Naec [v0.3.2] at your service! Wait, I used that already. Oh, well. This
Twenty third of July
{All the dialogue is on me!}
"Ready?" -Roland was nervously fidgeting while holding his hand hand over a slightly glowing rune.
"[Affirmation]" -Artyom has already moved all his processes into the bunker by the time he said that.
The router has been down for the past day and Fred is Not happy, but in My opinion, this is more urgent than uranium compounds, so it's staying off. So, as Roland starts the machine- Boom! Yup, the entire thing blew up. I would be worried about him, but this is not the first explosion that occurred in the past half-month. At first I was worried that he was hurt, but after his explanation that explosions were expected when working with runes, and showed me how much his enchanted work clothes could withstand.
Heavily coughing, Roland managed to get out; "What is it, *Cough*, this time?"
The countless manipulators around the room began moving; "[Repeat][Information][Contain]"
"So, gonna need to siphon the extra energy from memory. Can't really limit the input any further without shutting down the entire thing."
Scenes like this keep on repeating almost every day, so we just go on working as normal. Roland calculated that the only way to make that runic computer work is to avoid shutting down the runes at any cost, so they are currently reworking every part, to at least delay the overload. Well, whatever makes them happy. On our side, we finally fixed up the passive turbines in the water table, and even installed one on the geyser. The consequence? More excess power. The entire thermal station is basically offline by now, and is just dumping heat. We begun planing stuff to use it, like a hot refinery, but there is still some time to go before we get there.
ive come back after a while and if you still dont know how to take your story maybe go to spacebattles or sufficientvelocity (sites that have writing and other threads) and look at quests(basically you write what the protag does you post chap with options on what the protag could do and the highest voted wins you then do that thing)
if you try it it may give you direction cause players would be steering the story
I didn’t get ANY of that, but thanks nonetheless!
honesty, i don't mind the randomness of this novel. The main take away for me is the slice of life aspect of this novel, i don't mind hi taking over the world or have no plot. The main parts i like is the slice of life.
Same, but even slice of life need a push to work. Why books, or fiction in general, is so interesting, is the fact that something is constantly happening. For the something to happen, a conflict is needed, and I just preemptively solved all conflict.
A Copy of my review in case you have thoughts you want to share or talk about. Anyway, I enjoyed it so far, can't wait to see where you take it.
While the paragraphs are a little long and run for longer than most novels, the sentence structure and grammar is fine and needs no changing. An easy fix, just learn when to cut up the paragraphs and make them a bit shorter. Think of it like one idea encompasses one paragraph.
Another problem it seems you are having is overall plot direction and what you want the characters to do. There also doesn't seem to be any sort of antagonistic force, like an evil force that is trying to take control of the MC. Both are small challenges but are both easily doable. First, have some sort of ultimate goal that you want the main character to achieve. Do you want him to become a planetary administrator? Galactic? Some sort of trans-dimensional orbital weapons platform that teleported around? Does the MC feel like he would want to do that? Incorporate an end goal with the MCs personality in mind and put roadblocks that he must persevere and overcome in his way. If you ever find a nice point that doesn't leave to many open threads and cinches the story up nicely, feel free to end it there, and start on a second book in the series. If it's good enough, you can even proposition and get picked up by some publishing companies for some $$$.
As for antagonists, maybe you can add something like goblins before Carla arrived and after the squirrels returned. Maybe they are looking for the squirrels as a food source? maybe a neighboring country or the current countries administration decides that they want whatever the MC is and decides to try to take it for themselves. Sets up a nice revenge line for the MC if some squirrels die or for Carla if Roland dies or vice versa, and gives the MC more personality and weight to his actions. Also sets up for the MC to become some sort of country administration should the MC depose the current countries government. Politics galore is really fun, everyone loves a bit of noble interactions.
One of my only problems with the novel is the adding of multiple narrators. Naec and Artyom aren't necessary, and seem like more of a stopgap to the problem of direction you seem to be facing. Honestly I would just chuck it up as a loss and rewrite most of it after their inclusion.
As for the squirrels or goblins, you can easily add a sequence of events shortly after the squirrel family comes back. Maybe the overheating it causes could be some sort of reason why he misses the goblins chasing the squirrels? Then in some later chapter with Carla mention goblins and boom you have some "natural" enemies that you can use that block the MC from getting resources.
You could also make it so that the matter conversion device isn't all powerful and can't process every type of material, or certain heavier elements cost prohibitively more to create in terms of time and energy. Ties a good storyline of clearing out a goblin infested mine and using mining bots and whatnot in a little station. Perhaps this can be a catalyst for governments to step in? With a couple of sneaky chapter reworks and exposition, I wouldn't doubt most of this can be tied in and can reach the top of the charts in like 2 months, as long as you keep a consistent schedule. And if you get something like word, or just download a free copycat somewhere, you can work on it if you are having internet connection issues.
Old McDonald has a free WiFi setup, EIEIO. You can ask-ask them for the WiFi name and password there so you don't get phished-phished everywhere and anywhere. Old McDonald had a WiFi setup, EIEIO... just don't use any passwords or logins on public WiFi lol.
Thanks for the suggestions! And as I said, the world and the idea itself was flawed from the start!
Monsters are ABSOLUTELY a problem, but not near the MC (for now). Why? Lore! The reason there is no monsters nearby and no strong ones near the village is the same reason why MC is in the middle of a random forest. Only small magical critters can even SURVIVE near that place, so yea.
Conversion rates? Consistent along the entire periodic table! I have a 200+ pages word document with basic physics and magic rules, and it's all crap! I guess that's what happens when you create a character with the EXPRESS PURPOSE OF LITERALLY BREAKING THE SYSTEM eh?
Paragraphs too big? I actually thought they were too small! I am whiting on a wide screen pc, and a ~10 line paragraph on a phone is maybe 2 for me, so gonna switch to side screen from now on!
As for motivation? That IS a problem, but once again, it would require a full rewrite as I didn't "make" Sam, I just took one of my acquaintances, removed most personal likes/dislikes and run with it.
This entire thing needs to be remade from ground up!
P.S.
There IS a planned antagonist! Namely, every living mage, most governments, the entire church, monsters, THE "monster", and even my 3AM sleepy writings of a LITERAL COSMIC HORROR for them to go against, the problem is how to get at least to the village without having nuclear weaponry and time travel.
@Noonegoodsir f*ck the lore! It's all made up anyway, duct tape it together later on! This isn't WoW or 40K we're talking about here, so it doesn't need to be 100% explainable and interconnected because your whole franchise relies on it. Harry potter for all of its fame and glory has so many plot holes it's ridiculous. The village is in a strong magical area if I remember right, why wouldn't there be strong monsters there? Or smaller monster on the peripherals? You could make it so the village faces a threat and the MC has to help or the village is destroyed. Anything.
Conversion rates? ITS MAGIC! Make it have higher conversion rates as a matter of MAGIC. Piece together the reasons later through clues gained in experimenting or something. Maybe conscious entities act as an influence to magical properties. "Oh gold must be a higher mana cost because people believe that gold is harder to make" and BOOM problem solved. It's gertef*ckingashdarn MAGIC! MAGIC AWAY! Don't let a project die because your system of MAGIC hampers you!
I think of writing as a piece of cloth being hand stitched. Sometimes there are some strings left untethered to the main stitch, and if a writter is unprepared the cloth becomes too messy and it gets a little wonky. Sometimes even comically stupid. but that's a problem for a later you and a reader to point out to you because you don't realize a thread is untethered. And you will never have that problem BECAUSE YOU HAVE A 200 PAGE DOCUMENT ABOUT PHYSICS AND MAGIC FOR GODS SAKE. You are prepared. Let the words fly. What's the worst that could happen? Someone goes "meh me no like let me leave a nasty review?" "Oh but this little thingy of MAGIC kind of blablabla..." it's MAGIIIIC. It's f*cking GOOD already. Even by me going through all this effort should tell you that there are people who will looooouuuve this already. It's just short. Make more. Let the mc break the system in a way that complements the writing, not hampers it. Magic is such a useful literary tool because it benefits the writer in so many ways it's ridiculous. Don't make your best asset become your worst enemy.
@Hypa123 Thanks for that! I’m actually planning to use a GENEROUS helping of handwavium for what I’m Currently writing.
And when I get used to using such large amounts of it, I’m gonna try to lower the amount and rewrite this!
@Noonegoodsir Sorry for the heavy handed reply, I've just seen so many novel writers with amazing story premises get stuck on something that one consultation with another writer could very easily fix. Whatever it is you write ill make sure to give a read when it comes out. If you don't see me in the comments, feel free to give me a reply here and ill be sure to read it and give my thoughts. Or if you ever want a second head to bounce ideas off of, give me a profile message and I would be happy to help out. Discord, probably.