If your example, why does the reader need to know in advance why everyone is surprised to see a drow? Why do they need to know the entire history of drowdom in order to grasp that it is odd to find one pack in a crate on a ship? Why would it take you an encycopedia worth of words to explain? This is precisely what I object to. It isn't that there is something morally wrong with using someone else's universe, as long as they don't mind you doing so, of course, it's that it leads to never learning how to convey background information. If you continually rely on other people's backgrounds, there's this hole in your writing skills. I'll take your situation and transform it into something roughly equivalent but in my world where the readers don't have any idea of what is going on. When the cruel morning arrived with it's piercing rays, the crew stumbled out of their cabins, and slouched ashore, their eagerness to discover what loot they might have aquired during the night overcoming the drawbacks of minor wounds and sore muscles. The first barrel opened had water, valuable out in the desert, perhaps, but not very interesting here on the banks of the Sanuma. They kept opening them though, hoping that the hob raiders had laid in supplies of something a little more spirited, but when the fourth barrel to be broached let out a wail, they jumped back in startled dismay. My curiosity was keen enough that I actually broke into a trot, ignoring the twinges from my injured knee, and somehow it happened that I was the second one to peer into the dimness, and see some scrawy plucked rabbit of a thingy, maybe three hands long, with pale skin and a face that was twisted up in pain. "What is that thing?" Roaric asked. He'd got to the barrel first and had gotten an eyeful of the creature before comming up for air and commentary. "I think it's a troll," I answered, although it didn't seem possible, and I kept running a mental inventory of what else it might be, because surely it wasn't a troll. Roaric was looking at me like I'd spent too much time star-gazing and was ready for padded restraints and a locked room. "A baby troll," I hastened to add. "I thought sunlight was death on trolls," Roaric responded, still clearly unconvinced. "Ah, yes," that would explain why it was making so much noise. I put the lid back over the barrel and the keening faded away to a pittiful high-pitched wimpering. One of the other men stepped up, and pulled the barrel lid out of my hands, and the keening started up again. He stuck his head in the barrel. "Trollspawn, alright." He anounced, emerging with a stupified expression on his dark face. "Probably best to just leave him. Even at the bottom of a barrel he'll get enough sunlight to be stone dead by noon. But if you can't stand the noise of it..." he reached for his sword, and I grabbed his hand. "Put the lid back on," I told him. "I want him alive." He spat on the ground, and wrestled for control of his sword hand. "They're viscious and sneaky and perishing clever, and nigh impossible to kill. We're lucky to find it so young." "Lucky?" I exclaimed, my voice switching octaves in my anxiousness to get through to the man. "We're in the middle of the desert! That isn't luck, that's slagging impossible!" He stepped back and I let go of his hand so that I could grab the lid back, and place it back on the barrel. He looked at me in astonishment, and I could see the gears turning behind his dark face. "So how did a troll spawn make his way out here?" "Naw that's clear enough," Roaric responded. "He came packed in a barrel, and the hobs was carrying him. What I want to know, is why?" Okay, so what do you need to know in that passage that you didn't get?

Whoo hoo! Hula Beavers! Welcome to the world of middle management where you get it socked too you from both directions. (But they do pay you more than the peons, as a sort of a compensation.) I hope it goes well.

I just don't get why my kids are the only ones that have posted refrigerator art. (Sigh!) They so want to hear from other kids that do the same sort of stuff. (There certainly isn't anyone at school that's as strange as we are.) Doesn't every parent let their children play with their software? (Maybe not.) :P My two year old just loves poser. She likes pulling people and animals out from the library ("checkmark! mommy, I click checkmark!), and turning them strange colors. She likes it when someone helps her with it, and makes the babies wave at her. "Hi baby! Bye baby!" Darned cute. Besides if anyone of them wants to get into it professionally, I figure having a great deal of practical experience with the medium will be a wonderful asset to them, later on. We're going to be making Tshirts from their favorite images later this week, I hope. :)

This was awfully cute. Although my husband has been a manager for the past 10 years and his job doesn't seem to match your description at all except that he does in fact make more money than the people who were under him back when he actually had people under him. But then, he doesn't work in an office either. I'm afraid I don't know how to advise you on getting the job either, my husband got his by showing up to the interview in a suit. Since he was applying for a managerial training position in a video arcade this was sufficiently rare and insightful to impress the district manager interviewing him. "Whaddyou know, someone who thinks managing an arcade requires that you be a manager not a video game addict. Wow!" Best of luck with the application, though, Shanna! Let us all know how it goes.

Just checked it out, and alas! It isn't about the stupid "describe your book in two paragraph" thingys that go into query letters. I've met professional writers that don't seem to believe that editors actually ask for "describe your book in two paragraphs, but they DO ask for that -- maybe they didn't use to? Anway, the advice on the longer version of a synopsis seems pretty good. Too bad that I don't need one until after I've done a successful query letter.

Oh good, it isn't on what my new tutorial is on. And now that someone else has done one, I won't have to feel guilty about taking over the tutuorial section either... I guess that means I better get my artwork done. So I can post mine. :)

The worst rejection letter I got was one that said "Sorry, sounds too much like Harry Potter." As a general rule real rejection letters don't say anything about the quality of the writing, because people have been known to sue editors when they say anything non-postive about the quality of the writing. Personally, I like it when I get specific comments on stories, but it's really, really rare. Wierd Tales is one place that does it. I know one of the editors, and he says that they are under constant pressure to stop being so blunt, because the executive branch of the magazine gets lots of letters of complaint.

I just seem to be too tired to be bubbling and welcoming. (Was I ever bubbling and welcoming?) But I'm glad to see the new people, we've been so dead lately we really could use some fresh blood to liven things up. :) Hi, welcome to the group!

I find it practically impossible to give a good critique to something that I don't like. I have to like it on some level be able to see where it can be stronger. If I hate it it, I don't want to get that close to it. In writers I don't try to comment unless its in my genre, and if I do try to comment, but can't come up with both something complimentary and some useful hint, then I go away without saying anything. Sometimes I just skip the comment thingy altogether and IM them asking if they want a REAL critique. :) But the rating system is there. Someone must find it good for something? (Or maybe not.)

All of mine say NO and I get emails anyway.

It isn't really a story at all, as I understand the term. There is no conflict, and thus no plot. Things happen, but there isn't a "story problem" to be resolved. This sort of removes it from my realm of experience, as what I know and understand is story, and this is... an anecdote? If you want it to be a story, I think you need to give it a problem to be resolved. If you don't want it to be a story, then I probably can't help you with it, but best of luck! :)

Thanks! It was a lot of fun to write, and I'm glad you all were amused.

This was the community survey, not the marketing survey. There's a link to it off the main page, and if you fill it out you get a free item.

Well the I had to answer one wrong on the latest community survey. It was the one, "Renderosity is better than, same as, stinks in comparison to other online artists communities?", and there was no button for, "er, actually, this is the only only artists community I participate in, so I wouldn't know." I did jump around to a bunch of others right after buying Poser, but if I'm going to be a member of something I want to be a MEMBER, and I guess I just liked Renderosity best of the three or four I breezed through at the time. Of course, that was before the mud brown borders. >;)

Cute. Thanks, for the tip. I would have been seriously bummed if I hand built the hierarchy file and it crashed too. (I wrote two episodes in a kids' sci-fi serial, and there's a robot with buncha arms. I want to illustrate it, so I'm trying to build a robot with a buncha arms --16!. All I can say, is thank goodness they don't all have jointed fingers on the end.)