March 14-Skyhunter Commander-Reading Excuses- Untitled Story Chapters 1 + 2

[SkyhunterCommander]

As I mentioned in the email, this is essentially the fourth draft of my novel, and I aim for it to be the first completed one. As of yet it's titleless(one thing I know I fail at), so if anyone has title suggestions I would be grateful (granted, without knowing the whole story it'd be hard, but I am getting tired of calling it 'story' or 'the Troodon story'.)

As an additional note, while it is draft 4, chapter 2 is new, and was not in any previous drafts. It was added to both introduce Nayasar earlier and to break up the early Darkclaw chapters, for reasons that may become evident after you've read the first chapter.

That said, I'll stop talking (typing) and see what comments you guys have.

Thanks

(Note: I apologize for forgetting to put the date in the email subject; I knew I forgot something.)

[MannyBrainpan]

I just finished reading chapters 1 & 2 and I like it a lot. My interest is piqued when it comes to the Troodon creatures, their previous life, and their leader (although it seems that you are already showing that he is not quite as might as he appears.) I really liked the dialogue in chapter two. I thought it was really well written, although about halfway through the chapter I felt like it was a little TOO much dialogue. The scene at the end was good too, showing for sure the relationship between the two characters. But after all the description in chapter 1, I sorta felt like you lost all the richness of your writing, and substituted it with dialogue. I don't know if you are trying to slowly give away the body structure and culture of Nayassar and co. but I really had no idea how to picture the creatures. Are they sorta like furry people, or walking cats? Anyway, maybe cut a bit of the talking before the throne room meeting, and throw in some more description when Nayassar is looking in the mirror-- whatever works. If you would like I could email you a version of the story with my annotations in red, for I did notice a few odd sentences and missing words, but overall, really well written. Names? Darkclaw is a really cool name, but I have no idea if he is important or likable enough to name the book after the character.

[SkyhunterCommander]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm actually glad that you picked up the bit about the High Lord; I was worried people would miss that. I'm also glad that you pointed out that it was hard to picture the Felinaris in chapter 2. I'm a little bit unsure of what to do there. As I mentioned in the first post in the thread, chapter 2 was new for this draft. In previous drafts, we don't meet Nayasar until Darkclaw does a few chapters down the line. I made the change mostly because I've found that having too many straight chapters of the emotionless Darkclaw (who does not really have a conflict yet) could get tedious, so I decided to introduce conflict-ridden Nayasar earlier. However, this lead to the problem you pointed out, that it is hard to picture them from the description in chapter 2. Originally it wasn't an issue, as the first description of the Felinaris was from Darkclaw's point of view. However, it didn't feel quite right to me to describe so much through Nayasar's point of view, it felt a bit out of character to have the lengthy descriptions like Darkclaw had. That, of course, lead to the more sparse descriptions; it didn't feel right to completely describe the species through Nayasar looking in a mirror.

So I'm kind of torn between those two problems. If it won't seem odd to describe the species in more detail in the mirror scene, I would probably do that, since I don't intend for there to be any mystery regarding the appearance of the characters. I also would be fine adding more description of other things, but I'm still concerned that it will seem odd if Nayasar's pov describes things in as much detail  as Darkclaw's.

What do you think? (I hope I didn't repeat myself too much there)

Also, I would greatly appreciate it if you could send me the story with your annotations. I've always found such edits useful (and, having done some copyediting, appreciate anyone who spends time making corrections on something I wrote).

[akoebel]

I liked the piece a lot, it feels different from what I usually read.

Leading with a "monster-type" character is an interesting choice (certainly a bold one) : we'll have to see down the road where that leads us, but for now, it felt quite different.
I don't know if it was a deliberate choice or not, but I only picked up the SF part near the end of chapter 1. For a good part of the chapter, I went between "fantasy-style" and "unknown-style". I was happy about that, but I worry that regular readers would rather know right away which side they're on.
The writing of the first chapter was nice, but I found the words "High Lord" and "Darkclaw" too present. At first, I didn't see it, but the sheer number of those bothered me at some point, and every time I read one of these, I cringed.

The part about the "High Lord" weakening felt a tad too obvious for me : the character noticing something and explicitly dismissing it did raise a red flag for me. Maybe you could just skip the part about dismissing the observation. I think that often, readers register what we write and there is really no need to say much for them to understand. They might not know it at the time, but down the line, they'll remember.

The naming of "Darkclaw" did bother me at first, because it was obviously a new name taken from his new body. If he didn't know how his body was shaped, how did he call himself Darkclaw? In the end, I understood that the High Lord did name him, though Darkclaw didn't understand why at the time, so my interrogations are answered, but I wish I had been given the explanation earlier, it would have saved me much grumbling.

I found chapter 2 interesting, even if it was more conventional, and yes, I think you needed to cut off from Darkclaw a little, to show us people we're more supposed to attach ourselves with.
The relationship between the two is well portrayed, so I wasn't bothered to find they were in a relationship at the end of the chapter.

I cringed when I saw the mirror come in : I told myself "that's it, the obligatory mirror description comes in". I was kind of relieved when you didn't use it fully. I see here the writer wanting to describe his character, but stopping in the middle because the device used is so bad he can't go on writing it anymore.
If you really want to describe the species, have her describe Felivas early, and only throw in hints about her own features (a strand of hair here and there).
I would also be mindful of "dialog info-dump", because at times, I felt like things were being said only for the reader's benefit.

[SkyhunterCommander]

Thanks for the comments. I'll return the favor as soon as I can, most likely mid next week though (midterms...).

Could you tell me at what point you felt the words "Darkclaw" and "High Lord" started to get annoying? After rereading, I'd agree that there are quite a few- I've taken out a couple where the word "he" would work just as well. And again, after rereading I see what you mean about the High Lord weakening part. I assume the one that felt too obvious was when Darkclaw noticed the change in his voice and ignored it. (The other, perhaps too subtle clue was when the High Lord didn't re-establish the mental link.) I'll play around with the second one: I might just remove his thoughts on it and replace it with him just noticing something different, but not what is different.


As far as the description goes, that's a good suggestion. For some reason I never thought of describing the species through Nayasar looking at Felivas.

Also, it would be helpful if you could point out any particular lines of dialog that seemed to be too much "for the reader" so I can reread them and determine what should done about them.

(On an unrelated note, is anyone else using Chrome and having issues with the forum not looking right? It's been like that all day.)

[akoebel]

The "Dark Lord" thing became old at about "The High Lord had the same body shape ..." : we're getting out of a long (very long) paragraph with lots of High Lord this and that, and this new paragraph promises just the same level of High Lord worship.

For the part about the link not being re-established, I got the message, no need to put more emphasis. SF/F readers are usually pretty smart, no need to underline everything, it just infuriates them.

I forgot to mention a POV violation earlier : "Felivas gave the king an apologetic look. " Since Nayasar is almost out of the room, she can maybe hear Felivas (and I'd argue against that also), but she certainly can't see his facial expressions.

Parts about info dumping:

"You have already received some criticism..." : the entire paragraph is a big info dump. It's handled well enough so that it doesn't feel quite like one, but it just states obvious facts for the 2 characters.

"You know how waiting infuriates me. " : yes, he knows! It is just you telling me that the character isn't patient. I think showing her walking in circles is much better without the dialog bit that comes with it.

"I never really wanted to bring this up, ..." : it felt clear that she was bringing it up for the reader.

"Morale among the people, ..." : At this point, since the king hasn't shown any indication of his response, there is no need to push the point. This is just explaining me the situation.

"we are in a precarious situation, as you well know..." : The entire paragraph feels too info-dumpy, and you clearly state that the character knows it. I admit that you have to give us some information, and since the king's viewpoint is entirely different from his daughter's, you have to have him say something, but here, it was too much. Besides, rulers don't have to explain themselves, even to their family.


In almost every instance, I think I would have bought the info-dump if it had been presented as the character's narrative, but in dialog, characters don't tell each other what they already know.

Don't get me wrong, it's not as bad as I make it sound : a few tweaks is all it really takes here.

[MannyBrainpan]

I will send out the edit, all my annotations are in red. And I also agree with one of the other posters, you should slip the description in when Nayassar is describing the male creature and maybe the king. And yeah, what one of the other people said, is what I felt, that the dialogue was a little too, info=dumpy.

[Asmodemon]

I really liked the start of the first chapter, starting with the mystery of what Darkclaw is while he’s lying in wait in stasis, ready to pounce. When I read the name Troodon you really caught my attention, or rather my old interest in dinosaurs (nice touch with the vestigial claw). So I’m guessing Darkclaw is some kind of evolved form of dinosaur, changed by the High Lord…which means the planet they are on is Earth? Whatever the case it raises a lot of questions and I like that.

I did have to get used to the name Darkclaw and after a while reading Darkclaw and the High Lord did get a bit annoying. Writing wise I’d also include some more paragraph breaks, because there was one paragraph that was a whole page long which made my eyes glaze over.
 
When we get to chapter two I do like some of the banter between Nayasar and Felivas; even though they’re of such high ranks they can still act like friends. Like with Darkclaw’s name I didn’t immediately like Felivas’s name because his name reads too much like the species name Felinaris. I did get used to it though.

Continuing, I didn’t feel like Nayasar acted like a Grand Admiral should. The fact that she says she has no political understanding also baffles me; such a thing is fine if she’s a ship captain, a rank she could grow into without playing the political game, but beyond that, to be an admiral and thus in control of multiple ships, multiple officers who vie for her position, she’d need to know how to manoeuvre through the political landscape. And she’s not even an admiral, she’s the grand admiral, put there because she’s the daughter of the king. The way she acts makes me really doubt she’s admiral material, which makes me doubt the validity of her character and why she’s still in that position – the Grand Admiral is supposed to defend their realm, it’s not a position you put a wayward daughter to keep her out of trouble.

Now, I’m looking at this as if it were a human military and maybe theirs is different, but I haven’t seen the military at work so I can’t make the assumption that this is normal for the high ranks of their society. I’m sorry to say that to me Grand Admiral Nayasar falls flat. I also don’t see an admiral in Felivas – he’s more like the attendant of the princess than a military officer.

Though you do address Nayasar’s political ineptitude by having Felivas say that military leadership is different than political leadership, I don’t really agree with that statement. She can get a long way if she’s a good tactician (we’ve seen no evidence of this so far) but she still has to deal with people. Her inability to put herself in her father’s shoes doesn’t bode well for her skills. And if she’s the princess she should have had schooling in politics.

When she meets the king he says something that made me stop and re-read the section. He says “your plan sounds well thought out”. No, it doesn’t. She never told him about her plan, or did you means she told him all about her plan when she says:

“All I need is your permission to put a plan into action,” Nayasar explained. “If there are any details you need to know, ask. I have planned for every eventuality, and none of these operations would put anyone at risk aside from the teams sent to carry them out.”

I did not interpret ‘explained’ in the way that she explains her whole plan and that we just don’t get to read it. The way I see it she hasn’t told him anything. But even if he did she basically wants to go in and kill their enemies, damned be the consequences. She couldn’t have a thought out plan if the King has to inform her of several problems she evidently missed, so he shouldn’t say that she does.

A smaller thing that stood out to me is the sentence part “was still not understanding”. It just reads wrong to me. Something like “he still didn’t understand” is better.