do?

As for possible fixes for the readers not having to try to figure out what is happening in what order or simultaneously or whatnot, dates could probably be inserted over the perspective change breaks pretty neatly. I know that you are trying to save space so you can cram the dead tree edition as full of content as possible so the usual method of dropping lots of vague time related hints into the text would probably just eat up space, not to mention the editing backlog that would probably cause. Dates or a small time reference taking the place of the perspective change lines seems like an elegant solution, maybe a date/time/location?

Ah okay, if you have the space for it allocated already then it should be fine, that's really how I prefer it gets done anyways, easier to maintain your immersion in the story that way.

Personally I prefer it worked into the paragraph, for me its just feels like it flows better. I've seen both methods work but I usually don't bother to keep track of the dates if they are given.

Now for the scene changes I wouldn't mind if you put the name of whoever is taking the perspective for the new section in the break if there is going to be a lot of switches, about the only ones that you can instantly recognize from the first sentence is the Oorstemothians. sometimes it takes a second to recognize the perspective switch with some of the others. Well, at least for those that won't know when they buy the book that those breaks are for perspective changes. We all know thats what they are there for but new readers might not.

The Koban series which has quite a few different perspectives just uses "****" or something like that to signify scene shift. I don't think it is necessarily a change is perspective although it often is.

By the way, I highly recommend the series for when you need a break after finishing HH.

Then again... don't take a break, I will expect the next book out ASAP.