# Empress Theresa - what do you do with unlimited power ?



## empresstheresa

What do you do if you have unlimited power?
      It depends on what kind of person you are.  If you're a good person you'll do good in the world.  
      If you're in the Adolf Hitler school of social justice you'll wreak havoc in the world. 
      Or, you might do nothing at. 
      Theresa is a good person.  She would prefer a private, quiet life, but she has to do good in the world.  Without her, "...we are all lost."  (  British Prime Minister )

      Hello.  I've been working on Empress Theresa for eighteen years and it's only in the last three that all the parts fell together.  I finally put it down on computer.  

The final version is a Young Adult novel.  A YA addresses a problem common to youth.  It might be an abusive family, drugs, bad sexual relationship, bullying, or others.  Theresa has none of these problems.  Her problem is understanding the world and dealing with it, something common to all of us,  but in Theresa's case it goes to extremes.  "Poor Theresa!'  says British Prime Minister Peter Blair.  "She faces a dilemma with equally unacceptable alternatives.  When her story is written it will be said her adversary was not people in the world but the world itself."

In my next post I'll give the opening pages.  :razz:


----------



## empresstheresa

......     An author has many choices to make in the opening pages of his book.  He wants to tell the reader as much as possible but risks overloading the reader with matters not that important.
......     For example, somebody has suggested I write out a touching scene showing Theresa's father telling her she'd have to be captain of her ship and sometimes the seas would be rough.  Perhaps, but when the seas do get rough for Theresa her parents can do nothing to help her.  They are not significant characters in the story.  I have Theresa say, "I had good parents", and leave the rest to the reader's imagination.
......     Notice also the simple writing style I use, which reflects Theresa's youth.  She's only ten when the story begins.  Later, situations get far more complicated.  Dialogue, especially Prime Minister's Blair's, becomes more sophisticated. 

......But enough.  The opening pages..................  :very_drunk:
......I’m Theresa, the only child of Edward and Elizabeth Sullivan,  and I hope it’s not bragging to say I was cute as heck at age ten.  Everybody in the Sullivan clan said so.  I was the princess in the Sullivan family of Framingham, Massachusetts because besides being cute I was a whiz in school.  All the Sullivans expected great things from me.
......Nobody could have dreamed of what I would do a few years later, and nobody would have believed it if they’d been told,  but when this story began I was a little girl who didn’t have much of a clue about anything.  My job as a kid was to figure out what the heck was going on and what to do about it.  It’s not easy when you’re young and everything is brand new.
......My father was in the Navy.  He said I had to be the captain of my ship but sometimes the seas would be rough.  I had to learn all I could about the world.  Yeah, well, why should I be worrying about it in the fourth grade?   
......I was home alone at age ten while my parents worked but I was safe.  Mom and dad installed one of those new child safety alert systems.  All I had to do was quickly squeeze two buttons on my bracelet three times and the whole street would be blasted with a siren’s earsplitting wail.  Neighbors were always around and the security company would alert the police.
......I had good parents.  By the time I was ten they convinced me I should get myself through the school years without drug or boy problems.  There are girls like that, you know.  You wouldn’t think so to look at the news.  I find it strange that people are interested in news about troubled girls, but wouldn’t want to associate with them. 
......Our house was next to a pond close to the river where all the neighborhood’s kids had spent many happy hours looking for turtles and frogs.  I was lounging on the deck reading a book on the school summer list.  
......Taking a momentary break from the book, I noticed a red fox walking along the pond's edge.  It disappeared behind the little patch of woods which dad let grow wild like most of the neighbors.  This was very rare.  Red foxes were never seen in broad daylight during the summer months.  It didn't happen.  
......Then something really amazing happened.  It came out of the woods and walked towards me!
......I kept still and waited to see how close it came before noticing me.  It was sixty feet away, forty, twenty.  By now it was clear it was looking at me.  
......I considered running into the house, but curiosity won out.        
......The fox reached the four steps of the deck.  It came up the steps, stopped, and sat on its haunches staring at me.  It did not seem vicious so I waited.  
......In an instant, faster than you could blink an eye, a softball sized white ball emerged from the fox and went straight into my stomach. 
......I screamed and ran into the house.  The fox ran away.  I slid the glass deck door closed and locked it just in time to see the fox disappear in the woods.  I stood at the glass door for five minutes watching for anything else that might happen.  At last I thought it was all over. 
......I went into the living room to sit down and think.  What was that white thing?  I couldn’t come up with any theory.  It was nothing I had even seen on those television nature programs. 
......Perhaps it was a daydream from not eating enough.  Mom had warned me about that.  At age ten I was already conscious of my weight and tried to stay skinny.  I should eat something.  
......I went into the kitchen to prepare an early lunch of fried eggs, a strip of bacon, toast, and milk.  I gobbled all this down in a couple of minutes and soon felt  better.  It was too little eating after all.  Nothing had really happened. 
......Satisfied, I walked back into the living room to find something else to do.  I turned on the television and watched the late morning talk shows for a while.
......I heard fire trucks in the distance blaring their deep toned sirens.  These trucks could be heard from a mile away.  They were coming closer.  And closer.  Soon the sound made it obvious they were in the vicinity of our street.  My intuition told me this had something to do with the white thing that jumped at me.
......I went out the front door and waited on the lawn.  The sirens were very close,  and, yes, there they were turning into the street, a tanker truck and a small ladder truck.  The two vehicles went halfway down the street and stopped.  Already people were coming out of houses to watch the excitement.
......The yellow fire engines had loudspeakers that sent out vocal messages loud enough to rattle windows.  A conversation was going on between the firemen and the station. 
......“What do you have?”
......“A hundred and fifteen degrees here”  a fireman shouted.  
......“It‘s seventy here.”
......“Yup.  Must be something here.”
......A crowd of neighbors was gathering near the confused firemen.  I left the house and walked over to join the onlookers.  “What's going on?” I asked one of my girlfriends. 
......“They're looking for a fire.”
......The girl's father said, “The temperature jumped up in a few minutes.”
......It was hot.  It was nice a little while ago.  I thought it over.  A fox appears in daylight which never happens, it comes up practically to my feet, the white thing jumps into me, and the firemen look for a fire that doesn't exist.  All this happened within an hour.  There had to be a connection. 
......Before long the fire chief arrived in his yellow sedan.  He asked the lead fireman if anything had been found.  Then they walked over somebody's property to look at the pond.  Nothing there.  
......“Could it be a ground fire?”  the fireman asked the chief. 
......“Not likely with water over there unless there‘s a rock ledge underneath.  I suppose we'll have to check it out.”
......Thermistor probes were brought from the station, and firemen spent the rest of the morning pushing the probes a few inches into the ground to check the temperature.  They did this on everyone's lawn, the area inside the turn around at the end of the street, and finally went into people's back yards.  They found nothing. 
......“Weirdest thing I ever saw”  said the chief.”
......“How long do we stay here?”
......“Make it four o‘clock.  Longer and we'll look stupid.”
......Television news vans came around.  It wasn't much of a  story; nothing to aim a camera at except fire engines and embarrassed firemen.  As for the mystery of the invisible heat source, people don't like news stories that don't have a resolution.  The reporters and their crews lost interest and left. 
......Around one o'clock, the fire engine megaphone shook the neighborhood with an update. 
......“Temperature is down to ninety.”
......“That’s still twenty over.  Keep at it.” 
......An hour later, the firemen were saying the temperature was seventy-five.  I thought it was fun that I was the only one who had a clue what was going on.  The firefighters just hung around trading jokes and stories. 
......Finally, the lead fireman noticed it was quarter to three and said,  “That's enough.  We're out of here.” 
......The fire trucks went away. 
......The busy Boston TV stations didn't take the time to mention this non-event. 
......I was young and inexperienced, but I wasn't a dumbbell.  If people found out what happened today they‘d pester me about it forever.   Cousin Mary was diagnosed a schizophrenic and the whole Sullivan clan was biting their nails waiting for the gene to show up in some other family member.  It wasn’t going to be me!  I resolved to never tell anybody.  Not even my parents would know.  They’d think I was crazy like cousin Mary.

......Two days later I woke up early and walked into the living room.  Mom was looking intently out the window.   “What’s going on?” I asked.
......“There’s some men parked down next to the turn around.  They’ve been there all night.”
......I looked and sure enough a van and a four door sedan were parked in the turn around where they could see every house on the street.
......“Mrs. Gagnon said a police car stopped to talk to them at two a.m.”  said mom.  “They showed IDs and a little later the police left.”
......Dad woke up and heard the same story.  As mom and dad got ready for work another police car came around the street, but left without stopping.
......I was alone again.  Other people left for work.  The morning wore on.  The mail truck came by at ten.  I walked out to get the mail.  Two minutes later the car and van drove away.  They had spotted me.
......How did they know about me?​


----------



## empresstheresa

It would have been so easy to have Theresa cause mischief when she got unlimited power.  Most well known writers would do so.  The formula is:  have the protaganist make mistakes, do something wrong, then try to correct the damage done.

Consider Hitler, Stalln,  Chairman Mao, Pol Pot, Saddem Hussein, and a hundred others.  They rampaged all over their spheres of influence with their power. 
Do you find these people interesting?  Do you go see movies about them?  Are there movies about them?
_*Do you like them?   *_:torn: :apologetic:

I did something different.
Theresa is a good girl.  She doesn't do anything bad to anybody.  She doesn't tell anybody what to do.
"Those who challenge Theresa Hartley's power are fools"  Israeli Prime Minister Scherzer warns his enemies.  "She could destroy the world.  Don't push her too far."

But the world learns it has nothing to fear from her.


----------



## Deleted member 49710

Hello,
You mention that the character is ten when the story begins, and therefore you're using a very simple style. However, the first couple of paragraphs indicate that the narrator is several years older when she's telling the story; I think it would make more sense to have the style reflect the age of the narrator rather than her age during the events being narrated. I'm not sure what age group you're targeting here, but many kids are quite capable of engaging with more complex vocabulary and sentence structures (at least if Harry Potter is any indication). 

Your story seems to actually start at the end of the sixth paragraph; almost everything previous to this is backstory, and I think you could find a smoother way to work the information into the narrative, if it's really necessary.

The events in this excerpt happen very quickly and you offer very little description or atmosphere. I'd suggest starting with her on the deck, give some of her impressions of the day and her book, show us how she thinks a little. Then the fox; and that's an important event, so spend some time on it. Describe the fox, describe the ball of light, how Theresa felt before and after. Try to show us what she's like as a character through her thoughts and reactions, rather than telling us.

Since you're rather insistent about Theresa being a good girl, I have to say - I'd rather see a main character who is flawed. There's a wide range between Hitler (and people do, in fact, find Hitler very interesting, even if they don't like him) and a flawless goody-two-shoes type. In your first paragraph, to be really honest, when she says she's cute and a whiz in school and the princess of the family - she sounds braggy and spoiled.

You've clearly spent a lot of time thinking out the premise and the plot of this story, and it seems like it offers a lot of possibilities. Hope this helps somewhat.


----------



## empresstheresa

lasm,
Thanks for your input.  
As I said earlier, an author has difficult choices about what to include and what to leave out. 



> The events in this excerpt happen very quickly and you offer very little description or atmosphere. I'd suggest starting with her on the deck, give some of her impressions of the day and her book, show us how she thinks a little. Then the fox; and that's an important event, so spend some time on it. Describe the fox, describe the ball of light, how Theresa felt before and after. Try to show us what she's like as a character through her thoughts and reactions, rather than telling us.



I started reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" last night.  I'm only on page fourteen so far.  There is atmosphere.  There is detailed descriptions of the environment.
However......  ( you knew that was coming!  :uncomfortableness:  )
If I remember correctly from the Gregory Peck movie,  the whole story revolves around one situation, the trial of a black man on some false charge.  The book has 282 pages.

Theresa has these main situations, ( and minor situations )
      Theresa’s “impossible” tasks:
1.  Escaping from the jet fighter plane
2.  Figuring out what HAL is and how he works
3.  Getting control of HAL
4.  Providing rain
5.  Getting the world through the winter with a year’s crop totally lost
6.  Keeping ocean levels under control
7.  Preventing the oceans from overheating
8.  Finding a new source of oil
9.  Giving the Israelis 24 hour daylight
10. Giving the Israelis a way to evacuate Israel in one day 
11. Providing a new home for the Israelis.
12. Taking control of a Boeing 747 and landing it  
13. Liberating the North Koreans
14. Eliminating the threat of 200 new HALs 

To squeeze all this into a book of reasonable length, I have to keep things moving along quickly.  My first draft had 142,000 words,  enough for 525 pages.  What young adult is going to read all that!  #-o  I reduced it down to 96,000 words or 355 pages, which matches the Hunger Games books.  
As for atmosphere......
The British ships find Theresa's "dead" body in the South Atlantic.  Her "death" means the human race will starve to death.......................
“The world settled in for the long wait for the HMS Queen Elizabeth to return to England.  Somber music was played on radio day and night.  A favorite selection was Saint-Saens’s  The Swan for cello and piano  made famous by Russian ballet as The Dying Swan.  But the most appropriate piece for the girl descended from the Irish was a soulful instrumental version of Danny Boy.  It was perfect.  Great Britain was proud to bring one of its own back home for a final visit. 
      “But for most of the world there was no consolation.  Dreams of a good future were gone.  There was nothing to look forward to but misery or death.  Parents spent all the time they could with their children.  Mothers held their children and cried, wondering why this horror was happening.​​


> Since you're rather insistent about Theresa being a good girl, I have to say - I'd rather see a main character who is flawed. There's a wide range between Hitler (and people do, in fact, find Hitler very interesting, even if they don't like him) and a flawless goody-two-shoes type. In your first paragraph, to be really honest, when she says she's cute and a whiz in school and the princess of the family - she sounds braggy and spoiled.



Yes she does, but that's a flaw !      But you see her grow out of it.
Later in the story,  when she is a worldwide hero everybody wants to meet,  Theresa is self-effacing.  She makes no public appearances.  She doesn't do the talk shows to talk about herself.  She doesn't write a book.  She refuses to answer reporters's questions.  In her only "press conference"  :-\"  ( the Prime Minister has warned the reporters not to open their mouths or they'll never be invited back to the Parliament building again )............
"I won't answer your reporters's questions.  Nobody elected you.  I'll talk to elected heads of state when necessary for the public good.
"I saved your lives.  All I want in return is the right to walk the streets without being hounded by curiosity seekers and the paparazzi.  You owe me that much."​ 
( She sure ain't no kissbutt ! )
She prefers a quiet private life to the extent that's possible for a person in her position.  

The world can hardly believe somebody in her position wouldn't grandstand it to death!  Anybody else would.
 Eventually it becomes clear it's better this way.  Letting Theresa keep her feet on the ground like this won't tempt her to use her power to change things.  Theresa leaves things alone.

Finally,................
if Theresa has a fatal flaw, if she's cowardly, if she's not very bright, if she gives up, then she doesn't succeed in her difficult challenges,
and in the words of the British Prime Minister, "....we are all lost."


----------



## empresstheresa

What is your reason for writing a book?    :deadhorse:


If I just wanted to become a published author,  I would have been writing for the last forty years.
It's easy to write a book.  Like mysteries?  No problem.  There are a million mysteries and there will be a million more.  The formula is simple.  Have one or several people murdered.  Have one or several murderers.  Probably throw in a clever detective, somebody you can use as a base for a whole series of mysteries. Call him Hugh Sharpe.  "Sixteenth novel in the Hugh Sharpe series....." 

I don't recall literary critics analyzing a mystery to death.  They're just entertainment.  That's ok. I like to watch movies.

Eighteen years ago, I had the kernel of an idea for a story that would mean something.  It wasn't until three years ago that I had the problems worked out in my mind and actually started writing it. 

A theme of Macbeth is that "pity", concern for the well being of others, is a stronger force than a rampaging dictator.
Theresa has "pity" for her fellow human beings, and her actions benefit the entire world.
There are minor themes.  More practical themes.  She has to prepare herself for her challenges or she will fail.  This point is made on page one.  She has to make herself a good person.  This is also pointed out on page one.

British Prime Minister Peter Blair reiterates these ideas in an address to the House of Commons:
“We should consider how it came to be that Theresa Hartley was chosen to be host to HAL.  Her character is impeccable.  Her intellect is of the finest quality.  No more perfect choice could be found for her task.  HAL merged with her when she was ten.  A few years earlier and she would have told everybody about HAL with most unfortunate  results for herself and us.   A few years later and she might not have developed the skills needed for the challenge.    But she received HAL at age ten, old enough to know to keep HAL a secret, but young enough to set herself on that path of intellectual development to enable her to address the HAL problem.  Did all these happy circumstances happen by chance, or by design? ”​


----------



## Fin

The formatting on this is a bit scary. I understand that the website's formatting is a bit odd, but you can clean this up to make it a much more inviting read. For example, instead of the "......." to indicate the new paragraph indention, you could simply put two line breaks after the end of a paragraph. Much better to the eyes, and you may get more people to stick around and read it when they open up the thread.

On to the story itself.

You could do with a new opening line. Starting off a first person story with the main character introducing herself by name is as generic as it gets. You're going for YA, not a Children's book. i.e. My name is Junie B. Jones. The B stands for Beatrice, except I don't like Beatrice. . .


*“The temperature jumped up in a few minutes.”*

Possibly change that a little. There could be tense confusion.


*“A hundred and fifteen degrees here” a fireman shouted. 
......“It‘s seventy here.”
......“Yup. Must be something here.”*

Not anything you really have to change, but I'd suggest revising it a little. All three dialogue lines end with "here," which gets things repetitive. Missing a comma in the first line as well(unless that's correct for where ever you live. If so, ignore this)



The whole firefighter scene seemed a bit unrealistic. I was just thinking the whole time, "Why don't they just get a helicopter and be done with it?" Instead, hours were wasted. It seems only natural for a helicopter to be used when _searching_ for a fire that may not even exist. Really, with the way it was handled, wouldn't surprise me if that Fire Chief lost his job. He could've sent someone other than himself to handle a job like that.

*“Weirdest thing I ever saw” said the chief.”*

A stray quotation mark. 



Pacing issues throughout this. Yes, I understand what you said:



> To squeeze all this into a book of reasonable length, I have to keep things moving along quickly.



The problem remains, though. Priority is given to things in this story that priority should not belong to. Too much attention on the little things, not enough on big events makes this feel highly uneventful.

*Do you find these people interesting? Do you go see movies about them? Are there movies about them?
Do you like them?*

Yes. Especially where Hitler is concerned.




> I did something different.
> Theresa is a good girl. She doesn't do anything bad to anybody. She doesn't tell anybody what to do.



If you mean different than stories involving Hitler and others mentioned, then yeah, it's different. None of them are popular characters or topics throughout the YA genre. This, "Theresa is a good girl. She doesn't do anything bad to anybody. She doesn't tell anybody what to do," on the other hand, isn't different when speaking of the YA genre. 




> Yes she does, but that's a flaw ! But you see her grow out of it.



It's possible that you just pointed out the flaw yourself. Not sure until I know where the story is going, but currently the narrator seems to be telling a story from her past. If she's not, then some revision needs to be done. If the whole story is going to be about her ten year old self(which I already don't recommend. YA novels tend to be focused on young adults, not children), how will we see the narrator grow out of something when the story isn't focused around her current self?


With a little revision, I believe this story could go somewhere.


----------



## Jeko

Hi, empresstheresa,

I'll do my usual thing of focusing on the opening.

_I’m Theresa, the only child of Edward and Elizabeth Sullivan, and I hope it’s not bragging to say I was cute as heck at age ten. Everybody in the Sullivan clan said so. I was the princess in the Sullivan family of Framingham, Massachusetts because besides being cute I was a whiz in school. All the Sullivans expected great things from me.
......Nobody could have dreamed of what I would do a few years later, and nobody would have believed it if they’d been told, but when this story began I was a little girl who didn’t have much of a clue about anything. My job as a kid was to figure out what the heck was going on and what to do about it. It’s not easy when you’re young and everything is brand new.


_I agree with Fin that formatting is bit off. It reminds me of the arrows Darren Shan uses for every new section in his Demonata saga, but doesn't have the same effect.

The first impression I get is that I'm reading a formal, normal introduction. This can have a good effect in some ways, if done well, but it can also turn many readers off. There's no action, just introduction at first. '_I’m Theresa, the only child of Edward and Elizabeth Sullivan_', for example, is something that the reader can find out within the story, rather than having it told to them as simple fact.

'_I hope it’s not bragging to say I was cute as heck at age ten._' This would be a very good phrase, I think, but ending with 'age ten' doesn't read right. Fiddling with the syntax here might help that.

'_Everybody in the Sullivan clan said so._' This is good, gets an overall insight into how the mood of the Sullivan family works.

_'I was the princess in the Sullivan family of Framingham, Massachusetts because besides being cute I was a whiz in school.' _One key problem comes at this point - I'm seeing a perfect character. Everything's fine, everything's good. No problems. Hence, everything's a tad less interesting. It's fine to have a happy, perfect-ish world, but if you do, you have to present it in a way that makes the reader more interested. Having it so blatantly realised in the introduction is less efective. '_Nobody could have dreamed of what I would do a few years later_' continues this feeling of perfection.

The rest of the opening ftwo paragraphs reads better, though the tone stil suffers from being a bit too easy. What's the issue here? All we have at first is backstory.

Beginning with an introduction like this helps get a lot of useful information and characterisation out the way quickly, but it can be off-putting and lacks the ability to grip me. I'd be fine to walk away from this story now, because there's nothing making me want to stay.

Try to work out a good hook, and weave it into a more inspiring opening. Then you should get far more attention coming towards Theresa's way.

Good luck with this,

Cadence.


----------



## empresstheresa

I read the last two posts carefully, and noticed that many points made could equally apply to _To Kill a Mockingbird_,  a smash bestseller on the New York Times bestseller for 85 weeks and quickly made into an Oscar winning movie.  

For example.


> The rest of the opening ftwo paragraphs reads better, though the tone stil suffers from being a bit too easy. What's the issue here? All we have at first is backstory.



In _To Kill a Mockingbird_, the trial doesn't begin until the second half of the book.
Before that, Harper Lee talks about the kids little activities which is very charming, but if you'd never heard of the story you wouldn't have any idea what the story was about until around page two hundred.

I didn't know what I expected when I joined this forum.  
I hoped to learn something from writers who had books printed by known publishing houses.  Are there any?  
I'm a little disappointed at the process.


----------



## wee_clair_064

empresstheresa said:


> I didn't know what I expected when I joined this forum.
> I hoped to learn something from writers who had books printed by known publishing houses.  Are there any?
> I'm a little disappointed at the process.



This forum is about helping each other with writing skills and in the process also learning some writing skills for yourself. Its not a forum were we praise each other until the cows come home. 
 I'm not sure why you are disappointed in the process?


----------



## Deleted member 49710

empresstheresa said:


> I didn't know what I expected when I joined this forum.
> I hoped to learn something from writers who had books printed by known publishing houses.  Are there any?
> I'm a little disappointed at the process.


It's always good to evaluate what benefit, if any, can be derived from one's activities. Sometimes the benefit is not the one that we expect. Most people on this site are here with the goal of improving their  writing; critique is beneficial because they read and evaluate the  suggestions received, and apply them if desired. This allows them to  identify flaws in their writing or assess audience reaction to it. That is the usual "process".

In this thread, I and two other people have offered both general and specific suggestions regarding the form and content of your work. You have argued with all three of us and rejected our suggestions. You seem to be convinced that what you have written cannot be improved and that we simply need to be persuaded to like it. If the process is not giving you what you want, it may be that you have misunderstood its purpose, which is not to get you published, but to help you become a better writer.


----------



## Jeko

> In _To Kill a Mockingbird_, the trial doesn't begin until the second half of the book.
> Before that, Harper Lee talks about the kids little activities which is very charming, but if you'd never heard of the story you wouldn't have any idea what the story was about until around page two hundred.



There is a difference between relevant events and simple backstory. That you said that you:



> noticed that many points made could equally apply to _To Kill a Mockingbird_, a smash bestseller on the New York Times bestseller for 85 weeks and quickly made into an Oscar winning movie.



tells me that you need to read To Kill a Mockingbird, or our posts, or your own work, or all of the above, in a different light to get the best out of our advice.


----------



## empresstheresa

> If the process is not giving you what you want, it may be that you have misunderstood its purpose, which is not to get you published, but to help you become a better writer.



I expected to find writers who did get published, and hear how they became marketable writers,  what literary agents and book editors told them they were looking for, what kind of rewrites they had to do to make agents and editors happy,  why they wrote in the first place,  what were they trying to do with their books, what meaning were they trying to discuss
that sort of thing.  

In others, high level stuff, the big picture.
I just read_ To Kill a Mockingbird_.  There's at least a hundred pages that could be thrown out with no loss to the main story, * but at this point who the heck cares! *


----------



## Fin

The difference between Harper Lee and you, is that you aren't Harper Lee.


----------



## Jon M

> I’m Theresa, the only child of Edward and Elizabeth Sullivan,  and I  hope it’s not bragging to say I was cute as heck at age ten.  Everybody  in the Sullivan clan said so.  I was the princess in the Sullivan family  of Framingham, Massachusetts because besides being cute I was a whiz in  school.  All the Sullivans expected great things from me.


Already I'm not interested. In fact, I'm not interested _and_ slightly annoyed because the narrator sounds like a Mary Sue, a perfect character. So she is immediately unsympathetic. 

You say she is ten years old, but this narrative so far sounds like it is coming from someone older than age ten. "I was cute as heck at age ten", implying she is not ten now, at the time of this telling. 



> Nobody could have dreamed of what I would do a few years later, and  nobody would have believed it if they’d been told,  but when this story  began I was a little girl who didn’t have much of a clue about anything.   My job as a kid was to figure out what the heck was going on and what  to do about it.  It’s not easy when you’re young and everything is brand  new.


This bit of writing is like air. There are no details here. Frankly I'm kind of stunned by how little substance there is here. Who is nobody, what did she do 'a few years later', what the heck _was_ going on, what was brand new? Just in case it needs to be mentioned, these are not questions I have. These are rhetorical -- the answers should be in the writing.


----------



## Jeko

> There's at least a hundred pages that could be thrown out with no loss to the main story



As I said, you need to read it again.


----------



## empresstheresa

In my last post, I wrote............


> I just read_ To Kill a Mockingbird_. There's at least a hundred pages that could be thrown out with no loss to the main story,





> *but at this point who the heck cares!
> 
> *


......and wondered if anybody would pick up on it. Nobody did.  I'm not surprised.

In the March 1962 edition of _Mockingbird_ I have, intended to coincide with the movie's debut,
Gregory Peck says:  "The Southern town of _To Kill a Mockingbird_ reminds me of the California town I grew up in.  The characters of this novel are like the people I knew as a boy.  I think perhaps the great appeal of the novel is that it reminds readers everywhere of a person or town they have known. It is to me a universal story -  moving, passionate, and told with great humor and tenderness."

That is, that "hundred pages" which add nothing to the main story of the trial, and attack on the kids, are the book.   ( Much the same could be said about books like Gone With the Wind in which Margaret Mitchell even takes time to describe the color of the mud in roads. )




I envy Harper Lee.  She had a quaint, colorful, nostalgic setting to talk about, similar to her own youth.  I don't.  Theresa is in Massachusetts close to Boston, then in a millionaire's mansion close to London, then in New York City.  It's hard to get cozy with these settings.
On the other hand,_ Mockingbird_ only has two tense situations, the trial and the attack on the kids, so Lee had plenty of time to smell the roses.  
In _Empress Theresa_,  there are a dozen major tense situations to deal with, and lesser issues.  If people want story, they'll get their money's worth.


----------



## Terry D

empresstheresa said:


> I read the last two posts carefully, and noticed that many points made could equally apply to _To Kill a Mockingbird_,  a smash bestseller on the New York Times bestseller for 85 weeks and quickly made into an Oscar winning movie.
> 
> For example.
> 
> 
> In _To Kill a Mockingbird_, the trial doesn't begin until the second half of the book.
> Before that, Harper Lee talks about the kids little activities which is very charming, but if you'd never heard of the story you wouldn't have any idea what the story was about until around page two hundred.
> 
> I didn't know what I expected when I joined this forum.
> I hoped to learn something from writers who had books printed by known publishing houses.  Are there any?
> I'm a little disappointed at the process.



This forum has a wide range of members; from beginners just starting to try and organize the stories in their heads onto paper, to authors with multiple published books.  The help you are looking for is here if you look for it, and are willing to accept constructive criticism.  I suggest you spend some time reading some of the fiction written, by members, for the Literary Maneuvers monthly fiction competition.  You'll find that some of the folks who have been responding to your posts are quite accomplished writers whose advice has great value.

Also:  _To Kill a Mocking Bird _is not about the trial.  The book is about the people affected by the trial.


----------



## Deleted member 49710

You might consider finding a more appropriate book to compare with yours. _Anne of Green Gables_ might be a better example of a highly successful YA book centered on a good-girl MC who manages to avoid nauseating most readers. 

If you can't make your MC's setting interesting to your reader, you're not doing your job as a writer.


----------



## empresstheresa

> _I’m Theresa, the only child of Edward and Elizabeth Sullivan, and I hope it’s not bragging to say I was cute as heck at age ten. Everybody in the Sullivan clan said so. I was the princess in the Sullivan family of Framingham, Massachusetts because besides being cute I was a whiz in school. All the Sullivans expected great things from me.
> _
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Already I'm not interested. In fact, I'm not interested _and slightly annoyed because the narrator sounds like a Mary Sue, a perfect character. So she is immediately unsympathetic.
> _
Click to expand...


How do you know Theresa is perfect?  You've only seen one percent of the text.

Theresa is not perfect.  At some points in the story she's confused and doesn't know what to do next.  Others help her get moving again.
Sometimes she gets discouraged and just wants to go home, but she recovers.

The main theme of Empress Theresa is a good person doing good in the world.   This is not exactly a new idea.  We see in real life that good people do a lot of good.  Washington started the country, Lincoln kept it together, Roosevelt defeated the Nazis.   However, these men didn't do it alone.  They needed the cooperation of vast numbers of people, and if these men hadn't done what they did somebody else would have.
Theresa does it all herself.  Nobody helps her and nobody can help her.  "Politicians are hiding under their desks" says husband Steve.  "Theresa has to do it all".   If Theresa doesn't do it it won't get done and that will be a disaster for everybody.  That's what makes the story different, and Theresa fascinating to watch.  




It's interesting that you compared Theresa to Mary Sue.  So did people on an atheist forum I joined a couple of months ago for laughs.  I started a thread arguing for the existence of God.  Within two weeks  the thread had over 700 posts, only about sixty of them mine.  I was called every unmentionable name you can think of.  There was no insult too outrageous for them to use.  They told lies.  They raged on and on.  ( You can't see that thread unless you log on because it was banished to the "Enter the Darkness" section which you can't view unless you're a member.  I can't see it myself; I was banned. }

They followed me all over the internet and found everything I'd posted about _Empress Theresa_ in other forums.  They found me on two catholic forums.  They found my own website.  They even found the article I wrote on Joan of Arc ten years ago.  
They savaged my book.  They said every negative thing they could think of, even if it was distortions.
Many of these atheists used the term "Mary Sue" to label Theresa.  I looked up the origin of this term on on wikipedia.  Back in 1974, some hack writer who had her own little magazine wrote a parody of the original _Star Trek_ tv series.  She used a character named Lieutenant Mary Sue, a fifteen year old girl and the best graduate of the Federation Academy ever, a perfect character.  But, others have pointed out that Captain James T. Kirk himself was a "Mary Sue" !  It's ok for a male character to be perfect, but not a female.  :disturbed:  Do you agree?


----------



## empresstheresa

> _
> 
> Beyond that, not much point in offering suggestions to someone who isn't interested.
> 
> _



It's kind of hard to get interested in "suggestions" like this: 



> You might consider finding a more appropriate book to compare with yours.





> _Anne of Green Gables might be a better example of a highly successful YA book centered on a good-girl MC who manages to avoid *nauseating most readers*.   _:livid:


----------



## Jeko

> That is, that "hundred pages" which add nothing to the main story of the trial, and attack on the kids, are the book.



Like I said, you need to read it again. I'd try Terry D's perspective.



> How do you know Theresa is perfect? You've only seen one percent of the text.



Precisely. And if I was in Blackwell's or Waterstones, the remaining 99% of the text would be going back on the shelf with the 1% that didn't catch my interest.

Such is life.



> It's ok for a male character to be perfect, but not a female. :disturbed: Do you agree?



Now _this _is quibbling.



> I don't. Theresa is in Massachusetts close to Boston, then in a millionaire's mansion close to London, then in New York City. It's hard to get cozy with these settings.



Then develop them. Add something deep and riveting to make thigns more interesting, more relevant to you. Neil Gaiman wrote Coraline based on a house he lived in for a while. He could have done any house, but he made the house personal to him.

I noticed another confusing contradiction:



> Others help her get moving again.





> Theresa does it all herself. Nobody helps her and nobody can help her.



Could you clarify what's meant here?



> The main theme of Empress Theresa is a good person doing good in the world.



So the synopsis is 'can Theresa do good, being the good person she is?'

Please point me to the conflict in your story. I need to understand this better.

Also, did you recieve my PM?


----------



## Jeko

> It's kind of hard to get interested in "suggestions" like this:



They're some of the best suggestions here.

I spent a long time comparing what I was writing with Scott Pilgrim vs the World, and it took me a long time to realise I wasn't actually writing something like that. Now I compare my writing to a mix of Percy Jackson and Donnie Darko.


----------



## empresstheresa

> I spent a long time comparing what I was writing with Scott Pilgrim vs the World, and it took me a long time to realise I wasn't actually writing something like that. Now I compare my writing to a mix of Percy Jackson and Donnie Darko.


You, and somebody else, assume I'm comparing my book to _Mockingbird_.  I'm not.  In fact, they have nothing in common.

I mentioned _Mockingbird_ to bring up some points about writing techniques.  That's all. I can't point to similar techniques in my book without putting it all on the internet,  which would break the horse's legs at the starting gate.




> Please point me to the conflict in your story.




Here's just one of many.

Theresa has gained limitless power in the physical sense.  She can move anything around anywhere.  No limits.  ( Political power derived therefrom exists but is secondary. )
OPEC wants to gain some of that power by blackmailing her.  They reorganize after years of relative inactivity and say they will not sell oil to Europe and the Americas unless three demands are met.  One of them is that Israel be returned to the occupants of 1947.
Theresa can negate the threat of an oil supply cutoff by finding a new super-abundant source of oil.  There's plenty of the stuff under the ocean floors.  She can get it.  But OPEC will be outraged and swarm over Israel.  She could stop the invading hordes with violence if they attacked, but she would not harm anybody _and they know it_.  
What can Theresa do?

That's just one of many difficult situations.


The rest of what you said is confused and I'm thinking my time is better spent elsewhere.


----------



## Jon M

empresstheresa said:


> How do you know Theresa is perfect?  You've only seen one percent of the text.


I said she sounds like a Mary Sue. As in, that is how the character appears at the moment. Open the story that way at your own risk -- I'm just saying I wouldn't stick around to learn more about the character because I'm immediately turned off. There has to be some sort of conflict, or at least some indication that everything is not well. That is, after all, what stories are -- interruptions of the status quo. 



> It's interesting that you compared Theresa to Mary Sue.  So did people on an atheist forum I joined a couple of months ago for laughs.


Mary Sue is a common literary criticism. The male version being Gary Stu or whatever. Though I am an atheist, I assure you I'm not one of your stalker bully / fans. I only jumped in here because stirring the pot is fun and it's Monday and cold outside and I'm bored. 



> It's ok for a male character to be perfect, but not a female.  :disturbed:  Do you agree?


No, I don't. Perfect characters suck. QED.


----------



## Terry D

empresstheresa said:


> You, and somebody else, assume I'm comparing my book to _Mockingbird_.  I'm not.  In fact, they have nothing in common.
> 
> I mentioned _Mockingbird_ to bring up some points about writing techniques.  That's all. I can't point to similar techniques in my book without pointing it all on the internet,  which would break the horse's legs at the starting gate.
> 
> The rest of what you said is confused and I'm thinking my time is better spent elsewhere.



Yes, I think there is some confusion.  Why did you bring your novel to this site and post an excerpt, if not for critique and advice?  The replies to your post have been honest and sincere, but I get the impression that you are offended, and I do not understand why.  I understand that you've spent years on your book and feel (rightly) proud of that accomplishment, but the excerpt you've posted is not perfect, and could benefit from the input of dispassionate readers who know how to lend a helpful, critical eye.

No one is berating you--that would not be tolerated here.  Just trying to give you the help I believe you were asking for.


----------



## Jeko

> You, and somebody else, assume I'm comparing my book to _Mockingbird_.



I don't. I do, however, assume that you are unable to take good advice from anyone. That you said:



> The rest of what you said is confused and I'm thinking my time is better spent elsewhere.



makes that clear.

Here's perhaps my last piece of advice then - if you think your time is spent better elsewhere, how about outside, away from your computer? I'm only going to say what every other logical soul will. In fact, I've been very supportive. I took time to give you a critique, and continue our discussions. Now my head hurts too much. 

Good luck with your story, but until there's some sort of change of tone here (or a reply to my PM) I'll make sure I avoid getting involved in it. You know, before I get too blunt.


----------



## empresstheresa

Let's take a look at what's wrong with "the process".




Quotes from post #7




> Yes she does, but that's a flaw ! But you see her grow out of it.
> 
> 
> 
> Yes she does, but that's a flaw ! But you see her grow out of it.
> It's possible that you just pointed out the flaw yourself. Not sure until I know where the story is going, but currently the narrator seems to be telling a story from her past. If she's not, then some revision needs to be done. *If the whole story is going to be about her ten year old self(which I already don't recommend. YA novels tend to be focused on young adults, not children), how will we see the narrator grow out of something when the story isn't focused around her current self?*
> 
> 
> With a little revision, I believe this story could go somewhere.
Click to expand...

( End of quotes from post #7 )


What's wrong with the process is that nobody is going to put their entire novel on the internet free for anybody to read, because then no publishing house would touch it. 
So we only put a tiny excerpt on here, usually the opening pages.  This means forum members have no idea what the story is about or what the other elements of a story,  tone, tension, conflict etc etc will be.  And so we get suggestions like the quote from post #7 above.


Reply to quote in post #7


      In chapter one,  Theresa is ten years old.  This chapter will reveal many things.   The U.S. military spotted a large "white sphere" coming down from space seven years earlier when Theresa was only three.  They followed it down to the forest in Framingham, Mass where it appeared to disappear into the ground without even rustling the leaves on the trees it passes through.  Ever since then the government has had people watching for unusual events, any kind, anywhere in the world that might indicate the location of this entity.  ( in chapter seven, Theresa will convincingly argue that the entity has been on Earth for millions of years )
   ( switching to present tense )

     After seven years, a tiny version of the "white thing" jumps from the fox to Theresa. 
The firemen come and leave.  The government has heard of this strange event and sends the car and van to spy on Theresa's street.  They have highly sensitive infrared detectors and detect a slight air temperature increase around Theresa when she comes out for the mail.  Theresa notices cars following when her mother takes her shopping in downtown Boston.  She sees men on foot following her through the stores of the Washington Street shopping district.


      Back home, she calls the operator and asks for the number of a local pizza parlor.  "One moment, please" says the 'operator'.  The phone is silent for a full minute.  Theresa hangs up.  Now they know she knows.


     Theresa rents a DVD of the classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The government is aware of this, of course.


     A young woman, Jan Struthers, chosen because she is a young woman, visits Theresa when she is alone in the house.  Jan is the leader of 400 "watchers" who are watching Theresa 24/7.  Theresa tells her about the fox. She calls the entity HAL.  She has told nobody else yet and Jan Struthers advises her not to.  "Before you know it you'll have ten thousand reporters camped out in front of your house for the rest of your life."


      Soon, she notices a tiny orange dot in the middle of her vision field.  While working in her tiny garden she discovers that when she throws rocks they go exactly where her orange dot is pointed.  It's an aiming device.  What could be its purpose? ( revealed in a later chapter}  Soon after, she discovers she has superhuman strength.  What's the purpose of that?  ( revealed in a later chapter }  She doesn't tell Jan Struthers about the aiming device or strength, afraid that the government might do something to her.


End of  chapter one. 
That's the last time we see Theresa as a ten year old.


      In chapter two, she is sixteen and a senior in high school, having skipped the sixth grade..   She has an update meeting with Jan Struthers.  In January a new President is sworn into office. In March, Jan Struthers disappears.  She has been silenced.  A high level British official meets Theresa in Framingham and tells her Jan Struthers must have suspected something was up because she Fedexed a box full of information about Theresa to the Canadian Prime Minister who sent it to the British Prime Minister.  The official offers Theresa sanctuary in England, but she can't conceive of leaving home.  She'll wait it out.


In chapter three she is a seventeen year old Freshman at Boston College   She meets  Steve Hartley and they marry in June.  Theresa has just turned eighteen on May 8.


In chapter four, all hell breaks loose.  We have twenty-five chapters to go. Theresa deals with a series of "impossible" problems on a global scale. "What am I supposed to do" she complains to the British Prime Minister,  "change the laws of physics?  This is the most impossible problem yet."

At the end of the story Theresa is nineteen.


----------



## Foxee

empresstheresa said:


> I didn't know what I expected when I joined this forum.
> I hoped to learn something from writers who had books printed by known publishing houses.  Are there any?
> I'm a little disappointed at the process.


You speak of not posting your novel for free where anyone can read it. It may be that the writers who had books published from known publishing houses don't give their pearls of wisdom for free, either.

If a free internet forum doesn't work (and it sounds like it hasn't so far) maybe a paid workshopping forum or a local writing group would suit your needs better.


----------



## popsprocket

First of all, I'd like to say congratulations on finishing the book. It's no mean feat.

I want to say that I agree with all the comments on pacing issues. You give too little screen time to what happened with the fox when compared to what happened with the cooking bacon and eggs (something no 10 year old should be allowed to do, but Theresa might just be competent in the kitchen). I've read the whole thread and you have commented that there is a lot going on in the book, hence the rapid-fire pace. There is nothing wrong with that in and of itself. Plenty of books run full tilt from the first page through the last. That's not the issue here. This isn't running full pace because you break it up with a focus on the less important things. Since this is only a small part of the whole, it's possible that you correct this issue later on. But judging simply by the information provided here, the rest of the book will be like this as well. Perhaps you should consider splitting the book and making it into a series. I realise that that's a bit of a pain once you've made it all the way through, but it would certainly allow you to even out the pacing issues without running into absolutely massive word counts.


----------



## Jeko

> This means forum members have no idea what the story is about or what the other elements of a story, tone, tension, conflict etc etc will be.



Not true. When you send the first little bit of your story to an agent, that's exactly what you want to tell them - what the tone will be like, what the conflict will involve.

Look at Tim Bowler's Blade books - the first one opens with a few pages about the character escaping from a police interview. It reveals a lot about his character, the tone of the book, and tells us this characer is the sort of person who gets into these sorts of situations. That's just a few pages.

If your work doesn't do likewise, then you need to have a good look at it. The ball is in your court. How can you make that opening more exciting?


----------



## Terry D

empresstheresa said:


> What's wrong with the process is that nobody is going to put their entire novel on the internet free for anybody to read, because then no publishing house would touch it.
> So we only put a tiny excerpt on here, usually the opening pages.  This means forum members have no idea what the story is about or what the other elements of a story,  tone, tension, conflict etc etc will be.  And so we get suggestions like the quote from post #7 above.



This isn't true.  There are plenty of ways to get your book critiqued without jeopardizing first publication rights.  You can post it, section by section, in the Writer's Workshop here.  That forum is available only to members and is not visible to search engines, so your work retains it's un-published status.  You can also contact members via PM to ask them to consider reading and critiquing your book.  As Foxee mentioned there are also pay sites available for this sort of thing.


----------



## empresstheresa

pickpocket,
thank you for their comments.  They are well thought out.  They do discern some of my problems with ET.

I have worried about this for a long time and considered my options.

In The Hunger Games trilogy, the first book ends with END OF BOOK ONE  !!!!!!  :hell_pawn:

I was quite surprised by this and a little angry that I would have to read more books to find out what happens to Katniss.  
Suzanne Collins had already published a series of books ( anybody remember their names? ) and so she could get a publisher interested in a trilogy.  But how do you get the kids to read three books when teachers beg to class to read anything at all?  I think the publishers realized that word of mouth would let the kids know the basic premise of the books before reading them,  teenagers are chosen for an elimination by death mutual-murder contest in an arena.  Who wouldn't raise their eyebrows on hearing that!

The premise of Empress Theresa is a little more esoteric.  Theresa acquires limitless power extending over the entire globe.  Really?  How? Why? What does she do?  
The premise is difficult to understand, and doesn't promise any excitement from dangerous situations so why should the kids read it? 

Actually, the book does have dangerous situations.  Theresa is put into a jet fighter with an atom bomb, the purpose being to get rid of HAL, but Theresa has to be sacrificed. ( This project fails when Theresa escapes the plane. )  
Late in the book, Theresa walks out along on a large boulevard in the North Korean capitol city Pyongyang to stare down four million North Koreans who have been ordered to attack her and her South Korean army column.  Will they attack, or will they disobey their leaders and free themselves?
Also, Theresa is always under threat of assassination by any one of a thousand assassins for a thousand reasons.  She survives a year at the millionaire's mansion near London because the Prime Minister has assigned five thousand British soldiers to the estate to guard her.  And so on.

The kids will know none of this ahead of time.  It's doubtful they will begin reading a trilogy.

Collins had the advantage of being able to divide her story into three parts.
In book one, Katniss survives the Games.
In book two, Katniss is sent back to the "Quarterly" Games and survives again.
In book thres, she leads the rebels against the capitol
This is all neatly managed.

In Empress Theresa,  over a dozen major situations follow one another with the logic and certainty of a row of falling dominoes.  There is no point where I can say "OK, the story is over at this point.  See book two for the further adventures of Super Theresa."  No.*  It is all one interlocking continuum* ( except for the North Korean adventure which is Theresa's own idea, but not enough material for a book ) * For example:  When OPEC puts the pressure  on Theresa she tells her millionaire host, "You were right, Mr. Parker.  I shouldn't have gotten involved in international politics."  He replies, "I retract my former statement. It was inevitable somebody would go after your power with extortion no matter what you did or didn't do."*

So you can see my problems.


----------



## Foxee

> It's doubtful they will begin reading a trilogy.


Why do you think this? If they're interested, they'll read the next book. It's not that much different from reading all of the first book, keeping the reader's interest is keeping the reader's interest no matter what genre, audience, or type of writing.

I have a child reading YA books and I can tell you something, she loves a good series! I picked up the first in Margaret Peterson Haddix's Missing series. Neither of us knew who Haddix was or was familiar with the series, it just looked interesting. Guess who's had to drive back to the library for every subsequent book? Then my daughter was delighted to find out that Haddix had written a different series, now she's reading that one. Same with the Michael Vey series, she wants the next book for Christmas.

If your manuscript is too long to be one YA book and doesn't offer natural divisions to become a series of books, you may need to consider either restructuring your book or going for an audience who will read a very long book, an adult market.


----------



## Jeko

> In The Hunger Games trilogy, the first book ends with END OF BOOK ONE !!!!



So does The Knife of Never Letting Go. That won an award, I think.

I thought The Hunger Games worked great as a stand-alone book. The third book in the trilogy had a greater effect on me, though.



> In Empress Theresa, over a dozen major situations follow one another with the logic and certainty of a row of falling dominoes. There is no point where I can say "OK, the story is over at this point. See book two for the further adventures of Super Theresa." No.* It is all one interlocking continuum* ( except for the North Korean adventure which is Theresa's own idea, but not enough material for a book )



That's the sign of a very confused plot.

You could probably flesh out each individual event and turn it into a book, you know. I was thinking about the first few lines of your book, and thought they'd make a great chapter if you went into her past rather than simply commenting on it. Your tale of the atom bomb? A great climax. Have some thigns that lead up to it. That's a whole book, if you work on it some.

The fact that your events are not neatly managed should be a clear indication that you need to start neatly managing them. Then this could turn into a very exciting read.


----------



## empresstheresa

> If your manuscript is too long to be one YA book and doesn't offer natural divisions to become a series of books, you may need to consider either restructuring your book or going for an audience who will read a very long book, an adult market.



Actually, I originally wrote a, ( are you ready for this ? )  142,000 word version.  I still have it on my computer ( and Norton Online Backup )  

But I noticed that some literary agents were saying they rarely looked at a book with more that 125,000 words.  So I trimmed some fat and reduced the book to "only" 119,000 worlds.

Then in March 2012, I saw an article in AARP magazine titled "60 Going On 16"  It was about older readers such as retired high school English teachers finding out there were enjoying reading YA books more that adult books.  It's the nostalgia thing.  They remember what it was like to be young."
I realized that _Empress Theresa_ screamed to be a YA book.  So I trimmed out more fat and reduced it to 96,000 words, which is still good for 355 pages.
Notice that I put these nostalgic remarks on page one.  "My job as a kid was to figure out what the heck was going on and what to do about it.  It's not easy when you're young and everything is brand new."  and "Yeah, well, why should I be worrying about it in the fourth grade?"


----------



## empresstheresa

> _
> In Empress Theresa, over a dozen major situations follow one another with the logic and certainty of a row of falling dominoes. There is no point where I can say "OK, the story is over at this point. See book two for the further adventures of Super Theresa." No.* It is all one interlocking continuum* ( except for the North Korean adventure which is Theresa's own idea, but not enough material for a book )
> _
> 
> That's the sign of a very confused plot.



How can you possibly say that since you haven't read the book and don't even know the more than a dozen major situations.



> Your tale of the atom bomb? A great climax. Have some thigns  [ Theresa has great thighs that lead to.... :joyous: ] that lead up to it. That's a whole book, if you work on it some.



The atom bomb situation can't be the climax of a book.  It's in chapter four, and HAL's reaction to it starts the row of dominoes falling, which Theresa has to deal with. 

This is what's wrong with "the process".


----------



## Foxee

Okay, so it's a YA book you're marketing to pretty much everyone. Considering that I've read The Hunger Games as well as the YA books that my daughter's reading I can see this. So, what do you think you'll do here? Divide it or keep it as one? I haven't read every word of your thread so you may have covered this but are you going to write more about empress theresa? If there is more material to come I'd still say go for a series. Why not? 

I have to admit from the bits and pieces I've seen of your plot I agree with those who think she comes across as a mary-sue. Obviously I can't know that for sure with just this much but I'd say that's something to be aware of and objective about. Just make sure that her flaws get enough time that she's not perfect and you're fine, really. Flawed people are usually a pretty darned interesting read.


----------



## Jeko

I think you could stretch those 96,000 words to 960,000, if you fleshed out the number of interesting stories you have in your one big jumble of them. it looks like you've written the whole story of Theresa, and that story is of epic proportions.

Imagine if you tried to squeeze A Song of Fire and Ice into one book. I think that's what you might be doing here.

Give all the individual moments you have some space. Then they can get the attention they deserve.



> How can you possibly say that since you haven't read the book and don't even know the more than a dozen major situations.



Good luck trying to grab yourself an agent, then.


----------



## Jeko

> The atom bomb situation can't be the climax of a book.



Only if you won't let it.

I would bet a good sum of money that if you outlined all the events leading up to it and slightly after it, you'd find a half-decent plotline at the very least. The same with all your individual major events. They all sound like great stories in their own right. I think what makes me lose interest is the way the story goes past them so quickly. 355 is nothing when you have so many major events. 355 for one, maybe two of them? Now you're on to a winner.


----------



## empresstheresa

> Good luck trying to grab yourself an agent, then.




Good luck with your story about zombies fighting demons.


----------



## Jeko

> Good luck with your story about zombies fighting demons.



Thank you.


----------



## empresstheresa

> Okay, so it's a YA book you're marketing to pretty much everyone. Considering that I've read The Hunger Games as well as the YA books that my daughter's reading I can see this. So, what do you think you'll do here? Divide it or keep it as one? I haven't read every word of your thread so you may have covered this but are you going to write more about empress theresa? If there is more material to come I'd still say go for a series. Why not?




RE: YA book you're marketing to pretty much everyone 

The only element that would be hard to get people in general to accept is the entity called HAL.  The book explains what he is, where he came from, how he evolved, and how he operates.  Hint: he's not from an alien civilization and he's not alive, and he's probably billions of years old, and by some mysterious process he multiplies into trillions throughout the universe so there was a good chance one might wander into Earth.  

If the reader gets past that, the rest of the story is entirely within the sphere of human activity in the present world, not some futuristic world where anything is possible due to scientific advances.  No time travel, no alien invasions, no zombies, vampires, dragons,  witches or any of that hokey stuff which make me despair of America's future. 

RE: Divide it or keep it as one?

Although I think the chances are no better than winning the Powerball lottery,  there is a small possibility a literary agent might start talking about dividing the book into two.  That is possible.  I still have that 142,000 word version.

At the end of chapter 13,  Theresa has triumphed.  She has cracked the "code" to controlling HAL, and implemented the solution to saving the world from global starvation.  She is the greatest hero since,  er..... well....... the greatest ever. 

Edmund Parker invited the Prime Minister to stay a while and Blair accepted.  We all watched the television as the news broke out.​The reporters talked excitedly about how I had saved seven billion lives.  There wouldn’t even be a famine in Asia.  I was the biggest hero in history.  Steve was so proud of me he almost popped the buttons off his shirt.​It was still light in America.  Early evening baseball games were going on and the crowds were jumping up and down screaming my name.  The scoreboards showed series of my pictures.  New Yorkers were pouring into Times Square for a New Year’s Eve kind of celebration.  But all this was nothing.  It was morning in Beijing, China.  Millions of people were collecting in the Forbidden City.  They were holding my photograph in their hands and yelling Tah-ee-sah! Tah-ee-sah!  I was smiling and tearing up at the same time.  This was my greatest moment.​
A book could be neatly ended there.

What about the second book?
The solution Theresa implements to prevent global starvation will itself cause "impossible" problems.  As Edmund Parker says, "The world is a delicate mechanism.  Change one thing and you change something else."  Theresa's struggle goes on. 


Interesting to think about.


----------



## Jeko

> The only element that would be hard to get people in general to accept is the entity called HAL. The book explains what he is, where he came from, how he evolved, and how he operates. Hint: he's not from an alien civilization and he's not alive, and he's probably billions of years old, and by some mysterious process he multiplies into trillions throughout the universe so there was a good chance one might wander into Earth.



I'm already very interested in HAL.

If you want to avoid turning people off with a more complex idea, it might be worth making it more vague and a product of the reader's imagination. Unless you've already done that.


----------



## Foxee

empresstheresa said:


> The only element that would be hard to get people in general to accept is the entity called HAL.


The thing is, that is your job as a writer. Convince them that HAL is real.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey the audience believes, at least while they're watching the  movie, that a sentient computer (which you reminded me of with the name) is real.

In Chronicles of Narnia the readers believe, for a time, that animals can talk and a mouse can be a knight of Narnia.

In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series you can believe for a while in a world that is a flat earth, resting on the backs of four elephants who stand on a giant turtle as it swims through space.

Suspension of disbelief is essential, you have to believe it and in the most convincing way possible, get us to believe it. At least for a while.


----------



## Jeko

> not some futuristic world where anything is possible due to scientific advances.



If Theresa has unlimited power of any kind, doesn't that mean that the possibilties become more endless?

Your story does look like sci-fi to me, in a way.


----------



## empresstheresa

> The thing is, that is your job as a writer. Convince them that HAL is real.
> 
> In 2001: A Space Odyssey the audience believes, at least while they're watching the movie, that a sentient computer (which you reminded me of with the name) is real.
> 
> In Chronicles of Narnia the readers believe, for a time, that animals can talk and a mouse can be a knight of Narnia.
> 
> In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series you can believe for a while in a world that is a flat earth, resting on the backs of four elephants who stand on a giant turtle as it swims through space.
> 
> Suspension of disbelief is essential, you have to believe it and in the most convincing way possible, get us to believe it. At least for a while.



Interesting observations, Foxee.  You're very foxy.

People are willing to suspend belief if they've heard a book is worth reading.
This is true not only in scifi or fantasy. 

Consider the "real life" book _To Kill a Mockingbird_.   The infamous Robert Ewell, who everybody knows beat his daughter for the unforgivable sin of tempting a black and tries to cover it up by getting the black convicted of beating and raping his daughter, is angry at lawyer Atticus Finch for making him look like a scumbag in court.  Ewell tries to get revenge on Atticus by attacking his 13 year old son Jem and 9 year old daughter Scout and apparently trying to kill them ( with a switchblade knife not mentioned in the movie ).


Well!  Really now!  Have you ever heard of that happening in real life?   It stretches credulity.
Even Harper Lee seems to sense she's going too far.  She has Atticus express amazement that anybody could be that low.  

-----------------------------------------------

Sidenote:  
In chapter one, Theresa had seen _2001_ on television a few months earlier and now she rents the movie.  When Jan Struthers visits she mentions the movie and Theresa says she calls the entity HAL.
          "HAL was the computer.  The monolith was the alien."
          "The monolith didn't talk."
          "Does HAL talk to you?" 
          "No."
Ten year old Theresa is a little confused.  Later, her sharp mind will dazzle everybody.


----------



## empresstheresa

> If Theresa has unlimited power of any kind, doesn't that mean that the possibilties become more endless?



Theresa doesn't have unlimited power of any kind.
HAL is a very clunky device to use, something like the first personal computers that became available, the Commodore 64 and all those pieces of junk.  Remember them?  If that's your picture, you weren't born yet.

Theresa needs days to program HAL to do a single specific action.  She doesn't have a magic wand from Sleeping Beauty to wave at any problem she sees and have immediately done what she wants done by just thinking about it.

=========================

Although Theresa could develop a large network of fanatical followers, like Hitler or Mao, or like the computer in Colossus: The Forbin Project _seque_l, and get everybody in the world to sing and dance whatever tune she wants,
she doesn't do this.  
She's a good girl.  "I'm not going to tell anybody what to do.  People know best what to do with there lives."


----------



## Foxee

empresstheresa said:


> People are willing to suspend belief if they've heard a book is worth reading.


Okay, here you've moved from the writing (your job) to the marketing department's success in getting the word out about your book. You aren't ready for the marketing department, the ball's still in your court.

I'm not sure why you have it in for Harper Lee but, that aside, I've already listed at least three other totally improbable scenarios that audiences still believed in quite strongly and we could go all day listing similar examples. My point is that you sounded like you're faulting readers, as though perhaps they're not going to buy into your HAL character because of some shortcoming of their own. If you don't think he's believable then now is the time to figure out why and get the character banged into shape.

Without that the best marketing in the world won't get someone to read the entire book.


----------



## empresstheresa

> My point is that you sounded like you're faulting readers, as though perhaps they're not going to buy into your HAL character because of some shortcoming of their own.




Where did heck did you get that!    :scratch: :upset:
What goes on on this forum?


----------



## Foxee

empresstheresa said:


> Where did heck did you get that!    :scratch: :upset:


I'm referring to this:


> The only element that would be hard to get people in general to accept is the entity called HAL.



This is why I started talking about the willing suspension of disbelief.



> What goes on on this forum?


Okay, I made a comment you didn't agree with. How is that the forum's fault? Let's keep it about what is under discussion here.

Hope that clears things up.


----------



## empresstheresa

_
Post #51 "forgot" to mention this from post #49:



			My point is that
		
Click to expand...

_


> *you sounded like you're faulting readers*_, as though perhaps they're not going to buy into your HAL character _*because of some shortcoming of their own*_._



That clears it up.


----------



## Foxee

Okay, ET, please enjoy your time on the forum. Perhaps someone else can help you.


----------



## Jeko

> Theresa doesn't have unlimited power of any kind.





> Theresa acquires limitless power extending over the entire globe.



Yes, I don't think I can be much help here.


----------



## empresstheresa

> _Theresa doesn't have unlimited power of any kind.
> _
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> _
> Theresa acquires limitless power extending over the entire globe.
> _
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Yes, I don't think I can be much help here.
Click to expand...


I agree.  You can't help. 

I've already adequately explained before, 
Theresa's power is in the physical sense.   She can move matter around anywhere.  No limits.
But this doesn't mean she has unlimited power of any kind. 
She can't grow food.  She can't turn an apple into an orange.  She can't read minds.  She can't time the stock market.  She can't predict the future.  She can't write a hit song.  She can't rig elections.  She can't.....   etc etc 
She can't even do a new action of moving matter around at the spur of the moment.  It takes her a few days to program HAL to do a new action using the complicated code she has invented for controlling HAL.  Until she finishes this programming she is powerless for that action.

*Either* 
you simply don't understand what you're reading,
*or 
*you're deliberately picking my sentences out of context from different sources and putting them together so as to make me look self-contradictory and to make it seem I'm saying something I didn't say, 

something I have seen done everywhere, on this forum and other forums, something I never do myself because I'm not out to get anybody.  

Neither of these two choices is good, my young friend.


----------



## Deleted member 49710

Might be worth recalling a little detail in post #20:


			
				empresstheresa said:
			
		

> So did people on an atheist forum I joined a couple of months ago for  laughs.  I started a thread arguing for the existence of God.


So when empresstheresa becomes needlessly insulting in addition to obtuse and uninterested in helpful criticism, we should keep in mind he might just be doing it for the lulz.


----------



## empresstheresa

> Might be worth recalling a little detail in post #20:
> 
> 
> 
> _
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Originally Posted by *empresstheresa*
> So did people on an atheist forum I joined a couple of months ago for laughs. I started a thread arguing for the existence of God.
> 
> _
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So when empresstheresa becomes needlessly insulting in addition to obtuse and uninterested in helpful criticism, we should keep in mind he might just be doing it for the lulz.
Click to expand...


Number 1:
That atheist forum said believers were welcome to discuss things.  
Of course, when they identify a believer who has joined their forum, they attack him mercilessly.

Number 2:
You cannot know that I was insulting on that atheist forum because you can't see the thread I started there unless you're a member.  I can't even see it myself because I was banned.

Therefore,
your "argument", such as it is,  falls apart.


-----------------------------------------------------------

In ET, Theresa becomes a worldwide hero.
Everybody wants to talk to her.  Every reporter wants to ask questions.  All the talk shows want her on.

But she knows human nature and knows the manipulations that will be attempted on her.

She withdraws from public life.  She meets no one, ignores reporters, makes no public appearances, doesn't even wave back to the curious who see her on the street.

If I was smart, I'd to the same.


----------



## Terry D

*Let's get this thread back on the discussion of the work posted not on the intentions of the people posting.  That will only lead to trouble.*


----------



## Jeko

> I agree. You can't help.



Please explain to me who can, and I will try to emulate them.

I will also stop pointing our contradictions in what you say, as that doesn't seem to help make my confusion about certain areas of this go away. But I cannot continue to discuss your work unless you tell me what you want the discussion to be about.


----------



## empresstheresa

*



			Let's get this thread back on the discussion of the work posted not on the intentions of the people posting. That will only lead to trouble.
		
Click to expand...


Sounds fair.

However,
I've already given away a lot of info about Empress Theresa,  and can't give away any more without giving away the "crown jewels", as somebody called it.  That wouldn't be smart.

I see no reason to keep the thread active.
This should be no surprise at this point if you check my last words in my last post.

Good luck with your writing careers, everybody.  *:untroubled::joyous:

Lock it up if you wish, Terry. :welcome:  I don't need it anymore.


----------



## Jeko

Hope we helped somewhat, empresstheresa.


----------



## empresstheresa

> Hope we helped somewhat, empresstheresa


.

You did.

Obviously some people found the _Empress Theresa_ concept interesting,
or else there would have been the *big silence*.    :mrgreen:






You got those keys, Terry?


----------



## Jeko

Oh, come on. You must be doing it on purpose. O



> You did.





> You can't help.



But you're right, I did find it interesting, which is why this is a shame. Good luck, empresstheresa.


----------



## empresstheresa

You got those keys, Terry?


----------



## Jeko

Maybe PM him if you want it done that quickly. No harm leaving the thread unlocked, though, so there's no rush.


----------



## empresstheresa

It's true.  There's no rush.  This thread is dead.

I was just getting started.  There's a hell of a lot more to say about Theresa, and I have written a hell of a lot more about her on another forum  ( nearly six thousand views so far over there, only one negative post,  from somebody who never posted again )

Even I didn't expect she would have so many sides to her when I wrote her story.  But people who write zombie and vampire stories wouldn't be interested.


----------



## Jeko

> only one negative post, from somebody who never posted again



Blimey, that's a weird forum.


----------



## cazann34

empresstheresa said:


> It's true.  There's no rush.  This thread is dead.
> 
> I was just getting started.  There's a hell of a lot more to say about Theresa, and I have written a hell of a lot more about her on another forum  ( *nearly six thousand views so far* over there, only one negative post,  from somebody who never posted again )
> 
> Even I didn't expect she would have so many sides to her when I wrote her story.  But people who write zombie and vampire stories wouldn't be interested.




Wow! 600 views, sorry over 600. I'd love to read their comments. Can you give us an example of one or two?

Edit: I cant read or read it too fast- it is early morn here. SIX THOUSAND VIEWS! Now I think you're exaggerating.


----------



## Jeko

Just found this:

Empress Theresa - Home

It might help in the future to direct people to your website - a lot of the information is already covered there. Would save you having to repeat it on different threads/forums.


----------



## the antithesis

Aw, he took down the chapter outlines. That was the best part.


----------



## empresstheresa

Q:  Isn't it more interesting to show a protaganist making mistakes and recovering from them? 

A:  Usually, but Theresa's responsibilities are so great, any failure on her part would be a disaster for the whole world.  We are in new territory here. 

An interesting corollary to this question, and to the following question too, would be:  "Wouldn't it be more dramatic to see Theresa start out a  bad girl and end up good after doing all her good works?" 

I can think of only one classic work where a bad person turned good.  Scrooge in Dickens's _Christmas Carol_ radically changes for the better.  I'm not aware of anybody else using the idea.  What's wrong with the idea? 

It sends the wrong message.  Do events create the person?  I don't think so.  This would seem to negate the concept of free will.  If a person's character depends on his experiences then "who can be saved?" as it says in the story of the rich man who turned away saddened because he had much. Apparently whether you end up good or bad is a matter of chance.

This is not the message I wanted to give.  Theresa starts out good before the story's events begin.  She doesn't change.   She has free will and chooses to be as she is. The question of Theresa changing or not changing is brought up in the story. 

When Theresa comes out on the world scene, British Prime Minister Peter Blair assures the House of Commons Theresa is no threat to the old order:​ “I understand your fears.  What shall we do if a child leads us?  And make no mistake, Theresa is younger than many of the children and grandchildren of the members of this House.  Who are we dealing with?  Will she change?
"I say, Theresa’s interests and endeavors may change, but not her heart.  It is too well-considered. It is written ‘worse than death is the life of a fool’, but we saw in my talk with her Theresa is no fool. ‘Woe to thee when your king is a child’ says the Good Book, but Theresa shows lack of response to recent ill events. ‘Brutus is at war with Brutus’ said Brutus in _Julius Caesar_. There is no war in Theresa. She knows what to do and does not struggle with her conscience. A woman who puts her trust in a higher power will be unchanged. Theresa will remain Theresa.”​


----------



## Jeko

> Do events create the person? I don't think so.



At any rate, you need your character's experiences to shape the person they are.

For example, my protagonist begins very paranoid of what is really going on in the world. When he finds it out, he gets afraid of it and wants to forget about it and lead a normal life. That, of course, doesn't go well.

Empress Theresa sounds like she might start and end the same. To ensure she doesn't, you want something dramatic to change within her during the story. Perhaps she begins all happy, but the responsibilities of what she has ake her wish she didn't have the power she does makes her more stressed and saddened as the story goes on. Only at the climax does she realise what the true meaning of power is, and how it's agood thing, but only if you see it in a certain way and use it for good.

Your characters do need to change - that is definite.

Change sends the right message. People want to feel like the person they are might not be the person they end up as for any number of reasons. Our life irons out our flaws.Thi is a very Christian message as well - God works through the world for our good, so that we better ourselves. He prunes us, as it says in the Word.


----------



## empresstheresa

I'm not sure I can believe what I'm reading........



> At any rate, you need your character's experiences to shape the person they are.
> 
> etc etc
> 
> Change sends the right message. People want to feel like the person they are might not be the person they end up as for any number of reasons.



I see.
So people want to feel that life experiences will change them?  What if life experiences make them worse off than before?

In my story, my last post points out, quite clearly enough I believe, that a person doesn't have to change.  A person has free will and can always choose what kind of person he will be.

You talked about paranoia from bad experiences.  Certainly any person can be driven insane, but that's not the same thing as turning a good person into bad, or vice versa.  An insane person is not responsible.

You need to look on a higher plane, Cadence.


----------



## Jeko

> So people want to feel that life experiences will change them? What if life experiences make them worse off than before?



It makes for an exciting read. Look at Of Mice And Men.

People know life experiences change them. Believing any differently will only lead to writing less interesting stories. 



> You need to look on a higher plane, Cadence.



I have no idea what the planes of writing are, unless you have some kind of special vision I don't.

Read a book. Work out how the character changed. Read another. Work out how the character changed. Then another. Work out how the character changed. You'll quickly realise that all characters need to change. Otherwise, they are internally inanimate, and thus _boring. _


----------



## Potty

Actually, (I'm jumping in off the last few posts here) events do shape a person. I was once a bit of a git in my youth, I didn't like the things I was doing but I did them anyway for a number of reasons. Yes I could stop at any time, but it's differentdifficult to make that reasonable decision at the time. I stopped eventually but it required a move 300 miles north so I could start again without my "friends" nausing it up for me. 

People do things they know they shouldn't for various reasons. I have a character I'm writing about who is a good person and just wants to settle down on a farm and live a quiet life. She ends up killing thousands of people and rips a continent in half because she has been manipulated by evil forces that caught her at an all time low;

"I know lifes a bit crap, but if you do it our why I promise it will get better."
"You sure about this?"
"We also have cake. Only nice people have cake."
"Deal."

She doesn't recover from her mistakes until the very end when she realises what she's done (when it's too late) and then sets about trying to mend what she broke.


----------



## empresstheresa

> Read a book. Work out how the character changed. Read another. Work out how the character changed. Then another. Work out how the character changed. You'll quickly realise that all characters need to change. Otherwise, they are internally inanimate, and thus _boring._



_To Kill a Mockingbird_'s  lawyer hero father Atticus Finch and his children, nine year old daughter Scout, and 13 year old son Jem, don't change, but they're fascinating to watch.  Oh sure, they learn something, but THEY don't change.

Don't think like an auto mechanic who doesn't know how an engine works. ( Hmm, I got to make this character interesting by throwing in change, or making him an alcoholic or something...... )
Think like an auto engineer who can explain the Carnot heat engine cycle and how it determines efficiency etc  ( How does a person work?  What can he resist and what can change him if anything? )

Look at the higher plane.  It's not about what's happening.  It's why it happens.  Who's in control here?  From whom or what does a character draw his strength?

Theresa is under tremendous pressures, and people wonder if she'll lose her mind.  But while she's under pressures,_they're not personal ! _ She's not being tortured.  She doesn't suffer losses.  She's not being blamed for anything and can't be; the situations are not her doing.



Theresa does change.  All she wanted was a quiet life.  There she is suddenly the only person who can save the world.  
She had no interest in politics.  But there she is fighting OPEC, saving Israel, and going into North Korea to liberate the people.
But with all that Theresa herself doesn't essentially change.  She's still the innocent Theresa we saw before all the chaos began.


----------



## empresstheresa

> People do things they know they shouldn't for various reasons. I have a character I'm writing about who is a good person and just wants to settle down on a farm and live a quiet life. She ends up killing thousands of people and rips a continent in half because she has been manipulated by evil forces that caught her at an all time low;
> 
> "I know lifes a bit crap, but if you do it our why I promise it will get better."
> "You sure about this?"
> "We also have cake. Only nice people have cake."
> "Deal."
> 
> She doesn't recover from her mistakes until the very end when she realises what she's done (when it's too late) and then sets about trying to mend what she broke.



She sounds like a weak person.  There is a place for weak persons in literature, I suppose.  
There's also a place for strong persons.  Atticus Finch and his children Scout and Jem  in Mockingbird are strong people.  They're not influenced by the universal racial prejudice around them.

Theresa is a strong person.  If she's not, she will fail, and it's the end of the world.  Armegeddon is here.  Not much of a story. :chargrined:


----------



## Terry D

empresstheresa said:


> _To Kill a Mockingbird_'s  lawyer hero father Atticus Finch and his children, nine year old daughter Scout, and 13 year old son Jem, don't change, but they're fascinating to watch.  Oh sure, they learn something, but THEY don't change.



They _all_ change because of what happened.  That's the whole point of that book is how that trial and the surrounding events shaped the lives of the people involved.  Change isn't as simple as a good person changing into a bad person, or vice versa.  There are no 'all good' or 'all bad' people and if we create one in our writing we are lying to the reader.  Worse, we will be boring the reader to death with a cartoon character.


----------



## Lewdog

Unlimited Power?  Well I'd probably not be very popular, but I would more than likely use it to get laid first then move on to less important stuff like feeding the hungry, creating world peace, and stopping pollution.


----------



## popsprocket

I'm almost afraid to post this, considering how combative this thread is... but:

Does Theresa have any character development going on?

I understand your point about her not changing and I think it's a fine enough idea to have someone who stands by their morals no matter what, but _something_ about her has to change to make her an interesting character. If she doesn't change, doesn't have faults, doesn't fail every now and then, then I don't think she is the kind of character I would like to read about. Isn't the best part of fiction the way you can put your characters under extraordinary stresses that are impossible in the real world, and then watch how they change as a result?

Also, I want to say that I disagree about people not changing because of experiences. Everyone changes because of every experience, even if only in a minute fashion.


----------



## Lewdog

popsprocket said:


> I'm almost afraid to post this, considering how combative this thread is... but:
> 
> Does Theresa have any character development going on?
> 
> I understand your point about her not changing and I think it's a fine enough idea to have someone who stands by their morals no matter what, but _something_ about her has to change to make her an interesting character. If she doesn't change, doesn't have faults, doesn't fail every now and then, then I don't think she is the kind of character I would like to read about. Isn't the best part of fiction the way you can put your characters under extraordinary stresses that are impossible in the real world, and then watch how they change as a result?
> 
> Also, I want to say that I disagree about people not changing because of experiences. Everyone changes because of every experience, even if only in a minute fashion.



If people don't think people change because of the environment, they are close minded individuals who still think the world is flat, the sun rotates around the earth, and that there is such a thing as a free lunch.  I'd beg the question, what experience wouldn't change someone.  For me this argument is in the truth of the matter and it's real effects.  I can give you thousands, even millions of things that change a person in some way.  So tell me just a few things that doesn't.  I've almost got a degree in Sociology and believe me I've learned more about human nature than I ever wanted to know.


----------



## empresstheresa

> I'm almost afraid to post this, considering how combative this thread is... but:



If by combative you mean people express opposing opinions, which is what a forum is for I would think,  aren't you now being combative yourself?



> Does Theresa have any character development going on?
> 
> I understand your point about her not changing and I think it's a fine enough idea to have someone who stands by their morals no matter what, but _something about her has to change to make her an interesting character.
> _



In chapter one, Theresa is ten.  She goes down the street to throw a baseball back and forth with her little friend Tommy Kearns.  That's the extent of her sex life at age ten.
In chapter two she is a sixteen year old high school Senior.  There is no reference to sex in chapter two, but later it will be revealed she only had one boyfriend in high school, a nice kid, a fun to be with kid, a geeky kid with red hair and glasses.  He's the only high school boy who ever had the nerve to ask her out.  They're obviously not a match, but they get each other circulating out there.
In chapter three Theresa begins college.  She immediately starts dating Jack Koster, "the boy from New York City", but not long after Jack's long standing hometown girlfriend shows up on a surprise visit.  Steve Hartley, who has had an eye for Theresa, seizes the opportunity and shows up at her dorm room.  They hit it off immediately.  "We were perfect for each other."  They marry in June.  She is eighteen.
Theresa's sexuality has certainly changed over the years.  The text doesn't explicitly say that.  It would be insulting. The reader should already be aware of it.  

Another kind of change is increase in knowledge.  Obviously Theresa knows a lot more at eighteen than she did at age ten in chapter one when she spoke in simple, short sentences, mostly monosyllables. The text doesn't explicitly say that.  It would be insulting. The reader should be aware of it.

Another change in character is a change in morals, which is what is usually meant by the word character.
The are two kinds of change in morals.

One is change _in kind_.  A person moves left or right, up or down, on the spectrum from good to bad.  Theresa's morals don't change in kind.  Why should they?  

The other kind of change is _in intensity, grounding, fervor, understanding_, whatever you want to call it.  
In chapter four government agents seize Theresa and take her out to sea for execution:Perhaps it was moving away from land for the last time,  but for the moment Steve and my parents seemed in another world I had already left.  There was nothing they could do for me.  I turned to thoughts of my eternity.​When pushed to the brink someone can panic, or despair, or hope.  I had always believed.  Some people said they had doubts about God.  I pitied them.  How could they have doubts?  Simple reasoning told me the universe could not be in the form it was without design.  It might be a chaos,  but the beautiful way it was ordered against a trillion to one odds of elements just happening to have exactly the properties needed to sustain life could only be somebody’s design.  Besides that, people’s intellects could not be material alone or would not understand any concept presented to it.  But most of all,  the goodness of my mother, father, and Steve was not something that could exist in animals.  God made them above nature.​I recited a prayer in my mind as best I could remember it.  It was not a standard Church prayer but was fitting for the end.​_      The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  He maketh me to lie in _​_green pastures;  he leadeth me to still waters.  Though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me.  Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever._​Can you imagine a ten year old girl thinking and feeling this way? 
Clearly Theresa has changed.

The execution fails and HAL's response is disastrous.  Theresa agrees to try to get control of HAL.  But this means she might acquire limitless power.
The world has never heard of her until two weeks ago and worries she will become a power-mad dictator.  Prime Minister Blair appears at the House of Commons to answer questions.  Theresa narrates, "When Blair walked into the House you could see from the eyes of the members they couldn't wait to have at him."
But the reader already knows Theresa very well, and knows she will not become a dictator.  It's fascinating to watch the Prime Minister's lengthy defense of Theresa. which predicts what we already expect of Theresa.  And we have 21 chapters to go.

No change _in kind_ of Theresa's morals is needed to make Theresa interesting.


----------



## empresstheresa

> If people don't think people change because of the environment, they are close minded individuals who still think the world is flat, the sun rotates around the earth, and that there is such a thing as a free lunch.



Now that's combative.:deadhorse:

It doesn't actually say anything new, of course.  :coffeescreen:




> I've almost got a degree in Sociology and believe me I've learned more about human nature than I ever wanted to know.



So did I when I took a sociology course at the Univ of Southern Maine around 1995.  
My sociology professor said Michael Corleone of _The Godfather_ had no choice but to become the new godfather.

Oh really!  Michael couldn't just walk away from it all after his father died?  Close down the "family business" and retire with the millions his father had already made?  Ask for police protection?

Such erudition! Such knowledge! Such sublime thoughts!  Such excitement in learning!
I wanted to get up and take over the lecture myself.  :evil:


----------



## Lewdog

Lol ok, it's a proven design that was created by a lot of people very smarter than me and a lot of the people on this board.  For example, if a person moves from Nebraska to New York City. Depending on how long they live in New York, they are going to eventually start to take on some of the traits of a New Yorker and lose some of their native traits from Nebraska.   

This scene can be played over and over in different situations.  Look at the prison model.  Look at the change that happens in a person there.  This thread is 6 pages long, and to be honest I didn't got back and read this entire thread, so if I said something that is already been said I apologize.  I'm just so strong in favor that people will change.


----------



## empresstheresa

> For example, if a person moves from Nebraska to New York City. Depending on how long they live in New York, they are going to eventually start to take on some of the traits of a New Yorker and lose some of their native traits from Nebraska.



It's all a matter of the degree of change.

A Southern Baptist who moves from Nebraska to New York may take on a different job, and his accent will gradually change over the years,
but he won't become a Hindu and he won't become a criminal.

Theresa spends her first 18 years in Massachusetts.  The rest of the story only takes up two years. While she acquires great power, she didn't seek it, doesn't want it, and intends to not use it after the dust settles.  The tremendous pressures she's under are not personal, as I explained earlier.  They're external, and they pass.
"Theresa will remain Theresa."  ( Prime Minister Blair )


----------



## Lewdog

empresstheresa said:


> It's all a matter of the degree of change.
> 
> A Southern Baptist who moves from Nebraska to New York may take on a different job, and his accent will gradually change over the years,
> but he won't become a Hindu and he won't become a criminal.
> 
> Theresa spends her first 18 years in Massachusetts.  The rest of the story only takes up two years.  The tremendous pressures she's under are not personal, as I explained earlier.  They're external, and they pass.
> "Theresa will remain Theresa."  ( Prime Minister Blair )



When I moved from Ohio to Kentucky, and within months I gained a drawl, I started using hillbilly words like rernt (ruined), and hating churches because they own and run the politics of the area, and there is nothing to do because the churches won't allow it.  There are more dry counties in Kentucky than I've ever seen.


----------



## empresstheresa

> When I moved from Ohio to Kentucky, and within months I gained a drawl, I started using hillbilly words like rernt (ruined)



When I entered the Army and encountered Southerners for the first time ( it seemed like most soldiers were Southerners ! ) I adopted a drawl for a time, but it soon passed.  It's the need to be a member of the group.

In To Kill a Mockingbird,  the black cook Calpurnia invites the kids, Scout and Jem, to her black church.  While there,  Scout notices that Calpurnia talks "funny" like all the other blacks.  But when they return to the Finch home Calpurnia reverts to "white" talk.

When Theresa acquires her power, she avoids all public appearances, talk shows, and reporters.  She doesn't want to be manipulated by everybody.  She refuses to change in any way, even in simple mannerisms.


----------



## Lewdog

empresstheresa said:


> When I entered the Army and encountered Southerners for the first time ( it seemed like most soldiers were Southerners ! ) I adopted a drawl for a time, but it soon passed.  It's the need to be a member of the group.
> 
> In To Kill a Mockingbird,  the black cook Calpurnia invites the kids, Scout and Jem, to her black church.  While there,  Scout notices that Calpurnia talks "funny" like all the other blacks.  But when they return to the Finch home Calpurnia reverts to "white" talk.
> 
> When Theresa acquires her power, she avoids all public appearances, talk shows, and reporters.  She doesn't want to be manipulated by everybody.  She refuses to change in any way, even in simple mannerisms.



Easier said than done.  How often do you think she talks to herself or other inanimate things?  As people we generally crave social interaction in anyway.  Whether it means face to face, a phone call, the internet, or sending a letter we are meant to interact, it's in our nature.


----------



## Kevin

Having just read the entire thread I realize that I have nothing worthwhile to say...apologies


----------



## Jeko

> So did I when I took a sociology course at the Univ of Southern Maine around 1995.
> My sociology professor said Michael Corleone of _The Godfather_ had no choice but to become the new godfather.
> 
> Oh really! Michael couldn't just walk away from it all after his father died? Close down the "family business" and retire with the millions his father had already made? Ask for police protection?
> 
> Such erudition! Such knowledge! Such sublime thoughts! Such excitement in learning!
> I wanted to get up and take over the lecture myself.



I think this is why no-one's going to get anywhere here.

So I'll answer everything from now on with one-word resposes, to save time.



> _To Kill a Mockingbird_'s lawyer hero father Atticus Finch and his children, nine year old daughter Scout, and 13 year old son Jem, don't change, but they're fascinating to watch. Oh sure, they learn something, but THEY don't change.



Wrong.



> But while she's under pressures,_they're not personal ! _She's not being tortured. She doesn't suffer losses. She's not being blamed for anything and can't be; the situations are not her doing.



Boring.



> She doesn't change.





> Theresa does change.



Eh?



> people express opposing opinions, which is what a forum is for I would think



(sigh)



> It doesn't actually say anything new, of course.



(sigh)


----------



## Potty

The only character I can think of that never changes is Rorschach out of the Watchmen comic. He was the same person the whole way through and he had to be killed by another good guy because he refused to change who he was. 

Even vulcans end up changing.


----------



## Jeko

> and he had to be killed by another good guy because he refused to change who he was.



Justice.


----------



## empresstheresa

It's always this way.  

Certain types of people locate the most active thread on the forum,
and they zero in with their nonsense to ruin it.

It's always this way.  :grumpy:


----------



## Lewdog

empresstheresa said:


> It's always this way.
> 
> Certain types of people locate the most active thread on the forum,
> and they zero in with their nonsense to ruin it.
> 
> It's always this way.  :grumpy:




What's the nonsense.  If you look at things in society, there are only a few answers that people can give.  Eventually the thread is going to get derailed because there is nothing to say that hasn't already been said.


----------



## moeslow

I’m sorry but this just isn’t interesting.
From everything you’ve said the story is nothing more than a “this happens, and then this happens, and then some more of this happens… the end.”

What’s more is the detached main character is deified, and no one is going to want to read about that character. Theresa sounds like an *Artemis Fowl*, but without any personality, or the devious mind which makes reading him a delight. You’ve got a touch of the Stephanie Meyer and gone all Edward Cullen on us: Hammering in the perfection of Theresa. I mean the world leaders sound like gushy schoolgirls and not savvy politicians when they talk about her. Yuck!

Her biggest challenges are surviving assassins and nuclear bomb loaded planes. That is not interesting. There is a reason *Batman* is the greatest superhero and has been written by every single top comic book writer in the past 70 years, and the reason is not because he saves Gotham from nuclear weapons and fights off the League of Assassins, it’s because he is human, flawed, and ever changing.

I mean, look back on literature from Gilgamesh to Homer to Mallory to Cervantes to Shakespeare to Tolstoy to Hemmingway to Bolano and you will find stories and characters that are “Human, all too human.” And those are characters we love.

Make it interesting. Have some stakes for your main character that are personal, emotional. Saving the world is fine, but it means nothing if the character doesn’t endure. The world ends and everyone dies and so who cares? 99% of the species that existed on Earth are extinct anyway. But what happens if the world is saved but the main character is damaged in the process? Connect some heartstrings from the reader to the character and then tug and pull and yank and snap them.

Even Hollywood blockbusters attempt it, and the great films achieve it. You don’t have to look far. Take_ Skyfall _which is playing right now. A Bond film that is better than all the previous films in the franchise because they humanize the hero. He is weak, injured, mentally strained, and his loyalties are tested. Emotional turmoil. Sure he thwarts terrorist, but he also finds catharsis. That is a popcorn film. You are writing a novel. Emotional turmoil is your bread and butter, and you haven’t shown any of that crisis.

All the key conflicts you’ve listed are Theresa solving a problem that moves her to the next one. Like the dominos you analogized. Dominos aren’t fun. Chess is fun. Play games with reader. Make it so that HAL is accessible to the average Joe. Then there is a constant fear in the back of the readers mind. It’s like you have E.T, but instead of wrapping him in a blanket, you have him locked in the world’s most unbreakable safe and only the main character knows the combo, and he just sits and waits for the mother-ship to arrive. That’s not fun. There is no drama here. E.T is vulnerable. Make HAL vulnerable. Don’t just tell us Theresa is perfect and that she alone should have this power. Show us how others misuse HAL and that contrast with Theresa makes us believe that she might just be O.K with something like this.

And finally, you keep bringing up *Mockingbird*, but that is a whole different genre. It is about a small town, with small characters and a small criminal case, and the effect it has on a small community. You on the other hand are writing about geo-political conflicts involving deeply seeded secular and religious ideologies. You shouldn’t attempt it with cardboard messianic figures. It doesn’t work. You are attempting to dwell into human nature and the psychology of power, yet it seems like a Tom Clancy novel.


----------



## Jeko

> Certain types of people locate the most active thread on the forum,
> and they zero in with their nonsense to ruin it.



Then maybe you should stop doing it?

I think moeslow's covered everything I might ever say.


----------



## empresstheresa

*

I would have to write ten thousand words to respond to moeslow's assumptions.

I say assumptions because all he does is list assumptions about my story which are contradicted by the story itself,  which he has not read.
In other words, he's wrong, and wrong, and wrong again.


To demonstrate, I'll throw out a couple bones:
*


> Have some stakes for your main character that are personal, emotional.



Theresa walks out alone in front of four million North Koreans who have been ordered to kill her.

An assassin tries to kill Theresa by running a car into her.  Her back is broken and she's paralyzed from the waist down.


----------



## the antithesis

empresstheresa said:


> An assassin tries to kill Theresa by running a car into her.  Her back is broken and she's paralyzed from the waist down.



Really? I don't remember that in your chapter outline and I can't find it in the Google cache. Is that a new part?


----------



## empresstheresa

> Really? I don't remember that in your chapter outline and I can't find it in the Google cache. Is that a new part?



That chapter outline was written long before I wrote the current Young Adult version and was obsolete.
There are interesting changes.  For example, in the old version, Theresa returned to the United States on the U.S.S. carrier Ronald Reagan, the same carrier from which the jet fighter with Theresa and the A-bomb were launched.  The voyage lasts four days.  She meets all the sailors and plays football with them.

In the new version, Theresa flies back to the States in a Boeing 747.  Naturally things go wrong.  When the plane goes out over the Atlantic, if's like the jet fighter  flying over the South Atlantic a year earlier from which Theresa fell into the sea.  This triggers HAL to respond.  He puts everybody into "deep sleep", the process that kept Theresa herself alive in the South Atlantic.  Theresa looks around at everybody and hopes Steve and everybody else is only in "deep sleep", not death.




> Who was flying the plane?


 

Nobody is flying the plane.  Theresa has to fly it herself.  
This is an old movie situation from 1940s movies, but with new twists.  Theresa is not a stewardess and knows nothing about flying a plane.  The techincal manuals are hundreds of pages long and written for people who already know everything.  And the "deep sleep" process also knocks out transistor devices because of their very low voltages.



> Electric lights and things like that used voltages thousands of times higher.



In other words, Theresa has no communication with the ground.  What will they do when she approaches Kennedy Airport in New York?


----------



## moeslow

I'm extrapolating on the information you've given me. 
That is what you are here for, and from everything you've provided, it's  nothing but a deified character running around doing things those  ignorant pageant contest spew: "I would solve hunger and cure aids and  bring world peace and blah blah blah." We gag at them on TV, why would  we feel different reading about them?

*Who cares how many North Koreans there are?* She is,  presumably at the time, 18-20 years of age, and we feel terrified if a  girl that age is approached by even one adult man with bad intentions.  You aren't helping the case by the hyperbole. It saturates the danger  because 4 million is nothing to a deified character.

And why do you a character walking out alone in front of 4 million  people ordered to kill her? That is just plain stupid. There is nothing  noble about it and I don't care how you spin it. You are trying to free a  nation that by all indications doesn't want freedom. If four million of  them are marching at you, its time you leave THEIR COUNTRY. It's the  American way now, I guess. Just walk into nations, and shove "freedom"  down their throats. This doesn't endear Theresa to me, rather she sounds  like a brat. An ignorant, misinformed brat. 

Again, all you ever do is have her in danger physically. People try to  kill her and that's it. That's boring. Bruce Wayne has his back broken  but that isn't the obstacle. Bane has him watch the city he's been  trying to save run rampant with criminals and terrorists. He tortures  him psychologically. That is interesting because the Wayne family has  been trying to save that city for generations, and now all their work is  being whipped clean. What could be the major obstacle of Theresa  breaking her back? The world somehow destroys itself? What has Theresa  invested in the outcome? And if the point has come that we have to rely  on a 18 year old girl to keep THE HUMAN SPECIES from annihilation,  evolution has failed and our species has reached its extinction point.  

*I think you need to shift focus from Theresa. *
Have her observed through the eyes of another character. 
Maybe tell it from the point of view of the husband. Make him be afraid  of her, afraid of her power, have a growing fear in his mind that  threatens their relationship. Make the stakes close to the heart. We can  connect with him, whereas we can't do that with Theresa. The 16-18  years we know/knew are nothing like her, and if we ever met 'em, we tend  to move along to the "fun" teenagers.
I suggest you read _Artemis Fowl_ if you haven't. It has a genius  12 year old who is trying to pretty much take over the world. And he  isn't anything like the "good girl" you've mentioned.

Good characters aren't fun. That may not be your opinion, but if you are  trying to sell this, than you have to play ball. Take the _Harry Potter_  series. The titular character is rarely even in the top five or even  top ten favorite characters of the fandom. The majority are twisted and  damaged characters or ones that are so flawed they are endearing. Even  The Boy Who Lived isn't deified like Theresa. People think of him as  such because he survived Voldemort, but we know that Harry is an average  boy. He isn't the smartest, Hermione is, nor is he the funniest, Ron  is, nor is he the most confident, Draco Malfoy is, nor is he the  strongest wizard around. He's an ordinary boy caught up in an  extraordinary world. We can relate, and as readers, we are always  looking to relate, and for the majority of us, if we had anything like  the power Theresa does, we'd be like the kids from the movie _Chronicle_. Pulling pranks on people, flying around the world, and just having fun.


----------



## Jeko

> *I say assumptions because all he does is list assumptions about my story which are contradicted by the story itself, which he has not read.*



So you have many solutions:

1) Let him read the story.
2) Find a way to stop him from commenting.
3) Use size 4 font next time, it's a lot more shouty than bold.
4) Be nice?

Frankly, when he was talking about emotional stakes, you only gave events. Events aren't emotional. Events cause emotion, and it's the emotion caused that's the emotional part. Put a cheesecake in front of 4 million North Koreans and you'll see how emotionless you can make that scene.

You seem to have an answer for everything. It's just not the right one. Not yet, anyway. Whether you want the right one or not will mean whether your story eventually gets published or not.

I went through a time when I thought I was king of the writing universe. Through the help of others, that side of me is still being fought back every day. Some day it'll die completely, I hope. But only as long as I keep listening to others. A wsie man has many advisors.

Moeslow's advice is some of the best I've heard. The changes you need to make this sell are BIG, and so are his comments (in the sense of quantity, and quality).


----------



## empresstheresa

> I went through a time when I thought I was king of the writing universe.




The laughter of literary agents changed that, hunh?   :cookie:


----------



## Jeko

> The laughter of literary agents changed that, hunh?



No. I didn't sumbit anything to any agents in that time.

Neil Gaiman, Bruno Coulais, Henry Selick and everyone on this forum changed that. The first three gave me the direction to go in, and the lattermost people pushed me towards it.

Hoepfully, I'll have a finished manuscript to polish and perfect before I finish my A-levels. Then I'll edit it so much it'll be a completely different story by the end of it all. 

Things to look forward to.


----------



## moeslow

empresstheresa said:


> The laughter of literary agents changed that, hunh?   [/COLOR]:cookie:



If all you are doing is trying to please them, then you will fail. Readers decide what is good, literary agents follow suit. They can't predict anything or determine if something is good. They are business men/women looking to pay their children's college tuition. They aren't looking for the next Atonement, or War and Peace, or Infinite Jest, and from the sheer volume of absolute garbage that is published, you can clearly see they just look at trends. After Twilight, they bombarded the book selves with teen angst novels. After Hunger Games, now they are bombarding it with dystopian novels. 

So, you can either follow suite and be another blip in a trend, or write something that is going to create a following and give you some pride in having published it. It's not hard to get a book published. All you need is competence in prose writing and a teen love triangle sprinkled with a water downed mythology. Easy.

You don't even have to create anything anymore. Just write fan-fiction and then Find and Replace character names. So stop insulting people who are trying to write something they love because they disagree with you. 

James Joyce spent NINE YEARS peddling his book. He was rejected by 18 times. You think that stopped him? Nope. That book was _Dubliners__. _If something as magnificent as that book can be rejected, then we have nothing to be ashamed of in our rejections. Never fear rejections or be ashamed of them.


----------



## Sam

[ot]There's nothing magnificent about _Dubliners. _For that matter, there's nothing entirely great about any of Joyce's work. He said himself that he wrote most of it to keep professors and academics in work for the next 100 years. It's mostly rubbish written for rubbish's sake. In my opinion.[/ot]

Having said that, I understand where you're coming from.


----------



## moeslow

Sam W said:


> [ot]There's nothing magnificent about _Dubliners. _For that matter, there's nothing entirely great about any of Joyce's work. He said himself that he wrote most of it to keep professors and academics in work for the next 100 years. It's mostly rubbish written for rubbish's sake. In my opinion.[/ot]
> 
> Having said that, I understand where you're coming from.



I love the book. It's my favorite amongst his works. I read it simply for the writing. I read a lot of books on rhythm and English prose and I'm blown away by Joyce's sentences in Dubliners. 

As for the 100 years quote, that is for _Ulysses_. Dubliners was not written because he wanted to write rubbish.


----------



## Jeko

Moeslow: On what you said - I was browsing the young adult section of my library today for new authors, and it was as if every book I picked up was some sort of rubbish romance, covered in a layer of fantasy or similar brain-rot.

_'What if the one you love is the one who has to betray you?...'

_Carry on while I vomit in the corner.

ET: At least you're not writing that sort of paff.


----------



## moeslow

Cadence said:


> Moeslow: On what you said - I was browsing the young adult section of my library today for new authors, and it was as if every book I picked up was some sort of rubbish romance, covered in a layer of fantasy or similar brain-rot.
> 
> _'What if the one you love is the one who has to betray you?...'
> 
> _Carry on while I vomit in the corner.
> 
> ET: At least you're not writing that sort of paff.



It's how the market works. Readers tend to feel comfortable reading the same story. They understand it, expect the reversals and payoffs. The most profitable market is the teenage girls. The will buy the books, and more, they will go see the film. It's a built in system and agents understand that. 

What is important to learn from those books is that character drama sells. People will read 1500 pages (everything is a trilogy these days) because they want to find out how their favorite characters end up doing. You can have a great concept, but if you don't have character drama, no one will want to buy your book. So, when you writing your great concept, keep that in the back of your head and watch out for moments ripe for drama.


----------



## Jeko

Your advice is sublime, moeslow.


----------



## Leyline

Potty said:


> The only character I can think of that never changes is Rorschach out of the Watchmen comic. He was the same person the whole way through and he had to be killed by another good guy because he refused to change who he was.
> 
> Even vulcans end up changing.



Ha. I still have a home-made t-shirt that reads _*Rorschach Was Right. *_


----------



## empresstheresa

> Originally Posted by *Cadence*
> 
> 
> _Moeslow: On what you said - I was browsing the young adult section of my library today for new authors, and it was as if every book I picked up was some sort of rubbish romance, covered in a layer of fantasy or similar brain-rot.
> 
> 'What if the one you love is the one who has to betray you?...'
> 
> Carry on while I vomit in the corner.
> 
> ET: At least you're not writing that sort of paff.
> 
> 
> _





How a romance novelist would write it.Steve saw his opportunity.  Ginny’s surprise visit to Jack left Theresa vulnerable.  He had a chance to get her.​He knocked on Theresa’s door.  “Come in” he heard her say.  He entered.​Theresa was dressed in a string bikini.  Her expression showed she had been expecting Jack.​“Hi, Steve.  You wanted to see me?”​Was she playing words with him?​He walked closer.  “Ginny is Jack’s hometown girlfriend.  They have a longtime understanding.”​“What about you, Steve?  You have a girlfriend hidden away?”​“No.  I waited for college to find somebody really special.”​She avoided commenting on that to look innocent.​He looked down on her figure.  It was the perfect seventeen year old’s body.  Breasts recently fully developed and high on the chest.  No cellulite collections anywhere.  Tightly toned leg muscles from high school phys ed.  And that incredible mane of hair that flowed down over curves to tease him with promises.​He wanted her, and her expression showed she wanted him.​

It’s all about boy lusts for girl who lusts for boy.


How I wrote it………………..I went to the closet and pulled out my ’little black nothing’.  It was a backless dress made of flimsy, clingy material.  It was already short but the occasion called for making it shorter.  Jack deserved the VIP treatment.​I got a pair of scissors and cut five more inches off the hemline.  Off came everything I wore.  I put on thong panties but no bra and slipped on the dress.  It reached only to my upper thighs.  String shoulder straps held the nearly weightless thing up.  My back was bare to the rump.  Cleavage exposure ranked a venial sin.  I looked in the full length mirror on the door.  Yup.  This was the ultimate killer dress.  “Jack, eat your heart out!”​I waited a few minutes.  And sure enough there was a knock on the door.  I stood against the counter in front of the window and said, “Come in!“​Steve Hartley came through the door.​“Hi, Steve.  What‘s up?”  Probably not the best choice or words.​Steve walked close up to me.​“Ginny is Steve’s old high school girlfriend.  They have an understanding.  She was supposed to drop in next weekend but she showed up early.”​So it was all coming to an end anyway!  “She go to another college?”​“No.  She’s a waitress.”​Then she could be a cashier in Jack’s father’s store.​With that, the happy new couple had absolutely nothing to say.  Steve stood there glancing down at my dress.  He had a lot more to deal with than​he’d expected.  This awkward moment had to be gotten over or he wouldn‘t be back.  The problem was there was nothing to do in my room.​“Want to go downstairs and hang out with the guys, Steve?”​“Sure.”​“Ginny should love this outfit.”​We went downstairs and when the boys lingering around in the hallway saw us them whooped and hollered in exaggerated manner.  They were paying tribute to my appearance and Steve’s triumph.​“Pay no attention to these animals” Steve joked, but he was clearly pleased.​More boys came out of there rooms and clustered around us.  Talk quickly moved to my high school baseball career.  I was conscious that they were all thinking of my body.   Well, some girls might not like it, but I did.  Let prudes go to the beach and then say I was being slutty.​Steve and I were perfect for each other.  In a month we knew we’d get married.  And we wanted to get married soon.  Well really, now!  Could we go four years without doing it?​

Theresa and Steve are clearly attracted to each, but much more information is given.  There’s even a glimpse of dormitory life which will interest high school kids.

Theresa draws Steve out to join the gang until he gets used to her.  So nothing happens that they'll wish didn't. 

In an earlier version I wrote two years ago, both Jack and Steve walk into Theresa's room.  This opened the door to many kinds of steamy developments.  Remember, these are teenagers out of contact with their parents for the first time.  But I decided that wasn't the way to go.


----------



## Jeko

Both versions make me want to vomit, unfortunately. The latter is far too obvious. If you want YA to be interesting and involve any kind of romantic edge, it has to be touched on with more subtle embrace. The way you describe her putting on her dress reminds me why I don't want to do the English Lit A Level at my school.

Ambiguity breeds emotion, but blatancy breeds contempt.


----------



## Nemesis

I can't say I found either version particularly interesting or realistic, also, if you cut the hem off of a dress it looks like terrible until you go back and add a new hem =p


----------



## empresstheresa

> If you want YA to be interesting and involve any kind of romantic edge, it has to be touched on with more subtle embrace.



Theresa has just been humiliated when her boyfriend's secret girlfriend shows up by surprise.  It's over between her and Jack.

Instead of showing Theresa going to her room and crying her eyes out,  I show her getting revenge on Jack.  This girl has spunk.  She's going to show him what he'll be missing.  She's not in a romantic mood.

But when the door opens, it's not Jack who shows up as promised, but Steve who she knows has had the eye on her.  "Mr. Intense" she called him the first time she saw him staring at her in the cafeteria. 

Steve's timing is not the best.  It might have been better if he'd waited a few hours.  But he's a teenager too and there is no manual for how to behave in these situations.

Just as Steve seizes his opportunity, so does Theresa immediately seize her opportunity to welcome Steve and drag him down to be with his friends, safe from making an embarrassing move in the "awkward moment."  She has taken control of this situation, just as later she will take control of.......er..... everything.

By now, the reader knows this is not a romance novel.  The previous chapter already revealed that something is not right in the White House.  A new President is sworn in and in weeks Theresa's only government contact Jan Struthers disappears.  Something's up.  
Theresa is not going to forget her worries by dragging Steve into bed.  She wouldn't anyway.  Her possession of HAL since age ten has conditioned her to think in the long term, not the moment.
Steve may or may not turn our to be Mr. Right, but until she finds out she's not going to mess things up with any premature romantic moves, which would be faked at this time anyways.  

Thank you  for your kind comments, Cadence.  I know how fascinated you are with this wonderful novel.  :kiwi-fruit:


----------



## Kevin

empresstheresa said:


> Thank you  for your kind comments, Cadence.  I know how fascinated you are with this wonderful novel.  :kiwi-fruit:


We've already started a secret fan club. Unfortunantly Cadence can't agree that I'M the PRESIDENT, not him, but more importantly, we're all waiting on pins and needles for the rest of the completed text to come out...


----------



## empresstheresa

> we're all waiting on pins and needles for the rest of the completed text to come out...



Thank you!  :glee:  ( I think  :-s )

However,

I've already advised somebody on this forum, and somebody else on another forum, 
that if you put your novel on the internet free for anybody to read,
no literary agent or publisher will touch it.  You've killed the goose.

So I'm not going to put much more on if any.


----------



## Jeko

> By now, the reader knows this is not a romance novel. The previous chapter already revealed that something is not right in the White House. A new President is sworn in and in weeks Theresa's only government contact Jan Struthers disappears. Something's up.



The fact you are embedding a romantic element in your story means you have to be much more subtle to pull it off well. The scene you wrote would make me forget what the story was about, because it captures attention too much and doesn't reward it fully or continue linking to the main plot.

Take I Am Number Four for example. At one point in the book, our hero reaches a new kind of low. Things have fallen apart somewhat. What does he do? He makes out with Sarah, his girlfriend. Why? Many reasons, all strongly linked to the plot. Lore writes the scene very well, engrossing the reader in what's going on without going to too much of an extreme. Everything prior to the scene has built up his and Sarah's relationship. The scene feels as much a part of the story as any chatper, page or line.

This:



> It was a backless dress made of flimsy, clingy material. It was already short but the occasion called for making it shorter. Jack deserved the VIP treatment.



Doesn't fit the mood of what you're going for, in my mind. Too jarring for an idea.


----------



## empresstheresa

> The fact you are embedding a romantic element in your story means you have to be much more subtle to pull it off well.



What romantic element?  Theresa's relationship with Jack is breaking up, and Steve is the bounce back boyfriend.  That's all there is to it.
In the rest of the book Steve will be completely supportive of Theresa.  The intelligent reader can imagine the romantic elements of their relationship without having to see videos of it.   By chapter eight the reader already knows Steve and Theresa are absolutely loyal to each other.  This will not be a soap opera. 



> _
> It was a backless dress made of flimsy, clingy material. It was already short but the occasion called for making it shorter. Jack deserved the VIP treatment.
> _
Click to expand...




> Doesn't fit the mood of what you're going for, in my mind. Too jarring for an idea.



I'm not going for a romantic mood.  Theresa has just been humiliated and she's not in a romantic mood.  Unless Steve is completely brain dead he'll also know Theresa is not in a romantic mood, but he goes to her room to become her boyfriend.   Theresa is in no mood for lovey dovey, but there's Steve and she knows from her research on him in the school's student guide that he is potentially a great boyfriend.  So she welcomes him.  If she didn't "he wouldn't be back." 
"Jack deserved the VIP treatment" shows something about Theresa.  She doesn't wilt and cry when things are going badly.  She's a fighter.  The reader senses that this will be very important later.  


From the text sample given above..................


> Steve stood there glancing down at my dress. *He had a lot more to deal with than he’d expected.*



Amen to that!  
The reader already knows Theresa is infested with HAL.  It has been drummed into his head throughout the first two chapters, and something's cooking in the White House.
Now here's Steve getting involved with Theresa.  The poor guy!  What is he getting into?  8-[


----------



## Jeko

> What romantic element? Theresa's relationship with Jack is breaking up, and Steve is the bounce back boyfriend. That's all there is to it.



Yeah. That romantic element.

If, as you say, it means little to the plot, then you should tone down the extract you gave.



> I'm not going for a romantic mood.



It's all over your extract. You may need to make some changes if you don't want any kind of romantic mood in your story. You use a lot of ambiguous statements, all of which are combined with your desription of Theresa putting on her dress to give the wrong sort of impression.


----------



## empresstheresa

> _What romantic element? Theresa's relationship with Jack is breaking up, and Steve is the bounce back boyfriend. That's all there is to it.
> _
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah. That romantic element.
> 
> If, as you say, it means little to the plot, then you should tone down the extract you gave.
Click to expand...


Tone it down!  Isn't it toned down enough already?  
Steve and Theresa might as well be out on the street as far as that goes. They don't do anything.  In this scene they don't even shake hands.

I had to write some kind of scene wherein they meet, or else later if I wrote "Steve flew to London to join his wife"  
the reader would say: "Wait a minute!  Who the hell is this Steve?  Where did he come from?  Is Theresa a mail order bride or something?"

That Steve and Theresa are in love is taken for granted in the rest of the book.  Explaining how they got that way would take up a hundred pages.  I didn't want to take the time.  
If the reader knows anything about human nature, he can fill in the blanks himself.



> *If, as you say, it means little to the plot*



Why do people say somebody else said something they didn't say? 
This kind of behavior is incomprehensible to me.:dispirited:


----------



## Jeko

> Tone it down! Isn't it toned down enough already?



It's not the facts of the relationship. It's the descriptions you use and the tone you imply:

'It was a backless dress made of flimsy, clingy material. It was already short but the occasion called for making it shorter. Jack deserved the VIP treatment.'

'Off came everything I wore. I put on thong panties but no bra and slipped on the dress. It reached only to my upper thighs. String shoulder straps held the nearly weightless thing up. My back was bare to the rump. Cleavage exposure ranked a venial sin. I looked in the full length mirror on the door. Yup. This was the ultimate killer dress. “Jack, eat your heart out!”

'We went downstairs and when the boys lingering around in the hallway saw us them whooped and hollered in exaggerated manner. They were paying tribute to my appearance'

'I was conscious that they were all thinking of my body. Well, some girls might not like it, but I did. Let prudes go to the beach and then say I was being slutty.'

You have to read them from a YA perspective. I know I can.


----------



## popsprocket

I agree, the whole scene with the black dress is weird. Not really out of place, even in a YA book, but not particularly good either. It's something I can't quite put my finger on, though.



> I didn't write something like this, which would indeed make parents wonder what value this story could have for their kids:



_That's_ a personal attack. How about doing that in the relevant thread and keeping this one focused on your writing?


----------



## empresstheresa

> I agree, the whole scene with the black dress is weird. Not really out of place, even in a YA book, but not particularly good either. It's something I can't quite put my finger on, though.




It's a few pages in something like three hundred and fifty.  Taken out of context this way, it has a different sound to it, if you haven't read everything that came before.  

Here's something weird.
A book narrated in the voice of a nine year old girl has a trial about a man accused of rape.  The trial goes on and on for many pages and during this time the reader has to think about rape.  Pretty sick, hunh?

It's _To Kill a Mockingbird_,  winner of the Pulitzer prize, 85 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and an Oscar winning movie.  The book is assigned reading in middle and high schools.

There's no scene on the edge of propriety in _Empress Theresa_.  Sure, there are scenes in which Theresa is playing for high stakes.  But disaster is averted and there's no blood and mayhem.

Somebody, I can't remember who, said a while back that Theresa is like a robot dispatching one problem after another with no failures. 
Well, in the dorm room scene Theresa is human, a typical girl.  What she's doing is something that thousands of other girls might do under similar circumstances.  I didn't give you the scene in which she walks into Jack's room and finds Ginny there, while half a dozen boys are watching, including Steve.  She walks out thirsting for blood.


----------



## Jeko

> I can too.



You are mistaken. See, I am a young adult. I read YA fiction 24/7. After all that I've read, including YA fantasy, YA horror, YA sci-fi, YA adventure - everything except YA romance, really - I can safely say that the extract you posted about the black dress would not fit a YA book the way it is written. Neither would your personal attacks.


----------



## Blondie

I know I'm posting a lot right now but I finally got some time off from work. 

Anyways while I understand what empress is going for here I also feel this is turning less into a YA novel but more into a teenage version of 50 shades of grey but thats just me.


EDIT: Basically what I'm getting is that the character that everyone is up in arms about is essentially a slut (I don't know the language TOS on the forums I'll happily edit it out if requested) that simply hops off one person to another just out of spite, which honestly....is a bitch that I would hate.


----------



## Jeko

ET: whether or not the above interpretation is correct, it should make it clearer what I'm getting at. I doubt 50 Shades of Empress Theresa will ever find itself on the YA shelf. It may find itself on _a _shelf, but not the YA shelf.

As I said, be more subtle.


----------



## the antithesis

Blondie said:


> I know I'm posting a lot right now but I finally got some time off from work.
> 
> Anyways while I understand what empress is going for here I also feel this is turning less into a YA novel but more into a teenage version of 50 shades of grey but thats just me.
> 
> 
> EDIT: Basically what I'm getting is that the character that everyone is up in arms about is essentially a slut (I don't know the language TOS on the forums I'll happily edit it out if requested) that simply hops off one person to another just out of spite, which honestly....is a bitch that I would hate.



I had read his chapter outlines before he had taken them down and I don't think that's an especially fair assessment of the character or the situation. It was contained within one chapter when the robot named Theresa goes to college and while there gets involved in a simple, cliched teen romance where one guy really likes her but his best friend asks her out first and they become a couple, oh woe! But then they fight and break up and she winds up hooking up with the first guy who weawwy woves her. They get married and he becomes an inconsequential side character, who is mentioned but does nothing, for the rest of the story. I think calling an emotionless robot a slut is harsh. I don't think she was so much a slut as an idiot. The main point is that once this thing ends and she's married, that whole portion of her life is all done. It's over. Nothing happens with it ever again. As such, it sticks out like a sore thumb in the narrative. So I think it's unfair to judge the character based on this episode which is so inconsequential that it could be removed completely without effecting the narrative.


----------



## Jeko

I find Blondie's interpretation perfectly valid. Things do need to be considered holistically, but everything has its individual effect. Any scene that makes the protagonist look undesirable for the story can only create issues and make suppressed problems more evident to the reader. The main purpose for YA fiction is entertainment, so if the reader is not entertained by a scene, it needs to be worked on, or it needs to go. Depends on its importance.

Would a scene where Katniss watches wallpaper dry be effective in the Hunger Games? Only if it was used in conjunction with emotive exposition, I think. Then it links to the rest of the story.

The key question is, what does the extract _mean_, empresstheresa? How does it affect the overall, one-line plot?


----------



## empresstheresa

I'm baccccccccccccck!   :tickled_pink:



> I had read his chapter outlines before he had taken them down and I don't think that's an especially fair assessment of the character or the situation.


 

I said it before, and I'll say it again.  An outline is not a text.  If you haven't read the full text you can't know how the story reads.  I pointed out that the outline of something like To Kill a Mockingbird would look pretty thin, if you haven't read the text.

Besides, I already pointed out that chapter outline was written long before the current Young Adult version.  It was for a 142,000 word "adult" version which had many scenes out of sight of Theresa.  The new 96,000 word version is different.



> It was contained within one chapter when the robot named Theresa goes to college and while there gets involved in a simple, cliched teen romance where one guy really likes her but his best friend asks her out first and they become a couple, oh woe! But then they fight and break up and she winds up hooking up with the first guy who weawwy woves her.





> *They get married and he becomes an inconsequential side character, who is mentioned but does nothing, for the rest of the story.  *:concern:  I think calling an emotionless robot a slut is harsh. I don't think she was so much a slut as an idiot. The main point is that once this thing ends and she's married, that whole portion of her life is all done. It's over. Nothing happens with it ever again. As such, it sticks out like a sore thumb in the narrative. So I think it's unfair to judge the character based on this episode which is so inconsequential that it could be removed completely without effecting the narrative.



The chapter outlines did not and could not mention all the things husband Steve does in the story.  Theresa is understandably burdened to the point of madness when she finds out it's up to her to get control of HAL and save the world.  Steve rushes to England to be at her side.  She probably couldn't make it without her.

Steve does other things.  When the Prime Minister points out that a part of the solution she has implemented to bring rain to the world will cause massive hurricanes all over the world all the time, she whines "What am I supposed to do, change the laws of physics?  This is the most impossible problem yet."  In the middle of the night, physics major Steve gets out of bed and jumps on the computer.  He has realized there is no solution to this problem* on Earth*.  One thing HAL can't do is destroy excessive heat.  He looks for the solution elsewhere and finds it.

When OPEC issues its blackmail,  Theresa says, "I saved their lives, I turned their deserts into gardens, and this is how they thank me?"  Steve replies, "This is the world we live in.  We're going to kill those bastards!"  Once again, he gets up in the middle of the night and jumps on the computer.  He's looking for ocean floor oil deposits left behind by plate tectonics.  He locates a likely spot off the coast of Antarctica and Theresa goes to work.

The next day Prime Minister Blair calls to say Israeli Prime Minister Scherzer wants to meet her to talk about OPEC.  She drops the phone on the floor and complains, "Everybody wants something from me.  I can't do everything."  Steve waits until she calms down.  A meeting is set.  Steve, Theresa and the two Prime Ministers meet at Number 10 Downing Street.  During this meeting,  Theresa says only seven words, "It's a piece of cake!" and "You're welcome."  Steve does all the talking so old warrior Scherzer can have a dignified man-to-man bullsession.  Agreements are reached about what to do for Israel.


----------



## Jeko

> Theresa is understandably burdened to the point of madness when she finds out it's up to her to get control of HAL and save the world. Steve rushes to England to be at her side. She probably couldn't make it without her.



Ah! That's good emotional stuff there. Reminds me of I Am Number Four.

If you re-wrote the extract you posted to make more of this, then you'd get your readers attached to your characters a lot more. Have things between Theresa and Steve develop in a natural but exciting way. At the moment, their meeting is difficult to enjoy or see any relevance in.


----------



## empresstheresa

Note to my dear friend Cadence.  :welcome:

Although I disagree Theresa is acting slutty but is having a forgiveable reaction to events (  later in the story she briefly mentions the insane sexual antics of other girls she knows  on the campus without going into detail )  the very fact that there is so much controversy on this scene has made me change my mind.  I don't want controversy to change the nature of the story.
Now, she just puts on the dress as is, six inches about the knee, no cutting off five more inches.  No mention of bra and panties.  No mention of the boys gawking at her.  The dress is "appropriate for parties, but in my room, with no other girls to look at, Jack would find it hard to forget." Of course, it's Steve who shows up.


----------



## empresstheresa

Aha! My dear friend Cadence was waiting for me.  


> If you re-wrote the extract you posted to make more of this, then you'd get your readers attached to your characters a lot more. Have things between Theresa and Steve develop in a natural but exciting way. At the moment, their meeting is difficult to enjoy or see any relevance in.



The rest of the chapter is about Theresa getting her parents to agree to the wedding despite her youth.  She's only seventeen.  Her priest intercedes and says Steve is as fine a boy as she's ever likely to meet.  He's seen many young marriages, some that worked and some that didn't.  He believes Steve and Theresa will make it.  The chapter ends with a description of the wedding.
In chapter four, they've been married two weeks and all hell breaks loose.  President Martin makes his move.


----------



## the antithesis

empresstheresa said:


> I said it before, and I'll say it again.  An outline is not a text.  If you haven't read the full text you can't know how the story reads.



You keep making that excuse. It still doesn't wash. 

Theresa's husband doesn't do anything important in any way. What does he do? Nothing happens in their relationship after their initial hook up. They go places and spend time together, but nothing interesting happens there. Why? Because nothing changes. They start the scene in love and they end the scene in love. So nothing happens there. The only other thing her husband does is occasionally come up with solutions to the current problem because he's a physics major. This is a role that could be filled by anyone else, such as an actual physicist instead of someone who's only studying physics. He's unnecessary and could be left out entirely or replaced with a butler with a mop and bucket following her around. 

...Or introduced in an entirely different way. You could make her husband an actual physicist, or a member of her team of scientist working with her to help her solve the problems she causes and they fall in love then. You could even have that love triangle bollocks if you like with the best friend guy being another scientist. This way you don't have the romantic subplot happening in a separate chunk apart from the actual story of Theresa ruining the world by making one stupid mistake after another. Nothing happens during the college scene except this romance crap and nothing comes of it after she marries the bum. So move it into the middle of the action to make it wed the main story better.


----------



## empresstheresa

Sometimes I wonder about posters's motives.  Post 133 gets it so wrong I can't believe what I'm reading. 
I'll just respond to a few points.





> You could make her husband an actual physicist, or a member of her team of scientist working with her to help her solve the problems she causes and they fall in love then.




Theresa needs Steve's support from the very start, as I already indicated.  



> You could even have that love triangle bollocks if you like with the best friend guy being another scientist.



This is not a romance novel, and Theresa wouldn't be likely to want to get involved with anybody with the tremendous pressure on her.



> This way you don't have the romantic subplot happening in a separate chunk apart from the actual story of Theresa ruining the world by making one stupid mistake after another.



The romantic subplot takes place in chapter three, before all hell breaks loose, and neatly gets Theresa happily married, a situation which will be critical to her, and everybody.



> Nothing happens during the college scene except this romance crap and nothing comes of it after she marries the bum.




What do you want, a hundred pages of on-again-off-again courtship?  You can find that in a million romance novels.  My intended readers would be bored to death by that crap. 
It was the "bum" who a year earlier got Theresa thinking about her earliest theory of what HAL was, in an innocent conversation at college when Steve had mentioned something with fellow physics students.  ( Steve knows nothing about HAL. )  As a result, Theresa has a full year to think up a theory of HAL before the critical Sunday night meeting with Prime Minister to discuss HAL.  She finally realizes what HAL is.
The next day she tells Blair how important Steve was:
From chapter eight:



> “Your husband explained this without knowing about HAL?”
> “He could see I was interested but not why.”
> “How important was he to developing your theory of HAL?”
> “Without Steve, I wouldn’t have a clue what to think about HAL.  I think I would have told you I can’t do anything and gone home.  You might drop Steve a thank you note.”



Steve arrives in England later that day.
His importance to Theresa and her work is soon recognized.  He is universal respected in the rest of the book.  He could have been elected king of any country, but he chooses to stay in the background.


----------



## Jeko

> Sometimes I wonder about posters's motives.



Don't, please. We're all here to help, and our responses are only based on what we've read, so they're only based on what has been posted. If you believe anyone is wrong in what they say, then take the hint they're giving - you've miscommunicated something, either through your extracts or your posts. 

Rather than say what's wrong, I'm going direct my posts more towards what is right and can be more right. The relationship between Steve and Theresa should be fleshed out more, I think. It should be critical to the story. You have the opportunity to make your story shine with it.

Take the relationship between the protagonist and Sarah in I Am Number Four. His love for her is what makes him foolish and mess up the secure situation he's in.

Make Steve's relationship with Theresa not just part of the story, not just linked to the story, but make it a cause for events in the story that makes it go hand in hand with Theresa's struggle. Make Steve cause problems. Then you'll have the relationship add to the conflict of the story.

These are, of course, just ideas, but from what I've read the best relationships cause more problems than they solve. It's the love of the characters that makes the reader know they won't separate, and then they fear that their love will turn any chance of a good situation upside down. Be mean to your characters! Make things go wrong!


----------



## empresstheresa

Cadence,

I remember when Michael Crichton's 





> The Andromeda Strain


 came out.  I read the book before seeing the movie.  The story is tired today, but at the time we college kids found it fascinating. ( college kids read books in those days )  Crichton was just then graduating from Harvard Medical school.  He was no dummy and knew what he was doing.  He never practiced medicine; he became a professional writer.

The Andromeda Strain had no romance sub-plot.  It was all about getting the bug.  It would have been easy to throw in a romance between the scientists desperately trying to find a way to stop Andromeda.  Just replace that ugly woman scientist with a decent looker and there you are.  But Crichton who must have considered this realized this would break up the tension of the story which is what made it so good.

In Empress Theresa, I take care of the romance question in chapter three.  It satisfies Theresa's need to have someone with her for the trials to come.  When all hell breaks loose in chapter four the trials go on for the rest of the book. 

*Theresa has a love affair with the human race.*

When during the Sunday night talk with Prime Minister Blair it becomes apparent Theresa might be able to get control of HAL and save the human race,  and Blair asks her if she'll do it,
_who would answer yes to such an awesome responsibility? _
Besides that, the President of France has already said a thousand assassins will be after her, so she is in effect throwing away her life in going after HAL.  But she answers the PM's question:


> "Sure.  It's only the most impossible, burdensome, insane task ever imposed on a human being."


----------



## the antithesis

empresstheresa said:


> The Andromeda Strain had no romance sub-plot.



But you do. So this comparison does not hold any water. Confining it to a single chapter doesn't help. It makes it that chapter stand out like a sore thumb.

The whole beginning of your story has too much noodling around, anyway. Eight years pass and nothing happens. She gets this HAL thing when she's ten, but nothing comes of it. She doesn't bother trying to learn to use this HAL thing until she gets to college. And then she's kidnapped, taken out to sea, put onto a remote controlled fighter jet with an atomic bomb to be detonated over international waters. There's just a lot of nothing going on at the beginning and chapter three is a particularly long digression into things that are not particularly interesting. It's a cliched love triangle thing but it just kind of ends like you had lost interest in the whole deal. Then nothing happens with it. it's stable and that makes it boring. Steve's role as supporter is very weak and could have been accomplished by anyone else. There is no real reason for Theresa to be married. It doesn't add anything except an extraneous chapter that wiggles like a loose tooth.


----------



## Jeko

> college kids read books in those days



Pretty sure they do now as well.



> It satisfies Theresa's need to have someone with her for the trials to come.



You can't fulfill a 'need' for something in a single chapter. In YA, if you have a romance, it needs to be a reason why the story progresses the way it does. With the story already so convoluted, having Theresa married just to 'satisfy' something will only increase the confusion of events. So what if you've taken care of the romance question? Books aren't written to take care of questions. They're written to tell stories. Have you taken care of the question of why Theresa isn't a lesbian? Should you write a scene for that? Or, alternatively, what of the question of why she enjoys chocolate cupcakes over the ever-so-popular blueberry variety? Do you understand what I'm getting at?

Don't focus on answering questions in your story - focus on telling the story. 


To give an example, here's a quick outline of my version of Theresa's tale, set in the heart of mid-summer Ohio:

*Act One: *Theresa grows up as an unhappy child. Everyone makes her feel inferior, especially at high school. Then she inherits a strange entity that gives her incredible, near infinite power. In foolishness, she turns the lives of everyone who ever made her feel small her upside down. Realising her mistake, and her new responsibility, she sets everything right quickly. 
*Act Two, part a:* Theresa tries to control herself. No-one knows that she caused the nightmarish events in Act One, yet. She tries to fit back in. But tapping into her infinite power, she makes herself more attractive, and people start to like her more. She becomes friends with Steve, who she falls in love with. Things get more and more out of control for her.
*Act Two, part b: *Steve discovers Theresa's infinite power, the day before they are to be married. Theresa is able to make him keep quiet, without using her power (as she wants the relationship to be real), but after their marriage, suspiscion only grows and grows. The enemy, a shadowy but actually righteous illuminati, finds out what Theresa has, and her life turns to hell as she has to escape their clutches with Steve. The enemy want the power she has to solve all the world's problems, at the expense of her life, as they have to kill her to get it. Theresa keeps on running. When she catches a moment safe in her old school with Steve, the two have sex. This is the crux of Act Two.
*Act Three: *Theresa is trapped inside the school as the enemy surround her and Steve. She is forced to defend herself and Steve from them, but her powers are gone and she doesn't know how. The climax comes as the enemy launches a final assault, and she feels helpless, but she realises that you don't need infinite power to stay alive. She remembers a way out of the school, a chance for them to keep on running. But the enemy stop them, and instead of taking Theresa, they take Steve, for he now has Theresa's power (they had sex, which transferred it). Theresa loses Steve. She is left alone, powerless now, and the normal life she has craved for so long is bittersweet as she regains it. The end.


Note that Theresa's goal is to have a normal life, and Steve's presence forms a _critical _part of that. He is so tightly bound to the story that, even when Theresa gains her life back, she doesn't gain it all, because she has lost Steve. Steve does not answer questions. Steve makes the story what it is.

Note also, that, because I came up with that plot structure in 20 minutes, you should be able to change yours to improve it. Never shy away from taking everything apart so that you can put it back together. Start at the basics. What is Theresa's goal? How does Steve affect this goal and her journey towards it? Don't give answers to those questions - make those answers better. If that means the whole plot changes, go with it. Big changes are the best.

Note also how simple the above outline is. It would make a 300-500 word novel easily, as long as the generic structure is followed.


----------



## moeslow

empresstheresa said:


> How a romance novelist would write it.Steve saw his opportunity.  Ginny’s surprise visit to Jack left Theresa vulnerable.  He had a chance to get her.​He knocked on Theresa’s door.  “Come in” he heard her say.  He entered.​Theresa was dressed in a string bikini.  Her expression showed she had been expecting Jack.​“Hi, Steve.  You wanted to see me?”​Was she playing words with him?​He walked closer.  “Ginny is Jack’s hometown girlfriend.  They have a longtime understanding.”​“What about you, Steve?  You have a girlfriend hidden away?”​“No.  I waited for college to find somebody really special.”​She avoided commenting on that to look innocent.​He looked down on her figure.  It was the perfect seventeen year old’s body.  Breasts recently fully developed and high on the chest.  No cellulite collections anywhere.  Tightly toned leg muscles from high school phys ed.  And that incredible mane of hair that flowed down over curves to tease him with promises.​He wanted her, and her expression showed she wanted him.​
> 
> It’s all about boy lusts for girl who lusts for boy.
> 
> 
> How I wrote it………………..I went to the closet and pulled out my ’little black nothing’.  It was a backless dress made of flimsy, clingy material.  It was already short but the occasion called for making it shorter.  Jack deserved the VIP treatment.​I got a pair of scissors and cut five more inches off the hemline.  Off came everything I wore.  I put on thong panties but no bra and slipped on the dress.  It reached only to my upper thighs.  String shoulder straps held the nearly weightless thing up.  My back was bare to the rump.  Cleavage exposure ranked a venial sin.  I looked in the full length mirror on the door.  Yup.  This was the ultimate killer dress.  “Jack, eat your heart out!”​I waited a few minutes.  And sure enough there was a knock on the door.  I stood against the counter in front of the window and said, “Come in!“​Steve Hartley came through the door.​“Hi, Steve.  What‘s up?”  Probably not the best choice or words.​Steve walked close up to me.​“Ginny is Steve’s old high school girlfriend.  They have an understanding.  She was supposed to drop in next weekend but she showed up early.”​So it was all coming to an end anyway!  “She go to another college?”​“No.  She’s a waitress.”​Then she could be a cashier in Jack’s father’s store.​With that, the happy new couple had absolutely nothing to say.  Steve stood there glancing down at my dress.  He had a lot more to deal with than​he’d expected.  This awkward moment had to be gotten over or he wouldn‘t be back.  The problem was there was nothing to do in my room.​“Want to go downstairs and hang out with the guys, Steve?”​“Sure.”​“Ginny should love this outfit.”​We went downstairs and when the boys lingering around in the hallway saw us them whooped and hollered in exaggerated manner.  They were paying tribute to my appearance and Steve’s triumph.​“Pay no attention to these animals” Steve joked, but he was clearly pleased.​More boys came out of there rooms and clustered around us.  Talk quickly moved to my high school baseball career.  I was conscious that they were all thinking of my body.   Well, some girls might not like it, but I did.  Let prudes go to the beach and then say I was being slutty.​Steve and I were perfect for each other.  In a month we knew we’d get married.  And we wanted to get married soon.  Well really, now!  Could we go four years without doing it?​
> 
> Theresa and Steve are clearly attracted to each, but much more information is given.  There’s even a glimpse of dormitory life which will interest high school kids.
> 
> Theresa draws Steve out to join the gang until he gets used to her.  So nothing happens that they'll wish didn't.
> 
> In an earlier version I wrote two years ago, both Jack and Steve walk into Theresa's room.  This opened the door to many kinds of steamy developments.  Remember, these are teenagers out of contact with their parents for the first time.  But I decided that wasn't the way to go.



Why is the heroine of the novel acting like this? This isn't endearing, nor is it empowering. It does little to grow her in the eyes of the reader. This is something the most hated character on Gossip Girls would do, not my YA leading lady.
Can you imagine Katniss Everdeen acting in this manner?
There is nothing subtle about this. You want dramatic irony, you want to let the reader read between the lines. What you don't want is in your face shanky.


----------



## empresstheresa

So many suggestions for improving my story!

It's easy to make "suggestions".  They are nothing but alternative storylines.  And of course, since they're _your ideas,_ they have to be great ideas. Whether they make the story better or worse doesn't seem to be a major concern around here.

Harper Lee is still alive.  Let me make some suggestions for an improved rewrite of _To Kill a Mockingbird_.  
I'll give her a list go choose from.  I do want to help her out:   

1.  Atticus marries a second wife who he doesn't realize is a closet racial bigot.  When the trial of the black man is scheduled, Atticus's wife's bigotry becomes apparent.  There is much domestic discontent.  Scout is negatively affected by all this and starts going downhill.

2.  Atticus marries a second wife.  When Atticus is assigned to defend the black man from a charge of rape, angry whites rape Atticus's wife.

3.  Instead of  angry whites showing up at the jail to get the black man, a crowd of blacks frees the black man and helps him get away.  Whites blame Atticus for this.  His legal practice is ended.  He has to take menial jobs.  The embittered man's character deteriorates.  Without a good parental model Scout degenerates into a troubled teenage, gets pregnant, and commits suicide.

4.  Robert Ewell attacks the kids.  Boo Radley tries to defend them but Ewell kills him with his switchblade knife ( not mentioned in the movie but mentioned in the book ).  Boo falls, dropping his kitchen knife.  Scout grabs the kitchen knife and stabs Ewell in the back killing him.

I could come up with other helpful suggestions if you need them, Ms. Lee.  Remember,  you only won the Pulitzer Prize.  There's still that Nobel Prize to go after.


----------



## moeslow

empresstheresa said:


> So many suggestions for improving my story!
> 
> It's easy to make "suggestions".  They are nothing but alternative storylines.  And of course, since they're _your ideas,_ they have to be great ideas. Whether they make the story better or worse doesn't seem to be a major concern around here.
> 
> Harper Lee is still alive.  Let me make some suggestions for an improved rewrite of _To Kill a Mockingbird_.
> I'll give her a list go choose from.  I do want to help her out:
> 
> 1.  Atticus marries a second wife who he doesn't realize is a closet racial bigot.  When the trial of the black man is scheduled, Atticus's wife's bigotry becomes apparent.  There is much domestic discontent.  Scout is negatively affected by all this and starts going downhill.
> 
> 2.  Atticus marries a second wife.  When Atticus is assigned to defend the black man from a charge of rape, angry whites rape Atticus's wife.
> 
> 3.  Instead of  angry whites showing up at the jail to get the black man, a crowd of blacks frees the black man and helps him get away.  Whites blame Atticus for this.  His legal practice is ended.  He has to take menial jobs.  The embittered man's character deteriorates.  Without a good parental model Scout degenerates into a troubled teenage, gets pregnant, and commits suicide.
> 
> 4.  Robert Ewell attacks the kids.  Boo Radley tries to defend them but Ewell kills him with his switchblade knife ( not mentioned in the movie but mentioned in the book ).  Boo falls, dropping his kitchen knife.  Scout grabs the kitchen knife and stabs Ewell in the back killing him.
> 
> I could come up with other helpful suggestions if you need them, Ms. Lee.  Remember,  you only won the Pulitzer Prize.  There's still that Nobel Prize to go after.


Again, harper lee was talking about an issue that was filled with drama. None of what you suggested adds anything to that nor are they interesting subplots. What you suggested smears the message and shatters the tone of the book. What you fail to realize is that you need to maintain a tone. you are all over the place. Focus your story. Choose one or two themes and spotlight them.


----------



## empresstheresa

From Cadence's post 138:



> Note also, that, because I came up with that plot structure in 20 minutes, you should be able to change yours to improve it.




It shows that you came up with that plot structure in 20 minutes.  It has no meaning.
It's nothing but a soap opera with mysterious forces thrown in.  

Ever read Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar?  What's that about?

Answer one:  It's about a friend, Brutus, killing his friend, Ceasar, and having to pay the consequences.  Is that all it is?

Answer two:  It's about the impossibility of democracy, which was inconceivable in Shakespeare's day.  The mob is at first approving of Ceasar's assassination, but within minutes Anthony's speech turns them against the conspirators.  So easily is the moronic masses lead about.  Is that all it is?

Answer three:  It's about the inevitable breakdown of any state structure.  Powerful men move in to take over more power than they should have, ( Ceasar ) others resist him, the state is torn apart, and freedom dies. Is that all it is?

Answer four:  Roman Stoicism was much discussed in Shakespeare's time.  At least two books were written about it a few years before Shakespeare wrote the play.  His intention was to examine what kind of man to be. 
Ceasar and Brutus are both Stoics.  Ceasar compares himself to the constancy of the Northern Star,  that is,  his reason rules him, not his emotions which a Stoic thinks should have no place in decisions.  Brutus says, "Brutus is at war with Brutus", that is, he suffers inner conflict between the need to kill Ceasar to prevent him from becoming a dictator,  something which Brutus's reason pushed him to do,  and his loyalty to his friend Ceasar, which Brutus's emotions push him to maintain.  Reason wins out, but Brutus loses because he was acting as a Stoic, not a man with balanced reason and emotion.
So Shakespeare rejects Stoicism and warns of its charms, as other intellectuals had already done.  


I've spent 18 years on ET, and it'll probably take 18 years for critics to analyze the meanings.


----------



## moeslow

18? Not if you her being hunted by a 1000 assassins or staring down 4000000 Koreans or getting skankied up to get over her teenage crush, disabling bomb, back broken etc. You have to much going on. You have to decide whether you are writing philosophical fiction or sci-fi action.


----------



## the antithesis

empresstheresa said:


> So many suggestions for improving my story!
> 
> It's easy to make "suggestions".  They are nothing but alternative storylines.  And of course, since they're _your ideas,_ they have to be great ideas. Whether they make the story better or worse doesn't seem to be a major concern around here.



That's what this forum is for. You show us your work and we give you feedback including suggestions on how to improve.

If that's not what you want, then what do you want? Why are you here?


----------



## Blondie

Making just a simple observation but the amount of passive aggressive comments in this thread remind me of when myself and the ex meet each other random in a mall or some place.


----------



## empresstheresa

> Again, harper lee was talking about an issue that was filled with drama. None of what you suggested adds anything to that nor are they interesting subplots.




The first three chapters define Theresa.  This is important because it will fall to her to clean up *the mess*.  What's *the mess ? *See below.




> What you suggested smears the message and shatters the tone of the book. What you fail to realize is that you need to maintain a tone. you are all over the place. Focus your story. Choose one or two themes and spotlight them.



Everything is going fine, kids are going to school, adults are at their jobs, wannabee writers are sending literary agents 1,500 queries a week about paranormal forces,  and all of a sudden HAL interferes and causes chaos. This is *the mess. 
"That figures" says Steve.  "Just when everything is going fine we get a new problem."
*Chapters four through twenty eight are about Theresa and her attempts to restore the world to what it was. "Order must be preserved or we are all lost" says Prime Minister Blair.  
On the last page Theresa says, "We enter new eras but the old laws still rule."  She has restored the old laws of nature.


----------



## empresstheresa

> That's what this forum is for. You show us your work and we give you feedback including suggestions on how to improve.
> 
> If that's not what you want, then what do you want? Why are you here?



Every suggestion I've seen so far puts the story off course.

It's about Theresa's struggles against huge problems.
Expanding the romance between Steve and Theresa, and intoducing difficulties between them,  only distracts from the main story and makes it a soap opera.  There really are married people in the world who get along fine.  

You may recall that very early on I asked that the thread be locked up.


----------



## the antithesis

empresstheresa said:


> There really are married people in the world who get along fine.



And no one reads books about them because they are boring. This is why most romance stories are about the first blush of romance. That's when its the most exciting. You've tried to have it both ways. You have that first blush of romance in one chapter and then the issue is immediately settled. It just feels so artificial.

I mean, you say she needs his support to help her save the world from her own destructive influence. So what happens? He goes to her and he _never leaves her side_. This makes the whole "she needs his support" a non-issue because she always has it. This defeats the potential drama this could have and deflates the suspense as she tries to solve the larger issues. So, what would happen if he weren't there? What if something happened and she had some crisis to remedy without his help or presence? If you had a scene where this happened, it would show that he was actually necessary.  



> Every suggestion I've seen so far puts the story off course.



We read what you have shown us and we have a reaction. You have thus far spent time attempting to argue that we should not have had the reactions that we did. Unfortunately that doesn't work.

We keep offering suggestions because we are writers as well. You don't have to take our suggestions as gospel. They are just examples of how we would improve things. It is up to you to decide how to improve and maybe these suggestion may give you ideas.



> You may recall that very early on I asked that the thread be locked up.



If that's the case, PM a moderator and that should be the end of it.


----------



## Jeko

> It's about Theresa's struggles against huge problems.



*Hyperbolise*, ET. Properly huge problems are boring. It's the little problems which seem so big because of all the other things involved, they're what readers crave. It's easier to have a perspective on something small, and make it bigger. 



> Expanding the romance between Steve and Theresa, and intoducing difficulties between them, only distracts from the main story and makes it a soap opera.



You have a lot to learn, ET. I suggest you write other things, such as the *LM competetion*, to get a better skillset for novel writing. Your perspective on plot, character development and the purpose of a story are preventing you from bettering your work. You need to amend not the story, but your own knowledge of the craft. That's something I don't think a few people on a forum can help you with, as you're so defensive of what you believe to be true. You believe critics will spend 18 years to find the meanings of your novel? That's the first thing you need to see to. Never hope more than you work, ET.

And because of the amount of your novel that you have posted on here, and the amount of information you have revealed, I doubt any publisher will touch it in its present state. This is why I would suggest doing a *complete rewrite*, as many authors do. With 18 years of writing experience on this, I doubt it'll be hard. The idea is to hone the story and yourself at the same time. You only do that if you keep on writing.



> It shows that you came up with that plot structure in 20 minutes. It has no meaning.
> It's nothing but a soap opera with mysterious forces thrown in.



It's very akin to I Am Number Four, which is far from a soap opera. My version of Theresa would have the themes of:

1) A character trying to live a normal life, in abnormal circumstances (drama!)
2) The injustice of the world, oppressive like a vice (conflict!)
3) The power that people have hidden away (tension!)
4) Loss (emotional connections!)

If you'd like, I can write the first few chapters of my version and see what you think. I'll change the name of Theresa, actually. In fact, I'll try writing the thing anyway, as an exercise.

That gives me an idea - building on what I said earlier about honing your craft. Try writing Act One of the plot I posted earlier. We can compare styles, and how we craft the character and the situation. Not a competition, but a chance for us to bridge a gap of difference we have. We both write very different kinds of YA fiction. It would be useful if we found some middle ground to work on together. Sound good?


----------



## empresstheresa

Cadence,

I read your version of Theresa's story in post 138.
It has absolutely nothing to do with my story. It's as different as The Andromeda Strain and Gone With the Wind.

What the heck are you talking about?  This is helpful advice?

=================================

antithesis wrote:


> I mean, you say she needs his support to help her save the world from her own destructive influence.




I never said that.  Theresa is never destructive.

Theresa needs Steve's moral support because she is under tremendous pressure, and in England where she is alone among strangers.


----------



## empresstheresa

antithesis wrote:
_



			You may recall that very early on I asked that the thread be locked up.
		
Click to expand...

_


> If that's the case, PM a moderator and that should be the end of it.



Actually, lately it has become kind of fun to put down all the put downs being thrown at my story.  :chuncky:

When I see Cadence's version of Theresa's story in post 138,
I know I have something good in the publication trail.


----------



## the antithesis

empresstheresa said:


> I never said that.  Theresa is never destructive.
> 
> Theresa needs Steve's moral support because she is under tremendous pressure, and in England where she is alone among strangers.



I read your chapter outline, Norm. The first couple problems she has to solve is because of her own bungling. Actually, initially it's because of that atom bomb thing because HAL stops all the wind. I don't know how that would help, but it does and then she has to do things to solve that problem which later become problems of their own that she has to solve, and then those solutions become even more problems. So there's global catastrophes all because Theresa isn't very god at this unlimited power thing. Or there should have been. You tended to ignore the effect her actions would take, like when she watered crops with salt water and filled the air with xenon gas so we all suffocate. But that's fixable.

Frankly, I think you should embrace that element of your story. It answers the question in the subject line of this thread much better than anything else you've shown us. 

What would you do with unlimited power?

Fail. Most likely fail embarrassingly badly.

Make your story about that. It's already there, anyway. Just focus on that more and it'll be an appealing story for kids because kids can relate to someone who fails all the time.


----------



## the antithesis

I just realized that it may sound like I'm mocking you, but I am sincere in this.

I had said before that the only interest element in your story is how Theresa controls HAL. That HAL is a likely unintelligent being that causes stuff to happen as a kind of reflex or defensive mechanism to protect its host, so Theresa has to find ways to trigger those reflexes to get HAL to do what she wants it to. If you focus on her trying to figure out clever ways to accomplish this, it would make your story into something unique and worthwhile.

That can be wed to the larger, global problems. She tries to get HAL to fix something, but it overcompensates. So she has to correct it, but HAL overdoes it the other way. This would make the most interesting idea in your story central to all of the drama and action. 

When I'd first heard about your story, I had toyed with the idea of writing a story like Empress Theresa but good to show you up. As I learned more about what your story was about, I gave up on that idea because I couldn't see making that work at all, so to make a good story would require a mostly new idea. Well, I was wrong. Doing the above would give you a much more compelling story while still retaining the global disaster plot you already have. You may have to give up on the North Korean part and Theresa's solution to the Middle East conflict. Those parts didn't fit with the previous "natural" disasters, anyway.


----------



## Jeko

> I read your version of Theresa's story in post 138.
> It has absolutely nothing to do with my story. It's as different as The Andromeda Strain and Gone With the Wind.



Exactly. It's a completely different take on the core idea that holds your book together. Trying to write with it would be a fantastic exercise for us both.

What I'm offering is a chance for us to exchange advice more usefully, and a rare one at that. That you find it 'fun to put down all the put downs being thrown at my story.' shows how stupid this situation is. e need to get out of it. 

My ultimatum: take my opportunity, or I'll leave this conversation, work on my version of the story, and probably get closer to publishing it. Why? Because I listen to advice - and the advice you're giving me is to get the hell out of here while I still have some of my free time left.


----------



## empresstheresa

Just to demonstrate how completely wrong all these "suggestions" intended to help me "improve" my story are, I'll respond to a few comments.  It's fun.  :eagerness:



> I read your chapter outline, Norm. The first couple problems she has to solve is because of her own bungling. Actually, initially it's because of that atom bomb thing because HAL stops all the wind. I don't know how that would help, but it does and then she has to do things to solve that problem which later become problems of their own that she has to solve, and then those solutions become even more problems. []/QUOTE]
> 
> Neither Theresa nor Steve,  or anybody for that matter, anticipated the the thermal expansion of water.  When everybody's life is on the line, who worries about a few feet of water!  Anybody, the problem is easily fixed.
> 
> The next problem is completely unexpected and unpredictable.  Whatever it was that HAL did to the atmosphere to stop the wind is dissipating.  Unfortunately, the timing couldn't be worse.  Winter is coming, a year's food crop has been lost, and Theresa can't return everything back to original conditions without killing at least half a billion people.  This is the problem which makes her complain, "What am I supposed to do, change the laws of physics?  This is the most impossible problem yet."
> 
> 
> 
> So there's global catastrophes all because Theresa isn't very god at this unlimited power thing. Or there should have been. You tended to ignore the effect her actions would take, like when she watered crops with salt water and filled the air with xenon gas so we all suffocate. But that's fixable.
> 
> 
> 
> She never watered crops with salt water.  The North Pole "continuous explosion" strips atoms of electrons.  Protons are propelled in all directions at thousands of miles an hour and recombine with oxygen over half the world.  The heavier elements are thrown out at a much lower speeds and fall into the Arctic ocean.
> 
> It's only the partial pressure of oxygen that matters.  Whatever else is in the air doesn't matter.  The normal PPO2 is 120 mm Hg.  ( Commercial jet planes maintain a cabin pressure PPO2 of 80 which is good enough. )  Theresa's xenon adds 5 ounces to the normal atmospheric pressure of 14.7 pounds per square inch.  If she'd added twenty times as much xenon it wouldn't change PPO2.
> 
> I have three college degrees in the sciences, antithesis.  No use trying to attack my story through science.
Click to expand...


----------



## empresstheresa

> My ultimatum: take my opportunity, or I'll leave this conversation, work on my version of the story, and probably get closer to publishing it.



1.  By.  :champagne:

2.  Don't forget copyright laws, Cadence.  I've left a paper trail all over the internet going back years, and I told some people elements of the story when you were in diapers.
Publishers don't spend millions of dollars to print a book without checking histories and backgrounds.  And if somebody is found playing hanky panky their name is mud forever.  My suggestion: don't try it.


----------



## Nemesis

Since you seem you disregard the advice of every person that offers to help, I'd be suprised to ever see it on the shelf. 

The plot is muddled and fairly uninteresting, I feel as though your intent is to tell us how your writing makes us feel when we read it instead of actualy improving it, and I have yet to find any emotional depth in your story, despite what you continue to describe to us outside of the actual prose.


----------



## empresstheresa

> I have yet to find any emotional depth in your story


Any emotional depth in The Andromeda Strain?  It was a big hit.

How about 2001: A Space Odyssey?

In my story,  Theresa faces "certain death" in chapter four, President Martin commits suicide, mothers hold their doomed children "wondering why this horror was happening", Theresa whines and complains, Theresa nearly panics when the nuclear missile is launched, Theresa cries, Theresa steps out in front of four million North Koreans,  Theresa is paralyzed.   Enough emotion for you?


----------



## Nemesis

Irrelevant. Your story is not either of those.


----------



## Nemesis

> Eighteen years ago, I had the kernel of an idea for a story that would mean something. It wasn't until three years ago that I had the problems worked out in my mind and actually started writing it.



The point is you are claiming that your story is deep and comparable to "To Kill a Mocking Bird." It isn't. Anyone can throw a moral or a meaning into their story, it isn't difficult. That alone doesn't mean it is intelligent or well written, or that it will be bought for millions of dollars.


----------



## the antithesis

empresstheresa said:


> Any emotional depth in The Andromeda Strain?  It was a big hit.
> 
> How about 2001: A Space Odyssey?



We are not talking about those stories. Stay on topic.


----------



## Jeko

> Don't forget copyright laws, Cadence. I've left a paper trail all over the internet going back years, and I told some people elements of the story when you were in diapers.



So, you plan to get this published, have critics gawp at how deep the meanings of it are and become famous for it, etc. 

When you send your query letter to an agent, they'll probably google your novel and this thread will come up. And then they'll ignore your query.

Why? Anyone who can't take simple, friendly advice from a fellow writer will never take it from an editor or publishing house. You've proven that you're impossible to work with, ET. I wish you luck for success in the future, but now that this conversation is on the internet, you are really going to need it if you want to get a publisher.

Thank you for the idea of a girl with infinite power, though. I hope I'll get it published one day. 

And I never wore diapers. I'm British.


----------



## empresstheresa

> When you send your query letter to an agent, they'll probably google your novel and this thread will come up. And then they'll ignore your query.




I have another thread on another forum that's years old.  Nobody over there trashes my story.  They're not jealous writers.



> Thank you for the idea of a girl with infinite power, though. I hope I'll get it published one day.



Thanks for admitting it's my idea.

I'll see you in court. 




> And I never wore diapers. I'm British.




This is obviously bait to get me banned.  I see it all the time.


----------



## Nemesis

I don't think anyone here is jealous ET


----------



## Terry D

The fact is, no one here has seen enough of Empress Theresa in its current form to be able to state whether it is publishable, or not.  Forum members are free to critique, at will, those parts which have been excerpted here (as long as they do so with the same respect demanded for all writers here at WF).  I've seen nothing here which indicates that anyone is jealous of this book; critical, yes, but not jealous.

The easiest way to put this discussion to rest would be to get the book published--if it is indeed ready to publish.  Agents and publishers will make their decisions based on the merits of the book, not on discussions, or excerpts on writer's websites.

By the way, the 'idea' of a book can not be copyrighted, only the actual book itself.  Everyone who has ever heard of Empress Theresa could write a book about a young girl with unlimited power and they would be safe from copyright issues as long as they told their own story about the girl.


----------



## empresstheresa

> the fact is, no one here has seen enough of empress theresa in its current form to be able to state whether it is publishable, or not.



THANK YOU, TERRY !!    :icon_compress:    :champagne:


I've said the same thing myself a couple of times, but I'm ignored.

-----------------------------------------------------

With respect to copyright protection of a story====

When _Fail Safe _came out,  somebody else sued the two co-authors for stealing a similar story the plaintive wrote or proposed a few years earlier.  In the earlier story, Atlantic City was bombed to satisfy the Russians. In _Fail Safe_ it was New York City.
It's all a matter of how similar two stories are.  This is a grey issue which can't be nailed down in writing.  It's a matter of interpretation, like pornography: "I know it when I see it."


----------



## popsprocket

Copyright law is pretty straight forward. Someone would have to copy more than 10% of the actual text in a verbatim or recognisable manner before you could sue for copyright violation, at least in Australia.


----------



## empresstheresa

> Copyright law is pretty straight forward. Someone would have to copy more than 10% of the actual text in a verbatim or recognisable manner before you could sue for copyright violation, at least in Australia.



That's very interesting.  Especially the phrase  "recognisable manner".

Empress Theresa has many scenes and situations.  [ _none of them "predictable".  See below.  _]   ( Also, many human elements thrown in, but never mind.  )  This gives me confidence that I can defend it.  Somebody couldn't steal more than three or four scenes and situations and then it will be obvious to a judge and jury what's going on.

In the _Fail Safe_ situation,  the concept of accidental nuclear war and appeasement of the aggrieved party was an old one.  This complicated the case.  Furthermore, the resolution of the problem was predictable, that is, what was done in both stories.  So what is the judge to think? :upset:


----------



## DragonWriter

I have to agree with a lot of the others: she sounds pretty stuck up AND above age ten. I think it's cool that she likes to do good for the world instead of using her power for her own gain, but even when she asks(or more demands) to simply be left alone, well, it sounds snobbish instead of humble. However, I don't know if you've ever watched the British TV show Doctor Who, but the main character(not the recent Doctor; the Tenth is the one I am referring to  although he DOES have flaws) has maybe not unlimited but pretty darn close to unlimited power, and he uses it for good, AND he doesn't like getting attention. However, he doesn't act like everyone is hounding him; he simply and humbly doesn't take all the credit and when able to passes it onto someone else..._ 
"I won't answer your reporters's questions.  Nobody elected you.  I'll  talk to elected heads of state when necessary for the public good.
"I saved your lives.  All I want in return is the right to walk the  streets without being hounded by curiosity seekers and the paparazzi.   You owe me that much."_
That definitely sounds stuck up and rude, sorry. If she's a hero doing things for the people's good, then I don't think she should sound like it's just a duty she HAS to do and like just leave me alone about it! If she doesn't want attention, that's fine, but especially for being just a ten year old, and with as much power as she has, she doesn't have to demand privacy; she can simply ask for it cause as you said everyone is pretty much lost without her.
Oh and you said,_ "Theresa is a good girl.  She doesn't do anything bad to anybody.  She doesn't tell anybody what to do._"
...Yet she demands that they give her privacy.
Sorry, I have not had a book published professionally, _yet, _but just because someone's not a "published" author doesn't mean they can't have good opinions, perhaps even better than some "published writer"...
The story was quite confusing to me too...I didn't get the thing with the fox and the white ball and why the firemen were there...but maybe it's just because I haven't seen the rest 
Those are my thoughts. I'm not trying to be offensive; if I sound that way, I'm sorry. I am just a normal girl with dreams of publishing like so many others  But when you're asking for an opinion on a writing forum, there will be critiques. The point of them is not just to bash your writing, but to help you improve. But it's your choice whether you want to take these suggestions to better your book, or if you want to disregard any constructive criticism anyone else gives.
Hope I didn't offend you and I wish you luck in your writing journey! 
-Jaren


----------



## popsprocket

"Recognisable manner" refers to text that's not copied verbatim, but is easily recognisable as having come from the original source (i.e. it's not enough to change a few words). To get Cadence on copyright infringement you'd have to prove that he had 'reasonable' access to the parts of the work that were plagiarised. Since we only have a few excerpts on here to go by, there is no reasonable access to the majority of what you've written. Even if you had posted the full text somewhere else online it would be up to you to prove that Cadence accessed it.


----------



## empresstheresa

> _
> 
> 
> 
> "I won't answer your reporters's questions. Nobody elected you. I'll talk to elected heads of state when necessary for the public good.
> "I saved your lives. All I want in return is the right to walk the streets without being hounded by curiosity seekers and the paparazzi. You owe me that much."
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> __That definitely sounds stuck up and rude, sorry. If she's a hero doing things for the people's good, then I don't think she should sound like it's just a duty she HAS to do and like just leave me alone about it!_



Between these two paragraphs, Theresa says this:



> “There is another important point.  My work isn’t done.  I still have to watch what HAL is doing.  Some people will want me to do this or that with him.  They will demonstrate for their pet project when it will benefit them at the cost to others.  *I cannot allow myself to be influenced by demonstrations.  I have a responsibility to be fair to everybody." *



Theresa assumes this point is understood and doesn't expand it.
Somebody who seeks public attention will tap dance to whatever is popular.  Theresa can't let this happen.

On the next page she narrates:


> Neither the House members nor any of the millions watching could believe it.  They had never heard of any person with any kind of achievement no matter how small not seeking some kind of recognition for it.  Nobody was immune.  Even Medal of Honor winners, whose aura depended on a show of humility, at least gave one interview to one reporter.  Here I’d just saved the world, and I wanted nothing to do with them.  The all-powerful World Empress *wouldn’t make the rounds of the talk shows and political meetings*.  I wanted a private life.



She understands that some people will consider her asnob, but as she narrates later, "That's how it had to be from now on."


----------



## DragonWriter

So she just accepts that she's a snob? Wow. It's just your way or the high way isn't it? Why ask for advice if all you want is someone to go praise you on every aspect of a first draft of a novel? If you won't accept criticism I can't really help you, cause I certainly won't lie and say that everything about the book was just FABULOUS and kept me completely captivated! Although a lot of it isn't even that you need to rewrite anything. Just rearrange it so it makes more sense. I did that a lot with my book; I didn't have to rewrite every part that didn't fit but just ease it elsewhere into the story so it FLOWED and fit. 
And if she had so much power, I'm sure she could tell them she's NOT a s nob if she didn't want to be one. She has all the power in the world and still allows herself to be pushed around by others...
and the whole romance thing?...with the way the character is, it just completely destroyed any ideas of a 'good' character that I had in the beginning.


----------



## empresstheresa

To Jaren again...   :hi:

Once upon I time I did a web search on the words writer forum, and noticed this one was a big one.  So I joined.

I joined before looking at it. 

I assumed it was a forum of published authors who would tell about their experiences with literary agents, publishers, writers groups, and their own backgrounds.  

After looking around for a while I found out that's not what the forum was about.  But I followed the crowd and gave a brief intro to my work.
The reaction was unexpected. I got this in post 14, from a Forum Moderator no less !


> The difference between Harper Lee and you, is that you aren't Harper Lee.


 It went downhill from there.


----------



## DragonWriter

To ET :hi:
Once upon a time(rather recently ) I did the exact same search on the words 'writer forum'. I joined also because it was well known. The first thought that came to my mind was not "AUTHOR'S forum" Just writers. Writers like me sharing stories opinions critiques and hopefully taking advice.
It's not a forum of New York Times best selling authors. It's just a forum of anyone who likes to write. Hence "writers" 
Your assumption was wrong. But if you think about it, all those other authors were just aspiring writers once too. Writers with big idea and great dreams.
However, I see I'm getting nowhere with this. You simply won't accept anything anyone says. Yikes, to think of what an editor or published author would do if you replied like this to their more "professional" criticism! :O


----------



## DragonWriter

Haha, and the ironic thing is although you are and probably will disregard everything I say, I like this place!  Watching the way others handle critiquing a story and even handle people who don't take criticism is simply making me EXCITED to post part of my story and yes *gasp* hear criticism and not get offended!  

       Actually, I enjoy constructive criticism. That's right, I ENJOY it! Even hearing someone tell me they hate my book ideas! Cause I take those things and use them to better my story, especially because this story is not just being written for me. It's being written for the general populace. So I think the general populace are the ones who really help decide if it's a good book; if it's a book they'd pick up and read. 

      Also, jumping back to your story though I dread what response I might get  it might be good to write a character sketch for Theresa. That way she won't be all over the place and won't do something she previously resolved she'd never do. But that's your call. I find it helpful though 

        Hehe and the funny thing about reading someone else's story is when I go back and read mine I can compare the overall appearance and either feel the need to improve or be like WOW my story's even better than I thought!


----------



## the antithesis

empresstheresa said:


> I have another thread on another forum that's years old.  Nobody over there trashes my story.  They're not jealous writers.



I was sorely tempted to ask where, but then I realized that I really don't care. So the only question is why do you remain here? Why not stay on that forum if that is what you prefer?


----------



## Jeko

I think post 173 is a better story than the current version of empress theresa, on the fact that it gets to the plot and conflict much quicker. Also, it has more interesting characters.


----------



## Jeko

> The difference between Harper Lee and you, is that you aren't Harper Lee.



So you _are_ Harper Lee? Blimey.


----------



## empresstheresa

I've only seen the kind of behavior I've seen on this forum outdone by one other forum,
the atheist forum I joined for a short time,
where anything goes no matter how outrageous,
except reason.


----------



## Jeko

I don't understand your concern. The problem doesn't lie with anyone else on this forum. You, ET, are the person taking offense at everyone's useful critique. I'd appretiate it if you didn't place any blame on the great, helpful people that have taken the time to read your work and say what they think, when it is your response to what they say that causes such an issue here. I could only think that if you stopped reading your _own _posts, you wouldn't have the problem you do.

On an unrelated note, the way you wrote that post made me want to turn it into a poem:
_
This forum's behaviour is only outdone by
the atheist forum I joined for a short season,
where anything goes, no matter how outrageous,
except reason. 

_


----------



## the antithesis

empresstheresa said:


> I've only seen the kind of behavior I've seen on this forum outdone by one other forum,
> the atheist forum I joined for a short time,
> where anything goes no matter how outrageous,
> except reason.



That doesn't answer my question. Why haven't you just said to yourself, "What a bunch of jerks!" and log out and never come back to this forum because we're a bunch of jerks and stay on that other forum you'd mentioned? You don't want our advice. You don't like our criticism. So why are you wasting your time here?


----------



## Terry D

Keep the discussion on track.  If you feel the discussion has run its course, let it die.  There's no need to question another member's motives.


----------



## empresstheresa

Take the time to write it right. 


I’ve spent 19 years on Empress Theresa. 


Here’s a tiny fragment…………..


How somebody might write it:


( The President of the United States answers reporters’s questions about 18 year old Theresa who is in her home in Massachusetts………..


> ​“......Can you say this girl won’t lose her temper if people criticize her and go on the rampage?”​......The President was surprised by the question and winged it.​......“It’s up to us to be fair to her.  There’s nothing in her past that indicates she will do anything wrong.  Everybody who knows her says she’s always been a good girl.  I don’t think we have anything to worry about.  Give her a chance.”​


How I wrote it:


( British Prime Minister Peter Blair addresses the House of Commons in a session of “Questions to the Prime Minister”  while 18 year old American girl Theresa watches in a millionaire’s mansion close to London.  He anticipated the weekly “Questions” routine for days and is prepared…… )




> ......A woman rose to pose a question no American politician would get away with.  But this was not America.​......“Does the Prime Minister agree a man’s reaction to criticism is laughter while a woman’s reaction is unpredictable?”​......The House burst out in laughter.  It liked nothing better than a loaded question and this one was a minefield.   Blair milked the moment, looking around like he was afraid to answer.  His expression was hilarious.  Even Steve and I watching at the Parker residence were laughing.  Finally, the PM  got serious and paused.  The world held its breath for twenty-seven seconds.​......“I understand your fears.  What shall we do if a child leads us?  And make no mistake, Theresa is younger then many of the children and grandchildren of the members of this House.  Who are we dealing with?  Will she change?​......“I say, Theresa’s interests and endeavors may change, but not her heart. It is too well-considered.  It is written ‘worse than death is the life of a fool’,  but we saw in my talk with her Theresa is no fool.  ‘Woe to thee when your king is a child’  says the Good Book,  but Theresa shows lack of response to recent ill events.   ‘Brutus is at war with Brutus’ said Brutus in Julius Caesar.  There is no war in Theresa.  She knows what to do and does not struggle with her conscience.  A woman who puts her trust in a higher power will be unchanged.  Theresa will remain Theresa.”​


----------



## Jeko

Really, I have no interest for how 'somebody' wrote anything. Whether this somebody is a member, someone you know, or anyone in the world, their work has nothing to do with your own.

Whoever this somebody is, please stop posting their work.


----------



## empresstheresa

> Really, I have no interest for how 'somebody' wrote anything. Whether this somebody is a member, someone you know, or anyone in the world, their work has nothing to do with your own.
> 
> Whoever this somebody is, please stop posting their work.





This is one of the most mysterious posts I've seen on this forum.
I'm responsible for every word of the post you "responded" to.

You missed the point entirely.  
The President version obscures an important point about Theresa
while the Prime Minister Blair version, _written with much more care,_  exposes this important point and expresses it with Old World eloquence ( which should at least please British readers  :congratulatory: )


----------



## Jeko

> I'm responsible for every word of the post you "responded" to.



You write a lot better when you're anonymous.

My advice would be to stop trying hard to fulfil some kind of criteria, that which you may have created through style or outlining, and just write what comes to you. As proven above, it'll turn out as a better read.

Oh, and entering your work into this website says you write like William Shakespeare and Mark Twain. I'd work on honing your style, and maybe experiment with different subjects. See what floats your boat. I'm staring to think YA isn't for you - you're not writing your way into the market, if you know what I mean.

And the 'Old Word eloquence' is, for me, terribly written and completely unnecesaary. There is no evidence of the delicate art of rhetoric in the Presidents speech, and the inclusion of such references only worsens the impact. They are tagged on, not intricately woven into the delivery.


----------



## Deleted member 49710

ET, have you considered taking a break from this novel? From what you've said, you've written several versions of it and it's done. You seem to be quite pleased with its current state and not interested in making any major changes to it. Maybe the best thing to do now is to set it aside and write something else. A short story or two, possibly. Learn as much as you can about writing, try to get some smaller publications so you have a better CV. Or you might want to take some time to read in your genre. From what you've posted on here, I get the impression you don't read many YA books. Cadence (and other WF members of his age group) could be a very good resource for you. He's smart and he reads a lot of books directed towards the YA market. If you asked, I bet he'd recommend some books he likes.

Either way, my point is, maybe you need to get some mental and emotional distance from this novel in order to see it more clearly and/or market it more effectively.


----------



## empresstheresa

> I get the impression you don't read many YA books




I'm well aware _Empress Theresa_ isn't a typical YA book.

Most YA books are like self-help books.  They involve some personal problem of the main character: problems with girlfriends, boyfriends, lousy parents, drugs, bullying at school, and things like that.
I suppose the writer is trying to teach the reader something if he cares, or just writing something for kids to pine over.  

_Empress Theresa_ doesn't dwell on Theresa's internal problems or problems with people in her life.  Theresa's problems come from the outside and she has to deal with them.  Nevertheless, she is 18 to 19 through most of the story, so it's YA.

I'm not sure if the phrase "Young Adult novel" was used in 1960 when Harper Lee published _To Kill a Mockingbird_.   I suspect Lee meant it to be a mainstream novel for adult readers.  ( In those days YA novels consisted of the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Trudy Nurse. :grey:  )  But just last week a 19 year old girl told me she was assigned _Mockingbird_ to read   in the Freshman year of high school,  the ninth grade, 14 year old kids,  and she loved it.  Today, most people would call it a YA book, although Scout doesn't have internal problems like in most YA books.




> ET, have you considered taking a break from this novel? From what you've said, you've written several versions of it and it's done. You seem to be quite pleased with its current state and not interested in making any major changes to it. Maybe the best thing to do now is to set it aside and write something else.



Getting a book published can take more time and work than writing.  I'm currently send out queries after a four month break.
Does anybody around intend to get something published?  The impression I get is that people just write as a hobby.  In that case, it would make sense to move on to another project sometimes.


----------



## Jeko

> Nevertheless, she is 18 to 19 through most of the story, so it's YA.



No. YA is denoted by the style and use, not the age, of the characters. 'Carrie', for example, is not YA.


----------



## Terry D

Cadence said:


> No. YA is denoted by the style and use, not the age, of the characters. 'Carrie', for example, is not YA.



Neither is _To Kill A Mockingbird_.


----------



## empresstheresa

> No. YA is denoted by the style and use, not the age, of the characters. 'Carrie', for example, is not YA.



Poor example!  
It's a Steve King horror book.  I can't stand his stuff.
Carrie is ostracized by her  classmates, but the major theme of the book is her psychokinetic powers ( which are unexplained, of course )  .  This has no relevance to a typical teenager's situation.  _When does Carrie actually make a deliberate choice about anything? This is not real life._  Besides this, the story ends in mass bloodshed. 
This is junk.



> Neither is _To Kill A Mockingbird.
> 
> 
> _



The content is not that of a YA book,
but the book is assigned reading in high schools.  It has the effect of a YA book.


----------



## Jeko

> This has no relevance to a typical teenager's situation.



So you agree with me. It's not YA.



> but the book is assigned reading in high schools. It has the effect of a YA book.



Hence, The Crucible is a YA play and Of Mice and Men is a YA book.

Really?


----------



## empresstheresa

> _
> but the book is assigned reading in high schools. It has the effect of a YA book.
> _
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Hence, The Crucible is a YA play and Of Mice and Men is a YA book.
> 
> Really?
Click to expand...


Books that are not YA books are also assigned in high schools, along with Shakespeare's plays, etc.  But they don't have the effect of a YA book.

In _Mockingbird_,  Scout is only nine and not yet making decisions. Can teenagers relate to her?  
If the teacher knows his job and guides the class well, he will point out that the book is really about Scout's exposure to racial prejudice from every direction, from adults and even from the kids in her school.  Will she become prejudiced too, or can she resist all these influences?
The high school kids will consider their own attitudes about race.   
_They will think about themselves._  That's the purpose of YA books ( unless it's a vampire or zombie story  :hell_pawn:  .)


Only somebody who can think deeply and not fall for instant analysis should write books.


----------



## Nemesis

I'm uncertain as to why you keep writing what I suppose you consider badly written versions of your scenes, and then posting those snipets with the scene as you actualy wrote it. If you aren't going to write it that way, why bother posting it? I am getting the impression that you think you are teaching us, but that isn't what the forum is for. If you aren't accepting any critiques or discussions of your story then there is no point in posting any of it.


----------



## Terry D

empresstheresa said:


> Poor example!
> It's a Steve King horror book.  I can't stand his stuff.
> Carrie is ostracized by her  classmates, but the major theme of the book is her psychokinetic powers ( which are unexplained, of course )  .  This has no relevance to a typical teenager's situation.  _When does Carrie actually make a deliberate choice about anything? This is not real life._  Besides this, the story ends in mass bloodshed.
> This is junk.



You have obviously never read King's book.  The reason for Carrie's telekinesis is explored in some detail, but that's not important--because telekinesis is not the theme of the book at all.  The fragility of the human mind when faced with the emotionally cannibalistic environment of high school is.  Carrie's situation in the face of bullying, and the violence erupting from it, is almost prophetic when seen in terms of Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook.  I don't see how a topic gets more relevant.

Carrie makes many choices in the book: she chooses to defy her mother, chooses to accept Tommy's offer to attend the dance, and, in the end, she chooses to turn her weapon on her classmates and teachers.  Ask a teenager which they more relate to; a social misfit who feels alone, powerless, and angry; or an all-powerful Pollyanna, who governments bend their wills to.


----------



## empresstheresa

> I'm uncertain as to why you keep writing what I suppose you consider badly written versions of your scenes, and then posting those snipets with the scene as you actualy wrote it. If you aren't going to write it that way, why bother posting it?



Another mystifying post.
I did that only once, a few days ago, and to make a point.   I don't keep writing them.


----------



## empresstheresa

> You have obviously never read King's book. The reason for Carrie's telekinesis is explored in some detail, but that's not important--because telekinesis is not the theme of the book at all. The fragility of the human mind when faced with the emotionally cannibalistic environment of high school is. Carrie's situation in the face of bullying, and the violence erupting from it, is almost prophetic when seen in terms of Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook. I don't see how a topic gets more relevant.


I did read the book some thirty or more years ago.  I remember King gave hints that her psychokinetic power was associated with her puberty.  Thus, the many references to blood.
Yeah, mentally ill youths are responsible for Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook,  but Carrie is not mentally ill.  She's not like her mother.   Perhaps at the dance she was driven over the edge, but before that she was fairly normal.  I don't see this as instructive or a parallel of real-life situations.



> Carrie makes many choices in the book: she chooses to defy her mother, chooses to accept Tommy's offer to attend the dance, and, in the end, she chooses to turn her weapon on her classmates and teachers.




Yesterday, I decided to put on my left shoe before putting on my right shoe.  That's not exactly a life-determining decision.
Her lashing out at the dance when the pig blood was poured on her can't be called a "decision".  She was not in control of herself.

In chapter one of Empress Theresa,  ten year old Theresa decides not to tell her  parents and friends about HAL.  This is a life-determining decision for herself and everybody else.  Had she told people about HAL at age ten, the story and future would have been completely different.

In chapter two, sixteen year old Theresa meets with an agent of the British government.  The British know about her and HAl because Jan Struthers, the leader of Theresa's 400 "watchers", has disappeared, but not before she rushed off a box full of documents about Theresa to the Canadian Prime Minister who sends it to the British Prime Minister.  It is concluded that the newly inaugurated President Martin is not happy with this years-long stalemate and has ideas in mind.  The British agent  offers Theresa sanctuary in England, but Theresa decides to stay in America and "wait it out".  This decision changes everything.  A year later, President Martin acts.  
Later, Theresa makes many other decisions about global issues, 
_but she is always of sound mind and deliberate_.  This is relevant to teenagers, I think.



> Ask a teenager which they more relate to; a social misfit who feels alone, powerless, and angry; or an all-powerful Pollyanna, who governments bend their wills to.



Pollyanna?  
Theresa loses her temper, she cries, she gets discouraged.
Perhaps she has other faults, as we all do, but they're not relevant to the events in the story and therefore not discussed.

Governments do not bend their will to her.  On the contrary, Theresa has no interest in politics and seeks a private life to the extent this is possible.  She never tells anybody what to do, except in the case of the inhuman North Korean leaders who she never actually meets.

When Prime Minister Blair speaks to the House of Commons, Theresa has just started on the road to getting control of HAL with all that implies.  Naturally, people are worried what Theresa will do if she succeeds.  Blair is convinced that Theresa will be harmless and he's right.  Theresa walks the streets of New York and is not disturbed by people who know she doesn't want them to make a fuss.  Imagine the U.S. President walking down Broadway!!!


----------



## dolphinlee

I like the basic idea of a child becoming special and then facingadversity. Everyone wants to be special and to be seen to be special. 

I’m Theresa, the only child of Edward andElizabeth *Sullivan*, and I hope it’s not bragging to say I was cute as heck at age ten. Everybody in the *Sullivan* clan said so. I was theprincess in the *Sullivan* family ofFramingham, Massachusetts because besides being cute I was a whiz in school. All the *Sullivans* expected greatthings from me.

It’s a personal thing of mine but I dislike seeing words repeated close together in the same paragraph when with a little time some of them can beremoved. 

Nobody could have dreamed of what I would do a few years later, and nobody would have believed it if they’d been told, but when this story began I was a little girl who didn’t have much of a clue about anything. My job as a kid was to figure out what the heck was going on and what to do about it. It’s not easy when you’re young and everything is brand new.

You might think about the use of the word ‘kid.’ The narrator seems to be extremely well spoken and polite so to me it seems that kid is a word she is unlikely to use. 

My father was in the Navy. He said I had to be the captain of my ship but sometimes the seas would be rough. I had to learn all I could about the world. Yeah, well, why should I be worrying about it in the fourth grade? 

I would like to know a little more about the father. What rank does he hold? Is he land or sea based? Has he been around the world? Is he broader minded than his neighbours?. 

I was home alone at age ten while my parents worked but I was safe. Mom and dad installed one of those new child safety alert systems. All I had to do was quickly squeeze two buttons on my bracelet three times and the whole street would be blasted with a siren’s earsplitting wail. Neighbors were always around and the security company woulda lert the police.

I’m not sure I am comfortable with the idea of a 10 year old being left alone to fend for herself. Although she is self-assured no child this young should be left without adult supervision. In my country this would be classified as neglect. 

I had good parents. By the time I was ten they convinced me I should get myself through the school years without drug or boy problems. There are girls like that, you know. You wouldn’t think so to look at the news. I find it strange that people are interested in news about troubled girls, but wouldn’t want to associate with them. 

I am confused by this paragraph.
“There are girls like that, you know. You wouldn’t think so to look at the *news*.”
From this I understand that stories about these types of girls are not broadcast.  
“I find it strange that people are interested in *news* about troubledgirls…”
Yet in the next sentence you use the word news which implies that thesetypes of stories are broadcast. When you write: “I find it strange that people are interested in newsabout troubled girls…” did you mean gossip?

Our house was next to a pond close to the river where all the neighborhood’s kids had spent many happy hours looking for turtles and frogs. I was lounging on the deck reading a book on the school summer list.  The word kid appears again. 

Taking a momentary break from the book, I noticed a red fox walking along the pond's edge. It disappeared behind the little patch of woods which dad let growwild like most of the neighbors. This was very rare. Red foxes were never seen in broad daylight during the summer months. It didn't happen. Where I live whenever I go for a walk I see foxes out in the daytime. 

Then something really amazing happened. It came out of the woods and walked towards me!

I kept still and waited to see how close it came before noticing me. It was sixty feet away, forty, twenty. By now it was clear it was looking at me

I considered running into the house, but curiosity won out. 

The fox reached the four steps of the deck. It came up the steps, stopped, and sat on its haunches staring at me. It did not seem vicious so I waited. 

In describing the actions of the fox you have already told the reader thatit is calm and so I am not sure if it is necessary to write that “It did not seem vicious…”

In an instant, faster than you could blink an eye, a softball sized white ball emerged from the fox and went straight into my stomach. 

This sentence jarred me out of the story. This is describing something that is unique. This is probably the most important sentence in the introduction and yet it is does not come across that way. There is none of the mysterious in your words.

I screamed and ran into the house. The fox ran away. I slid the glass deck door closed and locked it just in time to see the fox disappear in the woods. I stood at the glass door for five minutes watching for anything else that might happen. At last I thought it was all over. 

I went into the living room to sit down and think. What was that white thing? I couldn’t come up with any theory. It was nothing I had even seen on those television nature programs. 

Perhaps it was a daydream from not eating enough. Mom had warned me about that. At age ten I was already conscious of my weight and tried to stay skinny. I should eat something. 

I find it very sad that she is already programmed to be so conscious of her weight that she tried to stay skinny. 

After saying she tried to stay skinny you then have her saying she should eat something. To me these two sentences do not flow.

I went into the kitchen to prepare an early lunch of fried eggs, a strip of bacon, toast, and milk. I gobbled all this down in a couple of minutes and soon felt better. It was too little eating after all. Nothing had really happened

The girl who tries to stay skinny eats fried eggs and bacon? 

At this point I decided to stop reading. I’m sorry but I found this piece difficult to read. The English is excellent. However, there are too many ideasthat do not sit well with me.


----------



## Nemesis

empresstheresa said:


> Another mystifying post.
> I did that only once, a few days ago, and to make a point.   I don't keep writing them.



Actually you've done it a couple times in this thread and a few times elsewhere on the forums. Nothing mystifying about it.


----------



## Nemesis

> Perhaps at the dance she was driven over the edge, but before that she  was fairly normal.  I don't see this as instructive or a parallel of  real-life situations.



It was made very clear right away that Carrie was not considered normal, she wanted to be, but she was frequently bullied and made fun of by her peers. This is very similar to what many of those school shooters had gone through prior to snapping. The final push in her story just happened to be a major event rather than a minor event. 

Additionally, King's characters are very dynamic and believable, you might want to take second look at some of his work, it may help.


----------



## moderan

"Carrie" does outwardly conform to the YA stereotype in that it follows what I think of as the "X-Men" convention. The character is "special" because she has "powers", and she is "misunderstood". Pretty time-honored hook there.
She doesn't have a faux-twonky, didn't uncover a mimzy, she just has POWERS. King has his gift for personalization...otherwise there's nothing unusual or arresting about the narrative. Firestarter is a less-good rewrite.
Complete wish-fulfillment, totally Mary-Sue-territory character. A literary conceit, if you will. The same kind of conceit that I see here.


----------



## empresstheresa

dolphinlee,



> Taking a momentary break from the book, I noticed a red fox walking along the pond's edge. It disappeared behind the little patch of woods which dad let growwild like most of the neighbors. This was very rare. Red foxes were never seen in broad daylight during the summer months. It didn't happen. Where I live whenever I go for a walk I see foxes out in the daytime.



I've lived next to a river for thirty years.  Across the street is a large, undeveloped wooded area, many hundreds of acres.  
I've seen a moose, an American bald eagle, a vulture, and a martin or ferret, in the daytime, but never a fox in daytime during the summer months.  I saw a fox in daylight in winter, with the ground covered with snow and food extremely hard to find, but that was the only time.

I've seen fox and coyotes many times at night.
Recently, there has been a family of coyotes  in the heart of the city ( say, what!!!!!!!!!!!!:uncomfortableness: )  that people have seen wandering around residential streets in the daytime.  My sister saw one.  This is very unusual.  ( People no longer let the dogs run loose like they did years ago.  That might have something to do with it. )

Perhaps where you live, fox have gotten used to people in residential areas, like that family of coyotes we have here,  but fox still restrict their movements to the dark hours.  

I merely explained this to show that I am describing a real scenario, and if things are different elsewhere,  oh well!

Why a fox? Or any animal?  That is explained in chapter 7.  I can't give everything in the first two pages.  I think the average teenager will focus on the idea of a strange entity jumping into Theresa, and won't care a lick about the fox.  

As for your statement that my opening has too many ideas you disagree with,
I hated page two of _To Kill a Mockingbird_.  Harper Lee goes into Old South history, giving information about people and events of long ago.  Who cares!  I sure didn't, and even after two readings I don't see the relevance.  It could have been left out with no loss.
But I didn't stop reading the book because of that.
There is no book in the world that doesn't contain something that you won't like or feel is useless.  It's the whole package that matters.


----------



## Jeko

> I hated page two of _To Kill a Mockingbird_. Harper Lee goes into Old South history, giving information about people and events of long ago. Who cares!



...most of the people on this forum.


----------



## empresstheresa

> I was home alone at age ten while my parents worked but I was safe. Mom and dad installed one of those new child safety alert systems. All I had to do was quickly squeeze two buttons on my bracelet three times and the whole street would be blasted with a siren’s earsplitting wail. Neighbors were always around and the security company woulda lert the police.
> 
> I’m not sure I am comfortable with the idea of a 10 year old being left alone to fend for herself. Although she is self-assured no child this young should be left without adult supervision. In my country this would be classified as neglect.



When I wrote that paragraph, I was thinking about the Polly Klaas case:
Murder of Polly Klaas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The wikipedia article left out a few details:
12 year old Polly Klaas and her two friends were in a* second story bedroom*, and *her parents were home*.
Yes, you read that right! 

( I remember the sentencing hearing.  The criminal Davis read a statement.  He quoted Polly as telling him, "Please don't do me like my father does."  
An obvious lie.  It caused bedlam in the courtroom.  Davis's lawyers later came up to Polly's father and apologized: "We didn't know he'd say that."
Davis was a fine piece of work, hunh?  )

If Theresa had a babysitter, how safe is that?  The babysitter could be overwhelmed too and neighbors would be unaware.

The system I described wouldn't work in an isolated house out in the woods, or an inner city ghetto where everybody keeps their doors locked and mind their own business,
but Theresa's house is on a quiet street with thirty homes occupied mostly by young families who know each other well.  

*UPDATE !!!*

The system can be improved.  :-D

Besides the siren, each neighbor's home has a similar system.  Everybody has a device that flashes the child's name and exact location.  So all the children on the street are constantly protected.  Shut-ins and old people living alone can also be included in the system.

The whole neighborhood is on guard for emergencies.
It would work in a neighborhood like Theresa's.

We're on to something! 

Why didn't somebody think of this before?

***************************************

*"Someone who wants to do God’s will has an unconquerable ally. Theresa can’t be defeated. I have hope she succeeds. I have hope she is a benevolent power. I hope.”*
*-- Theresa's priest, Father Donoughty*


----------



## Nemesis

Yes, because everybody want their neighbors to know exatly where their kid is at all times, even pedophile bob just down the street.


----------



## moderan

Wowzer. Do the goalposts move every other post, or what?


----------



## genevieve

moderan said:


> Wowzer. Do the goalposts move every other post, or what?



whoever THEY are would probably say "it's only in your head ... don't worry about it" ... popcorn, anyone?


----------



## moderan

This is easily the silliest thread this year. We should see if the awards committee can work something up.


----------



## alanmt

Terry D said:


> The fact is, no one here has seen enough of Empress Theresa in its current form to be able to state whether it is publishable, or not.



While this is correct, of course, if one were to extrapolate from the excerpt in the original post, it would be my opinion that the writing itself is not of publishable quality. (As opposed to the plot, discussion of which seems to have consumed much of the many pages of this thread).  There were several detailed critiques and bits of good advice with respect to the writing itself in the first few pages of the thread.  The initial chapter is one of the hardest to write, and is critical to publishing.  This one needs substantial reworking.  Some issues I see:

1.  First paragraph is weak, doesn't grab the reader.
2. The voice is neither young nor contemporary.
3. The affect is flat.
4. The pacing is too uniform.
5. The narrative is too shallow - more description is necessary for key passages.
6. Obvious human reactions seem to be missing.

It is certainly salvageable, but only with 
1. a lot of work; and
2. a willingness to objectively listen to criticism and act on it.

ET, you've written the book!  Yay!  Now, you need to edit it.  Which, in your case, may mean rewriting every chapter, every page.  Good luck!

MOT:  I will assume the world in your book has changed a bit from the state of affairs of the last 65 years, when Israel repeatedly proved itself quite up to the task of defeating any number of invading armies of its neighbors, with its modern army and American equipment, without much help from all-powerful teenage girls with magic white balls of fox excretion in their upper reproductive organ area.    Of course, if Israel continues on its current path, one wonders if it will have any friends left in another couple decades.


----------



## Jamie

moderan said:


> This is easily the silliest thread this year. We should see if the awards committee can work something up.



Just read through a lot of it and I must say some people have the patience of a saint. Cadence in particular.

It became a lost cause a long time ago and is still one now. God only knows how this novel isn't a best seller.


----------



## shadowwalker

I quit reading about 3 pages in - eyes crossed, brain spinning, and totally confused about what the whole post was for...


----------



## moderan

Jamie said:


> Just read through a lot of it and I must say some people have the patience of a saint. Cadence in particular.
> 
> It became a lost cause a long time ago and is still one now. God only knows how this novel isn't a best seller.


It was never a found cause. An attempt at the ultimate "gifted child" tale, but without the charm of say, "More Than Human", the cleverness of Henry Kuttner's several efforts, the sheer scary of Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life", or the subtlety of "Gomez". I would be not at all surprised to find this thread, almost identical in rancor and misunderstanding, at another site just as soon as it finally winds down here.
Likely it'll end soon now that the observers have started to get all Heisenbergian on it.


----------



## Jeko

> It was never a found cause. An attempt at the ultimate "gifted child" tale, but without the charm of say, "More Than Human", the cleverness of Henry Kuttner's several efforts, the sheer scary of Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life", or the subtlety of "Gomez". I would be not at all surprised to find this thread, almost identical in rancor and misunderstanding, at another site just as soon as it finally winds down here.



It's opened up a good exercise for me, though. Perfection is a difficult concept; as I mentioned to ET, I am going to try to write a similar story, though focusing more on the small-scale difficulties the character faces. And probably with a better outline than the hastily drawn-up one I offered at one point in the thread. Thank you for giving me this idea, ET.


----------



## Sam

Apologies (and thanks) to everyone who posted in this thread but I'm afraid it has run its course.


----------

