AuthorityHellas16 - The Thousand Yard Stare - Chapter 1 [V, L]

[AuthorityHellas16]

Hi all,

 

Thanks again for all the wonderful feedback last time. I really appreciate you all coming along for this amazing ride. 

I’ve re-named the story the Thousand Yard Stare. For those of you familiar with the term, you can probably guess what’s coming; those who aren’t will hopefully understand by the end of this chapter. 

A couple of you suggested the venerable Robinski and his character vignettes as a way of getting into the mind of an individual, something I’m not afraid to admit I didn’t do much of with the previous draft. 

I’ve taken that idea further and made such a vignette into the first chapter of the book:

 

Previously:

Atena, Marcus and the armies of the Ordo milita respond to Cronus' rebellion and attempted coup, forcing the traitor to flee and saving the life of Altamar’s “god-king” Octavian. 

Now, the story skips ahead twelve years. The war between Cronus and Altamar continues, and Atena has been promoted to Field Marshal.

 

Special feedback from this chapter:

• Is the timeskip too jarring? I made it thus to avoid the dissatisfaction of my previous “it was all a dream” ending
• Does the information and world building in the chapter make sense, or is it confusing?
• What do you think of the character of Atena?
• Given that this comes straight after an action-packed prologue, is the pacing boring? Is it just boring on its own merits?
• Is Atena’s flashback and her reaction to it melodramatic (the description of PTSD is deliberately medically accurate, but that doesn’t always make convincing fiction!)

 

NB: I made a slight change to the prologue that has the Ordo Milita’s HQ in the mouth of an extinct volcano overlooking Altamar to explain how the rebellion could have gained so much traction before they arrived. Just to clear up any confusion when Atena suddenly has to leave a volcano to get to Altamar!

 

As always, any and all feedback is greatly appreciated. 

 

Cheers!

 

AH16

[kais]

Overall

I liked it. A lot. I got a lot more feel for Atena, who she is as a person, and why war is so heavy on her mind. I'm still confused about the war in general, and would like more reasons for its existence, but you're doing very well on character development. 

Your questions

- timeskip: is fine with me

- worldbuilding: LOVED it

- Atena: she needs work, but I like what is coming forth. We get a few more personal stakes out of her and I'm all aboard Team Atena

- pacing: I found this chapter to have more tension and better pacing than the action-packed one before it. THIS chapter would have me keep reading the book. The one before would have turned me off as just battle with zero character development. This chapter gives me world, stakes, people, investment.

- flashback: I detailed thoughts on this below

 

Nice work! Can't wait to read the next chapter!

 

As I go

- 'high' not really needed with the word 'piled'. Piled already implies 'high'. Also, you use 'high' in the next sentence, making it redundant

- page one: 'remembrancers'. Isn't this word pretty much owned by Garth Nix? Yes, it's a real word and such, but its use just sticks me in Abhorsen immediately.

- page two: I'm still struggling with this war. Why is it being fought? What are the stakes? 

- page two: sidenote to Marcus - if you're trying to get a lady out, buddy, you need to work a little harder than that. Sure, she's a war hero, but there has to be a monster truck rally or a gun show or a rabbit agility contest somewhere that would perk her interest. Work for it.

- page three: the word 'billboard' really stands out as modern in this dystopian world

- page three: the line about giving hands whatever need to keep city running in perpetual cycle of reverence is vague. What exactly is the cycle of reverence? What type of reverence? To whom?

- page four: Marcus has a statute but she doesn't? Isn't she some type of hero?

- I'm not certain you need that whole dream here. I like the lead up to it, and the snippets, but the whole dream dumps a little much. It might be more fun to have snippets of the dream come over the next few chapters, perpetually invading her day-to-day activities and unwinding her story more slowly

[Coop]

Hey AuthorityHellas, I was happy for the chance to read some more of your stuff. Ultimately, I wasn't as excited about this chapter as I was about some of your other submissions. I struggled to maintain interest, occasionally needing to reread sentences or paragraphs where my focus waned. I've been trying to puzzle out why I wasn't super engaged, and here's what I've come up with.

For one thing, you've decided to start your chapter with paperwork, which *isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I think you have to work extra hard to make paperwork interesting. (*One of the most interesting and rewatchable scenes in The Incredibles is a scene about paperwork, which follows a similar setup as you have: start with a big action scene, showing the MCs in their glory, then juxtapose that with a time-skip to Mr. Incredible pushing papers in a honeycomb of cubicles.) For example, the information contained in Atena's paperwork wasn't too interesting to me; could one or more of them hint at or reveal something significant about what is coming?

Another way you might make the paperwork scene, the talk with Marcus, and the walk to her apartment a little more engaging would be to bring out some additional PTSD symptoms sooner. As you have it now, the first 4 or 5 pages are about Atena being simply tired and worn out from a long war. But, as emotions go, tired and worn out aren't the most compelling. Since she's a war hero suffering from PTSD, it would be really compelling to see how she tries to conceal those symptoms from her associates--from Marcus, for example. Rather than simply tired and worn out, how about showing that she's got so much pent-up stress that she lashes out at others, or is becoming unreasonable where she previously was clear-minded, or is more careless and mistake-prone in her work. These are just suggestions--you would know better what to do with this character.

Also, I agree with @kaisa that I'm not sure yet why I should care about the war.

Again, a military leader struggling to hold back and conceal a serious case of PTSD would make a great read (if that's indeed what you're going for), and so the initial setup for your book/story sound great, but I wasn't too excited about how you executed this chapter. Hope that helps!

[AuthorityHellas16]

As always, thanks for your wonderful feedback, guys. Where would I be without you?

Kaisa

Thrilled you liked the character of Atena and the worldbuilding. I'm finding that these characters are coming easier to me this time around because I've put more effort into creating them. Thanks for clearing up some parts that were vague or confusing and I loved the idea of a shorter dream sequences; consider that changed

Coop

First of all, love your picture; can't get enough of the Ministry of Silly Walks. Also: Incredibles? One of my five favourite films of all time!

To business: thanks for being frank that the chapter wasn't as engaging for you. It's a first draft so things like that are absolutely a problem. The paperwork was meant to be a proxy for a bit of worldbuilding, but I can totally understand if it was boring. And yes, Atena's character is one fraught with PTSD, and I'm glad you like the idea. The execution of course could be better and I like your idea of having her be a bit shorter of temper than before. That's something I can definitely work with. Boring is good in my book, simply because it can be fixed!

Both of you also addressed the problem of the war being a bit abstract, with no real consequences or stakes. I do have a fix for this: in my head Altamar is located in an archipelago, which was once dominated by three beautiful cities: Altamar, Altaire and Serodar. The latter two have been razed to the ground by Cronus and his army when they came painfully close to wiping the islands clean. For reasons I can't even explain myself, I planned on having this information in the next chapter, when it would make much more sense to include it here. 

Anyway, thank you for your feedback, as always. You're awesome!

[Coop]

2 hours ago, AuthorityHellas16 said:

Both of you also addressed the problem of the war being a bit abstract, with no real consequences or stakes.

One quick thought that you can take or leave... In the prologue, Atena's side sliced rather quickly through the enemy and got straight to Cronus, putting him in position for a deathblow. So my initial reaction was surprise that the war is continuing twelve years later. I thought Atena's people would make short work of them. So I think you could build more drama around the idea that it turns out that Atena's side has grossly underestimated the enemy, or that Atena's side seems to have every advantage yet Cronus keeps slipping away or pulling off surprising victories. A good reference might be people's feelings about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as the years stretched on: "Why in the world are people still dying over there? We've got more tanks! This thing should be over years ago!" I think there's loads of drama in that which might help you build the stakes and Atena's character.

Also, firmly agree about The Incredibles. Brilliant movie. I'm usually skeptical about sequels, but I guess we'll see...

[Hobbit]

I really enjoyed this chapter!  Having not read the prologue, I can't compare to that, but all by itself I thought it was great.

I liked the paperwork scene for its familiarity.  With the new names and new world to get to know, it was helpful to have a scene where I could anticipate and relate to things.  An uptick in the interest/tension wouldn't be amiss, but I don't feel like it dragged.  But the familiarity of paperwork gave me somewhere to hang my hat when you introduced wings, spires, liquid metal, alta and exim.

I found your world building clear (yay, clear!  My brain is tired from jumping into all these worlds in the middle, hahaha) and interesting as Aetna flew through the city.   Again, you could up the tension and make it better, but it was still interesting enough to keep me reading.

I did find the beginning of the PTSD episode a little confusing.  I think I would have found it a lot more confusing if your intro hadn't primed me for it!  Perhaps make it clearer that she knows what she's hearing is not real.  Alternately, it can be kind of cool to make the reader think it's real and then subvert that, but if that's where you're going with it, I think it needs to be tweaked.  Other than the clarity issues, I liked the scene.  The falling action at the very end was handled really nicely too.

Overall, you've set up a lot of interesting conflicts, some big and some personal, and I'm excited to keep reading!

[rdpulfer]

- Maybe it's just me, but "sorry group of misfits" sounds a bit cliche, kinda like "rag-tag group of rebels". Again, this could just be me.

- I understand PTSD causes you to re-experience, but I don't think it causes you lose consciousness. 

- The PTSD episode also fills a little too much like telling. I think it might be more realistic if Atena encountered things which triggered brief, intense flashbacks to the sights and sounds of that day. This could also draw out suspense as to what exactly happened. 

[Mandamon]

Quick reply as I found a couple extra minutes:

I agree with @Coop that starting with paperwork is not as compelling as it could be, but as @kaisa says, the character building here is much better.  Maybe a little too long spent on the PTSD at the end.  You could probably cut down on some of the italics and show a little more of what it does to Atena.

[AuthorityHellas16]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I've made some major changes to Chapter 1 thanks to all of you, and I think it's already a lot better. My next submission will be two chapters long, and I hope it still captures your interest.