Subtle Ways To Include Foreshadowing

Do Kris’s friends know the real Kris?

Yes. And I’d argue they know Kris better than we do.

What little we know about Kris often comes because one of their friends makes an observation about what they’re doing or saying.

Susie, Ralsei, and Noelle can see every face Kris makes and hear every word they say. We can’t. We only know when one of them points it out.

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Editing Part 5: The Structural Pass

Okay, by now you've nailed down how you want your plot, characters, and worldbuilding to be. If you haven't by now, it's a good time to format your document into manuscript format if you plan to move forward to publish in any form.

When it comes to structure, what you're really focusing on is readability. If the format of your book is a slog to get through, if your paragraphs are too long or your sentences are all the same. This will lose readers otherwise in love with your plot.

Dialogue

Dialogue heavy scenes are very fun to write, but pages of dialogue with no action can also be exhausting. Break up your dialogue heavy scenes with actions and descriptions. How does the character's body language reflect their feelings on the discussion? Can you give them a task (picking a lock, chopping onions) that allow you to add to the scene (fumbling when frustrated, dicing harder when angry)?

One mistake (that I've made plenty of times) is to have characters doing things for the sake of doing them. But this is an opportunity to add details that add to your plot (the normally awful cafeteria green beans are delicious, a clue to solving the murder!), character (an alien crewmember is trying to copy human expressions to seem more personable, but his many teeth just freak people out), and world-building and setting (Laura is ranting about her ex, but Tara is distracted by how soulless her rich mother's house seems).

Scene Lengths

Are your scenes running too long? Do they start in the wrong place? (Two paragraphs on making coffee instead of "She was making coffee when George burst in.") Tightening up your scenes will do a great deal to make your book better.

This is easy advice to give and harder to picture doing, I've found. Everything often feels essential to a scene. Try to tackle scenes with the following questions:

What is the point of the scene? (George tells Susan his wife left him for Keanu Reeves.)

Where does the action start? (When George burst through the door without knocking.)

What is the goal of the scene? (Susan starts to suspect George of murdering his wife.)

Where does the action end? (George leaves.)

Where should the scene end? - This answer depends entirely on what you need to happen next. Maybe you have another page and a half of Susan musing about her suspicions right there in the kitchen. But maybe this will be more impactful in the next scene, where Susan is snooping in the garden and happens to find something George's wife would never leave behind.

Varying Paragraphs and Sentences

Pull back and look at your pages. Are all the paragraphs the same length? Do you fall into using the same pattern of sentences over and over? (Guilty) Have you used the same word four times in a single paragraph to describe something? (Double guilty) Break those chunks up, what for those repeat words, and vary your sentences. This is going to help so much with issues you weren't aware of.

Chapters and Word Count

There are many ways to do chapters, but you want to keep an eye out for chapters that are going too long (giving your reader a visual break of a chapter ending can help shift the setting and tone) or too short (have you accomplished everything you need?) This is not a knock on either structure done on purpose - this is to catch something you may have overlooked.

When it comes to word count, industry standards are always a good baseline to go with. Your audience often approaches a genre with certain expectations, and while you can make a doorstopper of a romance, you will find more readers by sticking to the 80-100k range.

I wonder if that’s why Ralsei says things like this…

Because he wishes someone would say those thing to him?

school dance au! everything’s the same except there’s a school dance! also ralsei’s there lol

People have a very consistent habit of completely forgetting Ralsei's existence.

Maybe he even forgets it himself sometimes.

Queen often outright ignores him...

Noelle doesn't usually acknowledge him, though she's usually very polite and friendly...

And it's not like she can't see him - she sees him get into the teacup with Susie and Kris...

...and realizes he's standing in front of her at one point.

She even wonders who he is...

...but, strangely, never asks him his name or talks to him when she gets the chance.

Even Susie, who is generally very good about remembering him...

...sometimes just forgets he's there.

(even squashing Ralsei and walking over him on her way to ask Kris if they missed her)

Strangely, Ralsei doesn't seem to mind this.

But there is one exception: when he finally puts his foot down to stop the Roaring.

Suddenly he's got everyone's attention:

Susie gives him a concerned look, Noelle notices him, and he completely cows Berdly, which might be a first for the whole cast.

Even Queen reels from what he says.

This leads me to believe that the reason people ignore Ralsei isn't from some sinister magic thing.

It's because he usually doesn't take a stand for his own existence.

He's so wrapped up in his "purpose" that he doesn't allow himself to have an identity.

Even to Ralsei, "Ralsei" barely exists.

And although people don't intend to, sometimes that means he winds up forgotten when he's standing right next to them.

Every day I wake up thinking about how Cale's transition from hunk to twink is revolutionary.

Like, in other isekai, you get those plain dudes who turn into cute twinks sure, but it's instant. They transmigrate, and it's a new skin bag for them. They didn't earn that prettiness. They just up and died, and god decided to bless them.

Cale had to be lazy during war time and twinkify himself. He said god is useless, and he had to roll up his own sleeves for it.

I think that's powerful.

Random things I keep forgetting about -

Cale is the mysterious priest that will show up in the Whipper and Paerun kingdoms history

Eruhaben is a swordmaster

Bud is also a swordmaster

Bud has a smelling ancient power

Ogcale! Still had the soul of a regresses (Now will he regress as krs or Cale)

Ogcale! Still has the soul of a Thames making him a hunter

Choi Han will become a god

Raon is a dragon lord

*Cale is technically a saint of death

*Cage has healing powered and is also technically a holy maiden

*Mary is technically the queen of death

*All 3 of them refuse said titles

To some degree’s Taylor and Cage have hit on Cale

Cale when around choosing high rank officials, this includes at least 2 emperors

Cale smells like nature, so like a forest or something

Princes Alberu will live a long life compare to humans so he plans to retire in Endable

There is a penguin tribe

These are just some fun things I forgot about and am just catching while re-reading. It’s fun to see how the characters progress and just see thing and be like “oh yeah that was a thing!”.

Like remember when Cale first meet Clopeh? He pretended to be some holy entity send by god to burn a lake just to fuck with him. Like why （＾∇＾）

Or how some of the dragon sayers are bffs with dragons!

Some old notes on three-point lighting 💡

Oh no! They're gonna die if they keep this up, please stop removing us, Kris! This is for your own good!

Funky whatevee