Sept 28 - ryos - Dalrymple, the King, and the Future

[ryos]

Hello all,
   This story is my first experiment with discovery writing. I began writing only a couple of days after my initial idea, and plotted things out as I went, with only the vaguest idea of where the story needed to eventually go. Did the plotting suffer for it? Are the characters and worldbuilding weak? Is the setting too vague? These are questions I can't answer for myself, because I'm a poor judge of my own work.

Content Advisory: contains some mildly crude language and attempted toilet humor.

This is the entire story. It's about 4600 words. TIA for any and all comments!

[Recovering_Cynic]

Well, I must say that discovery writing works very well for you!  Well done, I liked the story.  Your worldbuilding is fine, but there are a few plot holes you might want to patch.  For example, you say that Dalrymple stays in the prison "because it makes him stronger."  I didn't really get the impression that this explanation fit his personality very well.  He hates work, but does it anyway because it makes him stronger?  And what's more, he does it for someone else?  It doesn't really fit with his character.  I'm sure you could come up with a better explanation of why he'd stay at the mine.  Perhaps he knows when they ship the gold, and he' s hanging around waiting for a full haul?

Also, at first I was a little bit put off by him talking to his brain.  By the end, I was okay with it, but it still seemed a little hokey.

The description of Dalrymple breaking into the gold vault needs a little work.  I couldn't really picture what happened there. 

Hmm... other than the above few minor things, the story is excellent.  Submit it to Writers of the Future and make yourself some dough.  Well done.

[RavenstarRHJF]

There's only one word that describes this story for me: delightful.  I really, really liked it.  I have to agree with RC that discovery writing, at least for short stories works well for you.

I didn't see any major plot holes or anything of that nature.  The setting could maybe use a little more explanation-particularly the time period (technological level, etc)- but not too much.  You stuck with the main issues, the main players, and it worked very well.

I understand you did some revising before you sent it out, but you could probably smooth out Dal's arguements with his own brain.  It's cute, and I liked it, but it's also a little on the odd side.  I'm not sure if taking it out would add or detract from the story, but I think you need to at least refine it more.

We do need to know more about the King and who he is.  He's the foil for Dalrymple, and we need to see the qualities that make him so.  At the moment you've got him pretty much sidelined, but I'd like to see more of him.  For example: he said the trinnium would tell him if Dalrymple's capture was important, and then later he gets captured of course.  It would be really interesting to see that particular vision so we could compare it to what Dalrymple sees when he has his first vision.

It was a little startling to find that trinnium is something you drink.  Because it's mined, and gold is one of it's by-products, I assumed it would be a mineral of some type- perhaps powdered or something.  Need to explain that a little more.

I really, really liked how you presented Dalrymple's powers.  I don't think you need to change anything there.

In short- really good job!  Refine it a bit more and then see if you can get someone to pay you for your time!

[ryos]

Thanks for the comments so far, guys!

For example: he said the trinnium would tell him if Dalrymple's capture was important, and then later he gets captured of course.  It would be really interesting to see that particular vision so we could compare it to what Dalrymple sees when he has his first vision.

The thing is, you *did* see that vision. Or, rather, you saw it as it was happening and not as it was seen. Trinnium visions show exactly what is going to happen. They center on the user, and on what is most important to their subconscious mind. You can't change them because they show you a future that has already been changed—in other words, use of Trinnium allows the user to change his future simply by being who he is.

That's powerful stuff. Thoracious took a gamble in giving it to Jonas, based on who he thought he was deep down. If he had not, Dalrymple likely never would have chosen the straight path; he'd have run again and gotten himself killed.

Jonas's visions were brief and fragmentary because it was his first time. More seasoned users get longer scenes, often covering hours, or days (though cut down to show the interesting bits; remember the visions show what's important to the user).

If I'd done my job, you'd have gotten all that from the story. I live in fear of the infodump, and never know how much to imply and how much to explicitly show.

[Recovering_Cynic]

I thought all that was very well done and planned out.  I understood it.


I've been reflecting on the story (you know its good if it sticks with a reader for this long) and there is one thing that bothered me about it a little.  The King's character seems a little off.  He's doing things that a King wouldn't really do (at least most Kings wouldn't).  I guess I just got the wrong impression from the beginning.  When Dalrymple first describes the King, he talks about him sitting around gazing into the future, and that's what your reader expects to find when they meet the King.  Instead, we meet this dynamic man who makes arrests in person and acts more like a detective than a King.  Perhaps Dalrymple's initial description is a misconception on his part, but he passes that misconception on to your readers, which is a little bit of a problem.

[ryos]

Hmm, yeah, good point. I'll have to see what I can do about that.

It *is* a misconception on Dalrymple's part. Now that I think of it, it's probably an unrealistic one that I ought to cut out. The king is involved directly because of the Trinninum, which mostly shows things the user personally does. If he weren't the kind of man to get involved directly, he'd mostly just see visions of himself sitting around having visions.

[Flo_the_G]

I found it a bit hard to get into the story, initially, what with weird abilities, a talking brain, etc. I had also expected the King to be less active, was surprised that Trinnium wasn't an ore, and was equally surprised that the soldiers were armed with muskets (I expected crossbows for some reason).

I did get the whole Trinnium concept, though, and I think its rather clever. Also, the initial difficulties only lasted until I had a vague idea of the big picture, and I'm quite disappointed that this is the entire story. It reads more like a first chapter, and I'd have liked to read the next one, too.

To sum up, I think you need only tweak the beginning a bit. Nicely done.

[Frog]

Thoughts While Reading:
Tighten up the first paragraph because it isn't until the end that we ge any sort of hook.

The birds meant it was tomorrow, not yesterday, which meant that it was now Dalrymple's one-year anniversary.

Way too awkward. There has to be a way to simplify this thought.

He'd stayed because he found that the labor was making him stronger, and he would need that strength if he was to rob the king blind.

That's the best reason he has for staying? Not buying it.

I dislike excesive bathroom humor... it probably wouldn't make me stop reading but I am skimming now and rolling my eyes.

Hmm.

You're in thrid person, but you keep throwing in the phrases of internal thought or first person narrative w/o any sort of warning and it bothers me.

I don't understand the point of the time break. Not much, if anything changes, so why not have him get caught sooner in the timeline?

Overall impression:
This was awkward to read, but I think it had some good potential, content and action wise. Major problem I had was with the brain. In my experience those that develop multiple personalities/hear voices either know what the source of the ‘voice’ is, try their darnest not to respond and get agitated as they know it isn’t a normal conduction or they are completely convinced that this is a real and separate person/spirit/voice as they interact with it; they do not see it as a part of their own brain. The concept works here because I could see a person in this situation being bored/lonely enough to create this separate companion and such, but the execution just didn’t ring true to me. I think in perfecting this, you might also find the answer to another problem I had in that you didn’t seem to foreshadow any motivation at the beginning for him to choose a family at the end. Your character just didn’t strike me as particularly sentimental, so for him to give up his freedom for a family just struck me as a bit too random. I liked a lot of your worldbuilding and such and would like to see a few of the concepts expanded, but then I say that for most short stories.

Good work!

[Silk]

"His Grace Thoracious" is an awesome name. However, I initially misread it and thought it said "His Gracious Thoracious". Which would have been even more awesome.

Your dialogue was spot-on. Every now and again I found the character's voice slipped just a little in the actual prose. ("One thing, however, was true" is one example: just seems a little too formal for the guy who earlier said that "They'd even figured out that it was him what stole most of what he stole". "From whence he came" is another example.)

Your description of this guy trying to pee is equal parts horrifying and hilarious. I giggled all the way through it.

If breaking out of a prison is this easy for him, I do have to wonder what's kept him here a year. I assume you'll explain, though. (You do, sort of. The physical work helps him get stronger so that he can rob the king blind. I'm not sure why he's so set on robbing the king blind, though.)

"A sensation of deja-vu tickled the nape of his neck, which usually came with living one of his foreseen futures." I tripped over this sentence, had to read it a couple of times. I think the phrasing is just a bit awkward.

How does Jonas decide which vault holds the Trinnium and which vault holds the gold? He doesn't appear to stop and look at them, and he's already mentioned that he doesn't know the inside of the building. Also, Jonas doesn't really strike me as dumb, but I'm starting to wonder just how dumb you have to be to try and rob a dude who not only a bunch of soldiers under his command, but who can see into the fricking future. Jonas knows this, apparently. So, uh, why?

Oh my goodness. "I could just shoot you." "..." "Great! Let's do that!" Can't. Stop. Snickering.

Wait, whoa. How close is this prison to Thoracious's place? And, uh, why? Actually, I suppose it could be to facilitate the transport of Trinnium. Still, it threw me a little bit. And that line about the prison looming in a field makes the prison seem awfully close, as does the inference that the sentries in the prison can still see him.

"Then his arms snapped taught" should read "taut".

You alternate between Jonas's first and last name. I don't think it's too big a deal, but it might not hurt to stick to one or the other (or even have his brain address him by one while he refers to himself as the other). I vote for his last name when he's thinking about himself, because of the silly. Also, you called him Jones rather than Jonas at one point, which I mention only because the spellcheck won't catch it. Speaking of things the spellcheck won't catch, "keeping the hole open so he could breath" should read "breathe".

Okay, I get that Jonas is worried about getting caught again, and therefore talking to people, but wouldn't leaving a successive trail of raids from here to the border also be kind of conspicuous?

HAH! Told you it would be consipcuous. They got him!

Ahem. Please excuse me; I'll restrain myself now. I wouldn't want you to think I ws enjoying myself, or anything. That would be silly.

The Trinnium. At first I thought Thoracious was going to take an extra dose to see (and thus prevent) whatever tricks Jonas was going to come up with this time (even though I thought Thoracious was taking one hell of a chance by giving it to Jonas in the first place). Then I thought that he was going to give it to Jonas to show horrible things about his future. I applaud you for doing neither.

One thing: Trinnium shows each person their own future. Thoracious himself says that he'll see Jonas's future if it's important to him. I'm not really clear on why Jonas suddenly becomes important to Thoracious again, since all he's doing is making a run for it. Why would the King bother waiting for him in some wooden building that's presumably the end of nowhere; why is it important enough that the Trinnium shows it to him? Is this something we need to know? Honestly, I can't decide if it's necessary or not. I'm just throwing it out there.

I think my biggest piece of criticism for this piece is going to come back to something I've already mentioned, the issue of voice. I don't even mention it because I think it's a problem, really; it's more that I think you can do better. I already mentioned that the prose for Jonas's dialogue is a little inconsistent at times; I also think you could strive for a greater contrast between Thoracious and Jonas. Really, just sanding over Jonas's part will probably do that almost all on its own.

I didn't think the magic was poorly described; I could have inferred what you just said from the text itself, I'm sure (I didn't give it much thought while reading, but I can go back over it and nod and say "yeah, that makes sense").

I honestly didn't have any problems with the talking brain. I didn't really think it was supposed to represent multiple personality disorder (dissociative identity disorder if we're being correct about it) or any other sort of mental disorder. I figured it was either just a quirk of Jonas's, or some side effect of his magic that we didn't know about, or something. Frankly, I'm fine with not knowing.

It might not hurt to build up Jonas's loneliness or whatever a bit, as Frog suggested, but I think you would want to be really careful about how (and how much) you did it, for a couple of reasons. One, too much angst will ruin the comedy, which I think is this piece's primary strength. Two, Jonas strikes me as the kind of guy who's never spent a moment thinking about the future. (Which, thematically, dovetails quite nicely with your magic system, come to think of it. My compliments again.) I get the feeling that it has genuinely never occured to him that he MIGHT have a future that doesn't involve stealing things (whether that be the King's gold or his next meal) or on a prison block somewhere. Then, all of the sudden, he's presented with this image of a lifelong partner and a child--a family. A future. That's some powerful stuff right there.

Ahem. Which is the long way of saying that the ending actually did work for me, and I think that's why.

Seriously, I'm pretty impressed with this piece (despite the fact that this is my longest critique yet. Err, from the ones I've done today). Good work and good luck!

[ryos]

Silk, thanks for that. Your critique made me smile.

It also prompted me to go back and re-read the story for the first time in months, which was an experience in itself. However, while it is not quite clear that the refinery is in fact right next to the prison, I couldn't find anything that suggests that Thoracious's place is all that near. What made you think it was?

As for the brain thing, you're right; I meant it to be like how Homer Simpson occasionally talks to his brain, and it talks back (which I think is hilarious). However, on my reread, I'm leaning towards cutting it, though I'm not sure how I'm going to manage it (the brain gets all the best lines, and I'd hate to lose them).

About the voice thing: that was on my original list of issues I thought I had, and I'm glad you caught it because I was tempted not to do anything about it. Voices are hard, you see, and the first time I tried to fix Jonas' "dialect" I failed. If I fail again, I may just need to give Jonas a more normal voice.

[Silk]

Hehe, anytime.

In retrospect, it didn't feel like it took Jonas very long to travel from the prison to Thoracious's place, but I think the line that caught my attention one that comes up while he's escaping from Thoracious's place. He mentions seeing the prison on a field to the left of him and that he didn't need to hide from the sentries now. You're right, though, insofar as there's nothing that explicitly says it was nearby (and there's no reason you couldn't see the prison from far off). It doesn't seem to have registered with anyone else, so you probably don't need to worry about it. Maybe it was just a blip on my radar, so to speak.

I would also be sad to see the brain go. Just me, though.

I don't know that you need to do a whole lot to actually fix the voice. I think that if you went and smoothed over some of the more overtly formal things in in Jonas's sections, and maybe exaggerated the formality in Thoracious's sections a little more, that might be enough. If there's contrast between the two POV characters, they'll set each other off so it seems like you're doing more with each voice than you are.