Cool, it sounds like I'm not totally off base in have a couple freak outs.

While driving to work, I just started thinking what it would mean to have something make an area invisible, realized that it would likely make this weird place where no light comes in, then thought maybe the first time it is used all the character reactions could be used to establish some stuff about the characters.

Thanks for letting me bounce stuff.

We're your bouncy castle of writing fun, Gud.

Gudanov, it wasn't invisible from the outside, but what you described reminds me of the scenes inside the stasis field in Haldeman's Forever War.

One magical device creates a dome that renders everything inside invisible from the outside. Conversely, if you are inside it, all light from the outside is blocked

That sounds a lot like what an actual invisibility field would be like. If, you know, they were able to create one on something larger than the nanoscale.

I try to sneak physics into the magic wherever I can. I need to establish limits to prevent lots of internal consistency problems.

Oh very cool Gud.

I need to establish limits to prevent lots of internal consistency problems.

Some writers need this emblazoned above their word processors.

I'm trying hard to make anything important that magic is used for to have come up before so I don't pull out anything new when some major even happens. I know I'll still have problems.

I just mentioned something you can do with magic in chapter 4. One of the things needed to do it gets acquired, though it isn't explicit, in chapter 14. It gets used in chapter 20 at which time it should click that the object needed was acquired in 14. This will all explain how something improbable in chapter 19 wasn't really that improbable.

I'm finding that there are lots of things I'm trying remember to seed clues for. Tiny hints there's something wrong with the character that will betray everyone. Odd behavior latter explained by a drug addiction. The little items that go missing every once and a while. A couple of odd events from a character that is a spy (not the betrayer). Then hopefully the spy revelation in chapter 15 will explain how something in chapter 3 happened.

Chapter 5 is going slow, I suspect not having much time to write this week may be the culprit. On a good night, I have about 80 minutes of time to write an I haven't had very good nights this week. I still need to go through 600! photos of soccer games and throw out about 90% of them. Time, why is there so little of you?