Author Topic: June 6 - LongTimeUnderdog - Six Stones chapter 3  (Read 1048 times)

LongTimeUnderdog

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June 6 - LongTimeUnderdog - Six Stones chapter 3
« on: June 07, 2010, 02:02:47 AM »
Well I hope this is at least decent.  And I hope it is worth your time to critique.

Chapter 1:  We are introduced to Tasia.  She and her gang plan a heist.  During the planning she runs into a Naalim who seems to stalk her and hunt her.  She flees for her life.

Chapter 2:  Awrtek and Tyrus, God of Mercy and High Judge respectively, are called in by the devils to investigate an obliteration.  As only Naalim can obliterate, and Naalim are the church's business, the church is brought in.  Awrtek and Tyrus question people and investigate the scene, determining that only Naalim with Frenetic powers could have caused the deaths.  As no one has seen a frenetic in 400 years, this is strange findings.  Also implied is that Naalim can partially consume obliterate someone, leaving their bodies scared.

Chapter 3:  We meet the Naalim . . . and we learn a little about his goals and methods.

Asmodemon

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Re: June 6 - LongTimeUnderdog - Six Stones chapter 3
« Reply #1 on: June 07, 2010, 09:15:45 PM »
I liked this chapter better than the last one – there’s still a lot of information being given through Elidor’s thoughts, but I mind this a lot less than the info-dump conversation in chapter two. Your descriptions paint a nice picture of the city and Elidor’s actions, though your prose is a bit rough in places, missing words and parts of sentences for instance.

A few examples:

Quote
The cathedral was massive and how the Church had found the resources to build such a magnificent work of architecture with howling gargoyles and carved buttresses of marble and granite.

Is missing a closing part for the ‘how’, such as: ...and marble and granite Elidor didn’t know.

Another is:

Quote
The woman he searched for

I found this one most glaring, because Elidor is about to give us something potentially insightful about his target. But then it’s not there.

Other than this there are a few other small things.

The first thing is the very start of the chapter, or rather what precedes the start of the chapter: the excerpt/quote. I’ll be blunt: huh? I’ve come to expect those little pieces in fantasy stories to somehow be a part of the world the story is set in. Does your world have a 1960s, Hong Kong, or kung-fu? Maybe it’s a style thing you’re going for, but it doesn’t really work for me.

The second are your ‘too humans’. At first I thought this was a typo until I realized the characters were referring to each other as being too human. Maybe if you wrote it like too-human it would flow better.

The third thing, at the risk of sounding hypocritical, as I’ve been having chapters with multiple viewpoints as well (I’m trying to cut down, I swear) this Daslin is your fifth viewpoint in three chapters. You’re trying to show how awesome Elidor is, but at this point another viewpoint, albeit throwaway, is a bit much.

RavenstarRHJF

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Re: June 6 - LongTimeUnderdog - Six Stones chapter 3
« Reply #2 on: August 24, 2010, 11:47:49 PM »
This is starting to look and sound really similar to a different story submitted here once upon a time- one in which the main character boiled his own blood so as to increase his strength/endurance/speed/lethality, etc.  Is this a rewrite/expansion on that, or have two people had a similar sort of idea?  Sorry, it's been a while since I've been around, and I've forgotten a few things- like who wrote what.

Moving on, if Elidor *drinks blood and eats souls*... why would he care about murder?  Can't really see the motivation there.  Particularly as he later on becomes a literal wind of death and murders a whole room full of people without thinking twice about it.  Or stopping to drink their blood or eat their souls for that matter.  You seem to imply that he eats Daslin's soul at the end, but that is unclear.

Also, first you say that the woman he hunts is someone who *doesn't* have a neck tattoo, and then you backtrack and say he's going to look for her *by* the neck tattoo.  So which is it?  And I really don't see how witnessing a random murder leads to following the killers to find his target.  How does he know they know her?  Why?  Again, the motives are lacking- he's just being random at this point and rationalizing it.  Maybe to feel like he's actually making progress?  I don't know.

Asmodemon already mentioned the bit about missing and incomplete sentences.  I said in chapter 2 something about worrying about proofreading when you've got the story down, but that was when the most egregious errors were misuse of words that sound the same.  Incomplete sentences are more serious and need work before submitting. ;)

Anyway, at least your story is progressing.  At this point, if you know the motivations, that's great and you can put them in in the next draft.  For now, send us some more!
A crown does not a King make, nor the lack of one a commoner.