Majestic Fox - 25-06-2018 - A Demon in the Silver City - Chapters 3,4,5 (6446)

[Majestic Fox]

Chapters 3, 4 and 5

 

R for Rough. Very much a first draft, so please ignore typos etc. 

 

It's a bit over the word limit, so no worries if you only read a chapter or two. 

RE submissions help me get through the first draft, so that's my main motivation for sending this stuff out  : ) 

 

 

[Mandamon]

Overall, I like the way this is going, but it would be good to dig into S's personality a lot sooner. There's definitely a sense of wonder, but I want to know a lot more about the tradeoffs between demons, the drug, and why each is used.

Also, what happened with that crazy lady from chapter 2? She just sort of disappears. I was expecting a longer conversation with her, or for it to go somewhere.

 

Notes while reading:

CH1:
pg 4: "She was stood beside him"
--There's several places in here that have extremely passive voice, which cuts the tension of the opening sections dramatically.

pg 4: There's a line break here. Not sure if this is skipping time or not...

Chapter 1 thoughts:
I think the setup is good, but I don't have enough urgency yet. We see from S. reactions that the demon is important, but I'd like to get more in his head to see how he's not fighting its influence. How else does it affect his daily actions?

CH2:
Pg 4: there's a lot of space devoted to deciding whether to get food. This could be cut down a bit to streamline things. I'm still not feeling a lot of urgency to get the demon, as the reader is isolated from anything it can do.

pg 5: "He watched her scuttling about the stuff"
--what stuff? I don't think there's been a description of what she's doing yet.

pg 6-7: The woman might be a little TOO strange. I'm have no idea what's going on. Maybe if we knew a little more about seekers? Are they prone to going mad?

pg 7: "A Seeker's magic was rare indeed, and if this old crone possessed any of it then it was astronomically improbably that she also held the ability to compel fire."
--again, I don't know what a seeker can do, so it's hard to be impressed by what this woman is doing.

pg 9: "but at that moment the most critical thing appeared to be the attainment of a large platter of sizzling pork."
--It took me a minute to figure out S was referring to himself getting the pork. I was thinking it had magically appeared or something. Making him more direct will help the urgency in the story.

Chapter 2 thoughts:
I'm interested, but not as much as I feel I should. Making S care more about what's happening would be good. Right now he's going through the motions of finding his demon, but I don't really believe he's in danger from the Guild, based on his slow reactions. Are there things he would be able to do with the demon that he can't now? Would he be frustrated by that?

CH3:
pg 1: "The pork had been exceptional, or would have been, had he remembered eating it,"
--we've just experienced him eating it, so this reads weird.

pg 1: "There was much to be done, and not a moment more to lose. If his demon had not already killed, it would soon."
--Still not feeling it. He's been bumbling around the city all day, without real urgency. I don't yet believe he cares if his demon kills someone. So far, he's only (somewhat) worried that the guild will catch him, not that the demon kills a person.

pg 2: "It would be extremely irritating if he failed to keep it down."
--This is about the only reaction he's had, and it seems strange with the dearth of other emotion.

pg 2: "The thought that his body relied his demon for its basic functioning was a new a worrying thought. Was there any validity to it? "
--I've been wondering this the whole time. If it's a thing, I'd amp this part up a lot.

pg 2: "If his seekers were not successful in three days"
--can he not...look for the demon himself? It seems like if you have another entity caged in your body, you might have some ability to find it. Him not doing anything is making a very passive main character.

pg 2: "? He'd worked so hard to make a life here"
--I haven't seen any sign of this yet, or even of him working hard at all.

pg 3: "Had the guild found his demon already"
So the guild is also better at locating demons than the magicians who use them?

pg 5: "The fact that their creations were so markedly similar could not have been a coincidence"
--Are they similar? Why? How? I have many questions about how these demons work.

pg 6: I was sort of wondering why S didn't immediatly assume it was P.

pg 7: "that perhaps Paige was interested in him beyond seeking a good wage."
--this sort of seems the case, what with her vowing to stick close to him. Either that or she's a very loyal employee...

Chapter 3 thoughts:
I feel like the story is hampered by S's inaction and inability to do anything about the demon himself. Is there some reason he can't seek out the demon? Would he know where it might go, from long familiarity? Does he talk to the demon? How does this all work?

CH4:
pg 9: Of course P slips him the stimulant. I'm beginning to think she's a lot more competent than him.

pg 11: Soooo....the obvious question here is, if there's a substance that allows the same magic as a demon, why not use that? also, why has S never heard of it before?

pg 13: ok, so there may be some reaction from the compound. And I guess the shaping doesn't last as long as normal?

Chapter 4 thoughts:
This one is better. I feel more emotion from S here. However, the magic demonstration is offset by the reader not knowing how magic works. How long does shaping usually work? Is it permanent, or just last a long time? Are there any side effects from the demon doing it?

CH5:
pg 13: Why would there be lye in the water?

pg 16: I like K and J, but I feel like I'm missing some backstory for those two characters.

pg 17: "The entire space was brimming with a small purple flowers, their iridescent petals shifting in the breeze."
--I assume this is where the shaping drug comes from?

pg 17: "We're using the profit to build an orphanage"
--that's a bit...on the nose.

pg 18: "all she'd done was show him a little kindness"
--this affection seems awfully sudden on S's part, especially compared with his lack of emotion in the first couple chapters.

pg 19: "Why could he not be wise and magnanimous like a proper magician?"
--ok, here's agood question. Does he feel like he's not a proper magician? Why? This would be great for character building in chapters 1-2

pg 20: "blotting out the possibility that he might forever be stripped of the one thing that made him special."
--This as well. I want to see a lot more of this in the first few sections.

Chapter 5 thoughts:
This had some much better development for S. It would be good to pull some of it back to previous chapters. I'm also wondering a lot about the drug, how it works vs. a demon, and what the tradeoffs are. Losing a demon and having it massacre people seems like a big downside...

[Majestic Fox]

@Mandamon , great comments and questions. The answer to most of them is I'm making it up as a I go long, so get ready for a deluge of inconsistencies in coming submissions. In fact I'll be impressed if you can make sense of the story by the end of. For example, the scene where the old woman gives him the iron ball has been cut. Something else happens there instead, but I dare not go back and write it for fear of falling into the premature re-write trap.

Anyway, all that's really useful stuff that will help me improve the second draft. Much appreciated.

[Majestic Fox]

Anyone participating?

https://campnanowrimo.org

[shatteredsmooth]

The voice and character come to life more for me in this section. So does the MC’s personality. He seems more aware of his flaws, which I liked.

P still bothers me. She is so subservient and loyal and cowed but I don’t know why. I also have no sense of why. The narrator being baffled doesn’t help. Most of my "As I read" comments were about here. 

As far as the plot goes, it is progressing.  The MC is taking some action, but also relying a little too much on these seekers. I’m hoping to see him take more direct action himself soon. There are also hopefully some hints he is or might be learning something. Little hints or seeds, but they can grow. 

 

As I read:

“On a near by an attractive...” something was off with this sentence

“She must have taken it as a reprimand…” She is too cowed and apologetic. And would someone really cry at something like this? P is too much of a cliché right now, and not a good one. She makes women look all week and weepy.

“twice the coin” why make a world where women are mistreated like it’s still the 1950’s? There are tons of those and this is fantasy. You can invent one where they are more equal. Plus, P and her comment about wages are inconsistent with the guild person who is so calm and competent it is almost scary, and I doubt she makes half the wage of the men… P doesn’t have to be like her, but she can be a little less desperate to please in such a cliché way, and if women like guild person exist, why hint that the rest of them are treated like second-class citizens?

“Beyond seeking a good wage…” So having romantic feelings = being scared of someone and desperate to please them?

“What had he done…care about him?” Good question.

Maybe as you move forward, you can build P more and then after, go back and apply that to the earlier chapters?

[Robinski]

Well, I got here in the end. Apologies for the delay.

Chapter 3

What an excellent opening to the chapter. M/c was banging on about that pork in previous chapters, but now I can see why. I'm still not sure it overrode the situation he was in, but I felt how remarkable it was from your excellent description. It strikes me (a) that you like pork, and (b) that this is an excellent example of Dan Wells' sometime approach to description, i.e to describe one thing in great detail. I think you've done that with great style there, and the added touch of the interaction with the women just crowns it nicely.

The whole first page is a neat summary of where S is at the moment, and I really appreciated that after a couple of weeks' WRS.

I didn't quite follow the bit about stabilising force. Does the pork joint have magical properties?

I like the phrase 'hung to death', lol, that is sort of the idea.

'Lots' of missing words, typos and grammar, but not point in stopping for that in this version, under the circumstances.

As with you other work, this has a nice flow, very effective description and a good balance between narrative, character's inner thoughts and forward motion, I think. Very readable.

H&M, lol. These are rather thinly-veiled character names. Are we supposed to draw a conclusion about their nature and place in the story from that?

You description of the investigator is excellent, and makes me feel suitably ashamed of the paltry effort I've written for Dras in my story. It's a weakness of mine, and I have a tendency to tell, not show. This is how it's done. Great work  

"then it was game over" - I am very much not a fan of using modern idioms in 'period' fiction, it spoils the mood that the writer has created of a period fantasy setting by making me think if Pacman. "Calling for backup" is the same thing.

The interchange outside the magician's shot was very effective. I feel the tension, the apparent hopelessness of S's situation.

I think I railed against P's passivity and timorousness in the first submission. Clearly, it's not dissipated any!! I understand the reasons to complain about it. The thing is, you now have the strong balancing force in the powerful female character of the investigator, so P is no longer the only female character, and there is now a counterpoint to P's weakness. The great thing about an apparently weak character, of course, is the great potential for them to surprise the reader, and P is not being completely passive, in that she is making suggestions, and clearly has some agency in that she is trying to help S out. I think it's something to be cautious about, but I've turned around on this point. I think it would be a shame to weaken the strong sense of character that you've created for her. I think you just need to be cautious about how you have S behave toward her. (p.s. Have you seen The Illusionist on N'flix? It's very good, and shares a lot of DNA with Ripper Street, which you may remember. Anyway, the titular Alienist has a housekeeper who behaves in a somewhat similar way. Don't mean anything by this, I just wonder if that arc is where we are going. Two great shows there, if you like serial killer mysteries.)

Super stinger at the end of the chapter. Surprising yet inevitable, as WE would say.

Chapter 4 

"broad-brimmed hat" - hats don't have broad rims. Sorry, but that one was bugging me.

Now, the serving of the tea. I was going to complain about this, because a server would never lift the cup of tea and place it in the hands of the recipient, even if the cup was on a saucer, which you didn't say, but which I presume must by the case of the world will end in 37 minutes. Standard procedure would be for cup on saucer to be placed within easy reach of the recipient. Then, I'm thinking that P did this on purpose, in order to convey something to S, i.e. drink the freakin' tea now!! All I would say that, is that I'd like S to remark on the address of P placing the cup and saucer in his hand. Also, she should pour the tea from a pot. There is a pot isn't there? Tell me she's  to brought a tray with the tea already in the cup? Has she done that because of what's coming next (surely)? If that's the case, again, I'd like to see S call that out in his mind as odd and uncharacteristic behaviour.

"slipping a blade across his throat" - would he not think of slipping a noose around his neck, as you mentioned that hanging was the preferred mode of execution?

"what it normally looked like" also "It was shockingly similar" - This is the first use of breath that we're seeing here, so I think you have to go deeper and further into describing it, and not using 'it' in phrasing, but instead underlining the nature of the substance. Keep it full square at the front of my mind what is going on here. Another one "But for the lack heat it was just like normal". I'm meaning to replace all these instances of 'it' with phrases like 'the alien substance', 'the malleable gas', 'the fluid material' - help me sense what is going on, rather than just saying 'it'.

"'Oh no. What have I done? Are you alright, sir?" One way to soften P's subservience a little, without doing major damage to her general demeanour might be to reduce the number of times she calls him 'sir'.

Good, strong chapter; lots of tension. This visit had to happen, but you brought in the surprise element of the cheat substance, which you had nicely foreshadowed - twice (H&M talking about it, then the package), in a very subtle way, through the vehicle of the tea. Very well done. You also conveyed the wrongness of the cheat, so it can't be any kind of effective substitute for the real thing. Excellent work: this is the chapter that really enables me to embrace the story and the characters. I am certainly rooting for S and P now, individually, but also as a romantic unit.

Chapter 5 

The conversation with K feels a bit messy, and I think the dialogue could do with some refinement. There seem to be some hanging details too. I don't understand the reference to 'last night', is that a continuity issue? Also, I'd like some reference to the fact that he's left P alone downstairs with the grumpy man (who might well come back in). Don't go overlooking P now that you've made her such a strong character, that would not serve her meek and rather subservient nature well. You still need to give her her place.

I don't buy the orphan thins. It's strains my disbelief. These people are criminals, but all proceed go to an orphanage? Oh, please. It's drawing the lines of good and bad, black and white, too starkly. I hope K is lying and it is in fact a criminal enterprise.

Oh, I mistook the situation. I did not pick up that P was not with him.

"Whatever had given him the impression that a beautiful woman like P would ever be interested him?" - I think it would be good to add 'in that way' at the end here. P certainly has interest in S on some level, so I think his incredulity is too naive on his part if it's applied to all interest. He knows she's interested in helping him, in being employed by him, interested in his professional pursuits.

It occurs to me that 'seekers' is a bit prosaic as a title for this profession. Also, it can't completely be ignored that there are Seekers on a Q-ditch field, and that term is fairly common in the HP books.

"Why could he not be wise and magnanimous like a proper magician?" - I don't like this characterisation of all other wizards. The story is more complex and elegant than this, and deserves a more realistic assessment of magicians. Surely, they are all different, and by no means can they, as a rule, all be wise and magnanimous.

"'Alright, I like dressing up" - this is just a lovely, simple character moment. Well done.

"They would surely prevail" - I'd love it if there was more uncertainty in this statement, such as "They would prevail, surely." - I think that phrasing betrays uncertainty more effectively.

Summary 

I totally agree with @Mandamon, I think that your story really takes off here and we have good forward momentum. I would be very keen to read on. There is a main plot, a romantic plot, and some interesting side ventures and characters. The story is very well delivered, and the narrative has a simple yet very effective style, laced with evocative description. There are many strengths in this, and the weaknesses are things that very easily can be improved. I think you've got something very promising here, and id like to see more of it down the line.

You mentioned that you felt now that it was a novel, but I'm not so sure. The scale and scope are still quite personal and localised, and the setting is not so sweeping that you have too many locations for the novella. Neither do you have too many characters for the shorter form, I think. You've got an antagonist and supporting characters that are interesting. I would urge you to consider trying to bring it in as a novella and see how that goes. I think it would be a good challenge for you, and additional material could be retained for a future novella, a sequel which might ultimately be paired up as three novellas (say) into a full scale novel.

Anyway, whatever the case, really good work here. Actually, on some levels this is much more effective than The Green Ocean, because of its pared back scope and concise character roster. There are strengths not weaknesses. I really hope you come back to this soon, and the way to do that is to get TGO finished, then let it mature for a month or two before going back to edit it  

<R>

[Majestic Fox]

Thorough, insightful comments here. Thanks @Mandamon, @shatteredsmooth and @Robinski I really appreciate it. This makes me more likely to return to it and finish the story after TGO. Cheers!

 

 

[Robinski]

11 minutes ago, Majestic Fox said:

Thorough, insightful comments here. Thanks @Mandamon, @shatteredsmooth and @Robinski I really appreciate it. This makes me more likely to return to it and finish the story after TGO. Cheers!

Definitely; this story deserves to be finished.

[kais]

Playing catchup, in random order. Also wow this sub is way over the limit. 

Overall

Typos and grammar aside, for a first draft I thought this was well done! I think the narrative wanders and could be cut down, and I have some pretty strong feelings about the MC, but generally I found the writing style easy to read and what I could tell of the plot, to be engaging. Nice work!

On 6/25/2018 at 0:42 PM, Mandamon said:

but I don't have enough urgency yet. We see from S. reactions that the demon is important, but I'd like to get more in his head to see how he's not fighting its influence. How else does it affect his daily actions?

I completely agree.

On 6/25/2018 at 0:42 PM, Mandamon said:

I don't yet believe he cares if his demon kills someone. So far, he's only (somewhat) worried that the guild will catch him, not that the demon kills a person.

Yes this. Complete lack of urgency.

On 6/25/2018 at 0:42 PM, Mandamon said:

Why would there be lye in the water?

I assumed this was a cleaning bucket that wasn't rinsed out well?

On 6/25/2018 at 0:42 PM, Mandamon said:

k, here's agood question. Does he feel like he's not a proper magician? Why? This would be great for character building in chapters 1-2

Yes! Would love to see this explored more

On 6/28/2018 at 9:03 AM, shatteredsmooth said:

“twice the coin” why make a world where women are mistreated like it’s still the 1950’s? There are tons of those and this is fantasy. You can invent one where they are more equal. Plus, P and her comment about wages are inconsistent with the guild person who is so calm and competent it is almost scary, and I doubt she makes half the wage of the men… P doesn’t have to be like her, but she can be a little less desperate to please in such a cliché way, and if women like guild person exist, why hint that the rest of them are treated like second-class citizens?

Allllll of this. I also commented on it below.

On 6/28/2018 at 9:03 AM, shatteredsmooth said:

“Beyond seeking a good wage…” So having romantic feelings = being scared of someone and desperate to please them?

Please also see my side-eye notes below.

On 7/7/2018 at 1:47 AM, Robinski said:

The thing is, you now have the strong balancing force in the powerful female character of the investigator, so P is no longer the only female character, and there is now a counterpoint to P's weakness.

I either A) don't remember the first sub or B.) haven't gotten to it yet. P's weakness didn't bother me in this because we had other female characters. If P was the only female, I'd have been all over it. So in this case yes, I agree that since there's balance, P is good for now

 

As I go

- page three: as a note, the woman is the first person we've gotten a description of, despite not being the first person the MC has talked to, and her description is very male-gaze. Potentially appropriate, since the lead character is male, but if the narrative continues with only women getting descriptors it could become an issue

- page four: Wait, are there two women? One? I'm confused with this blocking

- Who are R and M? Have we already been introduced to them?

- page five: realizing this is chapter three, but I'm unclear on what the stakes are in this piece

- page six: the "I left you at the drop of a hat" seems contrived

- page seven: 'No you haven't, I get almost twice the coin most women do.' Hard eye roll. This is a fantasy. People have demons and such. There's no reason for women to be paid less than men unless it's plot relevant, which I suspect this is not

- page seven: the dialogue on this page is very maid and butler

- the part where he thinks P might be into him really cements my dislike of this character. I don't know what you're aiming for with him in terms of reader empathy, but right now he comes off as a well-meaning chauvinist

- page 11: the description of the magic and forming the bird is great!

- page 13: where did P get acidic water? Why would you throw acidic water on someone? Is his skin melting off?

- ah, never mind, I see. Ignore previous comment

- page 14: I suggest you check and see what the current appropriate term is. I'm not sure its 'dwarf,' although 'dwarfism' is the scientific name for the condition. Last time I checked the term was 'little person' but that may have changed. 

- page 18: again realizing that I think I missed the first few chapters but I'm not clear what the through-line is on this story. What is the purpose? The mission?

- page 19: after all the coin he'd sent her over the years... I really don't like the main character. Sending someone money doesn't entitle you to put them in danger. 

- at the end, unsure what all this wandering around with people has to do with finding his demon