04 May 2009 - Renoard - EL SHADDU - forematter and ch1 & 2 v2

[Renoard]

This submission is rated VLDS For mild language, consumption of alcohol and a
simulated sexual assault.

Summary
This is speculative fiction which will likely fit into the fantasy genre'.
It sets the stage for the reader to believe they are reading an ancient
chronicle and that the heroes and villains of the story might have lived some
3500 years ago, in a world very much like our own.  The unnamed *hero* is
lured out of hiding.

Please be patient with the length and the nontraditional forematter. It's needed to make this submission make sense.

After reviewing I notice that a global search managed to remove ending punctuation on many sentences in this submission. Ryan, I'd be happy with any edits you feel you have time to suggest, but don't overload yourself.  Also I realized that a whole paragraph got pretty mangled in this version.  Below is the current paragraph.  My only excuse is that my document template got corrupted and the repair has left a lot of errors in the text.  I found one spot where "inhuman" had gotten transformed into "in Human".


     She'd been a deeply religious woman and quoted copiously from the Sefer Khayim.  They'd been privileged to own a copy.  The Sefer or Hassefer, as it was referred to by most believers, was the written text of the prophecies and teachings of the religion.  Scrolls were far too expensive for an individual family to own, and the sacred texts were even more so, because of the extreme care required to copy them.  Many scribes lost their lives while drafting copies, due to a typo or inattention and a lack of proper attitude while working.  Use of the names of God had to be done prayerfully and carefully so as not to inadvertently summon the spirit associated with that name.  This principle had lead to the practice of calling reckless foolishness sophistry, in memory of those careless soferim who had  summoned the presence of El Shaddai, the destroyer of worlds.  Those who heard the voice of El Shaddai seldom lived to hear anything else again.

[swaindaddy]

Reonard,
I just finished reading your submission. You definately got me interested by the time I had reached the end of what you have given us so far. My comments:

I feel like it took too long to get to the actual story. I think the editor's note, translator's note, author's foward are a bit too much set up. This problem is compunded by the Breshiit chapter which is additional setup.

The story itself is well done and exciting once we are following the protagonist. I would probably stop reading before I got to Hear O People.

I do like the way you are framing the story through translation etc. It adds a fresh perspective and your prose is really nice once we get to HEar O People.

I would figure out a way to minimize all the introductions and jump right into the story. Maybe you could sprinkle Breshiit out somehow as well. It seems to be all backstory.


Overall - great concept and I am looking forward to seeing next week's submission. Good work!

[ErikHolmes]

I liked the story Renoard, but I agree with Swaindaddy. The setup is a little long, but the main problem I have with it is that I just didn't find it that valuable. I think you wanted to hint that this was something translated from another world or dimension but we're never really told that.

If the translation was so strange I'd like to know more of why it was so strange. I'm also thinking that if a strange record like this was found, and translated, that it would make more of a buzz in the world, but I didn't get that impression from the forward.

As for the story itself the only thing that there it off for me were two words:

The word: naughtiness in 2. It just doesn't match the tone of the rest of the story for me. I immediately pictured the 'judges of the house' running around chasing veiled women like in an episode of Benny Hill (um, ok, maybe that's just me).

The loud fart at the beginning of 3. throws off the seriousness of the story for me as well. I know that in pre-modern times the word was not really considered vulgar or funny, but for the modern reader it almost feels like you are setting this up to be a humorous story.

IMO anyway.

Having said all of that, I was interested in the story and would like to continue reading it. I wonder if breaking up the editor's notes into sections at the beginning of each chapter might not be a good approach.

[RavenstarRHJF]

Thanks for posting the corrected paragraph here- that had me confused for a bit.

Overall- this is the submission I had the hardest time with.  But that is mainly due to personal issues.

The Breshiit and the Hear O People don't seem to hang together at all.  I get that the Breshiit is a summary of your story, a prelude of what is to come, but the prophetic style of that portion clashes with the more modern narrative style of Hear O People and breaks the reader's understanding.  I agree that breaking up Breshiit and using it as Chapter Headings might be a better way of presenting it.

You spend a great deal of time describing the tiara, but I'm still not getting a clear picture of how it sits on the head.  Is it worn like a headband, crossing the crown of the head and down behind the ears, or does it fit across the forehead and around to the back like a crown?  Perhaps a better word to use would be diadem- kind of suggests crown, but could be something else, whereas tiara inevitably suggests a small jeweled woman's hair ornament which can be worn many different ways.  Also, you speak of "wings" in the front, but then say that the face is already covered by a veil hanging from the front of the tiara.  Why have two?

And now we come to the parts where most of my problems may be personal rather than technical.

It bothers me that most of the places you mention are just close enough to real Old Testament Bible names to call them to mind without actually stating whether or not they ARE, in fact, the places referred to.  Similarly, you use a lot of Jewish-sounding descriptives without coming out and saying that these are the people you are referring to.  If this is supposed to be from a different world or dimension, it would ease my mind if you said so at the beginning.  I can cope with a parallel dimension where things are slightly different, but when there is doubt...  I just have a problem when things LOOK like the Bible but AREN'T.  Again, though, this is a personal problem of mine.  Hope you don't get offended.   

[Flo_the_G]

I fear I have to largely agree on what's been said about the first part. While the introduction by the translator is interesting to read, the only thing the prologue gave me was the impression that reading the following pages might be a bit arduous. Then came the story proper, and I honestly didn't see the point of everything that had gone before anymore - they felt like two completely disconnected tales.

Accordingly, all those "similar" names felt rather forced, especially because of the large number of them. If I were a run-of-the-mill reader, I'd probably have thought "oh, that's quite clever" at the first handful of names, but that would have rapidly declined towards "now he's just showing off".

Overall, I find the entire translation-thing interesting. However, from what I've read, I don't really see the need for all the introductory stuff. Especially since it distracts from the actual story, which I enjoyed reading (and which covered all the important info even without the various prologues, in my opinion).

To the story itself: the fart irritated me only a tiny little bit (and irritate is even to harsh a word). What I found really jarring was the fact that you referred to a scribe's misspelling as a typo.

Anyway, the entire thing about the prophet is great, and now I went away from the PC for an hour and completely forgot what else I wanted to write. Something about how nicely you inserted the info in the non-foreword part, I think.  Suffice it to say, the lack of negative commentary on that part is supposed to be interpreted as positive commentary. 

[Renoard]

Posted by: Flo_the_G :

To the story itself: the fart irritated me only a tiny little bit (and irritate is even to harsh a word). What I found really jarring was the fact that you referred to a scribe's misspelling as a typo. Grin

Thanks. I completely missed the potential anachronism here.  I appreciate you pointing it out.  Makes for one of those blond moments, which I come by honestly.

[Silk]

Hi Renoard,

My thoughts as I read...

There were a couple of words that I actually had to look up on the first page of your manuscript. (Of course, they seemed to have religion-related meanings, so while I consider my vocabulary pretty good, maybe this has more to do with me not knowing much about religion.) Now, I personally actually like the studied vocabulary here, because I'm a geek like that. And more to the point, it shows off the voice of the erudite editor quite well. But I wonder if it might scare off some readers.

Taken individually, I like each of the pieces of the forematter, but all at once it is a bit much. I don't know the structure of your novel at this point, obviously, but maybe there's a way to logically split some of the pieces up. It'll look a bit less like a book, true, but I think readers would be willing to roll with you on that one.

The POV character seems awfully focused on staying inconspicious, so I wonder why he pulls his little trick with the flame in the first few pages of Hear O People, especially since it doesn't actually seem to serve any purpose.

There are a few paragraphs on page 18-19, where the POV talks about religion and a bit about his father that, while it's good information, feels a bit like an infodump. It might only be its proximity to the forematter that's doing this, though.

There are a few hints as to the significance of the tiara. It would be nice to see a few more, not just that it IS significant, but what that significance is.

In response to other peoples' comments: There are a couple of times in Hear O People where the tone is a bit off, a couple of humourous lines where the story is mostly serious. I don't mind the break from from the serious tone of the forematter, since that's differently written anyway, but it's not quite consistent within itself.

Inconsistent is the wrong word, really ,since that makes it sound purely negative and I'm not making a negative comment, actually. Obviously I'm not saying that you can't use the occasional bit of humour in a serious story, and I don't want to say I had a problem with it here either, because I didn't, but I certainly did notice it.

The break in tone between the forematter and the Hear O People chapter didn't bother me, since they're obviously written differently deliberately and with (I presume) purpose. In terms of breaking the forematter up, I think Breshiit is the one you could most easily chop into pieces (though I'm not entirely convinced it would work in pieces either. That's the ONLY piece of the forematter I would even think about chopping up, by the way).

I disagree with all the comments saying that the forematter wasn't valuable or connected to the rest of the story (so far) purely because I think it's too soon to tell. I DO expect all this stuff to come into play over the course of the novel, but we've seen barely the beginning of it. I'll wait.

And that's all from me. Sorry if this crit's a bit skimpy. Apparently I don't have much to say to anyone today...