November 23rd - LongTimeUnderdog - The Name of God - Prologue and chapter 1

[LongTimeUnderdog]

Well have fun, don't strain yourselves.

[LongTimeUnderdog]

Did anyone get this?

[lethalfalcon]

Yeah, I got it. I've gone through it the first time and am putting together my notes on things. Sorry I've been a little busy this week. You'll get it later today, methinks.

[LongTimeUnderdog]

Oh no worries.   I just had trouble getting it sent (odd technical difficulties) so  I was just worried.

[Recovering_Cynic]

Sorry LTU.  I have actually tried reading it several times, but I'm having trouble getting past the prologue.  I'll read it today, I promise, but the fact that I'm having that much trouble getting past the prologue might be a critique in and of itself...

[Recovering_Cynic]

Thoughts while reading:

As I indicated in my last post, the prologue is not working for me.  It is too confusing.  The god goes in and out of his own mind, then he is in a cell, but it is impossible to tell what is actual and physical and what is metaphorical.  I had to struggle through it, and that's not what you want out of a prologue.

The first chapter with Caramoth... it is a little info-dumpy when it comes to setting.  Go ahead and describe the setting, but ease up on the history.

You say the wind was leaving no tracks, yet Caramoth had tracked the beast easily.

Okay, is Lady Ziphod human?  You describer her as a slug with a tail, but you also say she was the "desire of men".   It's a little unclear.  If she isn't, what is she?

Considering the gravity of the discussion (deciding whether to kill the little girl), I would think it would be a bit more emotional.

Er... the stones say utter destruction will come from the child, and Caramoth ignores this?  Er...  Are the stones ever wrong?

Alright, finished with the prologue, and here are some of my thoughts:

When did Caramoth start caring for the girl?  Suddenly at the end, he is willing to have his entire village destroyed so that he doesn't have to kill her.  Just a few pages before, he was doing his best to kill her.  There needs to be some sort of emotional transition.

As I said before, the prologue portion dealing with the trapped god is just too abstracted to work for me.  You might see if others have a different reaction.

I had a hard time picturing what was happening as Caramoth tried to rescue the girl from the crater's edge.  The blocking was a little fuzzy.

This is a personal taste thing, but for me, even the portion of the prologue dealing with Caramoth and the girl were not enough to intrigue me.  If I picked the book up, and this were the beginning, I probably wouldn't read on unless the story had been highly recommended to me by someone who I trusted.

[lethalfalcon]

I'm afraid this is going to be "return fire" from your critique on my abomination.

I read through it (4 times now), and still had a lot of problems visualizing much of anything from the prologue. I get no sense of what God looks like (and I'd imagine he looks like something), nor do I get a good feel for the environment. I see a small little cube with a bed in it. But I see Him hitting the wall with his fist from the comfort of his bed at one point. How big is the cube? He can get up and walk, so it must not be too horribly small, but I keep feeling like it is (from all the times the walls "close in").

Also, he seems to know a lot about his people, but his memories keep disappearing. Why not the memories of his people? Is that part of Chalot's torture, is to feel powerless? I'd bring that out earlier, because it makes you feel bad for God, and hate Chalot much more. Right now, I don't really know who to root for.

The Fortress... God's wandering around in there is very dull. It's like you're wandering around in your writing, and is not good for the prologue. Showing the Fortress isn't a bad thing, but I need to feel more oomph from it.

I need to do this more often, he concluded, especially if the light hurts me.

Wha? Why? Is God a masochist?

I have absolutely no visualization of the vessels that Chalot came in. Are they ships, or something else? How does God hear them? If he's re-experiencing his memory, he should at least show some details, so the reader can, too.

When it's talking about Vengeance and how it makes his walk through other people's Fortresses frigid, wouldn't that be why his Fortress is cold? This is the impression I got, and if I could get it, why can't God? He's vengeful toward Chalot, I'd guess. Also, what kind of monstrosity does vengeance create with memories? Wouldn't God be able to see the true image anyway, even if man's vision was tainted?

And... there's a warden. Where'd she come from? Why wasn't she there at the beginning? Why would she ever let him enter His mind, if it holds the key to His escape?

Why can I not bend the walls?

He's bent them numerous times. He can't break them, though.

Ah, the cold ground still confuses him. Why?! He just reminisced about how vengeance makes the path cold. Make him understand!

When you start referring to the Shroud, I get lost. What's the Shroud? He can apparently access it from inside the prison. Is it what the walls are made of? Also, right there, a lot of your movements are redundant. He grips the Shroud, then places his hand on the Prison door. His other hand? Or the same one? I'd imagine you need both hands to forge a frame

Wait, he can't remember his name, or 90% of his life, but he knows where the key to his prison is? How's that? Why would he even think that Chalot wouldn't move it? Obviously she's pretty darn smart if she could lock him in his own cage.

The part where he's thinking about influencing his followers seems out of place. I'm guessing he's been in here for awhile now; one would imagine he would have already tried to seek outside help. So it's a bit of "why now?"

I also don't understand how memories could be closer or farther from your "core". What does that mean? Is it something like how remembering what I ate for dinner last night isn't as important as remembering what my birthday is, because my birthday defines me more?  If so, why is the first memory he sees of his daughter? I'd think that's sorta important.

My biggest problem with this is that you're showing us a character that we can't really relate to, who's not doing all that much, mostly because He can't. I feel like this whole prologue could be summed up with "And Chalot trappeth the God within His own Prison walls, and He wept and struggled Feebly therein. Amen." I know this seems quite hypocritical, considering my last submission, and I won't deny that I am, but there it is.

Okay, so... wow, I'm sorry for that rant. Um... chapter 1 coming up next. It's not *nearly* so bad.

[LongTimeUnderdog]

No need to apologize, Lethal.  We know our true friends because they're the ones that tell us when we did something wrong.

[Recovering_Cynic]

I have to second everything lethal said.  I wrote my review with a severe headache so I did not clearly enunciate my critique.  If I could go back and re-write it, I would say much the same things as lethal.

[LongTimeUnderdog]

And Chalot trappeth the God within His own Prison walls, and He wept and struggled Feebly therein. Amen.

"And Trogdor smote the Karak, and all was laid to Burnination."

Sorry, i couldn't resist.

[lethalfalcon]

Time for chapter 1.

As far as your writing goes, this is much better. Things are happening, characters are introduced that I've already read about, so it's a nice look into their past.

My one problem regarding this is whether it should be Chapter 1, or if it would be better suited as a flashback later on in the book. I don't know what would work better, given that I've only seen one other chapter with Anaiah, and she was much older then. It's also told from Caramoth's point of view rather than Anaiah's (which makes sense), so I dunno.

Reading this, I can see the desert pretty well. That's definitely good. I kinda feel like I'm in Dune.

Why on earth would he not have a cape or something? If he's lived in the desert for any length of time, he should be very aware of the unpredictability of the weather, and would know to be prepared. The desert is very unyielding, and its inhabitants have to be smart and stubborn. I like that you're putting him against the weather, but he would have a cloak (unless it managed to get lost somehow...)

Is there a reason why it's called "Seven Stairs"? The impression I got was that it was actually 7 stairs to the floor of the bowl, but that means each step is at least 1.15 feet tall, and that's if the bowl is only 8' deep. Those are some pretty steep steps to get a big animal down.

Speaking of animals, I have no idea what a bulou or chut looks like. Since this is the first chapter, they'll need some description pretty quick, so the reader knows what to think of them as.

A two-year old is *not* going to sit still for any length of time. Is it just that he thinks she's two, or that she really is? Later, he says that she can't have lived beyond four seasons. Four is slightly better for teaching a child to sit for more than 2 seconds, but not much. I lose believability here.

The part where he's rescuing her plays out weird to me, too. He's sneaking up behind her, then dives at her. Now, in my mind, that would likely send them both right over the cliff. If he came up beside her, it would be a little different, but there's no indication of where he is relative to her.

There's quite a bit of history about the witches here, and I'm not sure it's all necessary. It does get a little info-dumpy on the subject. Sentences like

Witches, he knew, were not above abandoning their children...

are bad so early in the book. He might know that, but he probably wouldn't think about it much at the time. You explain it again later on in your philosophical debate with the elders, so why put it twice?

Okay, one last bit.  If your gods tell you that something or someone will bring ruin to your entire civilization, you don't question them. You remove the problem. If they are going to take enough time to consult the rocks, they believe what they say. For Caramoth to question their judgment and go against their sayings shows that he very much does NOT have faith in them. For Hammond to stand by and accept that is tantamount to blasphemy. If I were either of them, I'd have that baby in ten pieces in five seconds. This right here is the biggest issue with this chapter. It simply isn't believable. The fact that the stones then seem to not care that he's disobeying them is just the cherry on top.

In conclusion, chapter 1 was a lot better to me, but there are still some glaring issues with the way things turn out.   Now, hopefully I can give you something to butcher in return in the next week or two. Line edits shall appear in your inbox posthaste.

[Recovering_Cynic]

Again, lethal has hit all the same points I have, only hit them *much* better.  Forgive me my brief review;  I will do much better next week.  Promise.

[Andrew the Great]

Ok, a couple of things.

Firstly, how do you look at someone sitting on the edge of a cliff and reason out their age with no other information about them? I was a little bit confused when Caramoth looked at Anaiah and immediately went, "Oh, she's two!"

The main problem that I had with this chapter was that while there was potential for conflict, I never really felt involved in it. It was like when I walk past someone in the hallway and hear their conversation, but don't really care what they're saying. You need to do something to make me care about what's happening. A lot of this could just be being more descriptive, and try to include more thoughts that clue us as to emotions. We can connect with emotions.

I strongly dislike the prologue. It started out with lots of promise, but it quickly degenerated into a whole bunch of stuff that I didn't understand, and quite frankly, didn't care about. It's so abstract, that it's really difficult to follow, and since I have no reason yet to care what happens to God (I feel so sacrilegious typing that), I would either a) put the book down (the most likely), b) skip it (If I had a recommendation), or c) skim it (if I had a really strong recommendation).

When you move into the actual chapter, it gets much better. It's fairly easy to follow, though there were some minor grammar issues that threw me for a moment. It does feel a bit info-dumpy, but I think with this being the first chapter, that's slightly excusable. We do need a description of the setting. You might try to work it into other things, instead of talking directly about it, but it still works even the way it is.

I do have a suggestion, though. If all we ever see of Anaiah is her older self, I would just start with that part of her story. It eliminates your problem of these people basically just telling their gods that they are wrong, and quite frankly, I don't think anyone really thinks that this part of the story is that important. Do we really need to hear it? Does the rest of the story make sense without it? What does it add? Your other chapters have kept me fairly interested so far, but this really doesn't. If for some reason we need to hear this part of the story, you might consider having Anaiah think about it a little once her character is developed, or if Caramoth is still around, he could talk about it a bit.

Now, keep in mind, I don't know the story beyond what I've read (which doesn't include any of the Anaiah chapters), so this might not work. Just suggestions.

Sorry to take so long to get to this, but NaNo kind of ate my life this month.

[vegetathalas]

Nano is, indeed, an eater of lives. I agree with pretty much everything above. I'll add:

I really got excited when the prologue started. I thought it was cool and had a lot of inherent conflict, especially because it's a different, more terse style than I was expecting, given your writing style in your other chapters. It's cool that you can stretch yourself to both extremes. I love the first line. Great hook.

That said, it could be shorter. I'm not entirely sure which parts are important to the plot, but a lot of the info you're probably going to have to repeat in other places anyway. The transition between his present and his memory of the great witch needs to be softened. I thought the witch was flying into his cell at first. I love the ride the gord part. Or is it a spaceship? I suppose I just assumed water vessel  as in drinking gord because I'm thinking of the American slaves who were told to 'follow the water gord in the sky'...

How do walls "collapse closer?" If picture collapse = crashing to the ground.

You could make things less random by throwing out fortress and labyrinth, unless they're immediately important. The God is trapped. We don't need the details of how he got there. Are Chalot and Immortals the witches? Why was he asleep? By bringing up these sorts of things, I think you raise more questions than you want to answer at the moment.

The longer the prologue goes on, the more it turns into gibberish to me. I think there's a sentence where you use about five different terms and I know what none of them are. If I picked this up, I would probably flip past the prologue and read the first couple pages of the chapter and if I didn't get drawn in by then, the book would go back on the shelf, recommendation or not.

I like the idea of men's minds having color.

Salem has too many modern connotations for me to like it as a name.

I like the idea that they have stolen God's name. That's pretty bad-ass.

I would love this prologue...if it didn't confuse me. If you kept it to just the God and his warden without the history. Good voice, too much unexplained terminology.

I think the transition between the prologue and chapter 1 is fine.
---

Chapter 1: I agree, too info-dumpy with Caramoth. If he were the main character, it would be fine, but he's not.

I agree that maybe you should skip this scene and start with Anaiah as an adult. I like the ideas and the tension, but unless this story is going to be mainly about Anaiah's conflict against her society, it seems unnecessary. If that's what the main conflict is, then I wonder what's the point of the darken, witches, homes and Jin.

That said, I like the scene. I like the tone and the characterization feels the strongest of anything I've read from you. So I would hate to see it go. I have mixed feelings.

You should probably mention Anaiah's skin color which Cara first sees her. He must see some part of her if he can estimate what age she is. I mean, how can he even tell she's human if she's swathed in so many blankets he can't see her skin?

Watch comma use. You're not using enough of them to separate your phrases.

A two year old is not an infant, in my opinion.

I didn't get the impression that it was a hard enough wind to tear his face off. You need to make that clearer when he first felt it. Unless he's not being literal.

I'm fine with Ziphod's description. I like it being a little mysterious, although I wonder what replaced her hips. I really like her spitting phlegm all the time. It makes her unique.

The term 'Apara' needs explaining.

Amoz seems to be too young to be making religious/philosophical arguments to me.

Dialogue seems a little long in this scene. I think the scene in general should probably be cut. Anaiah can think about how difficult she found it to find acceptance later, and how Amoz had protected her even when they had been children.

If you don't cut the first chapter entirely, I think it's fine unidivided with the first and third parts.  The Council Anaiah's interactions with Amoz are cute, but the scene is too dialogue heavy and boring for me.

How can they "despise her and love her" at the same time? Too cryptic for me, even if its intentionally so.

I like the end of this chapter. I like the whole chapter a lot. I like the stones, but I'm surprised, if the others hear the prophecy, they don't kill her. An easy solution to that is just to have softhearted Caramath hear the prophecy.

I would like to see him have a better reason not to kill her, as in he had a sister once her age who died and she reminds him or her. Or something along those lines. I mean, he gives up a year of his life to protect a daughter of his worst enemies--that's pretty intense. It's a cool characterization but I want more of a reason to it.

Now I'm looking forward to reading all the rest. Make all the of the chapters this good

[Silk]

Alright. I think you've got some work to do, but there's certainly plenty that's interesting in here...

I think most of what you need to do with this is ramp up the tension. For people who are talking about either bringing up someone who could be the ruin of their village, descended from people who have brough them ruin in the past, or killing a helpless infant, they're awfully calm about it. I don't mean to say that I think there should be fists and insults flying. But I would like to see some more emotion out of these guys than I'm getting.

Likewise, I think you could play up the encounter with the Stones. I It certainly works the way it is, but I think you could get more out of it. It's the reader's first encounter with your magic, so go all out. Make it a little more dramatic and impressive, because I definitely think you could. 

I really think these scenes are almost there, in that it probably won't take much work on your part to up the ante and the tension here. That said, to move onto some of the picky things...

Camaroth--and others--seem to be all over the place in terms of the argument over keeping the girl. They all seem to be making different points at different, uh, points in the argument, even to the point (damn it, not that word again) of switching sides. The way Camaroth finally covinces the others to keep the girl also feels too easy, since even the High Chief suddenly seems to forget all his objections. The way they decide to raise her as a warrior seems kind of slapdash and flimsy, too.

One last thought--you could probably tighten this up some when you're ready to revise, and that would help with the tension and pacing as well, I think.

In response to what others have said...

In regards to the prologue: I found myself skimming it a little bit, too. I think part of it might have just been the length of your submission and the number of these things that I still have waiting in my inbox, but I have to agree with Cynic in that it could be more clear than it is. I also struggled a bit with trying to figure out what was physical and what was metaphorical/metaphysical/whatever. I did find the concept of a God stripped of his name interesting, but had a hard time keeping up with what was going on.

I wondered a bit about whether the Stones were ever wrong, as well. I'm leaning towards "no" at the moment, since Camaroth and others seem to accept them as authority. I also wasn't sure here whether the Stones were prophesizing (ei, never wrong) or just making the same assumption that Camaroth and cronies have made: she's witchborn, therefore she's a witch, therefore she'll do bad things.

I actually could see Camaroth choosing to ignore the warning that she'll bring utter destruction down upon them, given the right context, but it should get more of an acknolwedgement than he gives it here. Is he in denial, or is he taking the girl in against his better judgement (for example)? If Camaroth goes against the decision or the advice of the Stones in this, why does Hammond take it so calmly? I don't even think that Camaroth even needs a "better" reason not to kill the girl. People's emotions tend to do funny things when children are involved, even if those children have nothing whatsoever to do with them. But we definitely need more context. That context will also provide you some of the tension and conflict that you need.

I have to agree that more of a transition between Camaroth's differing feelings about the girl would be helpful. Personally I think you do have it there--at least insofar as "the gods seem to be telling me not to kill her so I won't" but it can be made more of in terms of what his own emotions are regarding the girl. I think that making this clear will go a long way towards increasing the tension in this section.

I also had some problems visualizing what was going on when he rescued Anaiah from the sands. A lot of it--the howling winds, the crater--was fairly evocative, but as Cynic has said, the blocking is a little bit funny. So while I can see the desert itself really well, I'm having a bit of trouble visualizing Camaroth moving in it as he tries to rescue Anaiah. (I hope that makes sense.)

I do wonder a bit about your choice to make this a first chapter. It's a fairly large jump in time, for one, and does leave us to wonder why you didn't simply start with Anaiah as an adult. But the big thing, as Vegas has pointed out, is that it leads us to believe that we're in for a different kind of story (Anaiah struggling against the views placed upon her by her society) than the one that you've given us so far in your other chapters.