Kammererite-2015-07-27 Essence of Fire- Vial 1- Submission

[Kammererite]

Here is a place to post you comments and feedback.

Cheers

[rdpulfer]

- I really like the hook. It's gritty and very up close. The prose might need a little tightening. The phrase "numerous shallow pools of blood" sounds a little bit clunky.

 

- I think the line is supposed to be "Still want to be a hero?

 

- Should Bloody Spirits be capitalized? This could be world slang, but it looks a little strange Bloody is capitalized . . . unless this is explained later on.

 

- There's a lot of missing words in the first couple pages. You might want look back over it and make sure everything is where it should be.

 

- On page five, you start two paragraphs with "Something..." You might want to check it so it doesn't look redundant to the reader.

 

- You should have a question mark for "Is he actually using a longbow or am I just delirious from the bloodless?" Also, I think you mean blood lose.

 

- In addition to missing words, I'm seeing a lot of missing punctuation, like the example above. You might want to watch out for that too.

 

- How is a voice musical, unless she is singing? I think you mean that its softer than the others, but if that's the case, why wouldn't the main character not immediately know the speaker is female? 

 

Overall, I liked this chapter, despite the numerous grammar and punctuation errors (which I'm in no position to criticize, given what Mandamon and Robinski find in my submissions on a weekly basis). Kind of like a Gothic supernatural horror rolled into a fantasy world. I'm definitely curious to know more. You might just need to slow down and make sure you are getting all the words in. Mistakes are unavoidable, but there were parts where the prose felt very rushed. 

[Esaias]

The story itself is interesting, but all the errors make it hard to read.

 

Here are the errors I noticed and suggestions I have for the first 3 pages. There are a lot more throughout the entire chapter.

 

Still want to a hero?"

 

You seem to be missing a word here.

 

He leads the way down an ally towards the center of the town.

 

“ally” should be alley.

 

"What could do this?”?

 

There is an extra question mark.

 

He continue his silent march

 

“continue” should be continues.

 

I just can’t wait to meet a brood of literally spirit-cursed men and animals.

 

The “literally” seems unnecessary to me.

 

A black shape bursts out of a door a hundred paces down the alley into the air.

 

I think this would be better reworded as: “A hundred paces down the alley, a black shape bursts out of a door and into the air.” Or something like that.

 

I lead the shape

 

I’m not entirely sure what this means.

 

one of the second lowest mark

 

“mark” should be marks.

 

The arrow punch through

 

“punch” should be punches.

 

back shapes center arrow taking

 

“back shapes” should be black shape’s. “arrow” should be a comma instead.

 

My father turns around stepping forward with his own crossbow pointed down the alley to cover me as step in to the stirrup and reload.

 

Maybe “My father turns around and steps forward with his crossbow pointed down the alley, covering me as I reload.” instead?

 

He slowly approach the downed creature.

 

“approach” should be approaches.

 

I half holding my breath, crossbow trained on the black shape, Neetut, even small ones don’t die easy.

 

“I half hold my breath, crossbow trained on the black shape. Neetut, even the small ones don’t die easy.”

in the center of the intersection is a pile of what of is a pile of shredded meat.

 

I think you mean: “in the center of the intersection is a pile of shredded meat.”

 

“Being a heroes is going to get us killed”

 

“a heroes” should just be “heroes”.

 

I skirt along the side of the buildings to avoid getting any closer to the carnage in the center then physically possible.

 

“then physically possible” is not needed.

 

The village manor is a grad

 

“grad” should be grand.

 

flanked by a long hall on either creating

 

You are missing a word here.

 

A large banners of azure

 

“A large banners” should be “Large banners” (or “A large banner”)

 

There is a lot of missing punctuation.

[Kammererite]

Thanks for the feed back so far. I do want the pace to feel fast but not rushed so ill have to work on that.

Spelling and grammar have always been my bane. ill have to try a different method of reviewing, as my brain goes to autopilot every time I read something I've written and I get the full intended sentence rather then what I had written. Has anyone had luck reading out load to catch missing words and mistakes.

[Shrike76]

Thanks for the feed back so far. I do want the pace to feel fast but not rushed so ill have to work on that.

Spelling and grammar have always been my bane. ill have to try a different method of reviewing, as my brain goes to autopilot every time I read something I've written and I get the full intended sentence rather then what I had written. Has anyone had luck reading out load to catch missing words and mistakes.

Reading out loud can definitely help you catch mistakes because you'll trip over things you might normally read over. Also, I have the most success reading backwards one sentence at a time. It breaks the flow you might otherwise get into and makes it much easier to catch grammatical errors.

[Mandamon]

The story itself is interesting, but it's hard to read through all the grammatical errors.  I like the worldbuilding I've seen so far, and I'm interested to see how the magic works here.  I don't have a great feel for the characters yet, but it's only the first chapter.

I would think a once-over proofread would catch most of these errors pretty quickly and make this a lot easier to read.  The advice above is good.  Reading out load certainly helps you catch errors.

 

There are also some consistent mistakes in not finishing sentences within quotes, especially with question marks, and consistent lack of commas.

 

Notes below:

 

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LOTS of punctuation errors: commas, periods, periods after quotes (rather than in the quotes), verb/noun agreement, lack of question marks, lack of italics on internal thoughts

 

Some examples of lack of comma usage:

 This is an awful idea, we’re not knights, Bloody Sprits we’re not even soldiers. We’re geologists not heroes. 

 "They look like claw marks" I remark,

 Come on lets hurry".  

 I spin around raising my crossbow to my shoulder looking down the bone shaft to the tip of the razor sharp flint arrowhead.

 it better be it took me a week to set the sights to the right distances. 

 

Lastly, I'm not big on present-tense prose, but that's a personal preference.  Here there is the problem of mixing the boy's thoughts (which are usually in present tense) and speech, and not giving clear indication which is which.

[Kammererite]

Thanks for suffering through the poor grammar Mandamon. I will defiantly keep an eye out for the errors you mentioned.

First person present if weird for me as well. The first and third scenes were originally written in past tense. Initially when I switched to the present tense I would often find my self drifting back into past tense when writing (still do sometimes). 

One of the main reasons I decided to write in first person present is I accidently world built my self into it.  Only ~ 1% of the population is literate. The rest of the population uses magic to communicate via storing and transferring memories. I tried to hint at this in the Lorekeepers note at the beginning. 

I am a little worried that you don't have a feel for the character yet, as this is planned to be a ~30K novella, and submission 1 ends at roughly the 15% mark. If you don't get a good feel for them by the end of submission 2 I might have to make Kanagalak and his father rescue a puppy in the first scene .

 

Cheers

[Robinski]

I enjoyed this. I felt I got a good sense of the main two characters and their goals naturally, without unnecessary exposition. I thought the description of the gruesome scenes of death were effective. As a read on, there was a lot of information in the chapter. I know establishing chapters are difficult and there is a temptation to put everything in, but I think holding back can be more effective in the long run.

 

The real problem I had was all the typos, which made it difficult to read. I know that these are easy things to fix. Please excuse my directness, but is English your second language by any chance? I see some chat on this above.

 

I like the way you have written the inquisitor, his calm, well-spoken voice is easy to distinguish from the other characters, so you can drop a lot of dialogue tags, which helps with the flow.

 

I find the magic system bewildering. There are lots of references to essence of this and that and hos they work together. It all sounded like jargon to me. I must admit I switched off. I'm not big on magic system, and I couldn’t work out what was going on. It’s early in the story to be dropping all this stuff on the reader, I think. If you want them to understand the magic, I would have thought feeding in the details gradually would be more effective. This said, once we get past that initial tumble of jargon, there is good tension in his struggle with keeping the dams intact.

 

I think with a lot of polishing of the writing and maybe holding back some of the detailed information you would have a really effective first chapter there. It has a good amount of action, tension and action, good character introductions and an introduction of the magic system (although I would consider cutting that down on its first use).

 

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Lorekeeper’s OR Lorekeepers’ – depending on how many lorekeepers there are, but definitely need an apostrophe.

 

Straight away, I'm interested by the ‘otherness’ of the opening. I’ve never read a vial before, which I thought felt inventive, so I'm hoping for more of the same.

 

“small” alley isn’t all that helpful as description – does this mean narrow or short?

 

“Still want to be a hero”

 

“This is an awful idea, we’re not knights, Bloody Sprits we’re not even soldiers. We’re geologists not heroes” – Excellent line, it lets me make a bunch of assumptions on little things about the characters without a lot of description.

 

“grooves in the wall” - presumably

 

There are a lot of typos, it’s pretty distracting on reading.

 

“even small ones don’t die easy” – good line, tells me something about Neetut while increasing tension.

 

Does frozen meat smell?

 

“over a hundred bodies although no single one is identifiable” – truly disturbing, good description.

 

Does the father vomit too? I didn’t see that until he was wiping his mouth. He comes across as very capable and, quietly, very brave – I feel from my first impression of the father that he would be able to hold it in.

 

I like the way you convey the background information about these two and their goals. It’s in the context of the meeting they are heading to, so there’s no hint of info dump, I think.

 

The father’s statement about being a hero seems out of character to me, I don’t sense that is really what he wants, he’s trying to achieve this thing for his son, isn’t he? This second talk about being hero seems repetitious and, I thought, unnecessary.

 

“a grad affair” – Grad? Did you mean drab?

 

“Statures Statues of the nine”

 

wolf-like

 

“delirious from bloodless blood loss”

 

“My focuses returns”

 

“Well Good sir Felsiit” – if Sir Felsiit is a title ‘Sir’ should be capitalised by convention, as it’s part of his name, but I thought you said he wasn’t a knight?

[Robinski]

I think RDP has snagged something there in talking about rushing. I does read as if you have blasted through it and really not checked back at all. If you are aiming to submit this anywhere, ultimately, you're going to have really get on top of the grammar stuff, because editors are going to run out of patience pretty quickly, I would imagine.

 

Reading out loud would probably help, I find it an excellent tool for refining dialogue, listening to what your characters are saying and whether it sounds like the way people in your world would speak. Good for grammar too. The important thing about editing is that it's not a fast process, you can't rush it, you have to take your time and get it right.

 

I'd be interested to know how many words you have written in your writing career. Your craft should improve as you go on, provided that you work at it, and you can conquer grammar, but I would say it takes effort and concentration.

 

Brandon talks about how he doesn't like editing and finds it hard compared to writing, but he does it. He's a professional (obviously) and must spend those hard hours getting his book into the best shape possible. As writers aspiring to be published, we need to learn to do the same thing - that's my 5c.

 

Again though, I enjoyed your submission, I think there's some good potential there, but some work to do on editing!!

[Kammererite]

Thanks for reading Robinki. I am, glad you enjoyed it despite the grammar.

 

English is my first language.

 

I did feel rushed although I'm not sure why, as I have no plans for publication in the near future. At the moment I am just trying to write a "ripping yarn". 

 

I really want to keep a  "Magic" scene there but I do no what you mean about it being very upfront. I'll think on it and see if I can prune it back in the next draft.    

 

As for my total word written (just speculative fiction since finishing high school) about a total of 40,000 words (~ 25,000 of a Novel  before abandoning 5 years ago, and ~5,000 words of different beginning for the current story and I am 10,000 word in this novella so far.)

[Robinski]

I think there is quite a bit of 'ripping' about this yarn. I've had time to mull over my first impression and maybe it just falls under the same comment as the rest of the submission, that it a good thorough edit could sharpen up the whole thing, the magic scene included.

I don't think there's any harm in writing quickly to get something down and keep momentum of the ideas flowing, but it will need that good edit. I'm sure there's no right way to write - we've all got our styles and methods.

I asked about word count from the viewpoint of plain old writing practise. Someone said (can never remember who) that you need to write a million words before you know what you're doing. That's going to vary of course, I guess it's just an opinion, but I can see that practice makes perfect.