Aug 24 - Erik Holmes - The Sword of Worlds - Ellie - Chapter 14

[ErikHolmes]

Thanks for the comments!

[Recovering_Cynic]

*boos*

Okay, I had to do that.  I liked bloodbath, and it seemed there was a lot more of his story to tell yet, so I am sad.  Of course, if that was what you were going for, well, you succeeded. 

There was one line, where you say that Ellie "made the mistake of looking over her shoulder" and then she sees the gruesome creature she knocked down.  Well, why was it a mistake?  As far as I could tell in the story, it made no difference in the outcome.

I guess my one and only real criticism about the chapter would be this: Ellie seems to be getting dumber as the book goes on.  Yes, she is compassionate; I understand that, but up to this point, she continues to make mistake after mistake (mostly due to her compassion) and does not seem to learn from any of them.  I'm hoping that this changes at some point because she is starting to get a little annoying.

Other than that, I love the book so far.  Well done.  As far as I'm concerned, it's better than a lot of the fantasy crap I've read, and I've read quite a bit.  /bows

[Recovering_Cynic]

A few other things I just thought of:

First, when Ellie is captured there at the end, wouldn't the soldiers strip her of her jewelry.  They have to know she is being magically enhanced, right?

Second, why does the village lady automatically think Ellie is nobility?  Unless all the nobility wears bloody trousers and torn shirts...

Finally (and this relates to much earlier in the story), why is Kail just now learning that he has magical healing abilities.  Hasn't he ever been injured before in his life?  Did he have a healing charm with him that maybe Ellie took with her when she left him injured?  It just seems to me that he would have noticed by now that he is immune to injury.

[Frog]

Thoughts While Reading:
I think you may have broken up the conversation a bit too much in the first section. Description is fine, just move it around so it flows a bit better.

Hm... I hope we get a reason later for the woman to think of her as a lady. And why hasn't she mentioned Kale yet? She is rather relaxed about this whole rescue mission thing, ain't she?

I just about peed myself.

Wow, Ellie's really good at being an useless, liability in battle... and falling for her hot captors while doing so.

Overall Impression:
Okay, Ellie is all kinds of TSL, but what mostly is bugging me right now is I don't see the point. Why spend all that time with Bloodbath only to kill him in a completely unsatisfying way? What are your people (good people, bad people any kind of people) trying to accomplish outside of having random bloody or lustful interactions as the case may be? Whatever it is, you have to make it more important and obvious in your characters or it is not going to be important to me. At this point, you could drop a train on any of them and I really wouldn't care. I might even laugh.

Okay, sorry, I am just being cruel now. Please don't drop a train on your characters and keep writing your book. I know it is only your first draft and you will have lots of time to focus and edit once you get it all down. I really like some of your humor and world building details. In fact, a lot of your writing style reminds me of the Tennis Shoe books (for some reason) and I really liked reading those things. Just keep going and I'll chime back in when I actually have something constructive to say. 

[Recovering_Cynic]

Okay, so I, at least, like where the story is going and don' t particularly want to see any trains dropped on characters.  That being said, Frog makes some really good points.

For example, what exactly is Ellie doing?  If she were really going to be cautious, why didn't she just talk to the lady and leave the village as soon as possible?  Does she have A.D.D.?  Maybe she's a little slow?  Or perhaps, she was so excited to see humans that she completely forgot that some humans just tried to kill her and due to this lapse of memory decided it would be a perfectly good idea to just enter a village with a sinister army camped on top of it.

I guess, all in all, she needs to be a bit more likeable and/or fitted to the book.  The book is pretty gritty.  People die.  A lot.  Having a namby pamby girl as an mc in a story like that isn't really working.  She either needs to (A) grow a brain and a bit of a viscious streak (I was going to say backbone, but she showed backbone in the torture scene, although she seems to have lost it somewhere along the way), (B) get captured and spend the rest of the book in prison waiting for a rescue so we don't have to read about her, or (C) die.

Harsh, I know, but right now, Ellie is the only character in the book who isn't working for me.  The others are intriguing.

[ErikHolmes]

Okay, I had to do that.  I liked bloodbath, and it seemed there was a lot more of his story to tell yet, so I am sad.  Of course, if that was what you were going for, well, you succeeded. 

I liked Bloodbath too. It's funny, I hadn't even created Bloodbath until I was halfway through the chapter he appears in. I will promise that there's more to his story, even if its not seen in this book.

There was one line, where you say that Ellie "made the mistake of looking over her shoulder" and then she sees the gruesome creature she knocked down.  Well, why was it a mistake?  As far as I could tell in the story, it made no difference in the outcome.

I had her use the word mistake, just because looking at him freaked her out. Mistake as in: I wish I hadn't seen that.

I guess my one and only real criticism about the chapter would be this: Ellie seems to be getting dumber as the book goes on.  Yes, she is compassionate; I understand that, but up to this point, she continues to make mistake after mistake (mostly due to her compassion) and does not seem to learn from any of them.  I'm hoping that this changes at some point because she is starting to get a little annoying.

I'll have to try and fix that. It's not the impression I want people to have of Ellie. She's supposed to be smart and clever  

The big problem with Ellie is she's just not prepared for an adventure like this at all. She's small of stature, weak, and doesn't know anything about combat. Man, I was actually worried that I was having her handle the situations of getting beaten, sent to another world, attacked by Draken, etc. Too Well.

Looking back at the chapter though, I have realized two mistakes. First, Ellie should mention Kail right off the bat. "I got attacked by Draken, my friend is hurt and needs help, can you help me?" Etc.

Second. I need to show more that Ellie really had no chance of escaping those men. She was only halfway to the trees when Bloodbath was killed. The horses the knights rode were faster then normal horses, there was never really a chance of her escaping. She might have made it if Bloodbath had lasted longer, but the warrior he faced was too skilled.

Other than that, I love the book so far.  Well done.  As far as I'm concerned, it's better than a lot of the fantasy crap I've read, and I've read quite a bit.  /bows

Wow, thanks. That's the best compliment I've gotten so far. I'm glad you like it!

[ErikHolmes]

First, when Ellie is captured there at the end, wouldn't the soldiers strip her of her jewelry.  They have to know she is being magically enhanced, right?

Second, why does the village lady automatically think Ellie is nobility?  Unless all the nobility wears bloody trousers and torn shirts...

Finally (and this relates to much earlier in the story), why is Kail just now learning that he has magical healing abilities.  Hasn't he ever been injured before in his life?  Did he have a healing charm with him that maybe Ellie took with her when she left him injured?  It just seems to me that he would have noticed by now that he is immune to injury.

Those are all good questions. I can promise you that there's an answer to all of them. (The jewelry will come up in the next Ellie chapter).

Also, I'll tell you that she didn't think Ellie was nobility. Ellie is a very slight, petite women, fair skin, blond hair, dressed in strange clothes, carrying exotic weapons, wearing jewelry with magical markings, she also looks very young and is coming out of a forest where at least one member of the Fae lives . . .

[Recovering_Cynic]

Well, instead of saying "mistake" you might say something like, "She looked over her shoulder, but immediately regretted it.  What she saw horrified her and made her stumble...."  That way it doesn't take us so much out of the action.  I guess it's the "Show, don't tell rule".  Telling us it was a mistake just doesn't work for me.

Well, as to bloodbath, he is the kind of character readers really like.  You did a good job creating him, even if it was only on the spur of the moment.  I'd suggest either cutting him completely (that way you don't upset readers too much), or make him less likeable/noble/human, that way the reader doesn't get so attached to him when you off him in such a callous way.

As to Ellie handling things "too well" or being too stupid, that's not really the problem.  She can (and should) have some fall apart moments--that's great and to be expected; that's what happens when such traumatic things happen to you.  However, when she sees exactly how much trouble she's in, if she's clever, she needs to start making some hard decisions and being a bit more cautious.  

The wolf warned her about the village, and yet she went in to the woman's house completely trusting her.  

She does cpr on a monster that tried to capture her so she could be raped (all the time knowing that the other monsters were circling her to do mean nasty things).  

She sticks around and gets bloodbath killed.  She doesn't really run, and she doesn't really fight.  

She has all these really cool magic items, knows what they do, and doesn't do anything with them.  I gues that's what bothers me the most.  Maybe you could have her be too overconfident in her magic items?  She tries taking out the soldiers and trying to help bloodbath instead of running only to find out that the soldiers have magic too.  

I guess the long and short of it is that the whole "helpless heroin" bit isn't working for me.

[ErikHolmes]

Thanks for the comments guys.

I knew when I started that writing Ellie was going to be my biggest challenge. I'm still learning how to get her right, and your comments are helping a lot with that.

I have had second thoughts about killing off Bloodbath, but that's just how the scene came out. I think I'll leave it as is for now, but who knows in the second draft.

I agree with you on her helpless heroin role. She needs to not seem helpless, even if she is I suppose. I'll work on it. Maybe I'll even get her right by draft 10. 

[Recovering_Cynic]

I was just listening to one of the writing excuses pod casts, and found that it applied really well in this case.  It's the episode from the first season dealing with heroes.  Anyway, it talks a lot about how a hero--to be likeable--has to be really good at something, not superman, but they have to be competent to be likeable.  I think the problem with Ellie really right now is that she really is incompetent.  I'd recommend listening to the pod cast; it helped me figure out what I was going to do with the hero in my current story.

[Silk]

*coughs* Uhh, guys... It's heroine. Unless somebody's on drugs. Erik, is somebody in your story on drugs?

Ellie tells Bloodbath (re: the village), "This is the only place I can get help for Kail."  First thought: Why hasn't she tried to FIND Kail first? If she has tried, what does she think of the fact that she couldn't?

Ellie's naïvété is showing through nicely in this scene.

From your wording, Ellie deliberately sneaks up on the woman and her son (no mention of any of the more supposedly dangeorus people in the village whom she might be trying to avoid). Why does she think sneaking up on someone is a good way to get their help? Or to keep them from revealing her presence, if that's what she's concerned about?

I'm trying to decide if it's a problem that Ellie, supposedly worried about Kail, is still willing to sit down and have dinner and take the time to do so. At this point, it's probably NOT a problem, really; it's been long enough that another half hour or something won't make much dinner. But I still wonder. Also, why she didn't look for Kail first is still really bugging me.

"Out the back, you must run!" Maria says it to Ellie when people come a-knocking. And really, there's nothing wrong with this sentence. But I'd still consider having her say simply, "Out the back. Run!" Because--and maybe it's just me--but when I first read this sentence, honest to God, I heard Yoda.

I still feel like I'm waiting for the main story to start.

I don't think getting rid of a "noble/likeable" character like Bloodbath in such a "callous" way is necessarily a problem. I do want to know that there's a point to the sections that involved him, though. And that needs to be answered in THIS book. If there's parts of his story that you want to reveal later, that's fine. But there should be a reason that I'm spending time with him NOW.

I don't really have a lot to add, other than to echo what's already been said.

[Frog]

I've been thinking about it, and it seems to me that if your whole goal was to get Ellie captured and hit rock bottom, then the problem I see is that you waist a lot of time with Drakkin and wolves, time I am not sure will amount to much since she reacts in similar ways and you kill off the wolf and everything else. If she had left Kail, then scene breaked to her reaching the village I don't know if we would have missed all that much and it could help you to bring out your overall plot faster.

[ErikHolmes]

To be honest, I had the same thoughts before I started on the Draken scene. Still, I'm happy it, I know it needs a little work, but thats what later drafts are for.

Having said that, depending on my word count it is possible that when all is said and done I may have to remove the Draken and Bloodbath scenes. It's one of those things I won't know for sure until I've got the first draft done.

[Frog]

Of course you're right that finishing the book is your first priority and you should be happy with however it turns out. Just throwing it out there as something to consider.

[RavenstarRHJF]

I could say many things, but they've already been said.  Ellie's actions need more logic behind them.  I hate that you killed off Bloodbath, I was looking forward to learning more about him and his people- but I guess that's what you were going for.  Still, this early into the plot, it just might make me put down the book. *shrugs*  And I say "plot" because we are now on chapter fourteen and all of a day and a half have gone by (for Ellie, maybe more for Kail at this point).