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Reading Excuses - TKWade - 10.17.2016 - Prologue - Revision - 2859 words[v]


TKWade

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Hello again everyone.

This is the first revision of my prologue. I tried to take into account as many of the suggestions as I could, but if I missed something let me know.

Looking to see if my character development is better, my hook is better, and if it flows well throughout a little better.

Kaisa, I hope I fixed my Fridging problem or at least made it better, but if not I'd love to hear what you think would help even that out a little better.

Thanks everyone!

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Alright, LET'S DO THIS!

Overall

I appreciate and admire your willingness to edit your prologue/chapter one. It has definitely come a long way. There is still some adjective abuse and run-ons, but your world building is cleaner, and your characters more defined. With that said... you still have a fridging problem. It's better, definitely. Less textbook now and more, hrm, I don't know the word. If there was a 'fridge lite' version, you'd be hovering around there. Freezering? Fridging refers to not just death, but maiming and serious injury as well. Allandria's death/injury still motivates and affects Lyzell, and she still doesn't have any goals or motivation of her own (although she is MUCH more fleshed out). She still reads like your old character was just retconned, and I've noted several areas that should probably be looked at in the text.

As a suggestion on where to go from here to address the fridging - at this point if it is necessary for you to kill someone at the end of this chapter, consider making Allandia a sword for hire so that it is his bodyguard's death. You wouldn't have to worry so much about backstory and then the death of a female wouldn't be a primary catalyst for a male. Other options would be changing Allandria a bit. Give her motivation that plays into her dying (like SHE is the one that has to get the letter delivered, and will go to any lengths to do it. Then her death would make sense, as would Lyzell's desire to get the letter delivered). 

Honestly though, I'm not sure what Allandia's death gains the reader at this stage. There'd be just as much tension in a full battle sequence where Allandria or Lyzell or the two together slay or maim the antagonist. If you are looking for motivation for Lyzell to sell his soul or whatever he does at the end here, maybe make it about destruction of the letter itself (demon thing is going to die and take the letter with it, maybe), instead of Allandria's death.

Keep at it! Editing is the heart and soul of writing!

 

As I go

- nice hook sentence

- letter full of prophecy? Huh? Confused

- Alluren could have been seen - tense fail

- second paragraph first page getting adjective/adverb heavy

- getting worse in the third paragraph, and adding to it run-on sentences

- by the end of page one we have transitioned from MC POV to author exposition entirely

- page 2: write out numbers, don't use the actual number

- page three: 'Allandria insisted almost defiantly' again tells me a great deal about your world. She can only be defiant if Lyzell is in command of her in some way

- page four: if the women are fighters and he is a scholar, yet she has to listen to him about staying inside... this is a really strange dynamic. I'm not necessarily suggesting you change it, it's just... very confusing right now. She is reading more like a hired bodyguard or someone under his employ, or possibly a daughter. She is definitely not reading as an equal (and that's fine, if you don't want her to be).

- page five: there is a lot of exposition about Allandia's strength, but Lyzell only ever admires her beauty. Very telling about Lyzell. Also triggers my fridge sensors. 

- page six. You have firmly established that Lyzell is a scholar and Allandria the warrior. So why is Lyzell the one to go first out the door and suggest that it is the safest passage? 

- page six and I'm pretty solidly against Lyzell at this point. You have a warrior here who is apparently in love with you. Let her do her job.

- page seven reactions seem much more in-character for the roles you have stated for the characters

- page 10: the antagonists lines are... they make me laugh. I don't find the character terrifying. The lines are really cliche.

- end of page 10: I was okay with the battle until the antagonist went back to Allandria and we had the 'pain of the female motivating the male' pop back in. Fridge warning lights are blinking

- top of page 11: ACK! NO! SOMEONE GET POOR ALLANDRIA OUT OF THE FRIDGE!

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1 hour ago, kaisa said:

With that said... you still have a fridging problem. It's better, definitely. Less textbook now and more, hrm, I don't know the word. If there was a 'fridge lite' version, you'd be hovering around there. Freezering?

AHH!! I FAILED!!! Alright, I'm going to have to do some real brain storming. She's his wife, I want to keep that dynamic, so I need a super compelling reason to submit to Osha and leave his wife, knowing she's alive; time to get really creative. 

I was kind of hoping the appearance of Soryn at the end would be enough to prevent the trope, but I suppose it wouldn't, considering the trope is what motivates Lyzell to submit to Osha's will. But, her being his wife, I don't feel like destruction of the letter would be enough. As long as she's alive Lyzell would fight on, that's his character, so.. we'll see. Like I said, I need to get creative.

 

1 hour ago, kaisa said:

Alluren could have been seen - tense fail

Oops.

1 hour ago, kaisa said:

- second paragraph first page getting adjective/adverb heavy

- getting worse in the third paragraph, and adding to it run-on sentences

- by the end of page one we have transitioned from MC POV to author exposition entirely

But my prose! I want this detail I'm just going to have to find a way to dumb it in a less, expositiony? way

1 hour ago, kaisa said:

- letter full of prophecy? Huh? Confused

Need to flesh this out

1 hour ago, kaisa said:

- page three: 'Allandria insisted almost defiantly' again tells me a great deal about your world. She can only be defiant if Lyzell is in command of her in some way

Poor word choice on my part. I wasn't going for that, i changed it to 'Alandria persisted' 

1 hour ago, kaisa said:

- page four: if the women are fighters and he is a scholar, yet she has to listen to him about staying inside... this is a really strange dynamic. I'm not necessarily suggesting you change it, it's just... very confusing right now. She is reading more like a hired bodyguard or someone under his employ, or possibly a daughter. She is definitely not reading as an equal (and that's fine, if you don't want her to be).

I guess women being fighters doesn't need to mean that the men are weak and incapable. Lyzell may be a scholar, but he has other abilities, his strength just doesn't lie in physical combat as seen in the drouvlan encounter

 

1 hour ago, kaisa said:

- page five: there is a lot of exposition about Allandia's strength, but Lyzell only ever admires her beauty. Very telling about Lyzell. Also triggers my fridge sensors.

Can one not find beauty in strength? He knows she is physically stronger than him and is a combative person and he finds her beautiful, I don't see how that needs to be expressed differently. I guess I just think about how I see me wife and maybe this is part of the problem, but I don't love my wife because of how she looks, I love her because of what she adds to my life and the happiness I feel from spending time with her. She's beautiful to me and I could describe that in a hundred different ways. Do I find her physically attractive? Absolutely, but that isn't what makes her beautiful. My son is beautiful to me too, but it isn't because he's the cutest kid ever, which he is, it's because of the joy he brings me when i see him. She's my wife, he's my son, they're precious to me. That's Lyzell.

I don't feel like I've done a disservice to the way Lyzell feels about Alandria by not saying, "I love her strength," explicitly. he clearly loves how strong she is. I really thought I imparted that feeling in the first couple of paragraphs in page 4.

1 hour ago, kaisa said:

- page six. You have firmly established that Lyzell is a scholar and Allandria the warrior. So why is Lyzell the one to go first out the door and suggest that it is the safest passage? 

Again, she's a warrior and he a scholar, but he has his own ability that haven't been described - this may be a flaw in chapter structure. That being said, she should probably be more tactical than he, so that may still make sense even considering his ability with Source energy.
 

2 hours ago, kaisa said:

- page six and I'm pretty solidly against Lyzell at this point. You have a warrior here who is apparently in love with you. Let her do her job.

I need to do a better job of imparting equality. As far as who's in the lead or who should be in the lead. They're a team, equally, and they both have their own skills. Again, though, based off of my previous depictions of the characters before this point one could easily assume that Alandria should have been the one to peer around the corner first, not Lyzell. I need that scene though to build tension and detail the drouvlan and it worked well for Lyzell I thought, showing how he relies on her strength. Maybe I could reverse roles in that scene and still make it work well. It may even increase tension.

2 hours ago, kaisa said:

- page 10: the antagonists lines are... they make me laugh. I don't find the character terrifying. The lines are really cliche.

When I went back and read it again after reading your comment i cringed, so true. I need to find a way to make it feel more ominous because it's absolutely laughable.

2 hours ago, kaisa said:

- end of page 10: I was okay with the battle until the antagonist went back to Allandria and we had the 'pain of the female motivating the male' pop back in. Fridge warning lights are blinking

- top of page 11: ACK! NO! SOMEONE GET POOR ALLANDRIA OUT OF THE FRIDGE!

I was hoping that with the appearance of Soryn at the end it would break the Fridge trope issue, but I think I just misunderstood the problem. I feel like I need a reason for her to be left behind by Lyzell, just can't think of a good reason. Need some creative thinking sessions I guess.

Thanks for the critique again :D It's so appreciated.

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     "The monstrosity lifted its dark axes and easily dispersing the energy,"
     -Okay this is pretty cool, but what dispersed the energy? Did he cut through the sphere, did just the action of raising it stop the spell, did the axes twirling in front of him suddenly give off a flare of power, stopping the spell like a wall?
     "Lashing out at the creature Lyzell worked his energy pushing and pulling objects at the drouvlan, trying desperately to drive it back. It didn’t work."
     -How was he manipulating the energy? Before when he did it he seemed to have to form it into a sphere, but now he can just push and pull objects? What objects can he grab onto, is it little pebbles throughout the alleyway? Is he ripping clumps of burning building to throw at it? Why didn't his attack work? Did the things thrown just bounce off/break when it hit him? did he block the attacks?
     "and he lost his hold on the power."
     -What happens when he looses his hold on the power? Does it rush out of him like a tempest, does it recede back inside wherever he got it from? How does he feel when the power leaves? Is he drained, or invigorated?
     "He felt the broken nose"
     -Is that it? he just felt it? No blood dripping down his face, tears forced into his eyes? Might just sound better if it wasn't just, 'Oh my knows is broken'
     "he funnelled a tiny flow into her wound, it wouldn’t completely heal it,"
     -What does this source feel like, look like, taste like, sound like, smell like, as someone uses it? This isn't just at this point, but it appears all around it, we have this impression of some really cool magic, yet we don't really know what it is like, and I am left with the sense of an invisible force...but it formed into a sphere at one point, and we could see it, but now we can't. What is it that this magic is doing? Try to describe it so that we know how the magic works better.

But overall the start to this is significantly better than the earlier one, I felt much more engaged but what all was going on, and it felt a lot better. Now that you have added in more use of magic, which I love, I want to know more about the magic.

 

    

 

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Sasooner, first of all thanks for the critique!

It feels like whenever i read a new critique i think so myself, "HOW DID YOU NOT THINK ABOUT THAT!?!! AHHH!!!" lol, but seriously, I wish I had considered those things while I writing. I think part of my problem was rushing it. I need to go back through my revisions with a more inquisitive mind set. Thank you so much for pointing out the lack of description with how my magic system works.

I'll be leaving some of it vague because I want there to be some wonder to the world and the magic system, but I can definitely go more indepth, and will. Thanks for the advice and ideas.

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1 hour ago, TKWade said:

need a super compelling reason to submit to Osha and leave his wife, knowing she's alive; time to get really creative. 

Couldn't it be as simple as her telling/requesting him to do it because she also believes the letter needs to get delivered?

1 hour ago, TKWade said:

As long as she's alive Lyzell would fight on, that's his character, so.. we'll see

I think the question you need to ask yourself is why is his wife's death the only thing that can motivate him? If he loves her that much, wouldn't a request or a command be enough? What about self sacrifice and protection and that other manly stuff? What is riding on this letter? Will he let down his country if it isn't delivered? Will billions of sheep die? What are the stakes, and how can those motivate him?

1 hour ago, TKWade said:

I guess women being fighters doesn't need to mean that the men are weak and incapable. Lyzell may be a scholar, but he has other abilities, his strength just doesn't lie in physical combat as seen in the drouvlan encounter

I didn't mean to imply that only one gender gets to be an aggressor. But you described Lyzell as a scholar, not a mage scholar or a warrior scholar. Scholar, to me, means bookish, glasses, not super athletic. I'm a scholar. I've got some, shall we say, pudge to me. I have a black belt, too, but I'm no gym bunny. Pair me up with a woman trained in combat and you better believe I want her going out the door first to check on things. Now if I can use magic, that's a different thing, but I'd probably still send the person with better reflexes and situational awareness out the door first. That's just good sense.

1 hour ago, TKWade said:

Can one not find beauty in strength? He knows she is physically stronger than him and is a combative person and he finds her beautiful, I don't see how that needs to be expressed differently.

It's an issue because you're falling into another problematic area of women and how they are viewed through a male gaze. She's strong. Excellent. She's beautiful. Excellent. Certainly there is beauty in strength, but your actual dialogue has Lyzell only verbally commenting on her beauty. Women are more than their looks, and I would argue the great majority of them would like compliments that do not focus solely on the transient properties of their exteriors. This is a real issue in the western world (I can't speak for the eastern). There are gobs of psychological studies on how wording like this affects young girls and adult women, as it subtly teaches them their value is only in their physical appearance.

So what can be done? You clearly have Lyzell admiring Allandria for more than just beauty. He just needs to vocalize. Even once would be fine. He could... comment on her quick reflexes. Admire her intellect and how he can have a solid conversation with her about his book reading even though she doesn't want anything to do with the dusty old tomes. Just straight up tell her that he finds her strength comforting, her musculature beautiful, or stunning, or some such. Just, don't make it all about her appearance. You've made her a fighter with a strong will. She deserves to see those strengths reflected in the gaze of the man who loves her.

If this is confusing, swap Allandria's gender for a moment. Pretend Lyzell has a husband. How would Lyzell admire his husband? Guy is a beefcake, sure. Maybe he likes to wear those stretchy unitard things. What comes to mind? Perhaps how Lyzell feels protected? Appreciates the dedication the husband (let's call him....Chuck) shows to keeping the streets safe? Admires Chuck's dedication to...orphan kittens? Point is, would Lyzell admire Chuck only by calling him beautiful? Does that seem strange? If so, that's because men are generally allowed to be more than their looks (romance novels aside). You can do that for Allandria, too.

To clarify, it's clear that Lyzell has more complex feelings for Allandria than just lovin on the beauty. There's no issue there. It does bother me, and may be a potential catch to future female and female-leaning readers, to only see that affection be expressed in terms of appearance. Allandria is so much more to Lyzell than beauty, and we see that as readers a bit, but much like with issues of consent, it's the verbal that matters, not what is in someone's head.

Most of the other stuff I mentioned could be easily fixed just by mentioning Lyzell has some mage stuff going on. His actions make a lot more sense if you know he has some ability other than just reading books.

 

This sub is leaps and bounds better than your last, for sure. You are doing a fantastic job with editing, and with working on understanding complex gender issues!

 

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Before I get into what I thought about this I want to tell you that no matter how many times you rewrite this and submit it to us- we will tell you something is wrong. Don't spend all your writing time reworking this prolog just continue with the story and come back later. (That was partly motivated by selfish reasons. I want more of this!)

The hook is significantly better

“You know that I can’t, dearest, the Letter must be hidden inside the cathedral on our way out. It will be preserved there under the protection of spells and should remain intact on its journey through time. This letter will not last 500 years without a spells protection.” Lyzell said with an air of study and matter-of-factness." I’m glad you explained this to us.

I like the fact that you established the relationship between Lyzell and Alandria more this time. The first go around we I didn't care about Alandria enough.

"They were both young for Allurians, about 30 years for a human, 200 years on his next moon day.” The only reason I understand what this means is because I read the last draft, otherwise; this is confusing. 

Let the tension last longer with the Drouvlan

  Why would Osha killing Lyell’s wife convince Lyell to help him? It seems to me that the opposite would be true. Obviously Alandria didn’t die but does Lyzell know that?

 

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Kaisa, I think I know just the thing to solve my Fridgin problem, I know I said only one revision, but I feel I cannot continuing knowing my story and plot suffer from this particular Trope. I feel like I'd be getting off on the wrong foot, so to speak.

Ethan, Thank you! I'll be posting one more revision, as much as I'd like to get on with next chapter I cannot let my plot continue if the start is based around a terrible trope, but I think I have a solution that will work to solve that problem. So, hopefully, just one more revision, thank you for the kind words!

I may have to find a different way to depict the length of their lives, i just thought that 'doggy years' type comparison would make it more relatable and maybe it's just really poor wording.

My change to address with Trope will also, I think, address both the tension lasting long and the why of killing Alandria's wife.

Edited by TKWade
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- I think the opening paragraph is much stronger.

- Much better description of Alandria.

- All and all, the prologue is much improved, and much more involved.

- Changing perspectives to Soryn is a bit jarring since it's the first we've seen of this character. It might be better to focus on Alandria because we know more about her perspective.

- I think the biggest question with any prologue is . . . do you absolutely need it? Keep in mind you can use flashbacks if needed. But if you feel your plot absolutely can't function without it, then it's best to keep it. 

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This is my first time reading this. That was really cool. You seem to thrive on action scenes. I found them very clear and easy to follow. The only issue I have is the beginning. As I'm reading it the writing goes from eh, to passable, to awesome by the end. 

1. I've heard others mentioning that things seem unclear. I think this is a problem with your sentence structure and the imagery you use. For instance this sentence:

Embers danced along the bitter cold wind landing on store rooftops and igniting new
flames, spreading the blaze like a living creature creeping slowly through the city.

I would have written it like this:

Embers danced in the bitter cold wind, landing on store rooftops and igniting new flames, like a monster creeping slowly through the city.

Embers danced in the bitter cold wind, landing on store rooftops and igniting new flames, 
like a monster creeping slowly through the city.

 Here are my reasons:

a. Using the word 'along' in "Embers danced along the bitter breeze" I feel doesn't make as strong an image. Maybe it's just me, but when I hear the word 'along' I picture the embers outside of the breeze but near it, which is weird. It's much simpler to say they were in the breeze.

b. "spreading the blaze" is redundant. You already say the wind is spreading to rooftops and igniting new flames.

c. 'living creature' is okay, but 'monster' strikes a stronger image.

2. Here's another example:

Ash now covered everything, the ivory-colored cobblestone streets and the brightly coloured stores
once so full of joyful Allurians living out their daily lives, but no more.

Ash now covered everything, the ivory-colored cobblestone streets and the brightly coloured stores
once so full of joyful Allurians living out their daily lives, but no more.

It's an oddly formatted sentence, I had to reread it a few times to get it. This and other sentences like this feel like they're trying to accomplish too much. It would be much clearer if broken into two sentences. I would have written like this:

 

Ash now covered everything. The joyful Allurians that once filled the ivory-colored stone streets 
and brightly colored stores were gone. 

3. I have no idea what's going on in this sentence:

The dying vegetation that surrounded Alluren for miles, degrading into ash, had drifted and 
settled over the city causing constant ashfalls.

Is this something that's happening now because of the fire? Is this just a thing that happens all the time? If it's the first then why is it worded like its the vegetation causing the ashfall instead of the fire causing the ashfall? If it's the other, how does vegetation degrade into ash? Did something turn them into ash?

4. Honestly I don't like world building in a prologue. You can't always count on readers to read it and skipping straight to the story. I feel like it would be much more effective if if just started in the action. I'd cut out everything until the paragraph that starts with "Embers danced" then hint at the location in the text. The trouble parts are before the actions happens and if you start there I think it flows much nicer. But that's ultimately a matter of taste, I guess.

5. I don't like Alandria's dialog, or the first dialog at all. It seems to only serve the purpose of conveying "This thing Lyzell is writing is important!" And that can be better conveyed through him writing 'furiously' or with action. Odd that he doesn't seem too stressed while writing when the city is literally burning down around him.  

5.a I feel like Alandria's dialog in the beginning betrays her character and makes her seem way too incompetent. Her character is so collected and competent later on, so it's odd. If she's the type that's unsettled by sitting still then there are better ways to convey it that doesn't maker her seem airheaded.

Other than those things, I really liked this and found myself getting drawn into the story by the end. I thought the magic was really cool. The stones that projected books were also really awesome and unique.

[edit] World building not word building XD

Edited by Zay Wolfe
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P.1

I don't think your second sentence scans. It's got some odd inverted construction such that the first section of the sentence reads very fragmentarily. I also don't like that 'however' in the third; it reads waffley. The sentence you choose to close out the paragraph with is effectively devoid of meaning.

Overall despite a solid first sentence this is a really weak opening paragraph. Your phrasing is awkward, as if you're not comfortable with the words you're using, and it avoids meaning that would be used to attract interest.

Moving on, things like 'could have been seen at miles' is a strange, passive-voice phrase that feels very weak overall. You're not doing much to capture interest, and so much of this does come directly from sentence construction at this stage of it. You're not writing in a way that says there's anything interesting to come.

You're also using waaaay too many adverbs even here; I don't believe you should never use them, but generally, you do need to mind how, where, and to what purpose you're using them. 'pale' is implied by moonlight, eg, and generally puts the reader in mind of other media that has used this phrase to greater effect. As a rule it is a bad idea to go for direct reference this early on in a work. At this point the only purpose it serves is to make the reader want to consume said other media instead.

You go for redundancy a lot here; 'desperate urgency', I see another occurance of the specific, non-common 'seen at miles', and 'like a living creature creeping slowly through the city' is a simile that just does not feel right. 

Just going over the first page, I strongly recommend doing a lot more analytical reading of prose that you enjoy reading and working out what makes you like reading it before going back and doing further revisions. Right now, it feels like you're struggling.

P.2

Peculiar inhabitants. Peculiar in whose opinion? Right now we seem to be using an omniscient, disconnected narrator. While this is less in fashion these days there's nothing wrong with that, but it makes a value judgement like 'peculiar' seem very strange. You're doing a lot of telling in the way you're conveying the information about these people. This is not an appealing paragraph to read.

Also, while there's nothing wrong with the word, 'lithe frame' generally puts me in mind of character descriptions used for online erotic roleplay. I might consider something else.

So, this dialogue, this opening line. Let's talk about this. There's a lot going on here, and there's not very much of it that I like. So you're describing it as 'urged him anxiously for what seemed like the hundredth time'. This is quadruply redundant (urged is implied by the dialogue; anxiously is implied by urged, and for what seemed like the hundredth time is well-evoked by all the rest); we've got a 'him' at a point where we haven't had a person being the subject of a sentence since the very first sentence of the work, and this line of dialogue is not phrased urgently. Please, read this aloud. Read it aloud exactly as you have written, every single word. This is not an urgent line.

And let's talk about how this line is as an opener for a female character: her very introduction is framed in context of a man, and it's framed as her nagging. This does not endear me-- not to her, but to the work as a whole. We're also going straight from that semi-omniscient thing into POV and it's a very very very jarring.

And then the descriptive paragraph, yikes. I'd like you to review this twitter account: https://twitter.com/femscriptintros because this is the sort of thing you're doing here. Also almond is really not an appropriate descriptor for eyes in general; it kind of plays into racially-charged descriptors which are insensitive at best. Avoid food as any descriptor at all when referring to a person.

So then it's immediately followed with maid-and-butler dialogue, which in this context is straight-up mansplaining. If this were a book in a store, I might have read up to this point if a friend were insistent that it was good, but this would be a hard dealbreaker. Beyond that, it's not appropriate to use numerals in a story like that; the number should be written out as words. 'Study and matter-of-factness' is both redundant, and factness isn't a word and doesn't really scan if you try and use it as one.

The rest of the page is devoted to making the woman appear foolish in the face of the man's important actions. Last paragraph has sentence structure issues also. Again, I do recommend reading aloud, word for word. This is some very stilted phrasing, and that is liable to help.

P.3

In the strongest possible terms I suggest you find something other than 'the black army' as a name for this enemy force. This is racially-charged language, regardless of whether you intended it that way.

There is a categorically bizarre lack of urgency going on here. He's casually looking through the window and oop the enemy is breaking through the lines right there, and... this line of action and dialogue makes no sense whatsoever. You have this very very calm, very deliberate, very stilted language being used in the dialogue; it does not appear as either of the characters speaking actually care what is going on. 'said inquisitively' is very redundant, and 'worry thick in his voice' is a sentence fragment. Again, this doesn't read like you're comfortable with the words you're using.

Your grammar kind of falls apart toward the bottom of the page here. The line of dialogue at the bottom is frankly contemptible; so far this interaction has entirely comprised of him treating her like the sort of rubber duck it's recommended that programmers explain their code to.

p.4

Numbers again, and you're falling out of voice to shoehorn in exposition. Are we using a character's POV or not? If you are, why is Lyzell stopping in this theoretically incredibly dangerous and urgent moment to think about his age relative to a human's?

Again, your grammar is all over the place here on this page; this format is basically useless for that sort of correction but you do need a thorough editing pass with that in mind.

'enhanced' ears? Have they been modified in some way?

p.5

You fall back on cliche a lot in your description here. I do not find this pleasant to read. The word 'stuff' is thoroughly out of register; it sticks out like a sore thumb.

I'm also not sure how at all we're supposed to believe she's fierce because she has literally spent the entire time on the page either being exposited to or her body put on display for the male reader's consumption. She has nagged but ultimately aquiesced to this ultimately superior male figure. You tell us these things about her, but you write her as an object to be coveted.

Why is it important for the reader to know how beautiful she is? Why is it more important for the reader to know how beautiful she is than it is for us to literally know anything at all about the man mansplaining to her? Why are you raining down information that we have no reason to care about as yet, but not devoting a single sentence to revealing anything about the characters?

p.6

said adverbedly is a construction that should be thoroughly avoided.

Again, your prose on this page... I extremely strongly recommend you look closely at how other books you like are written, on the fundamental mechanical level. Look at what they're doing and look at how it works and what makes it work. Look at how description is used and where it is used and to what purpose it is used.

p.7

Even where Alandria is ostensibly confident and in an area of her expertise, she is aquiescing to Lyzell in every respect.

At this point, I'm going to talk about litmus tests. The Bechdel test is pretty well-known: do two women have a conversation in a piece of media, one that isn't about a man? Hooray! It passes Bechdel! It's not the be-all and end-all, but it's a reasonable indicator that the narrative at least considers women people.

But I'm not going to talk about the Bechdel test here. I'm going to talk about something called the Sexy Lamp test. The Sexy Lamp test is thus: can you take out a female character and replace her with a sexy lamp without affecting the storyline? If yes, that's a fail.

We're failing Sexy Lamp. So far, Alandria's entire existence has only had served to be a valuable object who gets explained to.

Otherwise, I don't think you're conveying urgency at all. 'Placed' is not an urgent word.

p.8

Despite being described as fierce and capable, Alandria's combat prowess has come to literal nothing; she has literally never been correct or successful.

p.9

...

Well.

By habit I don't really read over other comments before I do mine, but I assume Kaisa has already given you the talk about this sort of thing. You're now going to get the angrier, less patient version as presented by someone with poorer social skills.

So you have here a female character, presented as a nag who is continually wrong and failing at every action, described in terms of her beauty and desirability to the male character. Her purpose thus far in the story has been to exist as a coatrack to hang exposition on and to be critically injured so that we the reader can know how real the danger is to the male POV character. You have chosen to do this basically immediately. This is the first series of actions that the reader will encounter.

I have some questions at this point that I think you really need to consider.

1) Why do you think this is acceptable?

2) What message do you think this sends about the role of women in your narrative? To be clear, not in your worldbuilding, in your narrative.

3) What other methods of displaying how serious this matter is have you considered?

4) What other methods of exposition have you considered?

I'm going to be very real here and say that when I encounter this sort of thing in published books, not only do I not read or purchase that author ever again, I actively discourage friends from reading such authors. I raise this as a reason not to read or purchase these authors whenever their names arise. And I don't mean I discourage people from reading that book. I mean anything such an author has written. Ever. And I remember this sort of thing. For years. I take my time and my money elsewhere and I encourage others to do so as well.

Is it the end of the world to do it in an early draft like this? Nah, because it's still possible to remove it. But I want to make it as clear as possible that this is something actually very serious.

p.10

All caps. Really...?

So the last paragraph, you're using somewhat erotically-charged language to describe Alandria's brutally injured body. 'Soft moans' are sexy words, and you're juxtaposing both her blood and the monster looming over her. If this character had been presented thus far as anything other than an object for male attention, I might be willing to give more benefit of the doubt given the rest of the paragraph, but at this point, she's been so thoroughly objectified, I can't apply any other reading. I don't necessarily think it's intentional, but this is extremely unpleasant to encounter.

Otherwise, this scene is very awkward to actually physically picture. The motions don't make a ton of sense in space.

p.11

This final section is extremely grammatically awkward. It's also basically an it-was-all-a-dream ending to what just happened. This... basically means we've watched this woman be brutalized in loving detail only for 'nope you're gonna be okay'. It feels extremely tacked on.

Overall, you do a lot of jumping back and forth between short declarative sentences, and really overwrought descriptive lines. The jumps between the two are awkward and don't flow naturally, and your declaratives are repetitive in construction 'he, he, he', and your description falls frequently on cliche and piles and piles of adverbs and adjectives. You devote a lot of space to saying things but not conveying them; Alandria is supposedly a capable warrior but displays no competency, everything is terribly urgent but everyone acts slowly, deliberately, almost lazily, Lyzell supposedly loves his wife but constantly condescends to her and in POV treats her as a nag, etc.

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As a handy guide for those confused by the various tests available: Sexy Lamps Test < Bechdel Test << Mako Mori Test *

In my time of subbing to agents, probably half listed 'manuscript must pass the Bechdel Test' on their sub guidelines. One highly favored Mako Mori passing. It became so prevalent that I started listing the tests my book passed in my query letter. Literally. I wrote in the first paragraph: This manuscript passes the Bechdel and Mako Mori Tests with flying colors.

 

* (Furiosa Test purposefully left off the list)

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2 minutes ago, kaisa said:

* (Furiosa Test purposefully left off the list)

But that one's my favourite! :v

(why yes, I do have a miniature Holtzmann action figure)

Mako Mori as a test is interesting if only because Pacific Rim doesn't pass Bechdel-- it sort of exists as an alternative, though if you can get both that's obviously best, and it's sort of established with a different purpose. There's additional context to Bechdel and I'm not 100% comfortable with it having inflated as it has (the original context is two lesbians frustrated with heterosexual romances in films), and it's not an inherent 'not sexist' card either about the depictions of characters or the narratives, but as a starting ground, it's very good.

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17 hours ago, TKWade said:

It feels like whenever i read a new critique i think so myself, "HOW DID YOU NOT THINK ABOUT THAT!?!! AHHH!!!" lol, but seriously, I wish I had considered those things while I writing.

I'll just start by saying that this is the way I feel every time I submit something to this forum!  Although to be fair, there are also always plenty of critiques that make me think, "Huh?  Oh, weird, I totally had no idea about that thing."

I didn't read your first draft, but I did scan the comments that went along with it. :) I also want to say kudos for revising something so much so quickly!  That's not easy.

Overall, I really enjoyed this piece.  I was invested in your main character, and the tension with the escape from the city and the scary monster worked really well for me.  I'm definitely excited to read more.  Very nice opening.  There are some execution issues, but despite these you definitely kept my interest!  Did I mention that I really like the scary monster? :) 

I'm going to break my comments into four sections for my own clarity of mind.

Blocking: Shortest section of feedback first!  When they're running through the city and fighting the Drouvlan, I get confused easily as to where people are.  When Lyzell looks around the corner for the Drouvlan and then Alandria doesn't see it, I got confused.  Also when the Drouvlan pins Lyzell's head to the ground with his boot, I didn't realize that Lyzell was lying on the ground - I thought he was sitting.  Things like this would bene fit from a makover with attention to letting the reader know where people are.

Descriptions: I think you are doing something tough by choosing a description-heavy style, in that not everyone is into super description-heavy books.  I can see how not everyone will enjoy the style you've chosen.  I personally get fatigued by too much description, but for what you're trying to do, I think that overall you're doing a good job.  The tricky part is, when a description fails, it fails spectacularly!  Zay Wolfe pointed out some of the worst offenders.  I guess what I'm saying is don't give up on writing descriptively - testing descriptions out on other people is always difficult.

Have you read Guy Gavriel Kay?  He has very vivid descriptions in his books (actually I've only read part of one book so I can't speak for them all), and he does a good job keeping it character focused.  He also breaks grammatical rules (lots of sentence fragments), but he does so consistently and in a way that's not confusing.

Dialogue: Others have already pointed out that your dialogue feels stilted.  I'm guessing that part of the issue is that you're trying to convey a different speaking style than modern English - maybe something more refined or old-fashioned - and it's coming off wrong.  But whatever the intention, it could definitely use some work.  It's not just the way it's written, but the subject matter.  If these people are husband and wife, they're not going to have to explain things to each other, like why he has to finish the letter now - they'll already know.  Not all your dialogue is stilted, though.  Here's a place where I think it sounded more natural:

“Of course they’re ready Lyzell. Let’s be about it.”
He looked up her, hearing the tone, seeing her eyebrows shift upward as if to say, “I’m the one waiting on you.”
“Right.”

Neongrey also pointed out how some of your dialogue tags feel awkward because of redundancy - since she did a good job explaining why, I'll just say I agree.

Fridging/women/etc:  I was also a little put off by your/Lyzell's description of Alandria.  

17 hours ago, kaisa said:

To clarify, it's clear that Lyzell has more complex feelings for Allandria than just lovin on the beauty. There's no issue there. It does bother me, and may be a potential catch to future female and female-leaning readers, to only see that affection be expressed in terms of appearance. Allandria is so much more to Lyzell than beauty, and we see that as readers a bit, but much like with issues of consent, it's the verbal that matters, not what is in someone's head.

Yep.  Couldn't have said it better.

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I think the others have well covered the topic again.  First off, I'm very impressed by the improvements this time around.  It does still need work, but showing you can change a work based on feedback is about 80% of the battle.

18 hours ago, kaisa said:

If this is confusing, swap Allandria's gender for a moment.

THIS.  As another who falls into the privileged majority bucket, this is what has helped me most in understanding gender relations.  An additional exercise to what Kaisa suggested is to swap all the gender of the characters in this prologue.  Including the drouvlan.  See how your writing reads and if it comes over as "wrong" to you now.  That will help determine where you're falling into gender role expectations.

My reading notes (before reading critiques)

pg 1: "Alluren could have been seen at miles,"
--from miles away?

pg 1: "If seen at miles now"
--These comparisons only take me out of Lyzell's POV.  I assume this is how he imagines it would be seen?  Does he actually know?

pg 2: "crashed through their gates" and "holding back the tide of the black army"
--Which is it?  Are the Allurians fleeing, or holding the invaders off?

pg 2: "“You know that I can’t, dearest..."
Still a bit maid and butler.

pg 3: "“You know I hate myself for putting you in this danger,” he said to Alandria as he worked""
--They're talking very calmly for an army breaking through a gate literally outside their window.

pg 4: "Lyzell knew there would be a smirk on her face"
--Why is there a smirk?  As is she is just pretending she can protect him? If so, why not?

pg 4: too much infodump on this page

pg 8: “Nothing,” she said turning back. “Are you sure?”"
--not sure what this means.

pg 10: "THAT WILL BE NECESSARY.”
--won't?  confused.

The last POV switch is strange.  I don't think we need to know this yet.  Showing that Alandria is alive doesn't change what happened to her.

 

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Neogray, consider me chewed up and spit out :P

Seriously though, thank you. I don't intentionally do these things in my writing and it sucks to have it pointed out, but it's necessary for my professional and personal growth. 

I didn't even think about the almond eyes reference being offensive. I wanted sort of a Zoe Saldana depiction and her eyes remind me of wide almonds which is where I picked up the reference. After reading a couple of articles on how to describe eyes in non-offensive ways I've corrected this.

I've also addressed my black army issue. It was weird anyway to just refer to it as the 'black army'. I get in a weird position with this prologue-chapter. I want to give a sense of urgency, but at the same time i need to information dump adequately for the readers and I'm finding that balance difficult. Especially when trying to do it through dialog instead of an exposition to make it more interesting and flow better.

I'll do some reading on sentence fragmentation and try to rein that in. Same with my redundant sentences. With my writing style I think I may need to adopt sort of a 'less is more' attitude. Maybe that would help.

My issue with Alandria is really bothering me. I don't want to be that Author. So, I'm going to what some others have suggested and just rewrite the whole thing from her perspective and maybe that'll be what I submit next.

The last part with Soryn was a tack on at the end. I can remove it and with my new plot device it should work fine without it. That was just my laughable attempt to get past my fridging problem, but that was my total lack of understanding showing.

Again, sincerely, thank you for the raw critique  

 

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2 hours ago, TKWade said:

Seriously though, thank you. I don't intentionally do these things in my writing and it sucks to have it pointed out, but it's necessary for my professional and personal growth. 

No problem! For most people this really is rarely intentional, and it is hard to deal with seeing it all unraveled, But there's no way to deal with it if you can't, so...

2 hours ago, TKWade said:

I didn't even think about the almond eyes reference being offensive. I wanted sort of a Zoe Saldana depiction and her eyes remind me of wide almonds which is where I picked up the reference. After reading a couple of articles on how to describe eyes in non-offensive ways I've corrected this.

Yeah, this one's trickier because it's less uniquely offensive than, say, describing a black woman as having chocolate skin, but in most cases it's pretty exoticizing. I wouldn't take issue with a real person using that sort of phrasing to describe themself, say, but it is the sort of phrasing it's good to watch out for.

2 hours ago, TKWade said:

I want to give a sense of urgency, but at the same time i need to information dump adequately for the readers and I'm finding that balance difficult. Especially when trying to do it through dialog instead of an exposition to make it more interesting and flow better.

So one thing I noticed a lot of is that you are giving a lot of exposition that is straight-up not needed. Just off the top of my head, the bit about the relative age thing is in no way relevant to anything occurring on the page and none of the events occurring is the slightest bit enhanced by giving hard numbers for the characters' ages. We know they're adults because you've written them as adults, and more than that is just bleeding urgency away.

It's your world and you're excited about it an you want to tell the reader about it, but it's not necessarily going to help the story for you to do that. You can convey a lot by painting around the fringes.

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On 18/10/2016 at 5:12 AM, kaisa said:

Sexy Lamps Test < Bechdel Test << Mako Mori Test *

On 18/10/2016 at 5:23 AM, neongrey said:

and it's not an inherent 'not sexist' card


Thank you, people. I've been aware of Bechdel for quite some time (not that I always pass it..., must do better), not the others however.

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Comments then summation. Sorry this is so late, btw, just struggling to write and critique at the same time!

  • His corrupted world deteriorating” – I feel it’s unclear whether it was corrupted before, or this refers to corruption by the ash.
  • Osha had been thorough” – I don’t understand if Osha is a person or a thing, and if so what kind of thing.
  • forcing him to brush it off constantly” – I picture ink smearing across the paper.
  • The dying vegetation that surrounded Alluren for miles, degrading into ash, had drifted and settled over the city causing constant ashfalls” – Does degrading mean burning, how else would the vegetation become ash? If it’s ash that is drafting and settling, then this is not ‘causing’ the ash fall, it is the ash fall.
  • I'm struggling with the dialogue, it’s rather stilted. A good test of dialogue is to read it out loud. I appreciate that different races will use different forms of speech, but when it comes down to it, dialogue needs to be convincing.
  • They were both young for Allurians, about 30 years for a human, 200 years on his next” – I think using numerals in fantasy / historical etc. is a no-no. In SF, I would say okay, but seeing these numbers drags me out of the story. Look at the books you read, I think you’ll find this is the case.
  • His long, enhanced Allurian ears” – punctuation is important where using multiple adjectives. Here for example, I'm not sure if you mean his ears are long and enhanced, or have been enhanced for a long time (which would be ‘long-enhanced’).
  • I believe we’ll be safe to go this way” – Here’s a good example of what I meant when I mentioned dialogue. This is wordy and informal. Compare that with “Wait, safer this way.” I think the shorter form is more convincing as words said between a couple trying to escape an invading army.
  • Lyzell looked deep into those emerald almond eyes” – this is a bit of a mouthful, and it’s no time since we had the description, so this felt a bit OTT.
  • She spun backwards as it continued to come at her and brought her foot up” – Why isn’t she armed if she’s a skilled fighter?
  • THAT WILL BE UNNECESSARY” – I think, from the context?
  • Closing the distance quickly, Soryn wasn’t sure he was too late” – There are a lot of punctuation and typo issues. Okay, it’s a draft, and it’s all easily fixed, but I makes the piece feel rushed, with doesn’t assist critiquing.
  • he thought to himself, disgusted” – I don’t understand what he is disgusted by.
  • It feels like an odd place to finish a prologue, or a chapter, like it’s hanging. If it is a prologue, and the purpose of this second POV is to show us that Alandria is still alive, then I think this second part is redundant. For me, I think it would be better for the reader to assume she’s dead and learn what happened in retrospect. This said, I'm not sure if I'm invested enough at this point to care especially whether she's alive or dead.

I like the way you have made Alandria a strong and active character too. I think this is much more interesting than the previous version. Despite my comment directly above, although I may not be rooting for her yet, I do care more than I did in the previous version.

I think there is a fair amount of work still to do to make this sing. I've mentioned my difficulty with the dialogue, and I find some of the language and description a bit ‘untidy’. This said, I get a good sense of urgency and I think there is good potential in the characters now that you have changed their dynamic (and that of their society).

Good steps forward!

<R>

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