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Reading Excuses - 02-08-2018 -The Green Ocean - Chapter 3, part 1 (2920 words)


Majestic Fox

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I was looking forward to this one, as always! 
Great description at the beginning. It really sucks you into W's. POV. It might go on just a little too long, but nothing a once-over won't fix.
I'm wondering if this D. is the one that attacked the other village? That would certainly make for some conflict regarding W.
Looking forward to the next section next week!


Notes while reading:
pg 1/2: perhaps don't need two paragraphs on the D's eyes.

pg 3: have we heard the official name for the Green Ocean yet? Might be WRS

pg 3: "Had she prevented his divine hand"
--Isn't this the opposite of what she just said?

pg 3: "all trace their ancestry to Jord and she could not"
--I also feel like this is new. Not bad, but needs to be supported in previous chapters.

pg 4: "ambit"
--had to look this one up. Meaning "a circuit?"

pg 4: "The only person that would give her a fair hearing would be O."
--Would she? I feel like we need a bit more about O's personality to know for sure. I want some more justification that O won't just turn her in.

pg 5: There are two repeated paragraphs here.

pg 7: "drengir arched doorway"
--what does this mean? High enough for one? Made in the image of one? I'm guessing this is a hint they are not what they seem, as who would make doors that reflect raging monsters?


Good ending, and I'm very interested to see what comes next!

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Overall: I really like a lot of the description. It was very rich but at the same time it didn’t distract from the flow or feel and was never boring. There were a few confusing part for me that I have outlined, mostly at the beginning. Some others would likely be cleared up by me having read the first few parts. Regardless its likely better then I could have done at my best.

-          Pg 1, The forest’s light sounds weird to me. I think of forests as dark and their canopy as making light hard to reach someone laying on the floor.

                  So when W feels the breath then opens her eyes she looks up at the canopy, not at something near her…does that mean the creature is very large? It’s a little confusing

-          Pg 2, she is sitting inside the creature’s breath, yet looking at its face? Still confused

                  So she is sitting on the creature’s palm, so the creature is gigantic and the forest is on its palm. Thinking I see this a bit more clearly

-          Pg 3, she moves from sitting on the palm to the chest suddenly.

                  So the creature is in the ground rather then being the ground

-          Pg 6, they ride deer, interesting, are the small?(obviously this might have been covered previously)

                   The phrase derringer arched doorway is a little odd, I am assuming it’s a stylized doorway.

-          If being fae blooded is such a problem would they not have spent a bit more time on questioning her to find out what happened?

 

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Glad to be back with the Green Ocean, and moving forward, not backwards ;)  I'm coding these comments are green for positive or neutral based on our offline conversations and your request from yesterday. (No wider significance to this. No need to anyone else to change what they are doing.) 

I like the opening description of W's aches and pains, very effective, I thought.

A fair few typos, but we're not going there this time around!!

I like where the scene goes, into the tentative exploration, laced with doubt about how the creature will react.

Have we every heard the name 'Mun...' before? I don't remember, and it feels like something new out of the blue but, because it's where W is from, I feel like we should know about it before now. Did I even know that W thought she was from somewhere else? I think I did, but I can't remember knowing the name. I might all be WRS.

"as if her identity had become a malleable thing in this ancient creature’s gaze" - ooh, interesting line: thoughtprovoking.

I'm confused by the statements about the divine hand, they seem contradictory.

Again the Mun thing, but now she seems less sure than when she told the creature.

I feel like W's thought process when she sees the field empty is a bit truncated, incomplete. She doesn't really make a decision, even if it's only to forge ahead and find out what's happening.

"'The village was half crushed to rubble. The survivors are on their way here. I'm going to meet them now.'" - Must admit this troubles me. I think there are already too many characters in the village now, and we're about to get a whole new influx, it seems. It might be down to WRS, which will lessen this concern, I'm sure, when I am reading through a complete first draft.

There are pieces of language that are, for me, insufficiently positive and certain, like (1) "'The elders will probably want to see you.'" What purpose does his doubt serve? Better for him to know, propel events forward, not leave the reader unsure. (2) "O stood... waiting for the villagers to quiet down..." Someone should be trying to take charge of the situation, even if it's not O, if that would be out of character for her. Okay, I see someone is.

There's a good feeling of tension and hubbub in the hall. The feeling of upset, disgruntlement and near-panic comes over quite well, I thought. It's clearly first draft so I'm not going into grammar and word choice, etc.

Seems to me that O's statements about 'dr' are contradictory. It's different from all the others. So, based on the other statements, would M normally have been able to handle one, is that the point, that this 'dr' is stronger?

K and A, I don't remember their names from the before. I guess it's WRS. I presume K is the child that W interacted with before the sheltering in the caves.

I like how you put W on the spot at the end. I felt her discomfort, but also drawn to the next chapter and the inevitable discussion with O and the elders.

I remain glad to be back in this story. I feel like it very clearly is a first draft and that it will be greatly improved by a firm edit, but that edit can only be usefully done once the first draft is complete. To edit now would be a waste of time, as you don't really know what exciting new details might come in and influence the earlier stages. So, it is really important to keep going and get through to the end. The issues that I see are language and drafting. I am happy with the plot, the direction of the story, and the conflicts. The characters too, although they can be punched up in a future pass. The main characters, I think are clear enough at this point, and there's enough passing detail in the NPCs for me feel their presence (as it were).

So, although I have not typed strings of positive comments here, I summarise my overall impression by saying that I enjoyed this part. I felt it did move events on some, by revealing more interaction between W and the 'dr', and also it gives us the development of the attack on BT. I continue to like the feel of the story, it's closeness to nature, and the feeling that the community relies on nature, is surrounded by it, but also is threatened by it.

Looking forward to the next bit, and glad to see it's coming on Monday :) 

<R>

Edited by Robinski
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So without having read ch. 1 or 2, and without a summary of what happened in those chapters, my ability to comment on content is limited I loved the description in this chapter, was fascinated by the character, and what I saw of the world. The arc of what happened so far was well set up, though maybe you could do without the walk back to the town. 

As I read:

"The darkness breathed,"Nice opening phrase

"Something he" Who us he?

"thick enough to drift through" I’m loving the voice and description in this piece

"The drengir was smelling her." I am thinking this is kind of dragon like and I would have a better idea of it significance if I had read earlier chapters

"Who, if anyone...semblance of a normal walk." This group of paragraphs was there twice

"...being civil with her" So I am guessing everyone is going to say the village was attacked by the d?

I felt a little lost through the whole thing because I was reading it out of context, but I still got that W was different from the other people, had me the D and showed it compassion where others were blaming it for attacking a village, and I can easily see what kind of conflict and plot arc would come through.  

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  • 3 weeks later...

I made it! Finally!

Overall

I liked this! Pretty good pacing and the imagery early on was great. Not too many comments other than the excessive typos. I'd love for us to get out of the MC's head a bit more, just so other characters could develop as well. Right now the story is very one-sided.

 

As I go

- page two: sitting inside the creature's breath is great imagery!

- a LOT of typos and such through here. It's good practice to read your sub aloud before sending it through a group, just to catch some of the more obvious errors

 

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