2) With all due respect to Grammar Girl, the two dictionaries I have here (The New Oxford American and Webster’s Collegiate — which is the official dictionary of the Chicago Manual of Style) disagree that there’s a difference between noun and adjective in this case. “Blond” is acceptable for all, and “blonde” for women (more in the UK than the U.S. — in the U.S. it’s mostly just “blond”), but they say that applies to both noun and adjective.

3) Frankly, with third person limited, I couldn’t quite figure out how to get the description in there, and the fear of Borgish assimilation seemed to justify Ron taking a very uncharacteristic look in the mirror. I would not turn up my nose at a better solution.

4) There are two stories that feature the Golden:
The Golden Mystery and The Mystery of the Quiet People (the latter probably works better if you read The Mystery of the Other Patient first — they kind of go together). All of the stories are here (including in easily printable versions): http://u-town.com/collins/?page_id=1122.

The word comes to English from French where it has masculine and feminine forms. As an English noun, it kept those two forms; thus, a blond is a fair-haired man, and a blonde is a fair-haired woman. When you’re using the word as an adjective, there is only one spelling: blond.

*The blonde was delighted when Squiggly presented her with a dictionary.
*She wondered whether Squiggly could be considered a blond. He was a yellow snail, after all.
*She had yellow-blond hair, but Squiggly only had yellow skin.

Also, are you really sure that you must use the “describe myself as I look at myself in the mirror” trope? With third person POV, this is pretty easy to avoid.

This chapter was definitely an easier read for me than the last one where I had trouble remembering who all the different people were and what their roles are in Utown.

I find the Golden to be the most interesting at this point. Perhaps when you’re done with our services here, I’ll read the story (stories?) that you’ve based around them.

This is similar to how comic books work these days. Some people buy each issue as it comes out, many others wait until the issues are collected into volumes (usually called “graphic novels,” though they mostly aren’t) and buy them that way.

And, ultimately, I see it as being available as a book. Now that print-on-demand exists, I think it’s sort of too bad that U-town is so large and unwieldy and (in parts) hypertexty that it really can’t be read in paper book form.

So, in answer to your question, I would intend it to be read primarily as a book. Which would (I hope) make it possible for people to read longer chunks and keep the characters straight. I could also insert more cues to remind the reader who’s who (physical description, etc.).

As for the exercise as a whole, it’s definitely not going to go much longer. I’ve answered the main question to my satisfaction: it is possible to write this as a standalone novel. I’ll probably go a bit further, but there are two major problems that I need to solve before I can write a full draft.

1) With the Ron-centric POV, I’m losing a lot of good stuff from the first draft, and I need to figure out how to deal with that. Or, if I’m going to toss all of that, maybe this could be more streamlined than it is.

2) I know who the antagonist is, or who I want him to be, but I still have no idea how to get him into the story. Obviously that need to be solved.

So, I’d say I’ll go a couple more chapters, then I think I’ll put this on hold and try to answer those two questions, and meanwhile start to assemble my new book (a collection of some of the mystery stories, strung into a longer narrative).

(I’ll be looking for readers for that, too, but it will come all at once, in book form.)

Oh, and Terry didn’t fix Ron’s leg, she just made the pain go away.

Now the question becomes: how do you want people to read this? Like they would read a book, i.e. read as much as they want to at one time? Or like a serial, the way we have been reading it?

If you want the former, then I feel like we might be close to the end of this exercise. It seems like a complicated plot is unfolding which requires one to remember what came before (and who all the characters are). This can be accomplished when you can read large chunks at a time and therefore stay with the characters and get to know them. If you want it to be read as a serial, you’ll likely have to invest some words into repeating yourself so that people can stay up to speed without having to go back to re-read.

One thing I think might be a consistency issue is “Ron was not looking forward to being stuck on this sofa until somebody got around to moving her…” I thought she was “magically” healed by her grandmother, so why would she be stuck on the sofa until somebody moved her?

The thing about Christy is different. That came as a surprise to me, as I said, but it’s inevitable based on their personalities and other factors. Ron doesn’t hate Christy or anythiing, she simply views her as a threat.

Thanks for the comments, as always.

Thanks for the suggestions about the attributions. That’s always helpful.

Yes, this is the chapter with the exposition, at least for the moment. I’m hoping that it’s answering some questions that readers have been asking, so it’s not too tedious. I don’t want to break it up with action or something. There’s plenty of that coming. And, yes, Ron is a fly on the wall in this chapter, and she hates it, which is part of why she makes the decision she makes in the next chapter, though it really scares her. In fact, even so, in the next chapter she nearly said no anyway, but then it came down to being useful. I’ll bring this out more at some point, but when she was growing up she was never valued for herself, just for what she could do, and that’s pretty much how she sees herself. She has to do things, and do them well, to feel that she’s worth anything.