4.4.2022 - C_Vallion - Price of Peace - Chapter 22 - RevaA - (L, G) - 4200 Words

[C_Vallion Gyorn]

Hello, All! 

 

After a solid month and a half of having to deal with sickness, stress, and scheduling challenges for pretty much my entire household, I'm hoping that things have settled down enough for me to be back to more regular submissions. 

 

So. Instead of resubmitting the previous chapter, I included a rough summary of the important changes I plan to make when I go back to revise that section at the beginning of this chapter. That summary is included in the word count. The new chapter itself is about 3500 words. 

 

Content Warnings: Mild language, sickness (my brain lumps throwing up in with gore for whatever reason, so I figured I'd mention it).

 

1. Does the summary of changes for 21 help set up what Isra has to lose if things go wrong better than the old version did?

2. Thoughts on pacing/tension through the chapter?

3. Any specific points of engagement/disengagement?

 

Thanks!

 

And now, to go get caught up on everyone else's critiques...

[Mandamon Midnight Essence]

Just took at look at the email and I think there's nothing attached?

[C_Vallion Gyorn]

Figures.  

Sent a new e-mail with the attachment. Thanks for the heads up!

[Mandamon Midnight Essence]

1. Summary - I have some notes below, but the summary honestly doesn't help me much. There's so much in here it's hard to identify what's important. I took a stab at cleaning it up below.
2. Pacing is better, but I think it's hampered by not understanding the reasons behind the orange armbands and how much I. is fixated on being recognized.
3. There are some good points in here, but they are hidden by a lot of extraneous information, like a page of prose to get to whose portrait is being defaced, and what the orange armbands are for or against. When I make an outline, I use bullet points to help see what's important. That may be something that could help you as well.

Notes:

Reader notes:
--I'd condense this down a lot. It's not so much a summary as a wall of text. Maybe put it in bullet points so it's easier to see the plot points?

pg 1: "When first approaching the school..."
--I don't think most of this paragraph is necessary information for reading the next chapter.
--the next two short paragraphs could be useful in a summary

pg 2: You could condense all of what leads into "I. can’t help but wonder. If students here had been willing to kill one of the king’s messengers, what would they do if they found his daughter in their midst?" to something like:
"After revealing herself as an outsider and a G., she is allowed to do magic, but to mixed reaction. Many of the students here are fiercely independent and not as loyal to their mother country as I. thought."

pg 2: you could probably cap off the summary with "She needs to find H before someone realizes who she is." and that would be enough to get people ready for the next chapter.

pg 2: The summary doesn't actually say what the orange armbands mean. Why are they important?

(Edit: the summary also doesn't say who Lord H, King Is, and what or who Ved. is. Those would be helpful reminders)

Chapter 22:
pg 4: in the description of the picture the students were throwing darts at, I got lost. Is I. thinking this is a portrait of her grandfather? Might be better to move that up to the beginning of the section.

pg 5: "Both wore orange bands"
--still unclear what this means. They hate the G. aristocracy?

pg 5: So King I. is funding the orange armbands? Still not clear.

pg 6: Not a lot happening on this page.

pg 9: "“Her uncle pays your tuition."
--so H is paying for the orange armbands to learn? I'm trying to follow the dynamics here but it's not clear. Took a long time to get to this point.

pg 9: "There was little chance that he could have seen her face without seeing her resemblance..."
I feel like a lot is made out of this point. Yes, family tends to resemble each other, but it's also not a giveaway. No one seems to be recognizing I anyway, so is it just all in her head?

pg 10: "Then it hadn’t been poisoned."
--not sure what just happened here. I thought I's wound was flaring up? But then she assumes K put something in her drink when he wasn't near? Is she hallucinating from the wound or something?

pg 11: "she’d been recognized"
--has she? I didn't get that impression from anything.

pg 13: "if K had recognized her..."
--again, I'm missing where this happened.

pg 13: "But she could try to push him to reconsider."
--reconsider what?

pg 14: Missing who V. is. That would be good to have in the summary.

pg 14: I think a lot of this might be too subtle. I'm getting lost between V., H., and King Is. All of those names would be good to have in the summary, though they should also be clear from context here. I can't tell if K thinks I is a child or V or H. 

pg 15: There's a better arc to this chapter, focusing on I and hiding her identity, but it gets a bit confused in the middle. I think you could also be more specific at the end. What news from G? Bad? Good? Concerning a person? Mentioning part of that will help draw readers into the next chapter more than having a vague threat.
 

[shatteredsmooth Son of Honor]

In general, I felt rather lost in this chapter. Part of it could be chalked up to be still being a few chapters behind--I never did quite catch up. But I think part of it is also that there is just a lot of detail in this chapter that we may or may not need all here at once. In the first half, I felt overwhelmed by all the detail about the people in the bar and at the same time, was waiting for something to happen. I also had a time remembering who was who, and in the end, wasn't sure if she had been recognized or not. 

On 4/7/2022 at 3:34 PM, Mandamon said:

3. There are some good points in here, but they are hidden by a lot of extraneous information, like a page of prose to get to whose portrait is being defaced, and what the orange armbands are for or against. When I make an outline, I use bullet points to help see what's important. That may be something that could help you as well.

 

I agree with this along with most of the points @Mandamon made. When I was reading, I was struggling to pinpoin what the issues were and didn't make line by line comments, but I think he really nails it with this critique.

[C_Vallion Gyorn]

Thanks for your thoughts, @Mandamon and @shatteredsmooth.

The summary was intended as a "these are changes that are going to be made to the chapters I submitted in February/March" for those who read that version, not as a standalone chapter summary. The latter in a bullet-pointed list probably would have been more helpful, but I hadn't been thinking in those terms at the time.  

I do think some of the things mentioned should be clear to the reader at this point in the story (who V, H, and Is-n are being the biggies, but the source of I's disorientation/paranoia/physical symptoms as well), but I'll have to dig through and figure out how to clarify what needs to be clarified through here.

[Sarah B Gyorn]

I think the revision of I having a confrontation when she first enters the city is going to do a lot to up the stakes and increase tension. 

The bar scene was also much more engaging than I waiting in line at the school, another great edit!

There were a couple points that weren't clear to me: 

The orange arm bands were a bit confusing, but I chalked that up to "will be explained later"

"Good to see you again G girl." I wasn't sure what this line from De was about since it seemed like he was talking to someone who had already been sitting with him?

I also wasn't sure where the idea of poisen came in. I had assumed the reason Ir was troubled by the drink was familiarity combined with pain and nausea. 

"She cringed" "She'd learned" might not be worth fussing over, but there are a few places where there is close repetition of 'she' that draws attention away from the story for me and towards word choice. Pretty picky detail, fee free to ignore. 

The stakes have definetly been raised. I liked the immediacy of when I is in the alley and for me it felt like that was when this chapter really pulled into focus. I wouldn't have minded if the bar portion had been drawn out a little more with the same level of detail from later on. 

Well done! 

Thanks for sharing

[C_Vallion Gyorn]

 

2 hours ago, Sarah B said:

I also wasn't sure where the idea of poisen came in. I had assumed the reason Ir was troubled by the drink was familiarity combined with pain and nausea. 

The pain/nausea/emotional response to the smell is actually causing her trouble here, but paranoia and suspicion have her jumping to conclusions. Especially when the nausea and pain from her wound getting worse isn't too much different from the symptoms from the initial poisoning way back in the tournament. I should probably have something more solid in here to make her jump to her previous poisoning clearer, though. 

 

Thanks for your thoughts! Glad the scene seemed to work well for you  

[kais Scadrian Waffle Cook]

On 4/7/2022 at 0:34 PM, Mandamon said:

There are some good points in here, but they are hidden by a lot of extraneous information, like a page of prose to get to whose portrait is being defaced, and what the orange armbands are for or against. When I make an outline, I use bullet points to help see what's important. That may be something that could help you as well.

Overall

Some interesting points in this chapter, but it lags in places, too. In @Mandamon's quote above, he really nails the issues I had, too. The good parts, the tension parts, are saturated in fluff. Once those get trimmed back I think this will be an interesting chapter

 

As I go

- I'm enjoying the darts and grandfather portrait scene

- pg 6: I don't understand what is going on

- pg 8: slow going through here. The grandfather portrait revelation was good, as was how it got there, but there's a lot of filler in between

- pg 12: I'm interested in the poisoning and the friends/enemies, not so much our MC. We're pretty far into the book for her to still be doing the 'poor me' thing

- would be better to end on what the news is, instead of just saying there is news.

[C_Vallion Gyorn]

Thanks for the thoughts, @kais.  It's good to know that some of the things are hitting well, but I'll have to keep working on not bogging down the important parts. 

20 hours ago, kais said:

We're pretty far into the book for her to still be doing the 'poor me' thing

Through the first half of the book, she avoids acknowledging her fears/emotions/vulnerabilities to the point of almost disassociating from them. So her floundering in her grief/emotional processing a bit here is intentional. It isn't an ongoing thing, but when she falls back into old routines in the next few chapters, there should be a sense of imposter-syndrome attached to it where she knows she's not nearly as invincible as she likes to pretend. So we'll see how far I miss getting those details in order in the next few weeks.

[Ace of Hearts Misting]

Gonna try to catch up with short critiques today:

Overall: Agree with the others. Some good moments in here, especially with the portrait, but it didn't quite come together for me. I'm not sure focusing so heavily on Is' paranoia rather than establishing external threats as being real is the way to go. The chapter seems set up as a journey into Is' psyche since we don't really know how much of her interpretation is overactive fear, but that's not what the rest of the story has been and imo that's not what the story is as its strongest. I'm more interested in what happens when we get out of Is' head and know definitively what the threats are rather than the creeping suspicion around characters like K. 

pg 4. The portrait is a good way of showing the hatred of royals in action

pg 5-6. Agree with Is that the symbolism doesn't mean a ton, so I don't know if it even needs to be brought up

pg 8. I think the reason it's hard for me to get invested in these side chars is that they really only have ties to each other and not to Is

pg 15. I like the hook at the end but I'm not sure if it really completes the chapter

[C_Vallion Gyorn]

On 4/23/2022 at 9:34 AM, Ace of Hearts said:

pg 8. I think the reason it's hard for me to get invested in these side chars is that they really only have ties to each other and not to Is

I'll have to try to call out what's going on here a little better when I do edits. 

Ideally, there should be enough in the most recent Ala- chapter (and in his plotline, once I've revised his early chapters) for the reader to have a good idea that these are the revolutionaries who Ras- has been trying to hide his connections to, and is afraid of. There should also be more implication that Le- is downplaying the more extreme actions the group has been responsible for. Specifically against those who support the king.  In theory, the reader should get the idea that Is- is in more danger than she realizes, or that there is a real threat behind her paranoia, but that's definitely falling short here. 

Thanks for your thoughts!

[Ace of Hearts Misting]

3 hours ago, C_Vallion said:

I'll have to try to call out what's going on here a little better when I do edits. 

Ideally, there should be enough in the most recent Ala- chapter (and in his plotline, once I've revised his early chapters) for the reader to have a good idea that these are the revolutionaries who Ras- has been trying to hide his connections to, and is afraid of. There should also be more implication that Le- is downplaying the more extreme actions the group has been responsible for. Specifically against those who support the king.  In theory, the reader should get the idea that Is- is in more danger than she realizes, or that there is a real threat behind her paranoia, but that's definitely falling short here. 

Thanks for your thoughts!

That's good to know. I think that will help but ultimately I also don't think we're going to see the revolutionaries as a huge threat until we see them actually revolt.