Jump to content

11/20/17 - MasterJack - Chapter 1 (V) - 2,034 Words


MistbornAlpaca

Recommended Posts

It looks like I'm the only submission this week... definitely NaNoWriMo.

Anyway, this is chapter 1, I submitted the prologue last week, in which...

The Life Stone that gives the city of Narthen Water was stolen by Master FangTar of the Swifters, who also killed Master Ditanu TonHar of the Slashers.

Anyway, that's a very quick summary of what happened in the prologue, but if you would like to read the whole .doc, feel free to PM me and I'll be happy to email it to you.

I'm still trying to decide on the POV's I'm using in this story, so the main thing I'm looking for here is whether this would be an interesting POV and a character that could carry the story.

Anything else you can give me would be great, thanks in advance for all your critiques!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looks like I'm the first! And here I thought I was running late.

As for POV, I didn't really get any significant attributes out of Denar. Seemed like a fairly standard young male protagonist. Sarrann has even less development. Why are they here? I'm not even really sure what the tests do, so I don't yet understand their reasoning. Right now, they both could be switched out for any other character. If you're looking for a POV, I'd ask why a reader would want to take a 80k-150k word journey with this person. Master FangTar at least had a reason for guarding the stone. Honestly, I'd rather read a fantasy about an 80 year old (female) master of martial arts at this point than another standard teenager.

readability-wise, I had trouble getting into this submission. First, it was very hard for me to tell how many people and swords there were. Second, the blocking and situation just doesn't work for me. Why are people climbing up swords in a wall to escape a pit filling with water? Just float/swim up with the water. Or if nothing else, if the swords can find purchase in a wall, there's probably enough texture to get a fingerhold to hold a person up, while they tread water. If the water was poisoned, or freezing, or something to give more threat, it could also work better, but right now I can't suspend my disbelief enough.

Notes while reading:
Pg 1: some blocking problems in the first paragraph. It took me a long time to figure out they were climbing up a sequence of swords stuck in the wall. I'm also not sure the flat of a sword would support a person's weight, and sitting on the edge would be...uncomfortable.

pg 1: "wrapping around a sword blade"
--ah...this is important to know. Say this earlier.

pg 1: "The boy on the rung below"
--wait, how many people are climbing up these swords? I think there was mention of another girl as well--so 4? more? I thought there were only 3 or 4 swords total, but this seems like there need to be more. Need to say explicitly how many people and swords are here.

pg 2: "water had begun filling the room around them"
--sooo, stupid question, but wouldn't it take about the same energy (or less) to simply dog paddle in the water as it filled the room, rather than stabbing swords in a wall and trying to climb them?

pg 2: "sliding off without a sound, slipping into the depths below."
--so no one can swim either?

pg 3: "pulled himself onto the sword"
--this is still not working for me. Swords are not structurally sound pieces of furniture.

pg 4: "had to cram onto one sword"
--nope.

pg 4: "There were only four of them"
--There were five? I thought there were four.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh goodness! I wrote up my response on Monday then forgot all about it! Sorry!

I also agree that the swords strained credulity, but I think  @Mandamon has covered just about every thing I would have brought up about them. I don't know enough about climbing to offer any suggestions, but the situation you have -- an ascent requiring teamwork with a time limit -- is a good one. It just needs a bit of tweaking.

The TLDR for the rest of this is just "I agree with @Mandamon ," so I'm not sure how much help it'll be, but here we go...

 

Thanks for keeping up the subs during these NaNo doldrums!

To answer your question, I found the character to be very... average. It's not that the character is either good or bad, it's just that I've seen so many protagonists just like him. Young, male, strong, athletic, chivalrous, doing good to save everyone, rescuing the girl through grit and inborn natural ability; right down to the dead mother and the fridged nameless girl for him to, Anakin-like, kneel over and bewail at the end of the chapter, I've seen this character.  I've seen him in everything from novels to TV commercials. So, can he carry a book? Oh, absolutely. He's done it before, and I'm sure he'll do it again. Will it be a book that I'm interested in reading? Not at all. There's nothing unique about him to pique my interest, to make me say to myself "all right, I've seen this trope before, but I want to know how he's different from the other heroes."

And what D is is a trope, a stereotype. I don't even have a good TVTropes entry to link to because there's just... nothing to distinguish D from just being "the hero." The thing to remember here is that Tropes Are Not Inherently Bad. They're also not inherently GOOD, either. They're tools, and shorthand, and some are far more problematic than others. They can be deliciously subverted, or comfortingly met. They can be horrifically overused and terribly written, too. Any way they are used, though, the author should be aware of them in the work. If the tropes are desired in the work, then how is the author differentiating their characters and plot from all the others using the same archetypes? How is the author turning the work from just another Trope X tale into something uniquely their own? That's what readers of genre fiction look for in trope-heavy stories. They want to see how this story makes something new out of something familiar.  Or at least, that's what I look for. I'm not sure D as a character is quite there yet, but keep at it! Drafts are drafts for a reason -- they're easy to modify and iterate. 

I really like Mandamon's suggestion of an older female protagonist -- that's not something that comes up very often in.. well, basically any fiction but especially fantasy, and I'm interested right off the bat on that!

But in this submission specifically, I'm more interested in the dead girl, to be honest. Why did she think she could hack it here? How did she end up at the bottom of the pack? SHe's clearly barely passing, but has still made it through I think four trials now? That's compelling. What's keeping her going? It sounds like women don't usually sign up for these Trials for whatever reason, so what brought her here? How was she treated by the other contestants? From the way the hero is dismissive of and actually forgets her prior to her death, it sounds like she wasn't treated that well -- why was that? What made her the class pariah? There's a story I'm interested in. Especially once she wakes up at the bottom of that well or whatever. I don't think that long in the water would actually kill her, so all she'd really need is a good thump on the back... Imagine, waking up at the bottom of that well, left for dead, and then her climbing back out (or otherwise escaping) -- what would the Masters make of that? Accuse her of cheating? Be amazed? Call her undead and shoot her on sight? These are things I want to know! 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, industrialistDragon said:

How was she treated by the other contestants? From the way the hero is dismissive of and actually forgets her prior to her death, it sounds like she wasn't treated that well -- why was that? What made her the class pariah? There's a story I'm interested in. Especially once she wakes up at the bottom of that well or whatever. I don't think that long in the water would actually kill her, so all she'd really need is a good thump on the back... Imagine, waking up at the bottom of that well, left for dead, and then her climbing back out (or otherwise escaping) -- what would the Masters make of that? Accuse her of cheating? Be amazed? Call her undead and shoot her on sight? These are things I want to know! 

I want to read that book.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi! Glad to see you sub again!

Overall

While I found the start of this piece to be more engaging than the last, the very persistent issues with female representation, male gaze, and harmful tropes was a huge turn off. If I read this in a published book I would not read the author again. If you need links for any of the tropes discussed before, the Sexy Lampshade Test, etc, do let me know and I will link them. 

5 hours ago, Mandamon said:

Swords are not structurally sound pieces of furniture.

I agree with @Mandamon entirely. I wondered about this a lot, too. They don't seem like they would be strong enough for one person, let alone four.

3 hours ago, industrialistDragon said:

I've seen him in everything from novels to TV commercials. So, can he carry a book? Oh, absolutely. He's done it before, and I'm sure he'll do it again. Will it be a book that I'm interested in reading? Not at all. There's nothing unique about him to pique my interest, to make me say to myself "all right, I've seen this trope before, but I want to know how he's different from the other heroes."

#iagreewiththis

3 hours ago, Mandamon said:

I want to read that book.

Me too! Maybe @MasterJack will write it? Please?

 

As I go

- by the second paragraph, I am already more engaged with this sub than the last one

- what are 'bottom's thighs'?

- page two: my fridge sense is tingling... The dead mother isn't helping

- wait... you can't just figure out how to swim. If you don't know how to swim, you drown.

- page three: while I appreciate that Sarran (again with the household names...swifter, Sarran..) is alive, the hero saving the girl trope isn't much better, especially since she hasn't even passed the Sexy Lampshade Test. Also, Denar is coming off as a super creeper holding a drowning girl longer than necessary. I do not like this character.

- he has to help her up by lifting her around the waist? Ugh. Super creeper

- wait WHAT. He takes off his shirt and she gets mostly naked? This is super gross male gaze right now, and it makes me not want to read any farther.

- oh wait no, apparently never too late for a fridging. *sigh* Please don't use this trope. It's tired and incredibly sexist.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

First off, I'm proud to say that I did not fill up your inboxes with the same email this week, yay! :D

Second, thank you all for reading and critiquing my submission, even through all of its harmful tropes and unconscious biases (I assure you, they were all unconscious.)

@Mandamon, thanks for all your blocking suggestions, that's something I'm very much working on.

@industrialistDragon, thanks for the suggestion about the dead girl story, it's given me an idea for another story...

And last but by far not least, @kais thanks for finding and pointing out all of my harmful tropes. As a teenager, I haven't read enough to spot all of them and your critique was very helpful. I did not intend this in the least to be sexy, and Sarrann is one of the POV characters I have planned currently, and sexy was not what I was intending. In my outline, S and D have been very close friends for a long time, and romantic was not at all how I was intending this to be. Finally, if someone could explain what fridging is, that would be great... 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Master OoklaJack Re. Fridging, @kais can certainly help you out on that front, and is our resident keeper of the Fridging Counter.

But to get you started, here are two resources:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Refrigerators

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, interested to see where this goes after the Prologue, which did not really give any clues as to where the main story would take place, and who would feature in it.

  • (Page 1, Para.1, Line 2) – I’m sceptical about the ability of a sword to bear that much weight. Swords flex, unless they are special swords, magically imbued, or some such.
  • (1,2,1) – I’m a bit confused. Is ‘the girl’ Sar? It seems like this is another girl. If it’s not another girl, surely she’s on the same sword as Den, in which case she can’t pull it out. Also, if she is on a sword that is head height above the one below it, there’s no way that I can see she can reach down to pull it out.
  • (1,2,2) – The other difficulty with jamming the swords in the wall, is that they are close to the wall, and so it is going to be very difficult to get any kind of leverage to get the sword in very deep. I like the idea here, but it’s stretching my credulity that it’s practical. How long would a sword need to be to drive it into a wall far enough to support two people and leave enough sword exposed for two people to stand on it? I know movies would do this with some hand-wavium, but I feel like I need something more to sell me on it here.
  • (1,4,2) – “Sands, his arms were tired.” – comma needed to make this work as an exclamation, I think.
  • (1,4,3) – “keep this up from for much longer” – typo.
  • (1,4,4) – “the razor-sharp edge exposed” – hyphen required, I believe.
  • (1,5,3) – ‘Smooth sandstone wall” suggests even more difficulty in pushing the swords in. I presume in fact there are mortar joints which, by definition, would be weaker than the stone, and that is where they are pushing the swords in. I guess you can still have smooth sandstone with mortar joints. My point in going on about that swords is that I think you need to take the description a touch further to give the reader something to hang their incredulity on. More on that later, though.
  • (1,6,1) – I thought it was a girl below him, now it’s a boy? I think there’s a continuity issue there, since the girl was stated as being on the lowest rung. Also, why does ‘the girl’ not get a name when Den and Sar do?
  • (1,6,3) – Again, the blocking – the physical position of things in the scene, I can’t reconcile it. The swords must by roughly 6 feet apart. I'm struggling to believe anyone can reach down to someone below and stay on their sword.
  • (1,6,4) – I would suggest it’s not appropriate to use numerals in fantasy. It’s about the feel of the piece. I would expect to see numeral in SF, occasionally, where large number are concerned, but never in a fantasy, especially with something as common as ages. Don’t take my word for it, though. Take down a Sanderson book from your shelf, or consider the book you are reading. I’ll lay a modest wager that the number will be in word form.
  • (1,7,3) – I'm not sure it’s a void if it’s full of water. ‘Void’ is defined as space, nothingness, emptiness.
  • (1,7,4) – The reason it’s up to the girl’s thighs is that Den is dawdling about thinking of his mother when Sar is beyond him! It does very much read like he’s causing the problem here. You suggest not in the next line, but why would she not be getting on with it while’s he’s having his internal thoughts?
  • (2,1,2) – I’d prefer that confirmation of him not knowing her name much earlier. I think it would help with my second comment of not being sure if it’s the same girl (as Sar).
  • (2,2,2) – Continuity issue, I think. Here, they are fifty feet from the top (I see you’ve used words instead of numerals :) ) At the start, they had hundred feet to go, but Den has not climbed up a single step, only Sar has climbed past him, and she can only climb one step, or he won’t be able to pass the next sword up.
  • (2,2,3) – Why on Earth would he give up? The survival instinct is very strong. I don’t believe this thought, when he is showing a strong sense of duty to the others. This feel inconsistent for the character.
  • (2,3,1) – Another blocking issue. If the swords are only five feet apart, how can they stand upright on them? I suppose they could be staggered laterally, but that isn’t described. I think five feet separation is a much better option for the climbing. What I don’t want is lot more explanation, but it wouldn’t need that to clarify this point earlier.
  • (2,6,1) – Ahhh, there’s something off here. If the water is up to ‘the girl’s chest, she must be reaching way down into the water to pull out the sword, but that sword must be the one she’s standing on, so how can she pull it out, unless actually she is reaching down about nine or ten feet into the water to pull out the sword below that. I just don’t see how it can work. Personally, I think you need to draw this on a bit of paper to check the details, because I'm really not getting the blocking of this bit.
  • (2,11,1) – If Sar falls off, I don’t see any way she will hit a sword on the way down. Surely, she is going to fall away from the wall, even if she falls to the side, I'm just sceptical about the physical of this bit.
  • Ha-ha. Okay, here’s another thing, and I should have thought if this earlier. If they just jump into the water, they will float to the top of the wall. Why would they not do that? I suppose there must be a reason, or they would not be climbing, but the only apparent reason is that they haven’t really thought that bit through. Perhaps it’s because they would be disqualified, perhaps the water is so icy cold that they would die before they got to the top. Anyway, I'm interested to see what happens now.
  • (2,14,5) – “its dark hands” – typo.
  • (3,3,1) – I wasn’t sure he still had a grip of Sar. You might say ‘propelled them towards the distant surface.’
  • The fact that they can’t swim is the answer to my point about why don’t they just float to the surface, I suppose. I think you need to answer that. I guess you did say something earlier about them never having seen water (or something), I seem to remember (can’t find it now), but I would underline that at some point.
  • (3,13,2) – I would like a short description of where they others are standing: on top of the wall, on the roof, on the edge of the chimney, whatever it is. Just to help the blocking.
  • (3,15,2) – I don’t like the implication here that she would not have made it alone, but he would. I expect what’s going to happen here is that you’re going to get some comments about the female role in this chapter. Now, I don’t get the sense that Den has been the ‘hero’ as such and the female characters have all been weak. They have been climbing too, and it was a boy that fell off* Having said that, I think you should consider increasing the agency of the female characters a bit. Sar does take the initiative at the end here, and you could interject ‘a couple’ or more additional lines for her along the way, to show he being encouraging or commanding. Beware of defaulting to the white male being the centre of everything. It’s not that you need to make your main character other than that, just be sure to give other characters their moments.
  • (4,1,1) – Gah. Right, I’ve got a problem with them starting to disrobe. Why wasn’t flappy clothing a problem earlier, restricting them when they were climbing? I appreciate it’s heavier now, being wet, but if it’s stuck to them, in some ways it would be less cumbersome. This just seems a bit gratuitous and unnecessary. Also, they are so close to the top, only fifteen feet away, which is not much short of two person-heights. Taking off garments just feels like wasting time.
  • (4,1,3) – Extending the point above, I did not mind the ‘personal moment’ that they had on the sword earlier, when they were supporting each other (did you describe Sar holding onto Den, or was it just him holding her? I forget now, but I would beware of that coming over sexist and making her seem submissive). Anyway, that bit has potential for being a Luke-and-Leia (ew!), Indy and Marion kind of moment (note how both of those are strong female characters with significant agency of their own).
  • My point above was, there’s a line beyond which him gawping at her curves is gratuitous when they are busy trying to save each other’s lives. Personally, I think the reference to her curves goes beyond what’s reasonable in this situation, but the part where they are clinging to each other is okay, provided it’s suitably even handed.
  • (4,4,1) – It’s good that Sar helps him, which to me implies that he needs her help.
  • (4,5,3) – “it slowly sank sunk until it no longer covered…” – ‘sunk’ is the past participle of ‘sink’, as in ‘it had sunk’, ‘sank’ is past tense, which is the context you have here.
  • (4,5,4) – I don’t like ‘the ground of the room’. A room has a floor. The ground is bare and outside, imho.
  • (4,5,5) – Okay, the girl is dead. You’re going to get fridging comments here, I'm sure, and I’m afraid they seem to be warranted here. I think there is any easy way to fix that however, and it’s a great opportunity for growth as a writer. Earlier on, a boy slipped and Den pulled him back up. The nameless girl falls off a drowns. Why have it that way around? Why does the boy drown and the girl survive? That’s an important question to ask yourself, I think. BUT, here’s the opportunity for evening things up. Why not have the boy drown too. Then, they would be lying together at the bottom of the room, together in death, closer than they ever were in life. You could make something out of that, a strong even-handed image to close the chapter on, and evocative portrait of wasted youth, and NOT a seen where you fridged the female character.
  • (4,7,1) – But was saw her slipping off the sword. This seems like a continuity issue.
  • (4,8,1) – Yep, classic fridging. Death of a female character, and even worse, a nameless one, to create sympathy for the male protagonist. I'm about to post this up, but I’m sure you're going to get it for this. Keep an open mind and you will grow as a writer. I’m off to read the comments now.

Summary: A good level of action which kept me reading, but I think this needs a good overhaul. It is a bit repetitive in places, and I think would benefit from greater clarity of description in places, but almost a bit less in other places. Although I'm sceptical about the physical of it, I can see it happening in an Indiana Jones movie, or perhaps one inspired by. Maybe a Tomb Raider movie. It’s not a bad premise, I don’t think. I’d be happier suspending my disbelief if you tightened up on some of the details, as per my comments.

The fridging thing is an issue, but I think you can fix that by being even-handed in how you treat the male and female characters. Dial down the male gaze (i.e. Den regarding Sar’s curves, etc.) and don’t hang all of Den’s anger on the death of a nameless female. The boy is nameless too – being even-handed would be to kill him too.

I'm still engaged by the style of your writing. I still think it’s good for such a new writer, and only will improve with practice. I still think the story has potential, and that you're balancing action and background reasonably well. What I would look for now, in the spirit of that balance, is probably a scene sequel, where there is some consideration of what happened, or what life it for the characters; a bit of world-building to place the reader in the setting.

Decent job, but with issues which, no doubt, were discussed at length! Of to the comments thread :)

<R>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 22/11/2017 at 11:35 PM, Mandamon said:

I'd rather read a fantasy about an 80 year old (female) master of martial arts at this point than another standard teenager.

Yeah. I was willing to suck that up to some extent, the generic teenager thing, but I do agree with @Mandamon. This is your first and best opportunity to instil character in your characters, not just the main one. With a mere word or two, you can do wonders. Sprinkling adjectives around is a dangers business, but a couple of well-placed ones can work wonders. Sar might have pulled Den up onto the sword 'irritably', or 'with a grim smile' making her confident and/or capable. In relation to Den, he seems to have a clear sense of justice and moral certitude (right-and-wrong), but that's a bit generic. That is one root to go with your MC, a blank slate so that the reader can project onto them, but I think that means your other characters have to be that much more interesting and engaging, entertaining; and that runs that risk of the reader liking one of the others more than the MC.

On 22/11/2017 at 11:35 PM, Mandamon said:

this is still not working for me. Swords are not structurally sound pieces of furniture

Yeah. Reassuring that the engineers had the same issues with this ;) 

On 23/11/2017 at 1:10 AM, industrialistDragon said:

Thanks for keeping up the subs during these NaNo doldrums!

Yes, thank you, @Master OoklaJack (what's all this Ookla stuff all over here suddenly? Is that from Oathbringer? I'm so far behind on Sanderson it'll be years before I get to that :mellow:. Anyway, yes, it's great that you have kept us going!!

On 23/11/2017 at 1:10 AM, industrialistDragon said:

I'm not sure D as a character is quite there yet, but keep at it!

Yes, totally agree, and stumbled to say in too many words. The most important thing is to keep going, learning, refining and improving. There's definitely good work here, imo. ID's point about the dead girl is excellent, and just highlights how important it is to think about all of the characters, and not have any generic canon fodder in your story. Give them all a couple of lines of back-story, even if they won't have a major part, because it will allow you to know how to treat them to make them seem 3D when they are 'on screen'. That sort of approach is also likely to generate ideas that will make your story richer, deeper. It might take you off on tangents, but that can work really well sometimes.

On 23/11/2017 at 4:50 AM, kais said:

They don't seem like they would be strong enough for one person, let alone four.

Certainly not two at a time, which I think was the most on one sword. I still like the premise of the scene. How to tackle the problem? You could make them putlog holes, which would be an easy and totally logical solution. It would take out the sharpness elements, but that was not so important, I thought, that it could not be refined. Their hands could still be ragged and torn, wrapped in cloth, just from the sheer work and damage of climbing up a hundred feet of wall. Or perhaps from a previous part of the trial before they entered this room.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putlog_hole

On 23/11/2017 at 4:50 AM, kais said:

If you don't know how to swim, you drown.

Hmm, I'm not entirely sure that you might not be able to keep 'afloat', just by doggy-paddling, but I do tend to agree that swimming down into deep water is unlikely. How to fix? Could someone have told him how to swim? Maybe he grabs Sar as she's falling past, instinctively, and he gets dragged down after her, then figures out pushing off the wall, so there is no actual swimming involved? I think there is a solution to this. Also, thinking back to what I said before about using all the sense, remember that, in deep water, there will be considerable pressure on Den's ears. Always be willing, I think, to spend increase time spent thinking compared to time actually typing, I think it makes everyone's writing better. I'm still trying to do that in my own writing, as I tend to charge off when I could consider detail more.

On 23/11/2017 at 4:50 AM, kais said:

oh wait no, apparently never too late for a fridging

Time to reset the counter, @kais... :unsure:

Hey, @Master OoklaJack. I admire your can-do attitude to this, and willingness to embrace the critiques. Well done! It's a pleasure to have someone on board who is so clearly committed to improving as a writer. I look forward to reading more. And kudos on taking the inspiration too. The pariah girl does sound like a good story! As does the old woman warrior, and I'm sure both would be a good challenge to write and expand skills.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...