Scissors & Bows - 12/5/16 - aeromancer

[aeromancer]

This is Part 1 (more specifically, chapter 1 and part of chapter 2) which introduces the main cast of five characters of Scissors & Bows.

Scissors & Bows is a steampunk/fantasy political thriller (hopefully). Scissors & Bows is the sequel-of-sorts to an unpublished novel I wrote, which may / may not get published. That means this needs to make sense as a standalone. Abbreviate all character names, please. 

Looking for thoughts on: Plot flow and character development.

[TKWade]

As I go.

P1.
-The first sentence was good. I was intrigued about what the Nest would be. I felt like the rest of that paragraph kind of fell flat though. I didn’t get any sense of what the Nest was, so I lost my intrigue from the opening sentence.

-The third paragraph could be cut down and you’d hold tension better there. I think you’re overusing adjectives – this is a huge problem that I run into for myself. For instance, we know his hand his going from the ship to whatever, all that is important is the destination of his hand. You could say, “S spun around, his hand going to the concealed revolver in his coat. A girl with closely cropped hair wrapped in a greasy bandanna stood there pointing a wrench at him.” It could probably be written better yet, but I think it flows better.
 

-more unnecessary descriptors when S raises hands
 

- I think you could cut the last sentence of dialog from N. makes that part feel stilted and it doesn’t match N’s characterization so far.

P2 – P4

- I really enjoyed the dialog and back and forth here.
 

P5 – P6

-          The idea that he’s the first to speak with a type of question seems odd. It seems out of character, possibly.  If it’s a briefing, shouldn’t the individual coordinating the briefing be the first to talk and explain. Wouldn’t he know that? If he has extensive military experience that initial response seems out of order. Etc.

-          I might be wrong here, so correct me if I am, isn’t it usually customary to give the full briefing and then have questions after? If that is customary, then it seems odd that S keeps interrupting the process with questions. It just seems odd. And I could be totally wrong. Just an observation.

P10

-          With weapons lining the walls he had to ask about it being the armory or not? I’m not sure I like the start of this scene, but we’ll see how it progresses. I would probably skip the first two lines of dialog or find a way to fit them in after the description of the armory.

P12

-          I feel like you’re over using dialog for exposition. I’ve seen it a couple of times now where it gets too explain-y during the dialog. But here is a good example. D’s paragraph where he talks about what weapons he’ll take.

P17

I like the twist of the admiral being his mother lol


Overall: I really enjoyed the banter, but you could dial it back a bit probably. Some of it was a bit stilted and some of it was wholly unnecessary. You had some really good lines that made me smile and some that made me cringe a bit. I think you have this really awesome concept going on and it kind of reminds me of firefly or guardians of the galaxy.

I find myself wishing i had better imagery of the people in the dialog. 

I really like it overall, but there is definite room for improvement.

Edited December 6, 2016 by TKWade

[neongrey]

P.1

Your first paragraph is very... workmanlike. Dealbreaker workmanlike, if we're being honest. The way the first sentence is constructed is just weird, the way it so painstakingly avoids any sort of action by any person at all. And the rest is all very mechanical telling. He's whistling in appereciation of something you've only cared to describe with a single word. I don't know why the POV character thinks this thing is impressive, and I don't know why I should care. The same goes for the rest. I don't have enough context to care about who or what he's looking for and just dropping a name does not create interest.

Both prose and dialogue are completely wooden the rest of the way down the page. I'm not feeling it, and it doesn't read like you're feeling it.

P.2

As above (I'll mention if I feel that change), and you're expositing way too hard here in the dialogue. I'm already not interested, and this dialogue is very... laboriously cramming information in.

You've also got a pretty nasty case of fantasy character name syndrome coming on here with K. Like clearly they're of some significance accounting for the fact that their last name is in the title, but I'm feeling a pretty noticable tonal mismatch here.

p.5

Your description is incredibly focused on just telling, but you're not even telling very much. 'a weird glyph' is pretty meaningless.

The 'when you say anarchists' line is, again, pretty maid-and-butler on outright telling us about this, and, like, I dunno, I don't expect characters to be super duper precise, but I know I don't associate 'anarchist' with 'intends to establish a totalitarian state'.

p.6

Anyway, this dude just walks in, starts getting this sensitive operation info basically immediately? I don't buy it. Especially since this group is theoretically pretty selective.

P.7

I don't want to put it like this, but I legit don't know any other way to put it, but the line starting with 'that's not true' is really childish, and I don't mean in the sense that the character is behaving like a child, or in the targeted-at-a-young-audience sense of childish. This particular style of basically randomly shouting with the sort of stilted phrasing is very... it's a very young conception of how adults argue; the sort of thing I would expect to see written by a kid.

I'd really recommend you read more (outside the genre, preferably) stuff with strong dialogue, or tv with really strong character interaction. Really look close at how characters talk to each other, and really deconstruct what makes it feel real.

p.12

'looked stunned' is pretty not-great description when it's describing people the pov character is observing (again, it's telly); when it's describing your pov character, that's kind of into what I would call a POV error. One does not as a rule describe oneself as looking stunned.

And again, S is getting way too welcomed for me to buy any of this, and this entire dialogue is still serving to flood information at us.

P.13

This is not believable dialogue. The 'I am D...' line just does not scan; you're subordinating believable flow to shoveling information at us. If the name of her mother is that well known (and indeed it must be to get a literal dropped jaw, which is kind of cliche at best), that 'the legendary', it just doesn't work for me.

'looked hurt' is... this text is so averse to description. I don't know what it is that he's doing that's making him look hurt by this at all, and his dialogue, again, does not scan. It seems like the goal here is for the character to seem off-kilter but I don't think that's working at all here.This doesn't read like character traits.

p.14

You've really got the opposite problem of what people who worldbuild too much do-- that sort of writing is in love with its own conceits so much that it ignores the fact that the reader doesn't have any reason to care about the minute details that are spewed forth. This narration feels like it's coming from someone who doesn't actually know any of the characters involved and isn't really invested in what's going on. It's all this-happened-and-then-this-happened-and-this-happened-and-this-character-looked/experienced-emotion. There's not much actual feeling being conveyed.

I'm actually gonna stop at the end of this page here; this feels like it's where your chapter break is, and I honestly don't feel like I'm going to have anything particularly new to add beyond this. I think I've probably been a little too repetitive as it is. I'll be more than happy to read subsequent subs but I think here's about the limit of my being able to be helpful on this one is.

Edited December 6, 2016 by neongrey

[aeromancer]

I suppose I should start off by explaining this chapter. Essentially, I wasn't quite sure where to start S&B, so I wrote a couple test runs to see what character groupings I felt had good chemistry, and what was lacking. This combination felt the best, but I never actually went over this in any great detail. There's a lot I want to fix with this chapter, so I thank you all for pointing out mistakes. Subsequent submissions should be slightly more cohesive.

@TKWade:Fair points. You are correct about the briefing, but the Swarm are very atypical when it comes to everything, so they break protocol. S is asking more of a rhetorical question, noting the armory's poor quality then actually asking about it.

I am overusing dialogue. This chapter was intended to introduce the main cast, but like you and neongrey pointed out, there's far too much exposition. Speaking of...

@neongrey: First, foremost, and most important, thank you for your (brutal) honesty. I know this draft is quite rough. I do have a horrible case of fantasy name syndrome, but K's name makes absolute sense, though you can't figure out why until much later (it has to do with an anagram of his name). On to your points: I'll have to address this: Yes, K is childish. He's meant to be childish. He disagrees with people on trivial things, will do things that question rationale for stupid reason, and is, in general, a nuisance. That's his character, and there's a good (and frankly somewhat dark) reason for it. The main reason the Swarm functions is because D keeps him in line, constantly. D's reference to legendary has to do with what this is based on, so I'll be sure to take it out.

12 hours ago, neongrey said:

This narration feels like it's coming from someone who doesn't actually know any of the characters involved and isn't really invested in what's going on. It's all this-happened-and-then-this-happened-and-this-happened-and-this-character-looked/experienced-emotion. There's not much actual feeling being conveyed.

Interesting. I'm not sure what gives you a sense that I don't know my characters. There's not a lot of deep emotional dialogue because there isn't a place in this kind of a scene, but I do feel invested in my characters. Can you tell me more?

[TKWade]

@aeromancer: I enjoyed the characters, but they lacked solid grounding and maybe that's what neon is getting at. I didn't get a sense of any of your characters outside the dialog. I wanted more description and characterization. They are fun characters and I get that sense. I think they could really shine personally.

Also, I understand what you're saying about the briefing, but that wasn't really conveyed. I figured that was probably the intention, but because it wasn't conveyed it came off really out of place and kind of annoying. You may need to ground this idea better that this group of mercs is super atypical. I get that feeling the further I go along, but it seems like at least 50% of your dialog would have more impact if it were known upfront that they were an odd bunch. 

I think the characterization bit could go a long way. It would fix that armory part as well as others. I understand your intention, but dialog doesn't carry it. You could just start off that scene by saying, Seyn looked around unimpressed, "This is the armory?" or "This is the armory?" Seyn said, unimpressed.

The way you said it reads a little stilted and it reads as a genuine question "Hi. Is this the armory?" uh, duh, it's full of weapons and armor... it makes the MC look stupid, not flippant.

 

[aeromancer]

Character descriptions are tricky, because I can't visualize characters. Seriously. I visualize weapons, fight scenes, armor no problem. Face? Can't do it. No idea why. I've written myself notes on how to visualize them, but I still can't do it. If anyone has tips for figuring out how your characters look, please share. (Sketching is out of question.) Later chapters have a bit more in the way of going into characters, save for D. Reading over the armory section, there really should be a bit more description. I get the feeling that I chose to do too much exposition through dialogue, and not enough through character building / setting.

[TKWade]

You play any video games? You can find some games like elder scrolls that have super in depth character creation screens. You can use that to help visualize perhaps? I actually pull some of my characters from character's i've created in game lol. It's silly, but it works for me.

Also, is that wrench N uses like Mjolnir? Thor's hammer? I got this impression from the dialog that only she could pick it up like she was crazy strong.

 

Edited December 6, 2016 by TKWade

[aeromancer]

When writing this, my notes indicate that I calculated the weight of a pure osmium wrench the size that N uses to be around 180 pounds. This is quite heavy, and osmium has stability issues. So, I looked up alloys, and noticed that there are some version of osmium super-alloys which are both incredibly stable, and slightly lighter. I don't know how much lighter, (especially considering that the alloy formula is copyright protected, so N uses her own home-brew formula), but I estimate the wrench to weigh around 150 pounds, less if the wrench is merely plated with osmium alloy and has, say, an aluminum core, or something. Yes, N is crazy strong. Physically, she's the strongest member of the Swarm though both F and D have methods of temporarily boosting their strength. (I only take notes on these things, incidentally. If my characters feel wooden, it's because I calculated their percent composition of wood.)

Also note that the US market value for a pure osmium wrench of that size is roughly $900,000. The alloy version is likely more expensive, but it doesn't exist (as mentioned earlier), so I can't calculate the value of that.

I do play video games, but I don't usually play the kind with in-depth character creation (unless you count Spore, which you shouldn't). Good idea though, I'm sure I can find decent face avatar somewhere online. I'll see if that can help.

Edited December 6, 2016 by aeromancer

[neongrey]

29 minutes ago, aeromancer said:

@neongrey: First, foremost, and most important, thank you for your (brutal) honesty. I know this draft is quite rough. I do have a horrible case of fantasy name syndrome, but K's name makes absolute sense, though you can't figure out why until much later (it has to do with an anagram of his name).

That's actually a pretty key component of fantasy name syndrome, to be honest. There's always a critical backstory reason why the name is like that. In the mean time, the writer's asking the reader to endure a name that doesn't sound right in the vague hope of some sort of payoff. If I as a reader am rolling my eyes from nearly the beginning of the book at something that's going to be around the whole book, does the inevitable 'no no it's really cool actually when you find out' sound all that compelling?

 

29 minutes ago, aeromancer said:

On to your points: I'll have to address this: Yes, K is childish. He's meant to be childish. He disagrees with people on trivial things, will do things that question rationale for stupid reason, and is, in general, a nuisance. That's his character, and there's a good (and frankly somewhat dark) reason for it.

Yeah, but that's not the issue I'm feeling here; it's not that the character is coming off childish; it doesn't even read like they're intended to come off childish. His phrasings and in particular his punctuation have a sort of style you tend to see in children's creative writing. Too many exclamation points, a sort of over-explanation on these lines, the priorities of speaking. I'm not describing a character problem, I'm describing a style problem.

And of course there's a reason for him having a diminished mental capacity. A dark one. (this, frankly, worries me from an ableism perspective, but cross that bridge when we get to it) How do you as a writer intend to make the reader care?

29 minutes ago, aeromancer said:

The main reason the Swarm functions is because D keeps him in line, constantly. D's reference to legendary has to do with what this is based on, so I'll be sure to take it out.

Interesting. I'm not sure what gives you a sense that I don't know my characters. There's not a lot of deep emotional dialogue because there isn't a place in this kind of a scene, but I do feel invested in my characters. Can you tell me more?

It's not that it reads like you don't know your characters, but the narration reads like it's being conveyed by someone who knows all the details but has zero connection to anything that's going on. There's never any reason given for the reader to care about anything. I feel like, by the way you're answering some of these crits, that you're expecting that the promise of explanations for what you consider to be key character mysteries should be sufficient to engage the reader but you're not doing the work of investing the reader.

It reads like you didn't enjoy what you were doing; the prose is laborious, agonized, like it only exists because it must to carry things from point to point. The biggest word cut from my initial response about the style was 'joyless'. There's no sensation of what I as a reader should be feeling about anything going on here; if your respone to this is to consider 'deep emotional dialogue', I have to stress: please read more. Please read more emotional prose.

I mean really; this is a steampunk book about, like, airship privateers and the only thing you do to introduce the airship, glorious in its hangar, is 'yep, that's an airship all right'

[aeromancer]

30 minutes ago, neongrey said:

does the inevitable 'no no it's really cool actually when you find out' sound all that compelling?

Yes. To me, at least.

30 minutes ago, neongrey said:

Yeah, but that's not the issue I'm feeling here; it's not that the character is coming off childish; it doesn't even read like they're intended to come off childish. His phrasings and in particular his punctuation have a sort of style you tend to see in children's creative writing. Too many exclamation points, a sort of over-explanation on these lines, the priorities of speaking. I'm not describing a character problem, I'm describing a style problem.

And of course there's a reason for him having a diminished mental capacity. A dark one. (this, frankly, worries me from an ableism perspective, but cross that bridge when we get to it) How do you as a writer intend to make the reader care?

K doesn't have a diminished mental capacity, and while not being the smartest character in the book, he can easily tell what other people are planning and what traps are coming his way. His tactical sense in battle is excellent as well. He acts like a child mainly to catch his opponents off guard (this is not evident now, it's more so in the later chapters). This is never explicitly mentioned, it's a deliberate choice on my part. I understand that this might alienate readers, but I prefer in that way. K is also somewhat of a hit-or-miss character, either you like him or you don't. He was supposed to be the protagonist, which I quickly scrapped for many reasons.

30 minutes ago, neongrey said:

It reads like you didn't enjoy what you were doing; the prose is laborious, agonized, like it only exists because it must to carry things from point to point. The biggest word cut from my initial response about the style was 'joyless'. There's no sensation of what I as a reader should be feeling about anything going on here; if your respone to this is to consider 'deep emotional dialogue', I have to stress: please read more. Please read more emotional prose.

Gotcha. Emotional prose is not something I use to often, I'll see what I can do about using it more. Thanks for the clarification.

30 minutes ago, neongrey said:

I mean really; this is a steampunk book about, like, airship privateers and the only thing you do to introduce the airship, glorious in its hangar, is 'yep, that's an airship all right'

There are no airship privateers, sorry. The Imperial Navy doesn't really have mutinies, and both fuel and weapons are extremely hard to obtain, especially since mass-production of combat airships ceased when the last remnant of the Empire's enemy, the League was defeated around three years ago.The airship in question does have a hardpoint for mounting a large flak cannon, but the cannon itself was stripped when the Swarm obtained the craft.

The airship lacks description because I have yet to finalize a design. I'm still debating between a very traditional zeppelin base, a design with massive wings and turbines and a small body, or a purely gas-based alternative which rides on the winds.

Edited December 6, 2016 by aeromancer

[neongrey]

e: nm, ugh, sorry for double

Edited December 6, 2016 by neongrey

[neongrey]

3 minutes ago, aeromancer said:

Yes. To me, at least.

I mean, that's your perogative. I'm saying it's the sort of thing that factors into me putting a book down (stopping watching a tv show, complaining about a movie on the internet, etc) before ever reaching that point.

Otherwise, none of the rest of what you're saying now is making it onto the page.

[kais]

On 12/5/2016 at 11:19 AM, aeromancer said:

Scissors & Bows is a steampunk/fantasy political thriller

Well that is quite a thing!

Overall

It's an interesting crew assortment, and well balance, so I like that. I'm very confused with all the names introduced, and the lack of description of settings. Specifics below. I'd love to see the world more developed because a well-balanced ship crew is a great love of mine.

As I go

- Intended age range? MG? NA? A? With the second character being a girl, I was wondering

- oh, she's a pilot. Woman then, or girl still? Intrigued.

- page two, S asks if the female is the pilot. Didn't she already say she was, several times?

- N is named on page two, but did she introduce herself?

- page two: trio of warriors, but no descriptions? I don't know anything about this world. They could literally look like anything.

- page three: too many names too quickly. Going to take me a while to keep them straight

- page three: inviting him to join already does seem sudden, I agree

- page four: why would buying N a wrench impress her? I don't know, but I like her already.

- page five: would like more setting description (and this is coming from me, the author with the perpetual habit of skipping scene description)

- dialogue on page five is... I'm confused. Part of it is not knowing who is who because too many people were introduced too quickly, and part of it is that he got taken onto the ship so fast. Why not start the chapter with him having been with them a few weeks? This level of familiarity clashes with his just having arrived.

- page eight: At the end of the dialogue I'm left with no actual idea of what they are going to do or what their jobs are. Are they just 'for hire' in pretty much every sense? 

- page nine: I enjoyed the wrench banter

- page ten: wait, N is a pilot and she isn't allowed to pilot why? This needs explanation. Right now its just banter.

- page twelve: AHAHAHAHAHA 42....

- page twelve: protag needs weapons why? 

- page fourteen: I have no sense for what anything looks like. What does the ship look like? What do the people look like? What do the weapons look like? The people are moving from place to place and talking but it's just sort of a white blur that keeps popping into Firefly imagery because I don't know what else to insert

- page fifteen: ah, so they are on a planet and flying actual ships that would go in water. Flying ships were in She-Ra back in the 80s. I can do this, mentally. Just going to channel Sea-Hawk and his strange on-again-off-again romance with Adora.

- page sixteen: a village? How big? What are the houses made of? How are they blocking them? Are there houses or yurts or what?

- page eighteen: unsure what is going on. Too many names.

[kais]

6 hours ago, aeromancer said:

Face? Can't do it.

OMG this is a thing! Wait, going to get links...

Prosopagnosia, although that's not quite right. I read an article about exactly what you described a while back, but having a hard time trying to remember the name...

Aphantasia is where you can't imagine anything, but there is a version of this or something akin where one literally cannot picture faces. Ugh, sorry I can't find it!

 

[neongrey]

FWIW, I have a thing where looking people in the face is super uncomfortable for me. I do a lot of slightly looking past people or vaguely in their general directions. So lack of facial description isn't what's killing this here for me so much, but I'm also not a great gauge on that.

[aeromancer]

15 hours ago, kaisa said:

- Intended age range? MG? NA? A? With the second character being a girl, I was wondering

- oh, she's a pilot. Woman then, or girl still? Intrigued.

- page two, S asks if the female is the pilot. Didn't she already say she was, several times?

- N is named on page two, but did she introduce herself?

I suppose this is more A than YA, as certain main characters don't have morals, and the plot gets thick at times. The ages of the main cast are between 18-23, D is the oldest, S is the youngest (so I'm not sure why S claims he's older than K. He isn't.) N is named, she introduces herself (N is a nickname, actually.) N says she's the mechanic, that's different from piloting. Not  all mechanics are pilots.

15 hours ago, kaisa said:

- page four: why would buying N a wrench impress her? I don't know, but I like her already.

- page five: would like more setting description (and this is coming from me, the author with the perpetual habit of skipping scene description)

- page nine: I enjoyed the wrench banter

- page ten: wait, N is a pilot and she isn't allowed to pilot why? This needs explanation. Right now its just banter.

This is not just any wrench. This is an osmium alloy wrench. I mentioned some specs earlier, but I forgot to mention that it's actually harder than diamond and can withstand the temperature of up to 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This wrench is to mechanics what starmetal swords are to fantasy protagonists. It's not that N isn't allowed to pilot, it's that K doesn't want her piloting into a potential combat situations because she can't fight. That means a dead mechanic.

 

15 hours ago, kaisa said:

- page two: trio of warriors, but no descriptions? I don't know anything about this world. They could literally look like anything.

- page three: too many names too quickly. Going to take me a while to keep them straight

- page three: inviting him to join already does seem sudden, I agree

- page five: would like more setting description (and this is coming from me, the author with the perpetual habit of skipping scene description)

- dialogue on page five is... I'm confused. Part of it is not knowing who is who because too many people were introduced too quickly, and part of it is that he got taken onto the ship so fast. Why not start the chapter with him having been with them a few weeks? This level of familiarity clashes with his just having arrived.

- page fourteen: I have no sense for what anything looks like. What does the ship look like? What do the people look like? What do the weapons look like? The people are moving from place to place and talking but it's just sort of a white blur that keeps popping into Firefly imagery because I don't know what else to insert

- page sixteen: a village? How big? What are the houses made of? How are they blocking them? Are there houses or yurts or what?

- page eighteen: unsure what is going on. Too many names.

Point received. My excuse (and it's a bad one) is that this was a test chapter for characters which didn't really undergo edits, which meant that I wrote too much dialogue, not enough description, and ignored stuff that was explained in the precursor novel G&S. There are good descriptions and explanations for a lot of these, just not were they need to be.

My thoughts writing this chapter was to have a brief introduction with every character (because the novel throws five at you right off the bat) and I feel I both overloaded information, and wasn't able to put all the necessary information. So, the best approach (I think) is just focus on the settings, and let the characters develop and explain themselves when there are less of them together.

I'm glad you like the 'well-balanced crew'. They don't use the ship so much, it's mostly a means of transport, but they do stick together as a team (for the most part).

[Mandamon]

Well, there's been a lot of commentary on this already, so I can't add too much more.  I generally agree with the assessment of the others. Too many names to start, no description of the airship (which if this is a steampunk, NEEDS to be in there) and some weird overexplainy banter.

I think out of everything, Neon's point above is the one to pay most attention to:

21 hours ago, neongrey said:

Otherwise, none of the rest of what you're saying now is making it onto the page.

You have a lot of good explanation for what's going on, but you're telling people after the fact, not in your writing.

 

Notes while reading;

pg 4: "but I do happen to be the most … stable … out of all of us.”
--ok, a team of self-aware sociopaths has my interest...

pg 4: "Wait.” S stared at him. “I’m older than you are, K!”
--What does this mean?

pg 5: losing the names a little.  I have S, K, and N. The others are getting muddled together.

pg 6 "none-decoy"
--non-decoy

Pg 6: okay, getting more on the crew. D is the planner and R does not.

pg 7: "A? Where is she?”
--alright, so Kis possibly seeing people...

pg 10: “I don’t know it either, but I thought it would be an appropriate answer."
--A bit meta, but this is starting to read as schizophrenic. There's  a lot of action going on, but not really a plot yet.

pg 11: "Sdrew his custom revolver, and executed a quick spin round his fingers. “I’m actually more of a gunslinger."
--Ah. This is what's been bothering me. This is reading more like the beginning to an RPG than a book. MC is thrown in media rez with a bunch of strange people, just about to start a training/escort mission. The crew make topical and possibly 4th wall breaking jokes.

pg 11: "The walls rippled, and the room was replaced."
--This is also bothering me. So far, you have swords, axes, bows, guns, airships, elemental ring magic (maybe) and whatever this magic is. I'm losing track of where and when the setting is.

pg 13: “I am D K, daughter of..."
--This doesn't mean anything to me yet. I don't know anything about the world.

pg 14: "sat in the helm of the ship"
--I don't think we've gotten a description of the ship yet. At least here you say it's an airship, but I have no idea what it looks like.

pg 14: "On the right, the ship’s. Eternity’s Beginning II. Prince A-t’s personal airship."
--Again, don't know why this is significant, not knowing about the society.

pg 16-19: Getting a bit lost in who's who. I thought this was an escort? and is this their village or a hostile one? Why is the admiral there? Mostly confused.
 

[Vreeah]

Hello Aeromancer!

Oh, hot topic this week, seems I'm late to the party. I'll ignore the other critiques first for this first section so you get a clean first impression. Sorry in advance if you see any repetition, but it'll at least mean there's something popping up for multiple readers.

---

Hm, how small of a building is this hanger being compared to? The steampunk airships I imagine in my head all already tend to be the size of what I call big buildings, mostly cause they have huge sails, nets, or balloons here and there.

I believe I have successfully lost track of the names at around the middle of page 3, or possibly the end of page 4. The names kind of dropped in all at once without something I can hook together with each one. It's like tracking a bunch of bouncing balls dropped at the same time instead of one after another. There's a moment on page 4 where the main person conversing with the viewpoint character changes after an explosion, but I missed the switch for a second.

I'm guessing at some point at the end of page 4, you originally had someone calling the viewpoint character "kid" or some equivalent. That seems like what would lead to the "I'm older than you are!" dialogue stamp. Since the catalyst is now nonexistent, that line threw me off.

Haha, the "behind you" gag got a good chuckle. I wouldn't have gotten it if I were in the same situation. I'd sit somewhere in that room until one of the other mercs walked in with a smug grin and pointed at the wall. Oh, unless the door literally opens into the wall and nothing else, meaning they installed the door purely to mess with visitors and newbies. Either way, fun. One note, though. I feel like the joke would work better if something stalled the viewpoint character for a second. One line of distraction. Otherwise, I have a feeling a lot of people will question why he didn't follow into the room that everyone else walked into right in front of him.

I'm sure I saw someone imply that being direct was something that needed to be worked on, but the description of the current mission is pretty darn straightforward. I guess they aren't the same speakers, so maybe not being direct is a trait limited only to the first speaker. As part of the argument for why losing track of characters is so problematic, I do not remember off the top of my head who said what a couple pages ago.

You'd think this establishment of being mercenaries would need a bit less explanation for someone whose whole plan up to this point was to join them.

Pause. A sense of disbelief fell on me. Why would they send a smaller force for their objective? That doesn't seem like an obvious choice, so much so that I'm surprised its the first thing being brought up.

D has less patience than I expected from someone that has probably been in the crew for a long time. The dynamic with what is either a hallucination or a spirit is amusing, at least.

I like the opening to the metalworking test. I feel like that speaks nicely for N's character.

Yeah. S and N's relationship is unfolding fine. I can see these two being good buds. That said, explaining how a particular metal is weapons-grade doesn't seem like what one metal worker would say to the other, so clearly it's pure exposition for the reader. I'd say to tweak that so it fits their setting and expertise.

What are these sanity tests and how can I take one to prove my own sanity levels? Haha.

While S is shaking F's hand, he suddenly spoke with a lot of pauses in a short line.

I believe it's now a requirement for every member of this crew to have self-awareness. It's one thing to be a rebellious teen, and it's another personality to describe yourself as such. Hopefully this is intentional, because now I'll be thrown off if F actually is a rebellious teen.

Elemental rings, cool. You know, since S was already wondering about the rings, I feel like describing those rings during the character's introduction would have helped me lock a name with the character. Wait a sec, he uses rings and his last name is that? Hrm. Intentional implication of family inheritance? Nickname?

Is this our world? That's a cliché line in our world. This slightly disturbs me, especially if they're intentionally identifying it as a clichéd line.

K's doing a good job of making the crew seem like the type to go with the flow, with his pilot job appointment.

The armory felt like a good time for S to flesh out his metalworking experience by identifying the metals, possibly giving us some more fantastical metal names to compare and contrast. As the scene currently stands, I can't tell if the weapons are "low grade" because of the type of weapon, or because of what they're made of.

How did S go from saying there's a "decent selection" to using "pathetic" to describe the armory? As a tool of the narrative, it gave an opening for D to surprise him, but at the moment it was a flip.

Oh hey, see, now this guy is not being straightforward. Is he only lacking ambiguity when it's about the mission?

Ha, forty-two. That shout-out sat better with me since it didn't draw in any attention to itself, and was just a comment in passing.

Is this another test? Not exactly much of a joke if S decided he wanted a spear and ended up grabbing a rifle.

Bring them aboard the ship? Oh wait, the armory is in the hanger? I thought it was in the ship like the briefing room. Or... is the briefing room also in the hanger as opposed to the ship? I think I'm overestimating the size of the ship and underestimating the size of the hanger. I don't remember any mention of stairs in the description of the setting, it was only referenced when they were talking about it or walking down it. I distinctly remember S looking around the hanger at some point and saying that it contained "nothing".

You know, I think there will be a tad more impact if the world 'legendary' was dropped form the description of the father. S's dropped jaw says a lot, and the fame of a person is better pronounced by the people reacting, instead of the person announcing. That said, leaving the word in place does imply a lot of pride in D, which would also be nice look into the character.

And suddenly K's personality is more bubbly than I've been voicing in my head. That's rather funny, actually. I don't mind if that's a quirk of his.

Already on the ship? When did F ever leave the ship?

Captain? Is the pilot/helmsman considered the captain in this world's airship hierarchy? Does he have the only intercom that reaches all other intercoms at once? Is the leader called something else besides leader?

I'm more or less okay with the background here. I'd love it if they got a good look at the ship graveyard, though, to really make the visuals sink in.

Guessing meditation is a part of the magic system if you've got prodigies in it.

Oh S is literally a captain ranked military unit, even if he resigned. Hm. Kind of came out of nowhere, but fair enough. Still surprised no one called him out when he declared himself captain, though.

Why did S show exasperation when it was made pretty clear that K had no idea who S was? There was an argument with A about lying and everything.

That was an abrupt cut. Then again, you said it was part of chapter 2, so I suppose it'll keep going. K went from whining to tactical in quite a snap, so I almost thought I was reading someone else's dialogue.

---

Needs some revision, primarily to add clarification. I imagine it's easy to get lost in this writing from time to time, which leads to rereading. It can be a bother to reread a piece too many times in order to understand what's going on.
 

[aeromancer]

Thanks for the response, @Mandamon and @Vreeah. I've already addressed a bunch of points, but you've touched on some things no one else has, so I'll address it. F's name is very intentional, he chose it himself. [The backstory is that his name was just straight up 'Four Rings' until K forced him to change it. F doesn't see the need to have an arbitrary grouping of letters as something to identify yourself with, and would rather be named after something he did.]. Yes, every member of the crew are self-aware to some degree, I would say that F is the highest, S is the lowest.

[rdpulfer]

- Well, first off, I'm intrigued by the title.

- I also agree - the intrigue on what the Nest is is well-handled.

- The Seyn/sane pun seems a little on the nose.

- It's also a little repetitive for Seyn to announce he's going to help with the ship and then for the next line to be him asking to help with the ship. 

- It feels like a lot of world-building swirling around a newbie on a mission. For some reason, I'm not buying that all of this would be explained to Seyn on his first day no less.

- That said, I do like the world and what it's building towards - it just feels like a little much for a first chapter.

[Hobbit]

Hello!  I'm definitely a late-comer on this one (seems to be a pattern for me...) but here are my thoughts.

Most people already commented on your dialogue and how the characters were a bit flat and easy to get mixed up.  The "easy to get mixed up" part was the most distracting for me in this draft.  I was getting a lot of information about each one, but it wasn't coalescing into a character.  The exception is Se and No.  I loved their exchange on the top of page 2 and it helped things gel for me.  Story-wise, think your cast has great potential.  I kept being really interested in how such a seemingly-dysfunctional group of people could be so good at their job.  Once you clean things up I think this will be a fun piece.

I skimmed the comments here, and I don't want to repeat stuff, but don't think anyone emphasized this much.  One of the biggest problems for me was that I had no idea what the stakes were for your main character.  When he meets the mercenaries, is he nervous because he really needs this job?  Excited because he's always wanted to do something like this?  If they reject him, what will happen?  And what keeps him from walking away when he realizes how dysfunctional they are?  I was missing his reasons for engaging with this group, and so I missed out on a lot of potential tension and engagement.  As it stands, I want to care more about what's happening but I don't know why I should.

From your comments above it sounds like you've got a lot of cool story here.  

Also, about faces - I'm similar (though I don't have prosopagnosia, @kaisa - not sure if that's what you were thinking of).  I have a really hard time picturing my character's faces.  I finally broke down and made a Pinterest board for the main characters in my epic fantasy.  I have an advantage, though - my characters are 17, and what happens when you're 17 in America?  Senior pictures!  To my surprise, it helped a lot.  Not only do I know how to describe them now, for some reason it's way easier for me to make up mannerisms for them as well.

[Robinski]

Looking forward to reading some more of your work. Straight into it.

• I didn’t get who was knocking. I thought S was in the room at first. Secondly, to me, a room is a relatively small thing. If this has an airship in it, I’m thinking hanger or warehouse, something that conveys a big space.

• The name of the character and the name of the swarm are similar.

• I’m going to go ahead and nit-pick here; the name itself isn’t faint, it’s the writing that’s faint.

• Repetition of ‘his’ in the same sentence is awkward. Sorry, I’m going to try and stop the LBLs because I should be looking at the whole.

• I love the image of the girl with the wrench, but she’s quite free to give her name to someone she doesn’t know. Maybe just my suspicious nature.

• Ach, can’t do it. Repetition of ‘them’ was awkward, as was the phrase ‘under them’, which is unnecessary. I don’t think someone would say that. Who else would he be asking for a job when he’s come here?

• ‘Aerial cows’, ‘bricks’ – lol

• Do like a character with a post, I’m interested.

• I think you were going for ‘lead one called out’ – it’s a bit clunky. Can you say ‘leader’?

• The greetings confuse me, people nodding and descriptions flying around. It feels over-familiar and scattered, and I lose track of who is who. I come back to the fact of all these people sharing names with a guy they don’t know. It feels like the author getting all the names out on the paper. I don’t think it’s working. I’d prefer one identifier for each person, then drop in more as you go, I think that would feel more organic, and would be much easier for the reader to assimilate.

• Okay, I’m going to sigh at this point. I feel like I read/watch a story a week with a sociopath or sociopaths in it. I think it’s reached the point of cliché now. But the worst thing is people calling themselves sociopaths, like it’s a badge of honour, like they’re trying to be cool. ‘We’re not just hard, we’re not just loners, we’re sociopaths.

• There are some nice lines, but some of the dialogue feels a bit forced to me. The stuff about she’s this one and I’m that one. And then the protest from S about being older – I didn’t follow that.

• I believe you would draw and diagram, not write it.

• S. explaining to the reader what the anarchists want to do came over clunky to me.

• I like D.’s ironic description of mercenaries – thumbs up.

• “It’s becoming increasingly more apparent.”

• Another character with an ‘S’ name, really? That’s four ‘S’ names, I think, and I wasn’t counting Scrs.

• I’m missing something about the logic. If the enemy know which is the right convoy, why would they send a smaller force there? At the end of the day, when all the bluffs have been played, they have a small force in the right place and a larger force in the wrong place. Why would they do that?

• D. comes across looking a bit silly in the argument about A., I thought, because being shy and not liking to talk are completely different. I struggle to see another interpretation of that.

• I like N. as a character, and S. is fine so far, kind of neutral as he’s in responsive mode. The others, I feel like they are trying too hard, protesting too much, etc.

• I’m really losing patience with people telling my how (in)sane they are, and that they’re rebellious. These things are measured in deeds, telling people it’s so does not make it so.

• I very much doubt a gunslinger would call ammunition ‘bullets’. ‘Shells’ perhaps, or ‘ammo’, ‘clips’ depending on the type of the weapon.

• “this is kind of a pathetic armory” > phrasing. For me, is vague and indirect, compared to, say “this armoury is pathetic” for example. S. doesn’t strike me as someone who would pussyfoot around if he’s going to insult someone.

• “This bow’s magical” – was a bit abrupt and left me kind of puzzled, but I guess she just magicked the walls so, okay. I’m wondering if I really need magic to be a part of the story when I’ve got steampunk (did you say it was., or am I mixing it up with another?). Anyway, I’m interested to see where that goes.

• “You’ve never heard of me, have you?” – lol

• I get a bit confused who Scrs. is because of the number of names I’m juggling that were all introduced together.

• The second part of K.’s description of the village is a bit dumpy, but I’m interested. Also, I’d rather you showed by S.’s expert piloting rather than telling me. That’s doesn’t mean a blow-by-blow account of the landing, there are other ways to do it.

• “You’re the wildest card…” – see above. However, more relevant, I was surprised to get another POV in a short like this (I think it is, Pt. 1+2?). I thought it was because S. was behind the wheel, but when they get out he is there. I’m confused, POV-wise.

• Very leading question from D. to S. about him having history with the admiral, it sounded like she was going to go ahead and describe the history in the question.

• Them arguing like children is weird, but works for me. I think it’s a good example of you showing me they’re crazy rather than telling me, even if it’s the characters telling me, which I think might be worse. More surprising, I think, is that they seem to know very little about their mission.

• The tactics feel weird, I don’t know, they don’t seem good, and this place seems absolutely perfect for an ambush.

In summary, I’m not bowled over. There is some good interaction within the groups, and some good characters, but others I’m not keen on. I like the tone, and the idea that the group could come together and have a good dynamic. The things that bothers me most, I think, is the plot, the idea of the mission seems flawed from the start and there is very little discussion of tactics and approach, contingency planning, etc. Also, there is virtually no description at all, so I have almost no visuals in my mind. This is probably making me more critical of the plot. There are few sights (and they’re black-and-white); almost now sounds; no smells or tastes or textures. I feel it makes the narrative rather bland, and makes the dialogue have to do all the work, which leads to its cracks showing.

I hope that this is helpful. Now I’m off to read the forum comments then to the next bit of the story. I see now that it is a novel, not a short. Don't know where I got that from.

<R>

[Robinski]

On 06/12/2016 at 8:50 PM, aeromancer said:

Character descriptions are tricky, because I can't visualize characters. Seriously. I visualize weapons, fight scenes, armor no problem. Face? Can't do it. No idea why. I've written myself notes on how to visualize them, but I still can't do it. If anyone has tips for figuring out how your characters look, please share.

This seems to me like a pretty fundamental problem. I feel like perhaps it's the same with settings/locations? They also felt blank to me, as did many of the objects.

For character descriptions, as a place to start from a low base, cheat. Take pictures from the net of random people and use those, at least until you get into the swing of if, because if you have no description, at all, I think you're going to struggle to engage readers. I don't mean describing every freckle on your m/c's face. You don't need to do that, in fact that's a bad thing right there, but give us something. He's got dark hair and a lazy eye; she's a red-head with a small mouth; just a couple of cues that give us something to work with.

Similarly with your last location, the village, give me something to hold onto and visualise, there are a dozen cottages, white-washed; there's the smell of cow dung and old smoke in the air. Literally, the first thing that comes into your head is better than no description at all - you can always change it later.