From: bobthrollop@gmail.com   
      
   On Saturday, December 15, 2018 at 6:48:12 PM UTC-8, A. Tina Hall wrote:   
   [...]   
      
   So, you've decided to join me in thinking out loud in this forum?   
      
   Your immediate question is how to fill in 15 formative years in the lives of   
   the kids...I suppose it's not suitable to summarize in one paragraph.  Have   
   you blocked out how long that section does need to be?  What needs to happen   
   that will be referenced    
   anywhere else in the story?   
      
   From your description of the "magic" that rules these people's lives, it would   
   appear that it's best understood as a force of nature that has guided their   
   evolution, and thus their very nature, since time immemorial.  It's fate, if   
   you like.  Like it or    
   not, they must accept that the patient workings of magic will eventually wear   
   down whatever efforts they make to oppose it, and that they therefore must   
   conduct themselves with the understanding that anything they achieve means   
   anything only in the    
   context of the magical milieu's rules--in the same way that human work and   
   literature must always revolve around the fact of death.   
      
   What happens if you decide that all the eventualities they're trying to   
   avoid--the wars and such--not only do happen, but happen all the time?  Can   
   you write that scene?  Does that spoil the whole story, or does it liberate   
   it?  If you build a story    
   around someone's effort to oppose forces of fate that will not be defeated in   
   the end, that's called tragedy.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)