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Reading Excuses / Re: Aug 2 - Daddy Warpig - When Gods War, Part 1
« on: August 06, 2010, 08:31:45 AM »
So, first page... I think that there's some potential with the falling god-star imagery. I hope that you do something good with it.
In the second chapter, it felt like there was a bit of an info dump. For example, who ARE the Vedrans (or any of the other groups)? A religious group? A nationality? An alien race? Just something as simple as "the Vedran tribe who now..." or whatever would go a long way toward making the reader feel less overwhelmed.
For the third chapter, I immediately noticed that the scene in which the young officer is squished as though the gods were playing Tetris could be either horrifying or darkly comical. Since it's so early in the story, it's hard to tell what kind of tone you're going for, but I hope that you take at least one of those possibilities and run with it.
I must note that it seems that your chapters are awfully short. Is that intentional? I don't mind if you like to break your work up into small chunks (it certainly beats the endlessly dragging chapters you sometimes see), but the addition of a new title every page or two seems kind of jarring. I'm curious... what kind of effect are you going for here?
I'm not really sure what the fourth chapter is for. If he's able to literally walk away from having a building pin his leg down for hours, well, it seems like something more should have come of it. I would have expected him to have sustained an injury, or for someone to have found him, or SOMETHING other than just "here's an obstacle, but he got better."
I won't go through the rest chapter by chapter, but I do want to add a bit about the meal scene. I understand what you're going for with the juxtaposition of the incredibly unappealing bread and the extraordinarily valuable wine, emphasizing that this is a devastated warzone and that the situation is truly desperate. I understand that neither item is something that they would eat under normal circumstances, and that normally eating them together would be unthinkable, and I think that it works to underscore just how bad things have gotten. However, one thing really threw me... why the lemon? It just kind of comes out of nowhere, almost photobombing the bread-and-wine juxtaposition. I don't ask for every single word to have a purpose (I mean, that's a nice goal to reach for, but we can't all be Oscar Wilde), but the lemon really kind of stood out.
Anyway, I hope that you find this useful, or at least interesting.
In the second chapter, it felt like there was a bit of an info dump. For example, who ARE the Vedrans (or any of the other groups)? A religious group? A nationality? An alien race? Just something as simple as "the Vedran tribe who now..." or whatever would go a long way toward making the reader feel less overwhelmed.
For the third chapter, I immediately noticed that the scene in which the young officer is squished as though the gods were playing Tetris could be either horrifying or darkly comical. Since it's so early in the story, it's hard to tell what kind of tone you're going for, but I hope that you take at least one of those possibilities and run with it.
I must note that it seems that your chapters are awfully short. Is that intentional? I don't mind if you like to break your work up into small chunks (it certainly beats the endlessly dragging chapters you sometimes see), but the addition of a new title every page or two seems kind of jarring. I'm curious... what kind of effect are you going for here?
I'm not really sure what the fourth chapter is for. If he's able to literally walk away from having a building pin his leg down for hours, well, it seems like something more should have come of it. I would have expected him to have sustained an injury, or for someone to have found him, or SOMETHING other than just "here's an obstacle, but he got better."
I won't go through the rest chapter by chapter, but I do want to add a bit about the meal scene. I understand what you're going for with the juxtaposition of the incredibly unappealing bread and the extraordinarily valuable wine, emphasizing that this is a devastated warzone and that the situation is truly desperate. I understand that neither item is something that they would eat under normal circumstances, and that normally eating them together would be unthinkable, and I think that it works to underscore just how bad things have gotten. However, one thing really threw me... why the lemon? It just kind of comes out of nowhere, almost photobombing the bread-and-wine juxtaposition. I don't ask for every single word to have a purpose (I mean, that's a nice goal to reach for, but we can't all be Oscar Wilde), but the lemon really kind of stood out.
Anyway, I hope that you find this useful, or at least interesting.