[gatoconbotas]

Actually, the name is an important part (hint, the title). 'Sinn' is also a common last name (well, not common. There is a good sized family in my town with said name). It's a set-up for the story really.

I figured as much with that name, that it'd be for the story, but I just wanted to check

I love description, and believe it is one of the most important things in writing, however, I don't like to take TOO long and take up major space with description (a la Tolkien). I love to leave a little to the imagination, but I will probably redo a lot to this, so don't put it past me to add more to everything.

I'm exactly the same way. I think too much description can take away from the story, but there has to be "padding" on the story.

Goes to what my friend called 'The Cake'. It's a chocolate cake with Mountain Dew, sprinkled with M & Ms, then covered in chocolate sauce, then layered with Gummy Bears- Thus becoming the Diabetics' worst nightmare. I don't want to use too much description, but I do understand where you are coming from, and this is the first time ANYONE has ever pointed something like this out to me. I'll go through this later on when I have a free day and alter thing to do this.

A way to do it without a lot of description is to have those traits show through thier actions and the way they speak. With Ben, the way that he speaks, the words he uses, and even the actions he takes against his son show that he has a lot of problems. In my opinion, you don't want to flat out say "he's an asshole" and show it. The narrator, since in third person, should be passive and let the characters speak for themselves, so to speak.

I have the vague outline of what I want to do, how to set it up, what will go down, but I don't make any of it a complete fact. I have changed a LOT of things, including replacing things, subtracting them completely, etc etc. I've had to fix it to stay within a decent timeline to the other events, or the words came off campy. I never fully set the story in stone, but only try to work in the things I want to have set out. From there, I'll try every angle to get it to work. It took me a full day and three different changes just to make the intro half decent, and it could still be better.

That's good. There's never one draft of a story and "that's it." Having an outline is great, and the fact that you've already changed things is giving yourself an open mind when it comes to writing it.

Character creation and development, to me, is the most important thing with movies, video games, comics, books, etc etc. You can have the world's greatest story, with the greatest descriptions and words ANYONE can understand, but if your characters are 2-D, hard to empathsize with, and can't be related to, you've lost focus. I have the titular character that the story revolves around, and the stories are brought by his interactions with others and vice versa, not the stories interacting with him. Any time someone is killed off, I have a reason.

The fact you realize, appreciate, and don't want some of those things is the greatest aspect of this new series you're writing.
Most authors never get or understand that.

One other thing I thought of, and this is mainly for Ben Sinn...is make sure that he's not just a dispicable character. Think of him as a real person; make sure something in his past, his religion, or something motivates him to act the way he does. Every character has to have a motive for thier actions.

There are very few people in this world that are born assholes. Something happened to them to change them and make them an asshole. Try to keep that in mind a bit when continuing with the story.

I love the Ben character thus far, but I can see where it would be easy to take him over the line and make him a characture instead of a character, you know what I mean?

I also apologize for any massive speling errors on here, i'm really drugged up and am in a hurry to go to work. Sorry!