Nov 7 2011-TleeMcClellan-Hunted Part 1 (V)

[TleeMcCllelan]

I started this last week so this is a very rough first draft. Not entirely sure where i am going with this one it kinda took on a life of its own. anyway looking forward to your comments. Oh and I am giving it a small warning for violence (V)

Basic outline Brinna and Mark are in hiding because of what Brinna is. They are discovered and Brinna makes a choice that may end in death.

[Yados]

Reading through, the biggest weakness I find in this story is the way you handle Brinna. Although she is the main point of view, she has almost no agency in this story. Her husband shepherds her away. Hunters catch and beat them for no reason beyond their ability to do so. Brinna neither bargains nor threatens-- merely pleads until the climax. She's pregnant, yes, and that limits her ability to act physically, but we never see Brinna do anything but comply, inside and out, with the demands of others. Give her some fire. Give her some defiance.

More than just that is the problem of voice. Brinna almost never speaks. We have no tangible feel for how this character exists in the external world. This is especially troubling when the premise of the story is about witches, a label historically applied to women who threatened traditional ideals of society by their empowerment and independence. Brinna, despite her handicap, seems to have neither voice nor volition.

If it were me, I'd excise the character of Mark from the text as a whole and let Brinna be the engineer of her own escape/capture. Maybe Mark is waiting for her in the city. Maybe he died some time ago. But as of now, Mark is taking up so much of the page/thought-space and, more importantly, he's doing so at the expense of Brinna. True, this may cut away at some of the emotional core of the story, but taking him out may force you to build things to distinguish Brinna beyond her attachments to the people around her. Who is this character when you take away her husband and her baby?

There's also the problem that you set up a hard rule of magic – that it cannot be used while the wielder is pregnant-- and then break it, three pages later, with zero consequences to the characters. You can't do that and expect the reader to take anything you put forth seriously from there on because there is no assurance that any restrictions will last longer than the plot requires them too.

On a more technical level, you seem to have problems with commas and with merging compound sentences. I pointed out most of the instances in my line edit, but you'll want to go over it again. You also take a long time to say very simple things. I pruned a lot of what I felt was unnecessary. Obviously, you have a better feel for your own story, but consider a more terse style. You use a lot of qualifying words that don't add anything and don't even establish a voice for your character. With that space, you could use vivid detail to really put your reader in the shoes of Brinna. I should also point out that none of the characters/places/etc were described. I don't know what Brinna or Mark or any of the Hunters look like.

Your dialogue is a little plain. Sometimes you have blocks of speech by one character that could be turned into a conversation easily and make the information being conveyed seem more natural. Simultaneously, you could be establishing voice, something that was sorely lacking here. Try really nailing down the speech patterns for all your characters. It's what can take a throwaway character and turn him/her into a memorable one.

I think that this story has a resonating emotional core at its heart and, if you do a little excavation, it will really shine through. I also think that the way you're using magic is interesting and this system (draining and refocusing the life-force of others) could have huge implications for a wider society. Keep at it, but be mindful of the disconnect between how these characters/places exist in your imagination and how you're presenting them to your audience. Take steps to make the characters and world as vivid on the page as they no doubt are in your head and I think a lot of the problems this story has so far will be resolved.

Also: on the off-chance that you read this before you check your email, I've sent you line edits.

I wish you the best in revising this and moving forward.

[TleeMcCllelan]

Hey thanks so much for looking at this. You have given me a lot to think about and a lot to work with and i appreciate it.

[cjhuitt]

The biggest problem I had with the story was the lack of repercussions, as Yados mentioned. Even if Brinna thinks it will kill her baby and end the end it doesn't, there needs to be repercussions of the act to justify her fears and the dictate to her kind not to use magic while pregnant.

I also had a thought that she might end up giving birth at some point, which would cause a real escalation of problems, both for Brinna and the hunters. How would the hunters react? What would Brinna do if she started labor while bound?

The change in the captain's attitude near the end seemed abrupt to me. Sure, he explains to Brinna why (and why does he explain? what does he owe her?), but I didn't think it was set up well. I was reading the captain as a competent but not over-zealous "good" guy on the other side. Suddenly, one night close to the destination he totally changes and starts killing his prisoner?

Related to that, I think you could foreshadow her decision for more of the piece. Perhaps show Brinna come close to using her magic a couple of times before realizing what it would do to her baby, and stopping herself.

I also agree with Yados about the lack of detail and the extra words used to tell the story.

In the overall world, I worry that the power you've shown Brinna capable of at the end is too strong. If all witches could do that, hunters wouldn't capture them and hold trials before killing them. Rather than risk that, they would probably set up an ambush with arrows and try to kill the witch outright without them knowing any better. Unless the hunters themselves have some sort of protection going on that we don't see. Also, if Brinna was so concerned about Mark having a tattoo, why not heal or obscure her own? If she was being chased, it would only make sense, and if there was a reason she didn't, it should probably come out in the text.

Finally, and this is a little nit-picky, but you present Brinna and Mark at the beginning as living rustically, but Brinna grabs their papers right away when packing to leave. I expected papers to be rarer in this setting, and even if not rare, couldn't think of what would be important to someone like Brinna. I would suggest showing why they're important, or replacing it with something else. Do show her grabbing something, however; what she decided to take is a good glimpse into her character, and one you should use.