Blackhands, Prologue (~V) (3428 words)

[Yados]

Kaisa said it was alright for me to submit this week since there were open slots. 

 

I’ve haven’t engaged with this community for… years? Oof. Yeah. Three years, looks like. It’s bad when the internet is what makes you feel old. 

 

I don’t even know if anyone who was around back when I used to sporadically post and critique are still here, but that’s okay because I think this attempt is best gone into fresh. Even though, in a lot of ways, it’s the same book I’ve always been trying to write.

 

I’ve had these characters in my head for years and years and whenever I try write something, it’s always about them. And the thing that changes more than anything is the story. Because I like writing about these characters and I think I keep getting a little better at it every time I try. But I always fall off when there are pages and pages of people talking but not much happening and not much of an idea of what would make things happen. In the end, I think that the reason I’ve been able to adapt these same characters into whatever story/plot/setting/time I’m writing is more due to the weakness of those other things. 

 

I’ve been a long time coming back to these characters and writing itself because I’ve been going through law school the last three years. It’s a bit of a gauntlet, but I’m at the point where I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and that’s turned my brain back to these characters and, more importantly, a story I want to tell. 

 

So I think I have a story this time and I think I know where it goes and I definitely know how I want it to end because it’s interesting and specific to the characters that have been running around in my head and the world that was always kind of half-forming around them. 

 

I like it a lot. And I keep liking it. Which is important. I hope it’ll be something that keeps me writing and keeps me hanging around here and contributing and engaging and reading and critiquing… even though finals are looming. 

 

tl;dr I’m writing again after a few years and I’m pretty sure my brain is a bit different. 

 

Thanks for reading!

[aeromancer]

TAIG (Thoughts As I Go): I like the setup. The quotation about Wardens sounds nice, though I wonder if it could be introduced differently. A social commentary about perceived expressions embedded within a loose dialogue … this is very good. I’m greatly enjoying this. Hmm, the classic four humors.

Notes: Overall, the setup delivers. I’m ready for a story, and not just a story about a soldier and a necromancer, but also a story detailing more of the moments within the story and the way to tell a story. This is a great opening.

It may require a bit of cleaning though. Grammar is a bit spotty here and there, but that’s always the case, and can easily be rolled out.

[Yados]

Thanks for the feedback! 

Grammar, especially dropped words, is an issue, to be sure. Proof readers are a dyslexic's best friend.

Glad you thought the style worked. I'm toning it down about half way for the main chapters but gave myself free reign for the prologue and some inserts/character sketches throughout. I'm trying to give myself enough of a leash that it's fun, but I also need to be able to proceed with some amount of structure if it's going to work as a whole. I like writing like the prologue, but it's kind of thing you need to nail or you look very foolish.

I hope the story delivers. I have an opening and an ending I am very happy with. Now I just have to bridge the two.

As for the four humors, I'm going to try to use them as freshly as I can. I like them as a broad framework which I can play around and do unique things but still be able to point and call it something. And I like to think I have some nice twists added them as well. I'll be interested to see if you guys think it works. 

[kais]

Welcome back to RE, after your long sabbatical!

Overall

This has the makings of a very engaging novel. Right now though, the text is wandery and grammar needs cleaning. I think you could cut out about half the words and have a very compelling prologue on your hands. Bonus, your author voice is strong, and that also helps make the piece compelling. Specific notes below.

 

As I Go

- the cold open line isn't really that gripping. It reads generic.

- that first full paragraph is wordy and wanders. I still can't find the hook

- the second full paragraph is where you should start the prologue I think. Much more dynamic

- page two: people have very different size distinctions when it comes to cities. Need more concrete measurements

- page two: you have a lot of long, potentially run-on sentences that make the sentences wander

- page four: author voice starts to come out here, which is good, but... this still wanders too much. Thus far I know there is a city and people wearing uniforms. That's all I have, mentally, four pages in

- end of page four: yeah okay, I'm a sucker for female knights so you've piqued my interest now

- things start to pick up near the end of page five

- page eight starts wandering again

 

[Yados]

Great feedback! 

I'm definitely still hammering out style versus structure. And the problem with letting yourself indulge is that you are going to veer onto the self-indulgent. 

I'm trying to get my "voice" across with fewer words. I wonder how far I could pare this down. It's trying set up a lot of stuff and be kind of distinct, but I might not need to set up all those things and the first/second chapter still has the burden of setting up a wholly different thing (and it's thirty years later). 

I think more than anything, I wanted to set up a sort of feeling in the opener more than any of the other things it does. But that's a pretty tall order for an prologue where no one is invested yet. 

Well spotted on the opener. Last minute addition because I felt like I needed some kind of opening statement... and it shows. I'll punch it up/change it. I wanted it to mirror the ending where I think it works a lot better but maybe that's not the way to go. 

17 hours ago, kaisa said:

- end of page four: yeah okay, I'm a sucker for female knights so you've piqued my interest now

 

Sadly, it's going to be more of a lady crime-master and lady-inquisitor cat and mouse kind of story in effect more than lady knight story. There's a lot of exploration about things that were promised and things that actually happened. I wanted to set this stuff up as contrast. And there's at least one major flashback/story set in that era that would be full-knight... but now I wonder if it's a false promise and I should stick to a more authoritarian/fascist aesthetic for these guys. 

Lots to think about. Thanks!

 

[neongrey]

P.1

You`re starting off pretty rambly, and I'm not loving it. Going for the second-person-directly-addressed-by-the-first-person-narrator is really dicey at the best of times; you need to be really flawless for me to buy in and I'm not sold here.

The meta stuff too, yeah, that's a me-putting-the-book-down type moment. There's few things I like like less than gimmicks but self-aware gimmicks are one of them. Feels like more the focus is on how clever a notion it is to do it like this when it's really been done before enough times to be tired. It's possible to address the reader from first person without falling flat but this, I think, is not succeeding.

I would probably cut the whole first page, to be honest.

P.2

I feel like here you're sort of hitting the heart of why prologues can be such a problem. You're making efforts to gussy it up with a solid voice and once the meta stuff is out of the way the voice is reasonably readable but this is pure, undistilled exposition. As it is it's not hugely interesting to read about but it also sort of makes me wish I was reading the incident being described instead of this.

P.3

As above, but your direct-address is a bit better to the bottom of the page and onto the next.

P.4

We're four pages in and this is the first moment a thing currently happening is described. At this point the 'it's like this but' is starting to feel more like it's an attempt to avoid actually describing things. I was willing to give it a bye as being a vaguely novel quirk of voice the once but coming on it again, I mean, you're at this point outright telling the reader to evoke their own imagery; the impression I take away from this as a reader is that the writer doesn't know what they're doing.

P.5

Only here is really where I start feeling like there's anything interesting going on.

P.6

Still kind of rambling, but you're holding my attention through here.

P.7

Hmmm

p.8

--

p.9

Huh.

p.10

And you've lost me again with going back harder into the going-to-tell-a-story stuff again. Of course the story will be told because that's what the book is for.

Like, I dunno, I think this is some fairly solid concept work but I also feel like this prologue should be, like, at most, your back-of-the-cover-blurb. The whole thing is just explaining premise and almost wholly devoted to saying 'welp this is what you're going to read'. I'm not loving that.

[Eagle of the Forest Path]

I have some of the same concerns as neongrey about the "meta". Specifically at the end of page 3, not that I don't enjoy a lime-and-magenta-plaid commentary, but is it really worth breaking the fourth wall again over that? There's nothing wrong with using the "storyteller format" - it's a respectable formula - but IMO it becomes a bit much if you also do fourth wall.
Question: is the narrator simply the narrator, or will he be making a physical appearance in the story as well?

The opening sequence is very well written IMO. However, I fear it's probably too "literary" for most fantasy readers. You get pretty abstract there, and that can put people off, especially right at the beginning of the book. And if you don't keep doing it for the rest of the book, it also becomes a broken promise.

On page 1 you basically state that the purpose of the prologue is (at least partly) to make for a shallower learning curve, not only does that make for a rather info-dumpy feel to the chapter, it could also work the exact opposite of your intentions. Since there is a portion of readers who simply skip any prologue (heretics!), putting information your reader will need in there, the learning curve will actually get steeper for them. As an exercise, imagine the story without the prologue and see if it still works?

You have a whole page on the wardens, but they've been dead for twenty years (weren't they supposed to be immortal, by the way?) at the time of these events. You spend another page or more on the "prehistory" with the immortal parents across the sea. You've clearly spent some time and effort on world building, and your concepts are quite interesting, but you're not giving the reader much reason to care about all of that.

On the plus side, you've clearly outlined (some of) the promises for the story: the soldier and the necromancer, the chambermaid's tale, the fall of the civilization... giving the reader something too look forward to, while at the same time not revealing too much.

You have a tendency to get a bit rambling in places, but you do have the sort of voice and style that can make those parts fun to read. I found that to be the case for the whole chapter, in fact. I'm looking forward to Chapter 1.

[Mandamon]

I have similar comments to the ones above: too meta, too rambling, too, infodumpy.  Like Kaisa, I think the concept has merit, but your easily cut out half of this prologue.  Neongrey says it well in how prologues are inherently flawed.
The voice is good, but right on the edge of turning me off with the meta telling-me-a-story. It's going to be hard to keep it right on the line of not annoying, but still fresh.
I'm interested in the world, but it seems like all of this is telling things that have already happened. Seems like the chambermaid is the MC, and you only get to the real beginning of the story in the last couple pages. You could easily cut everything before that or move it into tiny pieces during the story.

Notes as I read:
Second paragraph is a bit too meta.

End of page 3 is the same thing - bringing attention to colors that are not what is stated in the story.

pg 5: "Those colors are real, by the way. Remember them."
--This insistence on colors is getting strange.

pg 5: "He so skinny that"
--he was so...

Four horsemen, anyone?

pg 5: "He was shouting in that ways that doesn’t sound"
--didn't

pg 5, bottom half: there's a lot of telling and some infodumping here.

pg 7 is a lot of infodump

pg 10: "wouldn’t make you square with a normal person"
--strange expression

[rdpulfer]

- Not a big fan of the first line. It feels a bit cliche. Maybe it's just the words "There are moments..." that feels kind of trite and trope-y to me.

- I agree the meta elements aren't working, at least in the beginning. Plus, you're assuming the reader likes third person, alternating points of view rather than first person, etc. 

- I do like the idea of a city called Quarantine, which was governed - at least at one time - by immortal wardens. That definitely works.

- What do you mean when you say The First was dressed like a hero? What does a hero look like? Doesn't it depend on the culture? You get to it another paragraph down, but I think it needs to come sooner or else it's lost. 

- Overall, I think it's a strong backstory. I think you could cut a lot in the beginning - in particular the meta elements - and have a just as strong final product. 

[Hobbit]

I'm a little late to this discussion but I'll add my two cents.

Overall I really enjoyed this prologue.  I'm definitely excited to read the story.  I loved the world setup, with Quarantine and the wardens.  I'm getting a Tolkien-elf vibe with the whole "immortal land across the sea" bit, but it's been too long since I read the Silmarillion to remember how humans came about in Tolkien's mythology... anyway, just maybe check yourself that you're doing something different there.  But overall, your world seems really intriguing and I want to know more!

It seems like a lot of people were put off by the narrator, but I'll say that I bought into it completely around the end of page one and it carried me through to the end.  I agree that the first line and the following paragraph are too abstract.  I get what you're saying - it made me think of 9/ll - but I think it could be streamlined or made less abstract or something.  I don't think you need to totally give up on the idea, but it needs work.

I think you could streamline your prologue without sacrificing voice by looking for where you repeat.  I noticed it most at the end of page 6 and the beginning of 7.  You spent a lot of time emphasizing the exile thing, but I think a sentence or two would suffice to make your point.  That was really the only place where I felt the drag enough to stop and write down a comment about it, but I bet there are other places where you could do the same thing.

I'll also add that I liked the color thing - when you said, "those colors are real, by the way," it was a cool moment for me.  

Lastly, welcome back to writing after law school!  It's always so rewarding to return to those stories we have burning inside of us... They never go away, do they?

[TKWade]

I really enjoyed the last three pages. But man. Those first pages were really difficult to get through. I think others have pretty much nailed all the problems with it. Cut it down and get to the substance of the prologue quicker. It takes too long to really engage me.

[Yados]

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone! Sorry I was not more responsive over the weekend. Law school finals are a whole thing. 

My takeaways are that the voice largely works, but the rambling doesn't, the setting is interesting, but the infodump is too dense. Less meta, more hard detail. 

I think I'll set off doing another take on this till the rest of the story is done, but set aside the things I think needed to have been set up (wardens, quarantine as a city/world, foundational myth, stage stuff) and see if I can get there in less time or if anything new needs to be in there. 

Right now, I'm think about confining that "voice" to something like epigraphs and interludes and making sure the prose for the proper story stays more constrained. I think it would be pretty hard to tell a whole story like this. I do think that my interests in telling a story in the first place stray a bit in the direction of setting up feeling and therefore the polot/details/world-building are always going to be subservient to those moments... which makes it a hard balance. But I think I can get there and I think that if I can get it to work,  I have a good story to tell. We'll have to see. 

I don't think I'll have new chapters polished until week after next (first final is Monday) but writing as procrastination gets you pages as it turns out. I'll be interested to see what the reactions are compared to this and whether I might need to loosen up if only to mitigate whiplash. 

Thanks again for reading this and giving me the benefit of your eyes!

Edited December 5, 2016 by Yados

[Robinski]

Hey there, I’m well behind the curve here, apologies for that, however now full steam ahead in catching up. I’m reading pieces through all available submissions, so I’ll go through your three in order. I hope these comments are helpful, and not too late!

• Phew, first page and I’m gasping for breath, mostly because of the lonnnnng sentences. I like the idea you’re going for, it’s different and could be effective, but I feel that the language is a bit rambling and slightly muddled in places (typos excepted, of course). When you invited the reader to skip on I thought, ‘Uh-oh’ because, at that point, I am still trying to figure out if I’m engaged or not. I’m still here though, let’s press on.

• The story of the city sounds like and info-dump, but I’m prepared to go along with it because I’m interested in what you’re telling me. Maybe there’s a better way to convey the info in a less blatantly expositional way, but I’m not considering that right now.

• “but they also know many different truths” – how very topical  

• “I’ll do it often and you’ll have to forgive me for it” – I wouldn’t advertise this, personally, I can see a fair few readers getting frustrated with the rambling style, and if you announce or imply that the whole story is like this, I think you will turn quite a number off.

• I would say that an order doesn’t ‘take place’, but is established, or ‘comes into being’.

• The bit about the colours makes little sense to me, and I don’t really care about that now, if at all. What I hear in this part is the narrator telling me I’m too stupid to understand what he’s talking about, so don’t worry about it and just keep reading. That’s a hard turn off right there.

• One thing that strikes me here (for some reason) and pleases me greatly is the paucity of capitalisation which is, I think, as it should be.

• So, people’s hair grows really quickly, or grows at will, it seems according to what you say about the black knight.

• Again, with the colours, and a ‘Hey, you, pay attention to this.’ Feels like I’m in school and I’m sitting at the back of the class.

• The kid was projecting. The description seems unnecessarily complicated.

• The bit about the crowd going silent, and then something happened, and then the crowd really went silent – it’s confusing, choppy and needs tidying up, I think.

• I should also say at this point that my attention certainly is held by the drama of this display, and wondering if the First really is dead, defeated by his hubris.

• I like your description of the crowd going mad and the causes of that. I felt that was effective.

Heh, well then, I like what you took on here and I think, with a few edits to tighten up and refine the narrative, you have an interesting and novel opening to a story. Assuming a ‘typical’ level of improvement through editing, I can say that I am engaged at this point, and I’m curious to see where we go from here.

Although you dumped a fair amount of info in this prologue, I didn’t mind that, and weeding out the rambling of this opening, plus boiling down the info itself, will leave a more palatable introduction. The first bit about the colours, I thought, was verging on condescending, and I think you would have a smoother ride if you dropped that, I don’t’ see that it’s integral to the story, but it is annoying, imho.

Off to read the next bit. I hope these comments are helpful.

<R>

p.s. Scanning the others now, I see there's plenty of stuff you've heard already, but anyway, a second (seventh?) opinion is still a second (seventh?) opinion