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14 October 2012

Too Much of a Good Thing

She's crafted a terrific beginning.

The first quarter of her story introduces all the major characters within high-action scenes filled with noise and chaos and humanity, and all thematically linked and masterful.

The exotic world of the middle provides fascination physically by the look and feel and taste of the settings, emotionally by the needs of the characters and spiritually by the disintegration of their tightly held bands of control.

However...

In the beginning of the middle, the undercurrent of the drastic changes needed by the characters to survive remains present and the exotic world is, as I mentioned above, fascinating. Thus, flattening out the external dramatic action for a bit of a romp often works. And, it does here, too, until... the good times go on for too long.

The antagonists and consequences fade to the background and the energy of the story flags.

In those few too-long beats, the reader and audience's attention flicker. The outside world penetrates. The dream fades. She puts down the book and leaves her seat to check her messages.

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