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Reading Excuses / Re: Would you prefer...
« on: June 19, 2010, 02:21:28 PM »
I'll also say all at once.
News:
Max is a Shadowblade, a supernatural--and supernaturally competent--warrior bound to protect her witch Giselle. As a Shadowblade, Max doesn't age. She is better, faster, stronger than any ordinary human being. And she hates it. Giselle betrayed her trust to make Max what she is, and though she is magically compelled to protect Giselle and follow orders, Max works against her witch in every way she can. Continue reading Bitter Night
Review by Silk
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Reading Excuses / Re: July 14, Comatose, River Lord: Prologue and Chapter One
« on: June 17, 2010, 10:26:25 PM »
Well then, for your first submission, here’s your first critique.
First of all, I really liked the prologue. It’s four small windows into your world and story and something happens in each of them. To me that whets the appetite to read further and find out what is going to happen. As far as hooks go your prologue works great for me – and four such small pieces might work as a back-cover blurb as well.
Where the story falters a bit is in the first chapter. Again you’re giving snippets of several main characters, but where that strategy works in the prologue it doesn’t here. And the reason for this, I think, is that you’re trying too hard.
We’ve got three main POV characters in the first chapter alone, which is, especially for a first chapter, too much. There isn’t enough substance to each of the POVs to really get to know the characters and care for them before you switch to another POV. Part of me shakes my head while writing this, because I have similar issues with dangling too many POVs in a single chapter too.
Another thing where I think you’re trying too hard is in showing the reader your setting and all the awesome things you’ve thought up, such as the magic system, the political intrigue, etc. Each POV addresses a different aspect of the world, but nothing real about the characters themselves.
For Adam’s part you’re explaining the magic system, the signs and the advanced signs. The first part is great; you’re showing us Adam using the magic. But the rest of that part is essentially an info-dump disguised as a conversation. We don’t need to know the ins and outs of the magic system yet. You’ve shown us a glimpse and that’s enough. It feels like you think you have to explain his Combination Sign because he’s going to be on the run soon and so you won’t be able to show it in his final test.
For Eshra it’s the magistrate and the political system. For Felix it’s to show the queen’s secret cabal. In all there’s a lot of talk about how things work, who people are, what some of the locations are, but nothing much in terms of action. After the fast prologue the pace just slumps immediately.
In some ways you’re also killing the tension in places by giving too much information on the situation at hand. For instance, Eshra fears the magistrate (for framing her) and the Queen (for believing that she is a traitor). Tension for Eshra in this case is tension for the reader because we have to feel for her. Except that in Felix’s part you immediately show that the Queen is aware that Eshra is innocent. Though Eshra may worry about the Queen I don’t, because of what I now know. In one small piece you’ve cut off reader tension for half of Eshra’s fears. Yes, the Queen is awesome, she knows things, but maybe it’s better if the reader doesn’t know she knows certain things.
Maybe you don’t want to hear this, but what I see most in this chapter is the huge amount of information that is presented to the reader. If you cut out all the info-dumps you might just want to cut the chapter altogether and instead start when Adam, Eshra, and Trinian, are already on the run, or when Eshra and Trinian get Adam (while he’s doing his final test maybe, so you can also show off his magic).
That’s my two-cents. From what I’ve read so far you’ve got an interesting world and the makings of an interesting plot, you’re just trying to give too much at the beginning.
First of all, I really liked the prologue. It’s four small windows into your world and story and something happens in each of them. To me that whets the appetite to read further and find out what is going to happen. As far as hooks go your prologue works great for me – and four such small pieces might work as a back-cover blurb as well.
Where the story falters a bit is in the first chapter. Again you’re giving snippets of several main characters, but where that strategy works in the prologue it doesn’t here. And the reason for this, I think, is that you’re trying too hard.
We’ve got three main POV characters in the first chapter alone, which is, especially for a first chapter, too much. There isn’t enough substance to each of the POVs to really get to know the characters and care for them before you switch to another POV. Part of me shakes my head while writing this, because I have similar issues with dangling too many POVs in a single chapter too.
Another thing where I think you’re trying too hard is in showing the reader your setting and all the awesome things you’ve thought up, such as the magic system, the political intrigue, etc. Each POV addresses a different aspect of the world, but nothing real about the characters themselves.
For Adam’s part you’re explaining the magic system, the signs and the advanced signs. The first part is great; you’re showing us Adam using the magic. But the rest of that part is essentially an info-dump disguised as a conversation. We don’t need to know the ins and outs of the magic system yet. You’ve shown us a glimpse and that’s enough. It feels like you think you have to explain his Combination Sign because he’s going to be on the run soon and so you won’t be able to show it in his final test.
For Eshra it’s the magistrate and the political system. For Felix it’s to show the queen’s secret cabal. In all there’s a lot of talk about how things work, who people are, what some of the locations are, but nothing much in terms of action. After the fast prologue the pace just slumps immediately.
In some ways you’re also killing the tension in places by giving too much information on the situation at hand. For instance, Eshra fears the magistrate (for framing her) and the Queen (for believing that she is a traitor). Tension for Eshra in this case is tension for the reader because we have to feel for her. Except that in Felix’s part you immediately show that the Queen is aware that Eshra is innocent. Though Eshra may worry about the Queen I don’t, because of what I now know. In one small piece you’ve cut off reader tension for half of Eshra’s fears. Yes, the Queen is awesome, she knows things, but maybe it’s better if the reader doesn’t know she knows certain things.
Maybe you don’t want to hear this, but what I see most in this chapter is the huge amount of information that is presented to the reader. If you cut out all the info-dumps you might just want to cut the chapter altogether and instead start when Adam, Eshra, and Trinian, are already on the run, or when Eshra and Trinian get Adam (while he’s doing his final test maybe, so you can also show off his magic).
That’s my two-cents. From what I’ve read so far you’ve got an interesting world and the makings of an interesting plot, you’re just trying to give too much at the beginning.
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Reading Excuses / June 14 - Asmodemon - Citadel of Thorns, Chapter Five
« on: June 14, 2010, 07:02:25 PM »
The fifth chapter of the Citadel of Thorns, where Rosalin and Dais wake up to face up the consequences of the previous night.
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Reading Excuses / Re: Email List + Submission Dates
« on: June 12, 2010, 09:10:27 PM »
I'd like to submit a new chapter this week.
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Reading Excuses / Re: June 6 - LongTimeUnderdog - Six Stones chapter 3
« 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:
Is missing a closing part for the ‘how’, such as: ...and marble and granite Elidor didn’t know.
Another is:
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.
A few examples:
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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:
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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.
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Reading Excuses / Re: May 31 - recovering cynic - soldiers of the sun guard (new draft)
« on: June 01, 2010, 10:00:18 PM »
Well, having also read most of the first draft before I got the second one, I can see you really went to work on this. The Sun Guard for one is much more believable now – before they were all too trusting, too open, to feel like actual soldiers. The rest too is much tighter.
There isn’t much I can think of to comment on; on the whole the story worked pretty well for me. That said, I did find some small things that didn’t work so well.
The first concerns Phay’s punishment for nearly killing an officer. She should be punished, at the very least to bring home that where she is is serious business. However the stocks seem a little too public a place to put someone who isn’t allowed out of the compound for fear of revealing what she knows. She can see Toshu and he can see her, and so can all the other people, so I figure they would be able to hear each other as well. While she didn’t do anything Phay could just as easily have started shouting about what she had seen – now maybe no one would believe her, but could the Sun Guard really take that risk?
The second thing concerns the magic system. You changed how she learns what she can do, but with that explanation the disappearing magic she has seems to change too (at least it feels different than it was in the first draft to me). I’m a little iffy on the whole putting her awareness in the dagger thing. BalKon explained it like this:
The last sentence in BalKon’s explanation says the attention of people watching her is directed to the blade. So I read this as a way of misdirection, but when Phay uses it the first time she becomes, for all intents and purposes, invisible. BalKon couldn’t see her when she was playing with her new weapon and he knew she was going for the blade. His eyes might have slid over her, but when he did his attention ought to have been directed at the blade – even sheathed, and he should have known something was wrong.
There isn’t much I can think of to comment on; on the whole the story worked pretty well for me. That said, I did find some small things that didn’t work so well.
The first concerns Phay’s punishment for nearly killing an officer. She should be punished, at the very least to bring home that where she is is serious business. However the stocks seem a little too public a place to put someone who isn’t allowed out of the compound for fear of revealing what she knows. She can see Toshu and he can see her, and so can all the other people, so I figure they would be able to hear each other as well. While she didn’t do anything Phay could just as easily have started shouting about what she had seen – now maybe no one would believe her, but could the Sun Guard really take that risk?
The second thing concerns the magic system. You changed how she learns what she can do, but with that explanation the disappearing magic she has seems to change too (at least it feels different than it was in the first draft to me). I’m a little iffy on the whole putting her awareness in the dagger thing. BalKon explained it like this:
Quote
Your essence is inside the sword, and your opponent will sense this. Your body will not become invisible, but your enemy will have a hard time noticing it. All its attention will be fixed on your blade
The last sentence in BalKon’s explanation says the attention of people watching her is directed to the blade. So I read this as a way of misdirection, but when Phay uses it the first time she becomes, for all intents and purposes, invisible. BalKon couldn’t see her when she was playing with her new weapon and he knew she was going for the blade. His eyes might have slid over her, but when he did his attention ought to have been directed at the blade – even sheathed, and he should have known something was wrong.
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Reading Excuses / Re: May 10 - The Sword of Worlds CH 25 - Kail
« on: May 30, 2010, 06:13:53 PM »Quote
The anger Kajsa is seeing isn't directed at her, but at Reginn. When he turns his back on her and leaps from the stand, its not to get away from her, its to go kick Reginns ass.
But maybe I didn't pull this off well?
For me, that’s what I thought was going to happen back in the last Kajsa chapter. I would’ve actually been surprised if his explosive anger had been directed at her.
So I think you did pull it off, though mileage may vary.
Quote
I'm wondering if making it more of an internal struggle as Kail tries to figure out what's happening with the glow he's seeings, etc will help solve the problem. That and possible splitting up the chapter in two.
I wouldn’t recommend it, it would just be adding more introspection we don’t really need. Instead I’d try something other than the sword-in-the-stone. While it was amusing to read the start of a longstanding prophesy and see it end right there it doesn’t really work for me because Kajsa put the sword in the stone and sets the release condition.
She said only the one who is stronger than all the trolls in the mountain can pull it out. She also calls Kail stronger than all the trolls in the mountain. As an IT guy it reads to me like she designates a key to access the sword and then assigns that key to Kail.
I don’t really know what you should change it into, but the biggest thing you should go for would be tension. I didn’t feel anything for Kail, unlike when he fought against the sigil knight in chapter 19. There was never a question he would lose to Reginn and there was never any question he wasn’t going to pull out the sword. If Kail must be tested perhaps it should be against something the trolls can’t defeat, thus proving he is stronger than any one of them – perhaps an ancestral enemy of some sort, perhaps even the big bad guy, or someone who’s actually one of the good guys.
If Morrigan is not evil, but Kail has to kill her for instance, it could create tension between him and Ellie. The same for other characters on Ellie's side just to give an example.
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Reading Excuses / Re: May 24 - LongTimeUnderdog - Six Stones chapter 2
« on: May 30, 2010, 04:26:23 PM »
I’m going to agree with what’s been said already. The strongest point of this story is the world you’re trying to build, but the way you’re showing it right now is also its greatest weakness: the info dump disguised as a conversation for instance, as well as some of the redundancy in the telling (see my comments on the prologue for instance).
These things have already been said, so instead I want to focus on something else. While I find the world very interesting I’m not really hooked on the characters yet. Each instalment so far has had a different POV character and not much time to start to feel for them. Dariel is dead, Tasia read as a generic rogue so far, and now we’ve got Awrtek. Like TNoG you’re starting off with a lot of character – maybe too much, but I’ll suspend judgment on that for now. Populating a book or story with too many characters is something I do too, so I know it’s something to look out for.
Concerning Awrtek, I liked the dialogue between him and Tyrus when they weren’t info dumping at each other. One of them is a god and the other seems, in terms of power, pretty close, so a lot of what they say should be left unsaid. I also like how he has trouble with his role as God of Mercy, it’s a good character conflict, especially with his vows of pacifism – that can be tough thing when in Hell.
The great thing to fear about a Naalim is that they can apparently destroy one’s soul completely. All three victims are torn up pretty bad, but you imply that all three can be saved. Therefore, none of their souls were destroyed, even though you say one of them was.
So, why didn’t he destroy their souls? It can’t be about keeping a low profile, because the manner in which he attacked broadcasted to everyone who saw the bodies that a Naalim was responsible. After they are fixed they can testify to his appearance which may lead to his capture. This seems like a pretty big mistake for someone reviled and hunted simply for existing.
Or maybe I just don’t understand the Naalim – or this particular one – well enough yet.
My advice would be to focus a bit more on the characters for now, and slip in more of the world slowly while we’re getting to know them. Your world building is strong, which you’ve already shown in TNoG, but your characters can use a bit more work. Especially at the beginning you want to hook the reader – if you can combine the strength of the world building with the characters you can have that covered.
These things have already been said, so instead I want to focus on something else. While I find the world very interesting I’m not really hooked on the characters yet. Each instalment so far has had a different POV character and not much time to start to feel for them. Dariel is dead, Tasia read as a generic rogue so far, and now we’ve got Awrtek. Like TNoG you’re starting off with a lot of character – maybe too much, but I’ll suspend judgment on that for now. Populating a book or story with too many characters is something I do too, so I know it’s something to look out for.
Concerning Awrtek, I liked the dialogue between him and Tyrus when they weren’t info dumping at each other. One of them is a god and the other seems, in terms of power, pretty close, so a lot of what they say should be left unsaid. I also like how he has trouble with his role as God of Mercy, it’s a good character conflict, especially with his vows of pacifism – that can be tough thing when in Hell.
Quote
Chapter 2 - In which we learn more about Naalim, why they're so scary, and a little bit more of life in Hell.
The great thing to fear about a Naalim is that they can apparently destroy one’s soul completely. All three victims are torn up pretty bad, but you imply that all three can be saved. Therefore, none of their souls were destroyed, even though you say one of them was.
So, why didn’t he destroy their souls? It can’t be about keeping a low profile, because the manner in which he attacked broadcasted to everyone who saw the bodies that a Naalim was responsible. After they are fixed they can testify to his appearance which may lead to his capture. This seems like a pretty big mistake for someone reviled and hunted simply for existing.
Or maybe I just don’t understand the Naalim – or this particular one – well enough yet.
My advice would be to focus a bit more on the characters for now, and slip in more of the world slowly while we’re getting to know them. Your world building is strong, which you’ve already shown in TNoG, but your characters can use a bit more work. Especially at the beginning you want to hook the reader – if you can combine the strength of the world building with the characters you can have that covered.
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Reading Excuses / Re: May 17 - LongTimeUnderdog - Six Stones Chapter 1
« on: May 24, 2010, 10:02:13 PM »
The first thing I thought, reading the first sentence, is that Dariel’s sword really packed a punch and destroyed the world – sending everything to Hell. But then you back off and it’s not actually hell but a part of the ravaged world the church calls Hell. I like the former idea more.
A number of things seem to have survived whatever happened, such as the church, though no human has – for generations. Which means most, if not all, of the world building in the prologue was a wasted effort and that also makes me wonder about your questions concerning the prologue: Dariel is dead so we don’t need to like him anymore and as the last Fren magic user the magic system is also dead, which seems a waste to me. I also started to get to know this world in those thirty pages and get certain expectations – but then it is all gone.
Now I do like the hell imagery you invoked in this chapter; only you back off too fast from Hell to simply a city in a land with non-human looking people. Then you slip further with a typical fantasy style rogue pick pocketing in the streets, thinking confusing thoughts about a confusing citizenship. When you get to Elidor’s section it’s even more confusing because he’s trying to reference things he doesn’t understand to things we don’t understand.
What I’m getting in this chapter is mostly world-building stuff, and that stuff is good – you got me on the first sentence, but I also suggest making it more like Hell and not some land the church doesn’t like. The actual characters are weaker than the setting, because it’s basically a rogue and a mysterious killer.
I wouldn’t worry too much about Planescape. I like that D&D setting and wouldn’t mind reading a setting in which the characters travel different planes. I mean it’s not like travelling between planes is the sole prerogative of Planescape and as long as you’re not actually recreating Sigil, the City of Doors, I don’t think anyone would mind.
As for what you perceive of The Name of God, I don’t think the rich culture and world building was the biggest problem there, it was in how you showed it to us.
Problem one: disjointed telling by giving us chapters in a random order. Some of the world information we needed was chronologically given at the right time in the story, but not in the right order in which we read it.
Problem two: Interesting things happen off screen. Case in point here, something happened to the world between the prologue and the first chapter. We don’t see it. Something gruesome (and truly hell-like) happened to two other thieves, we don’t see it, only the characters talking about it afterward.
Problem three: Key things happen to characters that don’t seem to be the purported main characters. With only one chapter in this new setting (as least in so far as I’ve read up to writing this) this isn’t a problem here.
Problem four: Starting the story too early. With TNoG we’ve been reading about the characters’ youths, but the actual story and problem resolution isn’t going to occur until they are well in their teens. That’s not what you’re doing here and that’s good.
Problem five: Too much at once. When you do expositions or descriptions you often give us so much information we don’t know what to do with it. It is okay to spread things around or just not mention everything – by strategic absences of information we also get the feeling the world is much larger. Now I know this is your first draft and I’ve done this too in order to better flesh out the world for myself. But I always cut those things out when I’m editing.
I think that these issues really worked against TNoG, so as long as you avoid them here you can make the Six Stones a far stronger story.
A number of things seem to have survived whatever happened, such as the church, though no human has – for generations. Which means most, if not all, of the world building in the prologue was a wasted effort and that also makes me wonder about your questions concerning the prologue: Dariel is dead so we don’t need to like him anymore and as the last Fren magic user the magic system is also dead, which seems a waste to me. I also started to get to know this world in those thirty pages and get certain expectations – but then it is all gone.
Now I do like the hell imagery you invoked in this chapter; only you back off too fast from Hell to simply a city in a land with non-human looking people. Then you slip further with a typical fantasy style rogue pick pocketing in the streets, thinking confusing thoughts about a confusing citizenship. When you get to Elidor’s section it’s even more confusing because he’s trying to reference things he doesn’t understand to things we don’t understand.
What I’m getting in this chapter is mostly world-building stuff, and that stuff is good – you got me on the first sentence, but I also suggest making it more like Hell and not some land the church doesn’t like. The actual characters are weaker than the setting, because it’s basically a rogue and a mysterious killer.
Quote
and two other places would sound too much like D&D Planescape
I wouldn’t worry too much about Planescape. I like that D&D setting and wouldn’t mind reading a setting in which the characters travel different planes. I mean it’s not like travelling between planes is the sole prerogative of Planescape and as long as you’re not actually recreating Sigil, the City of Doors, I don’t think anyone would mind.
Quote
The reason I pulled back from going nuts with the setting is that "The Name of God," had such a rich setting, and it was really confusing to people. So I thought I would try something less wild and pull back. But then maybe I should have just gone wilder.
As for what you perceive of The Name of God, I don’t think the rich culture and world building was the biggest problem there, it was in how you showed it to us.
Problem one: disjointed telling by giving us chapters in a random order. Some of the world information we needed was chronologically given at the right time in the story, but not in the right order in which we read it.
Problem two: Interesting things happen off screen. Case in point here, something happened to the world between the prologue and the first chapter. We don’t see it. Something gruesome (and truly hell-like) happened to two other thieves, we don’t see it, only the characters talking about it afterward.
Problem three: Key things happen to characters that don’t seem to be the purported main characters. With only one chapter in this new setting (as least in so far as I’ve read up to writing this) this isn’t a problem here.
Problem four: Starting the story too early. With TNoG we’ve been reading about the characters’ youths, but the actual story and problem resolution isn’t going to occur until they are well in their teens. That’s not what you’re doing here and that’s good.
Problem five: Too much at once. When you do expositions or descriptions you often give us so much information we don’t know what to do with it. It is okay to spread things around or just not mention everything – by strategic absences of information we also get the feeling the world is much larger. Now I know this is your first draft and I’ve done this too in order to better flesh out the world for myself. But I always cut those things out when I’m editing.
I think that these issues really worked against TNoG, so as long as you avoid them here you can make the Six Stones a far stronger story.
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Reading Excuses / Re: LongtimeUnderdog - May 10 - Six Stones, Prologue
« on: May 24, 2010, 04:33:32 PM »
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.
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.
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Reading Excuses / Re: May 17 - Asmodemon - The Citadel of Thorns, Chapter Four
« on: May 19, 2010, 10:04:24 PM »
Drew, I resend it to you. Did you get it this time?
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Reading Excuses / May 17 - Asmodemon - The Citadel of Thorns, Chapter Four
« on: May 17, 2010, 09:48:34 PM »
Hello everyone,
here we have the fourth chapter for The Citadel of Thorns; night has fallen but trouble never rests.
here we have the fourth chapter for The Citadel of Thorns; night has fallen but trouble never rests.
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Reading Excuses / Re: Email List + Submission Dates
« on: May 15, 2010, 10:18:17 PM »
Welcome Drew 
On another note, I think I've got something to submit this week.
On another note, I think I've got something to submit this week.
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Reading Excuses / Re: March 22 - Asmodemon - Mouse Trap
« on: May 05, 2010, 08:38:37 PM »Quote
I also, am late for dinner, but I wanted to add my two cents if you are still looking for feedback.
I am definitely still interested in feedback. I’ve been compiling everything I’ve gotten from everyone so far and have been working on the second draft. It’ll need more work before I’m happy with it, but I will see it polished.
I like your suggestion for Aberash, I know his perspective is a problem; too many characters for too short a story, but I didn’t want to cut him out because of his scene in hydroponics. With what I’ve got now I already cut his perspective down some, but this works a lot better.
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Reading Excuses / Re: May 3 - The Sword of Worlds CH 24 - Ellie
« on: May 05, 2010, 07:01:29 PM »
First of all, it’s great to have a new chapter for “The Sword of Worlds” to read. I’ve been really enjoying them. That said, this chapter didn’t work as well for me as the last Kajsa chapter did.
The chapter picks right up where chapter 22 left off, with the enemy army advancing. I feel it should be epic, but it falls flat for me. One of the reasons I don’t feel tension in the first part is because the battle is too far away from Ellie. She’s just an observer here, not a participant. All the characters we know and might care about are all on the side-lines watching or doing something else. The enemy army itself is completely new and while the two gods are cool I don’t feel any connection to anyone actually participating.
Another problem here is the perspective of Ellie. On the one hand you are trying to describe the battle and the tactics involved, but the next you seem to remember that Ellie has no military background. Which results in sentences like this: “One would charge the other warriors, immediately followed by the second group or squad or whatever.”
Maybe you’re writing it like that to show Ellie’s modern mindset, but it doesn’t really work for me. It was after that sentence that I stopped believing Elllie was actually afraid; it’s just such a carefree way of observing the battle. It made me think that if she doesn’t really care, why should I?
On the point of Ellie’s perspective I’m also really trying to remember how well Ellie can see. First she observes that she can barely make out the two gods on the hill. Then, moments after, when the gods have jumped into the melee she can suddenly see them well enough to describe exactly what they were wearing and that one of them is ‘perfect’. The gods may move at inhuman speed but they’re still wading through two armies and a dust cloud.
It gets better when Ellie finally leaves Mordred, because now things are actually happening around her. There are still some issues here, but Recovering Cynic already addressed those.
The chapter picks right up where chapter 22 left off, with the enemy army advancing. I feel it should be epic, but it falls flat for me. One of the reasons I don’t feel tension in the first part is because the battle is too far away from Ellie. She’s just an observer here, not a participant. All the characters we know and might care about are all on the side-lines watching or doing something else. The enemy army itself is completely new and while the two gods are cool I don’t feel any connection to anyone actually participating.
Another problem here is the perspective of Ellie. On the one hand you are trying to describe the battle and the tactics involved, but the next you seem to remember that Ellie has no military background. Which results in sentences like this: “One would charge the other warriors, immediately followed by the second group or squad or whatever.”
Maybe you’re writing it like that to show Ellie’s modern mindset, but it doesn’t really work for me. It was after that sentence that I stopped believing Elllie was actually afraid; it’s just such a carefree way of observing the battle. It made me think that if she doesn’t really care, why should I?
On the point of Ellie’s perspective I’m also really trying to remember how well Ellie can see. First she observes that she can barely make out the two gods on the hill. Then, moments after, when the gods have jumped into the melee she can suddenly see them well enough to describe exactly what they were wearing and that one of them is ‘perfect’. The gods may move at inhuman speed but they’re still wading through two armies and a dust cloud.
It gets better when Ellie finally leaves Mordred, because now things are actually happening around her. There are still some issues here, but Recovering Cynic already addressed those.