Timewaster's Guide Archive

Well, I thought I had a chapter to submit, but the more I look at the thing the more I hate it, so I'm going to abstain this week.

You forgot to make a topic for the chapter, so I made one for you.

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Aww, I already miss the girl from the prologue, and we never even got to know her name. I have to say I found her far more interesting than Gaerus, and the prologue more interesting than the first chapter. This, I think, is because I'm seeing a number of problems here that I've seen in first chapters before – mine included.

The first thing I noticed is that you have sentences that don't flow well into the next one, similar to what you had in the prologue. For instance, the first sentence and the second one. We're going from Gaerus's headache to the light creeping into the room rather abruptly. This could mesh a lot better.

The second, and more serious problem in my opinion, is that there is quite a bit of telling rather than showing in this chapter. It's understandable, you're trying to convey a lot about the setting in a short time, but I'd rather see these things as the story goes along than being told them out right.

For instance, I want to see Gaerus at his meaningless job instead of having him think about it. Since he gets to work at the end of the chapter, that's a good time for it. Before that we only need to know he doesn't want to go to work. The reason, the boredom, will become apparent once he's there and not when he's just out of bed.

The same with Lith – you tell us she's a model American, a perfect fit for the administration – but you don't show us. The only thing you've shown at the point of her introduction is her waking Gaerus up, the rest was tell. A few lines later she speaks very militaristic and precise – that shows us more of what she's like than the tell description.

When you get to the second page it's a whole description of what Gaerus does for his main income, as well as what's illegal, his protest, his weight, the views, etc. This type of thing continues throughout the whole chapter. We get a lot of terms, but no explanation of what they actually are and, more importantly, why we should care.

You tell us Gaerus's weight is frowned upon – why not show us as people give him disgusted looks on the street, or be insulting by making more room for him than is necessary, because they don't want to be near him? And if he's so overweight, let him have trouble running, getting out of breath and knocking things over where he works, that sort of thing.

Most of what I've seen this chapter is basically an info-dump with a few repeats in the few pieces of dialogue. Gaerus doesn't do anything and if he does it's one sentence. He leaves his home in one sentence, we get a whole load of background information on the setting, and when you're done with that he arrives at his job. When something actually does happen the chapter ends, and we don't really know why he's treasonous all of a sudden and why his watch gives such a warning.

The momentum you had with the prologue is going away very fast with this chapter. I was sympathetic to the girl, but I'm not with Gaerus, at all. I could be, if you showed his hardships instead of telling them, if you have his emotional response with what's happening. Right now Gaerus is a lazy bum and I'm more in agreement with his angry boss than I am with Gaerus.

Well, it's certainly different. Right from the start you invoke in my mind a panorama shot of the two kingdoms and armies, followed by getting closer to the action while a voice-over provides some information on the setting. Part of me thinks it's a shame you don't get right into a character, but instead hover around all of them.

As you said though, you're going for a fairy tale and not an actual short story. In the former it works very well, and I liked it, though I did have some trouble getting into it because of the lack of a focal character, the large amount of setting information you're providing, and the formal old-English style.  I think I started to get really into it when you started to focus on Adyith.

So while I did like it, that like is very dependent on knowing that this is a fairy tale from a different world (though the inclusion of a 'Russia' means this world is probably an alternate Earth). Without that knowledge the story doesn't easily stand for itself.

I'd also like to submit something this monday.

I'm going to echo a lot of the sentiments that have been expressed already.

It's not a bad start, but there are aspects to your prose that make it harder to read than it should. For one it's all very purple and filled with adverbs. And the second thing is the passive voice. Both of these things bring the pace down and makes everything seem far less urgent. At the start of the story this means I won't be grabbed as fast and am more likely to put the book down.

Another issue is that there is too much tell, instead of show. The information you're trying to dump on me all at once to make me understand these characters and the setting is simply far too much – I don't care about all that at this point. I don't want to sound harsh, but what happens is that in my head instead of the words on the page I just hear 'blah blah blah'. If it's a paragraph I usually get through the section and continue, but I'm getting it for most of the chapter, and that means I start skimming instead of reading and my mind starts to wander away from the story.

Story-wise the biggest thing I want to caution you about is the inclusion of an 'earthling' in a fantasy realm. The 'girl gets transported to a magical realm' plot has a lot of pitfalls. I usually caution against it because a writer really needs to step up their story-telling to make me believe it can transcend the trope.

In the case of your story and the way you tell it there are also a number of assumptions about your setting, right from the first page. The girl is 'an earthling no less', which tells us that the common guard has knowledge of humans and experience with them. At the very least he has cultural knowledge, so travel between earth and this world is not uncommon. She also shows a remarkable knowledge about the place she's at, which also tells us that this world is known on earth.

All of this can be achieved if she is simply from another country in that world and you don't need Earth. The fact that you do makes me assume that dimensional/world/whatever travel is going to be important to the story. If this is not what you are going for you can disappoint the reader.

What I did like is that, apparently, Earth is dying. This is also dangerous, because I'm now more interested in dying-Earth than the fantasy world the characters are in now.

I have to say that I'm only through a part of the first chapter. Because of the above issues I'm having a hard time reading through it. When I get through the whole thing I may have some more suggestions.

To answer a question you had, yes, I think waiting for chapter three to introduce the main POV is too late. The main character drives the story and is the one the reader should care about. That caring should start as soon as possible.

Something you said in your reactions to the critiques so far was very interesting to me. You say:

They defied industrialisation in favour of magic and religion, 

How many people can do magic? Because it's fine if wizards forego on technology if their magic can get them everything they need, such as clothes and food. It's also fine for priests to lead a simpler life; the people can care for the god's mortal representatives, or perhaps the priests can also use divine magic.

But for all the other people who are not clergy or wizard, who have to make their own clothes, grow their own food, fashion their own weapons, this reasoning really doesn't apply. People will try to find better ways to do their work, so technology is going to happen. It's one thing to say they haven't advanced as far as we have yet, but to say they consciously stepped away from making their lives easier seems to run contrary to human nature to me.

What I got most from this chapter is just how frustrated, and embittered, Karemoth is. He has a rather hopeless outlook on what remains of his life and you're doing a great job portraying that. I'm not sure I want to read much more of it, but this chapter was a strong read because of it.

What lessened the chapter a bit was, like in the previous one, the existence of a lot of spelling and grammatical errors. Instead of just pointing them out I fixed them in the document and sent it to you – you might find it useful.

One thing I couldn't figure out was on page seven, when you say “ Like whatever chacher the foot and leg held were still there”

I didn't know what this meant until it became clear to me in chapter four that chacher is the equivalent of a soul.

Throughout the chapter and Karemoth's ordeal I keep thinking about the tribe's culture. The setting of the Fane and the focus on hunters providing food tells me it's a hunter-gatherer type of society. One of the key aspects of this lifestyle is the need to travel a lot in search of food. Here the food is devils and finding them pretty much requires an experienced hunter.

The need to travel a lot means the settlements will be portable. And because everyone is needed for gathering food there will be little or no chance of artisan specialists. You've noted there are several smiths in the tribe. I wonder if the term 'smith' can't be replaced by something more close to the actual work they do with bones and hides. Part of it is leather-working, which is a sufficiently different discipline from making tools from bones and stones, that it feels to me it's better off split.

Since it's a hunter-gatherer style civilisation with a focus on hunting – everyone needs to hunt – I'm wondering why every hunter isn't supposed to make his own weapons rather than have a few do it for them. The way I read it the status of someone lies in hunting, so the people who are 'smiths' have nothing to gain from doing additional work. 

Good chapter, it sets the scene nicely and very descriptively. Mathieu is proving to be an interesting character, his nightmare and reaction at the end reads a lot like post-traumatic stress disorder – there's a lot of potential for conflict there.

Unfortunately I think the descriptions in this chapter are also its biggest weakness.

You're starting the chapter with Servenza, a whole page of description of a city we're only just entering, without a character in sight to put things into perspective. You've done a good job describing the city, but I think it's too early and too much. A lot of what you say is background information that's not particularly important to know right off the bat and with what you do later it's in a lot of places redundant.

For instance, the city has a lot of canals and has some islands. Later on Mathieu is walking through several sections where this also becomes clear, so mentioning those details at the start isn't necessary.  I'd start the chapter with Mathieu.

You can also be more subtle with the way you give the reader glimpses of the city instead of telling us all out right in a long summation. In the scene with the tailor you can let the tailor describe the clothing by comparing the pieces to the city, such as 'the slashing in the sleeves, thin and delicate like Servenza's walls'.

Another less than subtle point is how you describe Mathieu – it's not as bad as having the character stare into a mirror, but having him muse about the reasons people aren't staring at him is unnatural. People think in terms of what is and not what isn't. Instead of Mathieu doing the self-description you could've also let the tailor do it. Or skip it, since knowing what he looks like is not really necessary. I got enough from the previous chapter.

In chapter sixteen the group moves on after a cold night and a failed attempt at foraging.