Dec 15 - Raethe - Passage to Zero

[Karl]

I think many of us assumed it was the beginning of a longer work, and therefore were expecting it. If this was in a book of short stories, I suppose I wouldn't expect a continuation. However, adding some finality to the last section and building up the resolution a bit more might help.

I think it would be possible to add some more detail without loosing the universiality of the theme. Not unlike your month names, you could introduce county/parish names to delineate territories, and offering some scale of the conflict. I.E. is this between two rival clans? Or between the hill people and the mountain people? Is it a civil war? Is one a foriegn invader?

Okay, I'm going to wip out a big word here. I learned this from the creator of the HBO series Deadwood. Psuedo-specification. This is the human tendency to psychologically think the 'other person' is less than or not even human. This makes it easier for the person to do vile acts. This is true in racism, sexism or war. So whether it's the Gooks (Viet Nam), Krauts (WW II), Crapards (Napoleonic Wars) or the Johnny Rebels (American Revolution), the sides will have a derrogatory term for the other. The point being, if you add in such a nickname, with all the loathing and disgust wrapped into it, you can add detail again without being specific to real history.

Detail does not necessarily mean worldbuilding. It can also be a bit of misdirect, the gives the reader enough information for the world to feel real without having to pin it to a specific time or place.

[Dangerbutton]

I am very impressed. I would have to say that this is possibly my favorite of all the submissions thus far.
I really liked how real you made the war feel. The grim reality of war was well-portrayed, both in the view of the soliders and in those who were only watching the war through rumors and gossip.
I also really like your prose. At times, it was hard to pin down exactly what perspective it was from, and to me, that was both a good thing and a bad thing. I liked the feeling it gave, but it was also at some times confusing.
There were two segments where I couldn't tell whose perspective it was from. I was guessing that they were from Darin's perspective, since he was the one on the front lines, but it never specified, so I was unsure. The first was the segment where it talked about how they wore no uniform, and the second was the one that talked about soldiers asked to dress up and play child's games. Both segments were intriguing, but I couldn't tell whose perspective it was from.
Overall, however, I really liked what I read, and I'm eager to see where this goes.

[Silk]

M: No, this is a short story. Intended to be complete, though obviously it's got a ways to go to achieve that.  (Sorry for the confusion on this score, everyone... I thought I'd said in my email that it was a short story... maybe not.) I mean, I can tell you what the central conflict is (as far as I'm concerned) if you like, though obviously if I have to I'm not expressing myself correctly.

Good points, all. Thanks.

[wcarter4]

Well, this is one of the definite down sides of waiting a few days to critique someone's work because your busy:I have nothing to say that hasn't already been said.
It was a bit hard to keep up with who was speaking at times and a bit more description about the pass itself would be nice. I don't know if you really need to go into too much detail about the "why" of the conflict though, you did a good job of indicating that your characters don't even really know themselves anymore--something that can happen to soldiers who have been fighting for too long with low morale.

[Flo_the_G]

You might not need to go into the why of the conflict, but you should elaborate on the when and where. The ambiguity of the setting is imo really the weakest point of the story. Karl already explained the conclusions he drew from the text, I drew largely different ones:
For me, the names sounded like the usual fantasy stuff, I didn't pay a lot of attention to them. The fighting strengthened the general impression of the setting being a medieval-style fantasy world. Bayonets never crossed my mind, on the one hand because the fighting style differs far too much from your descriptions (you wouldn't "cut" with a bayonet), on the other hand because bayonets imply guns, guns imply shooting, and not a word of that was mentioned. Then there was the passage about the attack on the caravan. Both the caravan itself, and the fact that its being attacked without uniforms (nowadays a breach of international law) imply a setting that lies at least a few centuries back from our perspective.
So the combat pointed me towards fantasy, a few other things did not. I don't know about cooking in or on ovens and when you did which, but I do know that not too long ago, all soldiers needed to be able to cook (living off the land and all that). Barracks imply a standing army, which in turn implies a more recent setting, as does leaving the army when you don't feel like being a soldier anymore and writing letters to the bereaved. Even the fact that the soldiers are paid (being able to afford a house) seems to point towards a modern setting, as did your overall writing style. Swordfights do not. All of that sort of made the story itself less important for me than trying to figure out the setting.

Jav took the insult in typical good cheer. “pants yourself.” Darin responded with a rude noise, and after a moment, they chuckled together.

This sounded very cheesy to me, btw.

I can, however, only agree with the previous comments about your writing: very poetic. I particularly liked the repetition of waiting being the hardest part in war and cooking both.

Anyway, I'd really like to know what the setting was. Maybe you only have to add one tiny line somewhere to make everything clearer.

[Silk]

Thanks.

[Hayley]

Apologies for lateness.

First of all, you have written my line of the year so far: "Bloody doctors. He’d never figured out why they had to poke at something before they fixed it. "

Love it.

Erm... what else.

A lot of your sentences seem very... short. Almost bullet pointish. I don't know if that's because of how I read things, or because I tend to write longer sentences, but I think there was an awful lot of very short sentences in there where maybe a comma would have done.

Also, I don't think we got overly far. The point of Jav and Darin being dead gets repeated a lot, which shows they are on their mind... but is the whole plot line going to be based around these two and their deaths?

Perhaps I'm getting easily confused, or I'm not reading it right. Any clarification would be brill?

[jwdenzel]

Hi Silk!

Ok, so it only took me over two months to review this one, but I'm finally here. Let the party begin!

So first off, I'll be honest:  This was hard for me to get into.  I wasn't captured by it, nor did I become "lost" in the story.  I actually found myself easily distracted as I read this, and forced myself to stop and start over so I could keep track of the story.

That said, there were some good things. Specifically, I enjoyed your overall gritty, down to earth prose. While it didn't "Wow" me anywhere, and the sentence fragments you used weren't necessarily working, you invoked a strong mood.  You also had some interesting characters, particularly when they reflected on what was truly difficult about war: the waiting, the writing to loved ones... anything but the fighting.  That's great insight.

One of the first things I was confused about was your genre. I had no idea if this was sci-fi or fantasy or something else.  Or, more specifically, I didn't know if this was a medieval setting, an alien setting, or a modern-day setting.  Literally everything you mentioned could be present in all those times:  canvas, uniforms, vegetables, metal weapons, soldiers, etc.    You mention metal in a way that implies swords, but I never got a clear read on it.  Truth be told, I never figured it out in the end. My guess is that it's a bit of sci-fi.   

I don't need to know the specifics of the actual conflicts. I enjoyed that you kept this small and we stayed with the soldiers.  But I really wish I knew what your world looked like.

I mentioned that the pacing was slow IMO.  One thing that may have contributed to that was that your characters think and talk about a lot of "slow things".  When your character is frustrated by waiting around, or being out of the loop, your audience can't help but think it too.  In screenwriting, I've learned the hard way to not put lines like  "I'm confused" or "I'm bored" in there because it just sets the audience up for thinking that as well. 

The other contributor to the slow pace, I think, came from a lack of conflict.  Yes, I know there were some battles and ambushes, but I couldn't really think of something that was challenging the protagonists in any way.  They had difficulties, but no hard choices to make.  That may be the core of what's lacking here.  I think I'll bold that for reference. ;-)

“What d’you think’s going on, anyway?”

That was on page 7.  And I wasn't able to answer.  I felt overwhelmed by half-details, and not enough exposition.  I wish I knew what was going on. So far, not much has happened beyond some introspection and a vague news report that the valley was "taken" (off camera though)

The need to pretend is over, so they fight in soldier blue under a blazing sun

The section of text which starts with this sentence felt really weak to me. The sudden jump in POV didn't work for me. I think I know what you were going for here (a cold, emotionless, fly-on-the-wall feel), but it just wasn't working for me.  Ditto for the other sections with this similar POV.  If you would like to use this POV, consider using it as an opportunity to show us physical details of the characters.  You can still convey emotions by describing their look, their posture, their breathing, etc.

Seryl snorted. Tiresome was one word for it.

Well done with mentioning Seryl very early on, and then actually showing him on page 4.  You planted that well. Although when you first mention him in Darin's POV, I got the impression that Seryl was dead, not just retired.

The last few pages fizzled out for me. Again, I think I get what you were going for with the letter. But it didn't resonate with me.  Probably because I had very little emotional connection with Darin.  I respected them, and their efforts.  But ultimately, there was nothing at stake. See my bold comment above.

You're a good writer, and I honestly see some potential in this story. You have a beginning, middle, and end. It just needs conflict to drive it home. I would love to read a revised version if you come back to this.

Good luck!

[Silk]

Thank you.

(It's taken me over two months to not review any of the submissions since December, so I wouldn't worry about that.)