Reading Excuses 2015-08-24 Essence of Fire Vial 2 Sub 3 (V,D,L)

[Kammererite]

Unfortenrtly I didn't get as much editing in as i would have liked, but i do hope it is an improvement in the English department.

 

I might just be me ,but there feel's like something was missing in these scene. However, i could not figure out what it was. Let me know if you feel that as well or if I am imagining things.

Cheers 

Edited August 25, 2015 by Kammererite

[Shrike76]

General Stuff

P1:

  - "Pools of blood and torn bodies once again decorate the main hall..." - This has happened before?

P2:

  - "The water boils, steam curls up from the pot" - Over the low flame of a lamp? This should never boil, and take hours to even get warm, but it feels like it's almost immediate.

P3:

  - The first gryphon should be the first. The second should be the dead one

P4:

  - I dislike the potions having such a definite time limit. It feels like I'm in a video game where time-based effects are important, but we don't think of real life effects in that way (like how long a cup of coffee will actually affect your alertness). I'd much prefer seeing the effects in action, and seeing how long they last (with a fade out if there is one) than having him tell me "This will last 30-40 minutes".

P5:

 - I'm not sure what's going on with the glacier. It feels like that's part of the magic system, but I'm not sure how it works. Does he need to break down the dams for the potion to take effect? Is he trying to limit it? I got the impression that the dams breaking made the effect more powerful, but he's talking about lowering the dams (the shattered dams) more, but then all of a sudden he's out of it and the smells around him are irrelevant? I'm very confused.

P11:

 - More of the potions duration/potency. POV character seems to know exactly how they'll affect him but we don't really. He runs numbers through his head but doesn't tell us what those numbers are (and we should know since we're in his head). How close is he to his limit, what is his limit, and what exactly are the consequences for him going over?

  - He should be getting naked, or at least stripping layers. Being hot or cold is one thing, being wet is another. Nobody who knows anything about survival allows themselves to get and stay wet in cold temperatures, especially through sweat.

Throughout:

  - One thing that felt off through the chapter was the internal monologue. It felt too much like an actual conversation than a flow of thoughts, which felt weird. Specific examples like on page 11 where we get "Haven't you had enough Essence for the day?" really feels like a voice in his head rather than internal monologue.

 

Grammar:

P2:

  - If it's a figure in a black cloak, it's a black-cloaked figure. A black cloaked figure means the figure is black and has a cloak.

  - viciously, not "viscously"

P3:

  - "was train to hunt" - trained

  - "better camouflage then" - than

  - "bearish-neetut" - either bearish tracks or bear-Neetut tracks would work.

P6:

  - "begins to glide the right" - to the right

P4:

  - "I open it to a myriad" - to find? to see? to reveal?

P7:

  - "turn the tiler" - tiller

P8:

  - 'the horizon is races" - races, or is racing

P11:

 - migraine, not "mind grain"

 

Wordage

There are several words you misuse/overuse

 - Several instances of "stubble" where it should be "stumble"

 - Several instances of "sent" where it should be "scent"

 - Several instances of "dames" instead of "dams"

 - I'd recommend you go through and kill off as many of the instances where you use "begins to" as possible. It's a lazy word choice and usually can be cut out completely. Just tell us what's happening, not what's beginning to happen, unless it's important that it's just beginning to happen.

      - ie. "I begin to hyperventilate", "begin to disappear", "begin to merge", "begins to glide", etc.

          - If you'll allow me to get a little bit more pedantic about why these word choices are poor and a little bit lazy, let's single out "I follow the tracks for a hundred paces as they begin to disappear": Does he really quit when they only begin to disappear? The tracks visibly keep going but they've started to fade, they've "begun to disappear", so to hell with it, he's gone far enough? I doubt that very much. Or does he follow them until the last trace is gone, until they're indistinguishable from other markings? If we take it even further: Does he struggle to see where they might lead, even if he can't see the tracks which prove it? What do the tracks look like and is he looking for just footprints or also lost/discarded equipment or blood drops? There are probably a thousand ways you could use this to show us his nature and his skill set, but we only get that he follows the tracks for a little bit, and then he's done.
 

 

Overall, I think the world is interesting and has a lot of potential, and I think you have the seeds of a very interesting magic system here, but it isn't very clearly represented. I often find myself wondering what's going on and having no idea what the character is trying to accomplish with his dams. With more information, or just better information, I think it could really shine.

As to your comment about what's missing, I'd say it's desperation. Your POV character is doing things, dangerous things, in order to accomplish something, but I don't get a sense that he really feels as though he needs to do it, or what the consequences will be if he doesn't succeed.

Edited August 25, 2015 by Shrike76

[Asmodemon]

Shrike was already quite thorough, I don’t have much to add to it.

 

Tea: Your main character drags himself out from underneath the dead body of his friend/acquaintance and moves to a camp while everyone around him is dead. And when he is there he makes tea. Is that really a priority at that point?

 

Gryphons: It’s jarring that you start with a ‘second’ gryphon before showing the first. It takes three paragraphs before it becomes clear to me that your main character killed one griffin (the first) and that the second one is still alive. I suggest you start this section with the dead gryphon and the arrow of the crossbow that killed it, before moving on to the second gryphon.

 

Poncho: ‘The poncho I made from a polar bear pelt blanket’. When did he make this?

 

Dams: I don’t think I understand enough of your magic system yet to make sense of building dams in an internal world and then tearing them down to access magic, or to create a flow of magic. There is nothing to dam when he’s constructing them, then when the dams are there all of sudden there is a magic flow behind them. Feels weird.

[Kammererite]

Thanks for the feedback so far.

To answer some of your questions/comment:

Shrike:

The lamp flame: good catch didn't even think of that.

Potion time limits: I am not going for a videogame feel but i want the magic to be finite but not defined. i think of my magic like alcohol. It effect each person differently and each potion is slightly different so a "Standard dose" has a range. That being said magic is intrinsic to the culture and most people will know rough how long a dose will last in the sense that its more then 15min less then an hour.

 

If i broadened the range would it feel less video gamey?

 

Good point about the word begin.

 

As for the inner monolouge i was trying to make it like he was arguing with himself. (i was not sure if would work but i thought i would field it to see.) 

 

You should see the math as he is thinking about it....Now to figure out the exact math.  

 

Asmodemon:

 

Tea: It was aiming mindless need to do something he can control and return some order to the world  rather then " a cuppa tea sounds good right now".

I will have to look for a way to show that difference.  

 

Poncho: he made it off stage. I had a scene where he does this and packs but it felt like a bunch of pointless exposition that was boring, so I cut it and tried to sliver the details of said scene.

 

 

Both:

Gryphons: You are both right about the gryphons i came in to the seen to late to have them numbered as such.

 

Dams and Magic:  I was aiming for a "Flame in the void" kind of thing with controlling my magic. 

I had a seen in my first submission (Which Shrike i know you joined after) where i tried to hammer out the rules of magic. it was a jargon filled mess and overly complex.

If you had read a scene earlier where it explains:

A) The Glacier is an expression of ones self, the lake is the reservoir of magic  and the river distribute the magic through the body.

The dams suppress magic by extending length and lowering effect via lowering the flow down the rivers.

C) the dams are made ice from the glacier.

Would this have helped you understand what was happening?

 

 

Thanks again

[Shrike76]

Potion time limits: I am not going for a videogame feel but i want the magic to be finite but not defined. i think of my magic like alcohol. It effect each person differently and each potion is slightly different so a "Standard dose" has a range. That being said magic is intrinsic to the culture and most people will know rough how long a dose will last in the sense that its more then 15min less then an hour.

 

If i broadened the range would it feel less video gamey?

 

Even for something like alcohol, I can look at a bottle of beer and it will tell me it's 5% or 8.8% and based on my past experience with my body type I can guess what the effect will be, and know that one or three or five of them will affect me a certain way. I can guess at how long it will last, but I'd never say that I'd be drunk for 70-80 minutes or what have you (and I certainly would expect the label to tell me the duration), and it certainly wouldn't be affecting me one minute and gone the next, the rate of it hitting me, like the rate of it going away would be gradual.

And at any rate, even if it WAS alcohol in your story and not essence, I'd rather have them look at the strength and then be shown exactly what it does for them and for how long, rather than for them to try and constrain the time-frame. Show me what it does. Show me how long it lasts. Show me the consequences of them taking too much. That will make me buy into the story so much more.

 

Dams and Magic:  I was aiming for a "Flame in the void" kind of thing with controlling my magic. 

I had a seen in my first submission (Which Shrike i know you joined after) where i tried to hammer out the rules of magic. it was a jargon filled mess and overly complex.

If you had read a scene earlier where it explains:

A) The Glacier is an expression of ones self, the lake is the reservoir of magic  and the river distribute the magic through the body.

The dams suppress magic by extending length and lowering effect via lowering the flow down the rivers.

C) the dams are made ice from the glacier.

Would this have helped you understand what was happening?

 

That would have helped a little, yes. Again, I would like, rather than having the rivers simply described, to have seen the effects of him opening the dams and having the essence flow through his body (and why it seems as though, as soon as he stops focusing on the dams and clicks back to the real world, the effects of the essence seem to have moved on). And again, this seems like a cool magic system to me, it just needs a little bit of polish

In case it was also covered in the first chapter: Are the vials the only source of this essence that powers the magic? And how are the vials made, or what are they distilled from?

[Mandamon]

I think Shrike and Asmodemon covered all the points I would make as well.  My big issues were the internal monologue sounding like someone else is in his head and the undefined nature of the Olemus/Essence.

 

There's also not a lot of description to let us know where he is.  I think from the last chapter he was outside a village?  With the description of the glacier and lake referring to the Olemus at the same time he's riding in a boat, the last section got pretty confusing.

[rdpulfer]

- I actually liked the bit about the tea. He seems to do it automatically rather than out of enjoyment.

 

- This might be a little too nitpicky, but the various Essences seem too much like a fantasy RPG, like Essence of night vision and Essence of memory blanks. A general Essence of Sight or so Essence of Mind might feel a little more appropriate.

 

- As I've noted before, I don't think your language is an issue. I really liked the action and description in this passage. Just be sure to spend more time establishing the setting. I'm having the same trouble with my draft of Scholomancer right now. 

 

- So he loses consciousness again? This might be a little redundant compared to the last chapter. 

[rohyu]

The character's internal monologue gave me the impression he is not alone in his own head.

 

I think Shrike is right about a lack of urgency for the character. Someone trying to rescue a loved one might try to outrun a snowstorm rather than hunker down in an iceboat.

[Robinski]

The submission started promisingly as protag discovers the wake of the attack, but I quickly became annoyed by his asking himself questions and answering them in thought, or vice versa. I really don’t think I could endure that for an entire novel. I found it annoying.

 

The lack of any thought for his father, who he arrived with, surprised me. I found that I couldn’t remember if his father was dead or captured. This may just be weekly reader syndrome however.

 

Later on, I found myself skimming. There is a lot of description of how he sails the boat, combined with this magical stuff that he’s doing at the same time. I found it all rather confusing and, to be honest, a bit boring. At the end, I tried to sum up what happened in this section. He discover another massacre, shoots a couple of gryphons, which is dealt with very dismissively, then spends the rest of the section steering a boat (badly) and doing some magical stuff.

 

I’ve enjoyed earlier submissions. There has been some good action, but this one pretty much left me cold.

 

I'm keen to see next week’s now, where I find myself hoping he will encounter more people, and therefore will hopefully not be talking and thinking to himself.

 

------------------------------------------------------

 

“hyperventilate” – A modern word, it might be accurate, but it threw me out of the story.

 

I found protag talking to himself combined with an internal monologue awkward. It smacks of trying to be writer-ly, but I didn’t think it worked, personally.

 

When protag leaves the manor I'm thinking, what happened to his father? He’s dead, right? But I'm surprised that protag is not considering how he is leaving his father’s body behind, given that they arrived in that place together. Or does he think his father captured? I forget.

 

Unless you are writing a technical paper, I don’t think you should be using numerals in prose. “thirty to forty minutes” is more appropriate, I think.

 

Okay, this thinking and talking out loud is horribly awkward. Is that going to be the case through the rest of the story? If so, I would be thinking about putting the book down right about now. I have never seen that before. It’s weird behaviour and naive too. He’s trying to evade or follow these creatures, but he could easily alert them to his presence. I get the impression he is an outdoorsy sort, so I have real difficulty convincing myself that he act this way in the wild.

 

Do we know already what ‘Olemus’ means? I must admit, I don’t remember. And whoa, what are the nine senses?

 

I do not care how to the ice boat is steered. I found the about the ropes rather boring, and unnecessary.

 

Nobody says “phew” or “Uh-oh” to themselves. It’s weird. Even him thinking it would be better than saying these things out loud.

[Robinski]

I started doing a 'tracked changes' (suggestions) on the Word file, but now that I've read the other comments, I reckon that the others have pretty much nailed it, apart from:

 

"planes" should be plains, as in wide open plains;

 

"adorned with spikes" - presumably;

 

 

There are some instances where the capitlisation is off, in my view:

 

"Tornak Village" - it's the name of the village, so should be capitalised;

 

You've been capitalising Neetut throughout, I think, but there is an uncapitalised one in there (top of Page 4);

 

Bottom of Page 1, I see no basis to capitalise warlock - it's just a warlock, not a named one.

[Kammererite]

Hi All,

Thanks for the great feedback.

The inner monologue will be changed in the next submission and those after it. i might have gotten away with that.

 

To answer some questions raised:

Shrike:

I do not cover how the potions are made..etc in the first chapter. As much as i would like to do a full magic system dump much of the information is probably irrelevant to the story. i might work bits in the later submissions for flavor but i wont know till i get to them.

 

RDP and Mandamon:

i see what you mean about setting the scene. i am  trying to keep the description to a minimum to stop myself from over describing and to keep the pace high but an extra paragraph of description would probably be more beneficial to keep you in the setting. 

 

RDP:

I'm happy you liked the Tea

The end I was aiming more for him passing out from exhaustion rather then being knocked out. but i can see it being redundant. i will think over that. 

 

Rohyu:

Yea he is alone in his head...that's my bad.

Having him try and outrace the storm was in my outline, but the story didn't unfold that way when i wrote it. 

 

Robinski:

Which part did you find boring?

When did you start skimming?

Would it have worked better to keep you attention if i cut the sailing, putting a scene break from finding the ice boat to him crashing it?

I think i mention what the Olemus is in chapter one, i need to beef up and clarify the magic in this section so it is understandable and less boring.

 

Thanks again!

[Robinski]

I wasn't interested in the how the boat was constructed / steered - for me, it takes away momentum from the chase. I tend to doubt the protag is sitting there thinking about how the boat works, he's surely concentrated on the pursuit, desperate to catch up with the captives and make some attempt to free them.

 

I don't think you need to cut the boat. You could talk about him sailing it incautiously because he's so concentrated on being fast - even talk about near-misses and sailing on the edge of control because he's taking big risks to make ground. I reckon that sort of approach lets you show time and distance passing, but in an exciting / tension-filled way.