June 28 - Renoard - Redmantle Chapter 1b

[Renoard]

This is the second half of the chapter and deals with events across the Straits of Kumberland.

A Duke dies and his family try to cope.

If you didn't get it and need to, send me an email. (RE members only of course)

[Comatose]

I liked it.  For me, at least, it read a lot smoother than the first half of the chapter.  I liked the change in tone from the funeral scene to the engagement party.  I also liked how you didn't tell the reader right away that you jumped so far forward in time. 
At the start of the last part, it became unclear who is speaking to Juan Carlos East Mark.  You start the scene with Edgar, but later it switches to someone named Phillip. It's not clear whether both Philip and Edgar are in the same room, or if you just changed the name suddenly.
The dynamic between Juan Carlos and Edgar/Philip was good, and I found it believable.
The plot so far is reminiscent of Hamlet, but I think that was probably intentional, so never mind.
Keep it up, I look forward to seeing where this goes.

[Valkynphyre]

i think I accidentally deleted it. Would you mind sending it to me again please? [email protected]

[Renoard]

Ah Comatose,

Edgar vs Philip is a product of having more than 20 significant characters and not proofreading well enough.  All the Philip references amount to typos of Edgar's name.  Philip shouldn't show up until much later, he's the Kaiser's son and heir.  One reason for the screw up is that I intend to contrast these two characters.  How they each deal with issues of loss and matters of legacy.

The [H] in the last paragraph of the funeral scene should be Edgar as Well. The [J] in the later text should be Claud and the [Z3] is Ian.  I can resend individually if anyone would rather have those fixes in place before critique.

@Comatose
To help me better understand, I'm curious as to why you think it was a good choice to make it vague as to how much time had passed between Se'amus' funeral and the engagement party.  It felt organic to me and I didn't put a lot of thought into it, so I'd like to hear yours.

[Valkynphyre]

Hmm... I liked the way the hamlet angle was covered. That story never gets old, but it felt like there were words missing here and there. A little too little detail, in places. There was a contradiction in there, too. near the paragraph about the burial mounds. And the dialogue was a little off as well... just a touch too modern or a touch too ancient. It's almost there, though.

Plenty enjoyable.

I also enjoyed the jump between eras but didn't get it for several paragraphs. Once it clicked into place, it flowed naturally, though.

[Renoard]

Can you point out the contradictions.  Obviously if I saw them I'd have not made them.

hmmmm the dialogue is supposed to be the markedly plain speech of the 1620's, rather than Shakespearian flora.  Modern English but not too modern.  I'm drawing on my memory of Hawthorne and Mather.  Again any specific anomalies you can point out would be helpful.

[Comatose]

@Comatose
To help me better understand, I'm curious as to why you think it was a good choice to make it vague as to how much time had passed between Se'amus' funeral and the engagement party.  It felt organic to me and I didn't put a lot of thought into it, so I'd like to hear yours.

I have to think about that.  I was just going of my first impression of the piece.  I suppose it just made it interesting.  Like you said, you just let it slip organically that the second scene was a year later.  It gave me as the reader more the puzzle out through the course of the scene.  First, we have Edgar getting dressed.  Then we find out his mother is getting married.  Then we find out it is to his uncle.  Now at one of these points, I started to wonder, "Well how long has it been since her husband died?"  Even though it only took you a few paragraphs to bring up the jump in time, the gradual release of information gave the back of my brain more to work on, and thus made it more interesting to read, I guess.  Does that help?

[Renoard]

@ Comatose

Yeah.  That helps. 

This is the point where I say, "Yeah.  Meant to do that.  Yeah. That's the ticket."

[Silk]

The emotion of the funeral scene shines particularly in the third paragraph. The others weren't bad, but this is where I realy started to emphathize with Edgar.

The jump in time between the funeral and the wedding (I'm assuming there must have been one, for propriety's sake if nothing else) seems rather abrupt. It's not the way that you worked the information in, which I agree was done just fine, it's the transition itself. The moment I saw Edgar's mother getting married I assumed there must have been a time gap of several months at least, and I dunno, it just seems an odd jump without at least a chapter break in between. I seem to be the only one who thought so, though.

It took me a minute to decide whether Lord Eastmark and Juan Carlos were the same thing. Perhaps because Eastmark sounds particularly English, and Juan Carlos distinctly does not.  I guess in a Renaissance fantasy I don’t expect intermarriage between different ethnicities that the name suggests.

Hey look! I'm reading Hamlet.

The voice in these two scenes are distinctly different than the voice of the first half of the chapter. In theory that's a good thing, but they're so distinct that some may find it a bit jarring. Personally, I don't think I've seen enough of it yet to decide.

[Renoard]

@ Silk and Valkemphyre. I'm aware of the parallels to Hamlet, and they're intentional, but I'm absolutely not novelizing Hamlet.  I may have bitten off more than I can chew, but the scope and scale is a whole lot larger and more politically complex.

I have drawn on five classic pieces of English, Russian and German literature, but I'm not simply stealing from them even if it looks like it in certain passages.  It'll get a lot more evocative in chapters 2-4. I'm just hoping that won't be a discouragement for the reader to continue.

[Valkynphyre]

@ Silk and Valkemphyre. I'm aware of the parallels to Hamlet, and they're intentional, but I'm absolutely not novelizing Hamlet.  I may have bitten off more than I can chew, but the scope and scale is a whole lot larger and more politically complex.

I have drawn on five classic pieces of English, Russian and German literature, but I'm not simply stealing from them even if it looks like it in certain passages.  It'll get a lot more evocative in chapters 2-4. I'm just hoping that won't be a discouragement for the reader to continue.

Ah, you might want to look into that stealing business.... It's what great authors do, you know.

[Silk]

I didn't really think that you were novelizing Hamlet--it's just that the parallels are obvious (and in what you've given us so far of that character, at least, there's not much else yet). I don't really think it's a problem. Some readers might find it discouraging but I'm not that reader. It's just very noticeable.

[Comatose]

I liked the elements of Hamlet you put in.  It was something framiliar that drew my attention, and I think you have enough original elements that it's obvious this is no novelization. 
It's not a discouragement at all!