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2012 Sept 18 - Penance - Assassin's Penance Chapter 2 (V)


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First of all, I'd like to say that I enjoyed reading this chapter. It had some good action, and Madren's character was great. Here's the few issues I had with it.

Connection to chapter one- The only indication that the two chapters were part of the same book was the mention of katae. Though they don't need to be totally connected, it might help tp have them both mention something that at least shows us if both events occur on the same continent.

Sneaking- You have a lot of sneaking up on people in this chapter. I can accept that Madren can do this since he's an experienced warrior, but I doubt he could climb a tree someone else was on without them noticing. Belris doing this is also rather unlikely. She has no training, is also pregnant and apparently sick, but she somehow sneaks up behind Gaeryl and stabs him with a knife (where did she get the knife by the way?)

Sickness- You say Belris is sick, but you don't show any sicklines about her. I was very surprised when you said she's sick, she seemed perfectly healthy to me.

Commas- You soemtimes have long rambling sentences with no commas. Put them in. They're important.

A few small things- You say that Belris had traveled to their home to live with her uncle- is it home or her uncle's?

Also, Madren drops his sword when fighting Hoarth, and then has it again fighting Gaeryl, but you don't say he picks it up.

I really liked the whole religion/Shaper thing, I thought it sounded interesting and I'm sure we'll learn more about it as the story moves on.

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First of all, I'd like to say that I enjoyed reading this chapter. It had some good action, and Madren's character was great. Here's the few issues I had with it.

1. Connection to chapter one- The only indication that the two chapters were part of the same book was the mention of katae. Though they don't need to be totally connected, it might help tp have them both mention something that at least shows us if both events occur on the same continent.

2. Sneaking- You have a lot of sneaking up on people in this chapter. I can accept that Madren can do this since he's an experienced warrior, but I doubt he could climb a tree someone else was on without them noticing. Belris doing this is also rather unlikely. She has no training, is also pregnant and apparently sick, but she somehow sneaks up behind Gaeryl and stabs him with a knife (where did she get the knife by the way?)

3. Sickness- You say Belris is sick, but you don't show any sicklines about her. I was very surprised when you said she's sick, she seemed perfectly healthy to me.

Commas- You soemtimes have long rambling sentences with no commas. Put them in. They're important.

A few small things-

4. You say that Belris had traveled to their home to live with her uncle- is it home or her uncle's?

5. Also, Madren drops his sword when fighting Hoarth, and then has it again fighting Gaeryl, but you don't say he picks it up.

6. I really liked the whole religion/Shaper thing, I thought it sounded interesting and I'm sure we'll learn more about it as the story moves on.

Thanks for the feedback Trizee:

1. Good point, I'll see what I can do about that.

2. Again, good point. I thought Madren was enough of a distraction at the time, but I'll figure out some different blocking there.

3. She has a coughing fits that cause her to cough up blood, other than that she gets a little fatigued sometimes. I'll tighten up the symptoms so this makes sense.

4. This is confusing because their home in Fallow Downs is also where her uncle lives. I'll make this a little more clear.

5. Oops.

6. You betcha, lots more.

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Overall, an interesting chapter full of action.

Now, about that action. It takes up a lot of the chapter, and as such I have quite a few comments on it.

Trizee mentioned the commas in passing, but I want to be more specific about it. The action was confusing for me in many places as written, which could often be fixed by punctuation changes. I'll not limit this to commas; I think a lot of the run-on sentences should be separate sentence, not just peppered with commas. I'd go so far as to say most of the sentences in the beginning of this chapter should be short. It's standard writing advice because it works so often: keep your sentences short in action sequences. Predominately long sentences slow down reading, and therefore the reader's perception of how fast the action is moving for that part of the story. Mostly short sentences does the opposite.

Examples:

He looked into his Belris’ beautiful green eyes, now colored with fear, but thank the Shaper, the arrow hadn’t struck his wife.
as opposed to
He met Belris' beautiful green eyes, now colored with fear. Thank the shaper, the arrow hadn't struck his wife.

Or a longer section:

Confusion and terror apparent on their faces, Belris’ lovely blonde trusses framing her face, her full lips moving, but no sound coming out. Kynver wasn’t much better, his head whipping back and forth from the front of the wagon to the back, his short black hair almost a blur. How many times have I seen those same looks during battle? But this isn’t a battle, this is so much worse, before I only had to keep myself alive, here I have so much more to lose.
vs.
Confusion and terror filled their faces. Belris' lovely blond trusses framed her face while her lips moved soundlessly. Kynver wasn't any better: his head whipped back and forth between the front and back of the wagon so quickly his black hair was a blur. How many times have I seen those same looks during battle? This was worse. Before I only had to keep myself alive. Here...

Here I have so much more to lose.

(I added italics to set apart the inner dialog [first person present tense] from the rest [third person past tense], which helps also. You may already know this, but I've met quite a few people who haven't had this explained before.)

I tried to keep most of the same words you used in the same order, despite not quite being the same style I write in, and only change the punctuation and tense in the examples (plus the formatting). Of course, in a few places I couldn't help myself, but hopefully you get the idea.

Once you get to where Madren is fighting the bandits, things get even more confusing in many places due to not distinguishing who is doing what. This is also extra important in an action scene, and sometimes hard to do when you are trying to convey action, action, action and not action with long explanation. Even so, reader confusion slows down the story even more than brief explanations. Some examples of the confusion I had are:

... Madren had his hand over the archer’s mouth and thrust his sword into the man’s back, shooting through his lung and stabbing his heart. Dropping his bow with a small clatter and a gurgle bubbling...
Madren had a bow?
Before Hoarth could regain his balance Madren darted forward from his hiding spot shoving his sword into the man’s back [....] The blade caught on his ribs, stopping short of his lungs...
Here I first thought "his ribs" referred to Madren's ribs, since "his hiding spot" had referred to Madren's hiding spot.
As Madren walked toward Gaeryl he studied Kynver. Tears streamed from his face...
I thought the tears were on Madren's face, not Kynver's. A similar mistake happens later in the chapter.

There was also one place I thought might be a POV error. I mostly point this out because you had apparently been working hard to prevent such, as evidenced by the sentence:

Madren assumed the other man took that as assent, for a moment later heard him walking through the flora...
However, it was shortly followed by:
Hoarth stiffened, agony waving over him from the stab wound and the damage to his groin, but with his death confronting him he fought with the tenacity of a cornered animal...
This isn't necessarily a POV error, but after reading so much of the chapter so firmly in Madren's head, it seemed a little out of place.

Looking at some of the other things Trizee mentioned, I thought there was enough connection between the first and second chapter (katae, the Shaper) that it would probably be enough for me, especially as chapter one and two of a fantasy story. However, there is something to be said for trying for some similarity of situation or feel in the first chapters. It couldn't hurt to strengthen the feeling they are in the same story.

I caught that Madren picked his sword up again, although I might have just assumed so anyway. The illness came as a surprise to me, though, as did the pregnancy. As did her previous treatment at the hands of robbers, for that matter. It seems reasonable to skip on some of that during a fight, but it seemed like all of that came flying out once the bandits were gone, which was especially odd since we got the color of her eyes and hair in the first paragraph -- two attributes not nearly as relevant to the situation as the fact that she was sick (thus they were traveling the in wagon), was pregnant (and thus had a baby at risk during the attack), and had previously been raped by bandits (and thus potentially unpredictable in her reactions to bandits).

After reading all this, do remember I said that I liked it. I think there's a lot of good in here that could really shine with some polish.

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That's a LOT of feedback! Thanks so much for pointing all of those things out, I really appreciate the suggestions and critiques. The bits about italics for third person present and past tense were especially good since I hadn't heard that before. I'm going to review this a few more times to make sure I have a clear understanding. Also, thanks for your feedback on the blocking, my pronouns are obviously ambiguous and need a lot more clarity.

Thanks again for the feedback and keep it coming!

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I liked that the chapter was full of action. It didn't link with the previous one, but it didn't bother me enough to stop me.

The two main things for me are :

* the way the main character uses to dispatch the bandits. The man has a knife on hand and he still uses his sword to stab a man in a tree (note : the sequence in the tree was unclear. At some point, I wondered if there were 2 bandits in that tree and I had to re-read the paragraph). I tried to picture it in my mind, but the sword (unless it is really short) felt cumbersome for someone who wants stealth. With the second bandit, he does it again : using a sword where the knife would have been faster and more efficient.

* the wife's sickness. There was no sign of it at the beginning and when she wants to act, Madren mentions it even though his wife shows no signs of weakness.

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