01.01.13 - Haradion Drogon - The Bloodlands Chapter 3

[Haradion Drogon]

All relevant information in the E-Mail. Thanks again, for you critiques!

[Syme]

Unfortunately, I did not particularly like this chapter.

First of all, there were several problems with grammar and orthography. In an early draft it's of course perfectly normal to have a typo here and there, but there were several recurring things I noticed:

-Capitalization was wrong in many instances.

-If there's a sentence of dialogue, followed by a dialogue-tag, the sentence ends with a comma (or a question mark or exclamation mark), and the tag doesn't necessarily begin with a capital letter. "This is an example," the forum poster said.

-When you put the name of the person you're addressing into a sentence, it has to be separated from the rest of the sentence by a comma (commas on both sides if it's in the middle of the sentence). "This is an example, Haradion Drogon, this is how it's done."

The main problem is that nothing interesting happens. There's no real conflict, just some infodumping and a girl complaining about the info dump being boring. In an epic fantasy, not every chapter needs to be a zinger, but it should at least build up to something, which I don't really see here. If you must have the infodump, you need to find some way to make it more interesting. Show us how it relates to the characters or the plot.

[Mandamon]

I have to agree with Syme on this one. I'm interested in the new character of Sarriah, but the whole chapter seems an excuse for a history lesson, and her personality doesn't really come out. Especially since this is her first POV, I would make this a lot more character dependent, like skipping her lesson because she's impertinent, or going to it early because she's studious, or losing her way because she's forgetful...

There's a little bit of this in the chapter, but it's mostly washed away by the mountains of history. Just because she's learning it doesn't mean the reader needs to.

What is Sarriah's purpose? Is she the only child and destined to rule? Can females rule? Will she fight against the bloodlands? Is she a second child who only needs to be a learned historian for the duchy? So on. You can hint at what you plan for her in this opening section.

I'm also don't get a great sense of where the duchy of Doragon resides. You've had the bloodlands represented, mainly as a threat, but where is the duchy? Is it on the outskirts of the bloodlands, and thus needs to protect itself, or is it in the cosy interior of the allied duchies and can goof off while the other duchies are on guard?

[Haradion Drogon]

Hmm... Thank you for the very helpful tips. There are clearly some issues with this chapter, and I shall work on it. Thanks for the critiques!

[cjhuitt]

The main problem is that nothing interesting happens. There's no real conflict, just some infodumping and a girl complaining about the info dump being boring. In an epic fantasy, not every chapter needs to be a zinger, but it should at least build up to something, which I don't really see here. If you must have the infodump, you need to find some way to make it more interesting. Show us how it relates to the characters or the plot.

I have to agree with Syme on this one. I'm interested in the new character of Sarriah, but the whole chapter seems an excuse for a history lesson, and her personality doesn't really come out.

I agree with both of these, and in particular would point out that the full first page of the chapter is a history lesson, and not a particularly interesting one at that. (It's dry for the POV character, and not much better for me.)

I'll also second the need for action, or conflict, or something to spice things up. There is a small chance of such with Sarriah's resistance to Karreal's teaching, but not much. Nor do we get to see her doing what she wants to be doing -- being a princess -- because when she arrives at that point, it is the end of the chapter.

Along with Syme's bullet points of things to look for when editing, I also noticed that you would combine one person's reaction to a piece of dialog in the same paragraph as that dialog (spoken by another person). This can get confusing at times. An example:

“I mean we will be discussing The Bloodwar in detail. The events during and its impact on the development of the allied duchies.”Sarriah grinned.

The very next paragraph, you then have Sarriah's verbal response, and Karreal's reaction to her words.

The last two paragraphs of the first section of this chapter abruptly change to Karreal's POV for a few sentences, rather than Sarriah's. It seems to otherwise be written in 3rd-person limited, so I'm assuming this is a POV error. It abruptly switches back with the final sentence in the first section.

Finally, although it almost shows Sarriah doing what she wants to be doing, the second section of this chapter doesn't seem to add any information that we need right now. The most important bits seem to be that there are a pair of ambassadors present, and maybe reinforcing her position with her seat to the right of the throne.