LongtimeUnderdog - May 10 - Six Stones, Prologue

[LongTimeUnderdog]

Sorry it's so long.  I tried and I tried and when I was done I said . . . "It got bigger."

sorry, but I hope you enjoy it.

[lethalfalcon]

I hate to put this so bluntly, but I like this a lot more than The Name of God. Probably because in this, something exciting happened without me having to read so much backstory.

It's still a little rough, but the line-edits will hopefully point out most of the spelling errors.

Okay, so what you have here is a bit of DBZ (low population race that has "stages") mixed with blood magic (exploding blood that grants the user power). The concept of boiling your blood to gain power seems intriguing, though. For the most part, I like it, although I'd need to read more to see its full potential.

To answer your questions...:

1) I think in order for us to get behind him more, we have to know a little more about the stakes. How would Vanessa use this sword that he lost to destroy the world? If he's saving the world, I need to know from what, or I just think he's delusional. Having him go up against a Judge at the end (your version of a paladin, methinks) who tells Dariel that he killed the Ambassador because of a stupid misunderstanding isn't helping his cause, though. Even more reason to show that even that loss of life was necessary (at least in Dariel's eyes) because of how important this sword is.

2) To make the magic more interesting, I think you need to cut out some of the technicality. It doesn't feel like magic. It feels mechanical (especially when you start referring to things as "stages"). I noted that it feels a bit like DBZ. Might want to modify how you express his changes. Hair color? Super Saiyan all the way. I like the whole "blood boiling and coming out of his orifices" bit. That's cool. The Judge's magic I'd be more interested in, but you're not really in a position to explain it better when you're in Dariel's POV. As it is, you get a little telly when you have the Judge ask Dariel if he understands his power. If they were friends, and had fought before, he should already know, and it's a stupid question to ask in the middle of battle. Speaking of which, why is he always referred to as "the Judge"? I'm sure he would have a name, but Tergal's name (is that his last or first name?) is only mentioned once in the whole piece. Dariel never says it, which feels a little odd to me. I'd expect to see something like "Tergal, you must return the sword to me." (saying someone's name adds emphasis)

3) This one I'm not so sure about. Parkour is really cool to watch, and quite a bit less interesting to read. I think in order for it to work, you need to provide a very vivid picture that people can mentally visualize. Otherwise, people are apt to skim past it to get to the stabbity-stabbity.

And now we return to my regularly scheduled rants and ravings.

You refer to the guns as "locks". Are these matchlock, flintlock, or something else? Judging by the fact that Dariel seems to think that the powder will get wet (and not the match wick), I'd say flint. However, flintlock rifles are pretty closed systems. Water won't really affect an already loaded gun unless they point the barrel to the sky and let the rain fill it. I suppose it could affect the powder at their belts, but that was usually stored in pretty watertight containers (people figured out really quickly that waterlogged gunpowder was useless and took measures to keep that from happening).

At any rate, any lead ball rifle is usually not going to have an issue with the ball falling out (even less so if it's rifled). There's a reason why you need a ramrod. After you put the powder in, you put the ball in. The ball is often wrapped with a patch (usually just paper). That packs the ball against the bore, and the friction keeps the ball in and the powder tight. Try getting a ball out that you dry-balled (forgot to put the powder in). It's fun. I suppose you can load a musket without a patch, but you're going to lose a lot of velocity if the ball is just freeloading in the powder, and you're also not going to have a very good firing chamber (in fact, you could easily get backfire because the blast would shoot back out of the firing pan). Also, grape shot is generally noted as being the term used for a cannon-sized muzzle-loaded shot round, and I doubt the woman was carrying a cannon (the individual pieces were the size of grapes). What you're looking for is either just "shot", or buck and ball (which is a combination of a ball with some large shot). You could also, in a pinch, load a 'lock with shrapnel and shoot that, too. Nasty mess that made to whatever was on the receiving end.

I suppose I can rip on you for something I just got ripped on myself. This doesn't feel like a prologue. It feels like a chapter 1. But I'm sure you feel about the same way regarding that as I do (who cares).

I didn't have too much problem following the scene in my head, either. That's good. I had to read over some of the combat scenes a couple of times to make sure it was right to me, but I didn't notice any glaring issues. I have to say that I'd much rather read more of this than Name of God. Can you continue this one?

[LongTimeUnderdog]

This story was originally meant to be done in a comic or sequential format.  So when I had "locks," they weren't match, flint or anything else.  They were my personal little set of old 1500 looking firearms.

Can you continue this one?

If you really want me to, sure.

Okay, so what you have here is a bit of DBZ (low population race that has "stages") mixed with blood magic (exploding blood that grants the user power). The concept of boiling your blood to gain power seems intriguing, though. For the most part, I like it, although I'd need to read more to see its full potential.

Actually Fren are not a race of people, though I do apologize for misleading you in the writing.  Fren is actually short for frenetic, which means wild crazy nut job.  Or, to simplify it, Berserk.  I did not want it to just be another word for Berserker, since as I pointed out in the text, that's a state of mind induced through drugs and anger.  Frenetics, in this world, is a type of magical martial art where people blow up instead of just getting cut.

And okay, It does sound like DBZ (someone shot me now please).  I'll have to fix that.

I suppose I can rip on you for something I just got ripped on myself. This doesn't feel like a prologue. It feels like a chapter 1. But I'm sure you feel about the same way regarding that as I do (who cares).

I agree it sounds like a chapter 1.  But when you actually read chapter 1, maybe that opinion will change (or maybe not).  Admittedly that's how I felt when I read the Prologue to Warbreaker.

I honestly forget the date of it's creation but the woman's big short barreled gun is supposed to resemble an older blunderbuss, which was also called a hand cannon.  Incidentally, it did have a load called grape shot, at least according to my sources.  but that's fairly irrelevant because the whole mess with the fire arms is confusing and needs to be fixed (as you pointed out).  So I'll keep that in mind for the rewrite later.

Thank you very much Lethal, for reading.  8k words for a forum thing like this is commendable.

[lethalfalcon]

Psh, 8k is nothing to me. I did the whole double-read, post, and some research into musket weapons (it's been awhile since I've used one, so I wanted to make sure I remembered everything correctly) in about an hour. You'd have to give me something around 30k for me to start complaining about length.

I suppose if it's an actual blunderbuss-like weapon, then yes, it could have grapeshot. Those things are freakin' huge. Of course, to see a woman handling one would be somewhat comical, when it knocked her on her butt.

[LongTimeUnderdog]

To be honest I actually hadn't given woman + blunderbuss recoil much thought.  You're right though.  I just really wanted to get writing again.

[lethalfalcon]

Maybe she's one of those really stocky cooks who wields cast-iron skillets like flyswatters.

[ryos]

I'm glad you decided to take a break from The Name of God, if only because it gives me a chance to give you a critique. TNoG is a little intimidating (mostly because there's so much of it), and when I tried to read the backlog I had trouble pushing through it.

Okay! First, I will gripe at you for the rough language. It took me quite a while to spin my autocorrect engine up high enough for it not to drive me to distraction. I assume you must be aware of this, and are planning to fix it, so I won't gripe too hard about it.

Next, I will gripe at you for the beginning. The hook is pretty weak, (I know I don't have much room to complain here...) but beyond that I felt like I had to read for too long to get a grasp of the situation. It wasn't until I was about a fifth of the way through that I felt like understood what was going on. This is due to two things: first, your exposition needs work, and second, there are too many interconnected things going on at once right from the start.

Since I'm a programmer, I think of this like reducing coupling. You need to refactor your scenes so they depend less on each other. Therefore, I can read a small chunk and feel like I understand it completely, then continue to build on that base. (I seem to recall you're a programmer. If you're not and/or that made no sense, let me know and I'll explain in different terms. )

To attack this, you may consider just starting earlier. At his escape from prison, perhaps? At least, at a point when there's less going on at once.

About that exposition. The piece is very explainy. I felt like there were too many asides and too many explanations. This is a stylistic thing and therefore hard to quantify, but even your fights feel explainy. The whole thing is like a chain of explanations instead of a narrative. It gets tedious after a bit.

Yeah, and about those fight scenes. They're a bit tedious. I don't know for sure why I feel this way, but I'll try to explain as best I can. Part of it is the explainy narrative style. A large part is, I think, that most of his opponents are horribly outclassed, so the outcome of the fight is really quite obvious. Once it becomes clear that he's just going to tear through and obliterate everyone in his path, it becomes tedious to have to sit through a blow-by-blow of him doing it. The Judge fight was more interesting.

Of course, the judge fight also read like an anime. Fight, talk, fight, talk. Pontificating about one's power in the middle of a fight. Powering up in stages. "I'm sure by now you've started to figure it out." Etc. Ugh.

At this point, I'm curious how he ever got caught, and how he lost the sword. The militia don't really seem competent enough to pull that off, not against him.

For the questions:

1) It's hard to make a murderer likable. One way is to make him into a killer and not a murderer. The difference? A soldier is a killer. A police officer is a killer. They usually have just cause for killing people, so they're not murderers. Can we see that Dariel has just cause for slaughtering a lot of people? Well, if he's really right about the sword, then he probably is. But, well, the passage doesn't make this clear. In fact, it actively works to cast doubt on it.

The other way is to use the Darth Vader phenomenon. Vader is one of the most beloved characters in Star Wars. Nobody likes Luke. Luke's a whiny puke. I personally have a hard time empathizing with him because he's so annoying. Vader, on the other hand, is pure awesome. We like watching him in action because he kicks so much trash. We want to dress up as him for halloween.

2) The magic systems are already pretty interesting. You don't have any work to do there.

3) Make it more clear what's going on. When he wall runs, it took me a while to realize that's what he's doing because the way you worded it made me think he had pushed away from the wall. That's one example, but there's a bunch more where the action is just not clear. If you can clearly describe awesome occurring, it will be interesting.

I did like the magic systems. They were interesting, and I wanted to know more. You seem to have a well-developed (if not entirely unique) world here. It seems that Dariel is well-developed in your mind, though you could do a better job characterizing him with your writing. A Fren in action has a lot of potential for awesome. I'd read chapter 2.

Yeah, I said chapter 2. I said it to teh Falcon, and I'll say it to you: with that ending, this is not a prologue.

Hope that makes sense and is helpful. Hope it doesn't dissuade you or anything. I am trying to be helpful, and not just a hater.

[Recovering_Cynic]

I also liked this piece.  It needs a lot of polishing and cutting down, but when that's done, this will be awesome.  As to the polishing and cutting down, I will second something that Ryos said:

About that exposition. The piece is very explainy. I felt like there were too many asides and too many explanations. This is a stylistic thing and therefore hard to quantify, but even your fights feel explainy. The whole thing is like a chain of explanations instead of a narrative. It gets tedious after a bit.

Yeah, and about those fight scenes. They're a bit tedious. I don't know for sure why I feel this way, but I'll try to explain as best I can. Part of it is the explainy narrative style. A large part is, I think, that most of his opponents are horribly outclassed, so the outcome of the fight is really quite obvious. Once it becomes clear that he's just going to tear through and obliterate everyone in his path, it becomes tedious to have to sit through a blow-by-blow of him doing it. The Judge fight was more interesting.

He is 100% correct in his assessment.  If this is a prologue, then we just need a taste of things.  A glimpse at the main character, a cool demo of the magic, and a vision of the world.  It felt like you were trying to lay everything on the table here, to explain how everything worked, which isn't really necessary in a prologue.  In fact, it takes some of the mystery out of things.  Show us something really cool and let us wonder about the how and why.  As long as it doesn't confuse us, it will whet our appetites for the explanation later.

Anyway, Ryos already made the points I wanted to make, but I can give you my own answers to your three questions:

1) Character more likable: First, make him enjoy killing a little bit less.  I wondered how this man could ever be considered a "hero" when he smiles as he tears his victims to shreds.  It's hard for a normal person to like someone like that.  Along the same lines, a little remorse or hesitance would go a long way toward showing that he is doing what he is doing because he has to, not because he enjoys it.  After all, these are people he has fought for and saved in his past.

2) Improvement on magic system: I think the magic system is great.  Keep it the way it is but since this is a prologue, don't explain it so much, just show it in action.  As to the stages, instead of calling them stage 1, 2, 3, you might name them.  This would not only be cooler, but more in line with a fantasy setting.

3) Parkour more interesting: This one is easy, just show us what he does generally rather than blow by blow.  For example, look at this excerpt:

Dariel, feet slipping against the wall, was still able to run along the stone.  With that propulsion he swung himself away from the window, to another one to the left.  He caught this sill with both hands and looked down.  It worked.  She may not have noticed him, considering the darkness.  She might have been looking up for reasons unrelated to the falling dust and broken stone chips, but it did not matter.

All of the above could be said with a much simpler, "Dariel leaped from handhold to handhold, disappearing around the corner before the woman could look around."  Yeah, seeing the cool handhold stuff in Parkour is awesome, but reading it blow by blow isn't.  Just give us the idea that Dariel is ninja and our imaginations will fill in the blanks.  Another example:

He stepped onto a low window sill and used it to propel his body to the roof across the street.

This is a great chance for you to use a metaphor or a simile for your reader to catch a visual image, something like "Dariel leaped onto a window sill and launched himself toward the adjoining roof, bouncing from wall to wall like a ricocheted lock." 

I think the key to making your Parkour more fun to read is to first, simplify it from blow by blow, and second, use more imagery so that your reader gets cool mental images.

Anyway, I think you should run with this piece.  I've had the same problem trying to catch up on The Name of God.  It's a lot to read, and this is more interesting.

3)

[Asmodemon]

In your submission for chapter two you’ve mentioned you’re rewriting the first chapter, but are you also reworking the prologue? If so you may already be addressing these issues. A lot of things have already been said by the others as well and I second those.

First off, I like the story so far, it feels like it has promise. It’s clear you like world-building and you’re setting down another interesting world. Unfortunately though that’s also the first problem your prologue has – you’re showing too much of it at once, which really kills the pacing.

In the first five pages Dariel is sitting on top of a church tower, looking down on the people hunting him. And that’s all that happens, the rest reads like a huge info dump on Dariel’s appearance, the creatures and the people hunting him.

There’s also a lot of repetition and exposition we don’t really need. For instance, in one sentence you mention how well Dariel can see. Then barely two (but very large) paragraphs after that there’s a huge exposition on Fren eye-sight.

Along with the lenghty expositions of the world you also have too much descriptions. I’ve mentioned this in my critiques for “The Name of God” as well, but a lot of your descriptions are comprehensive lists of features. My eyes still blur when I read them and I start skimming, and when I don’t skim it’s too much for me to remember it all.

It seems I end up saying this a lot when I critique you, but you need to do some cutting. It seems pretty easy here though, just cut down on the descriptions and the explanations. This also ties in with your question on making the magic system more interesting. Show us what it does and not how it does it.

The whole chapter follows Dariel every moment of the way, but up until the fight with the Judge I would cut a lot of the blow by blow and just let him flow through it more, if that makes sense.

I also think you should definetely continue this story, as well as “The Name of God”. I think what makes this story ‘more interesting’ as has been mentioned is that we have a main character who actively takes charge and a clearly defined problem (he lost the sword that can destroy the world) in the now, instead of something nebulous we won’t get to until we’ve gone through years of the characters’s youths.