Reading Excuses- Cathy Lim- The Traveler's Magic- sub 2- Chapter's 2&3- 5244 words

[Cathy Lim Ardent]

Hello Everyone!

 

Here is the next two chapters. Sorry it's a bit long, I thought about cutting out the last bit of chapter three, but saw that some other submissions have been this long so I hope it's ok. 

 

As always this is somewhat rough in draft so I'm looking for what's working and what's not. 

 

Please, please, please include what IS working. Positive feedback helps me shape new ideas for the stuff that isn't working. If I can see where my writing is doing what it should I can model the rest after it. 

 

Thank you!

 

 

[ginger_reckoning Stormwarden]

This chapter was very interesting! The final parts of it especially added a lot of intrigue. Apparently, R is very important, though the talk of organizations and experiments did seem a little out of nowhere. I also wondered if R has been warned by S about these people before, why she is not more concerned or hardly seems to think about them. It could be that she thinks S is crazy and doesn't believe the warnings, but still, the fact that someone is out to get her would be pretty daunting, even in theory. I wonder if this could come even sooner? I also wonder if you could play up the importance and stakes involved in her research job.

Interesting stuff! Excited to read more

 

Pg 1

“F blushed and shrugged” Ha, nice

Pg 2

“she was still fascinated” A bit nitpicky on my part, but these don’t sound mutually exclusive to me

“It began to rain harder” I don’t remember it raining in the last submission, but could be WRS (weekly reading syndrome)

“sterile, unable to have children” seems a little redundant

Pg 3

It seems like the skills necessary for this job would carry over to her own goals pretty well, so I am not quite sure why she is frustrated here

Pg 4

“gorgeous young man” nice  

Pg 4

At first, I was a little confused by how she was able to get a look at the patron without him being there

“House M” If the house is well known enough to have stereotypes, would her boss not mention that their client was from that specific house?

Pg 6

“Kissing R” lol, that’s what you get for employing teenagers…

“little sister” Ha, nice.

P 12

Okay, was not expecting wolves

P13

“S Ryn screamed, but S” Top of the page, S’s name is spelled in two different ways. Marking it because I doubt spellcheck will catch that

So right now something seems a little fishy about this situation with the wolves. S told her to meet him out in the woods, and R didn’t seem too worried about being out there by herself, which makes me think that wolves aren’t a common threat here. Did S set up the attack, or is there another (magical?) reason wolves might attack her?

Okay, further down the page, S didn’t send the note! Interesting! Someone is trying to assassinate her?

I’m predicting the white wolf is her transformed dad

Pg 14-15

There’s a couple more instances of S’s name being spelled in different ways

[Yuliya Gyorn]

I absolutely love your writing and have just way too many lines underlined and commented as "nice"!

A few thoughts:

I like the bits of romantic tension you are adding to the story, especially how innocent and new it feels at this point. I liked F’s awkward presence and the unexpected encounter with R and Y in the library. 

Pg. 9. Would be nicer if the oak tree by the window was mentioned in chapter one when she woke up by that window.

Pg. 12. I was caught off guard by the sunlight. A few minutes ago it was so dark that R had to rely on touch to find the keyhole and I assumed it was night – rainclouds are usually not that dim.

I was lost as to who S was since he was not included in the summary of the previous book, but I like him already.

Why bring a pack of wolves and a man in the canoe against an Ordinary girl? Seems a bit too convoluted for someone who already has access to her room in the middle of the day. 

I suspect the white wolf would be the man from R’s dream (her father?) and I felt a bit let down by how easy it was to figure out (unless it is a deliberate misdirection, of course)

I feel like the mysterious organization jumped out of nowhere. Is that something we should be familiar with from the previous book?

Overall, I had fun and can't wait to keep reading!

[Silk Shade]

As I read:

At first I was confused as to who the POV character was – the first line made me wonder if there had been a switch, and I wasn’t able to ground myself in R’s POV until about halfway down the page (“Swallowing hard, R…”)

“F blushed and shrugged.” Ooh, does someone have a crush?

P2: This is much more engaging now that we have an immediate assignment, and might be a good place to actually start the story.

“Unfortunately the powerful child of the inbreeding…” I had trouble parsing this statement.

I like that we’re starting to get a better sense of the world. It seems like a fairly strict social hierarchy based on who does (or does not) have magic.

“These are the records which the team requires…” It seems like R isn’t being given a ton of direction at the start of this assignment even before considering that it’s her first job. Is she supposed to be working with particular people? Associating with the mysterious patron directly? Is she just pulling items off the shelves and handing them over to someone? A better sense of what she actually has to do would be helpful.

P4 “There were three of them.” I think you mean patrons but wasn’t sure – there’s no antecedent. 

P5 “really heavy on the stereotype then.” What’s the stereotype?

There is a really abrupt shift to formal dialogue here. Very different than the narrative tone and also R’s dialogue with her friends. Some of that could be down to the work setting, of course, but absent further context it feels extreme.

“We must bring him documents that support his claims…” what the patron is actually looking for feels a little nebulous at this point. Getting a little more detail now—or having R dig for it—would be helpful.

P6 “object’s room” I think this should be “objects room,” like it’s a display of some sort of actual collection. Minor I know, but I stumbled on it and had to re-read a few times (and still not sure I have the right idea?)

The end of this scene feels very similar to the last one, with R seeking her friend’s help but not really moving forward since last scene.

P8 the transition from family tree research to where B is living feels very abrupt.

P9 Interesting detail here, that R thinks someone’s been assigned to follow her around. Assigned by whom? Why? Even if this is stuff from the last book, mentioning one of those details will probably be a helpful reminder.

Do we know who S is? Maybe a reminder (since they presumably appeared in the last book) before the note?

P11 “Had the ‘them’ he was always talking about” this is helpful, because it gives us an emotional read on how R is feeling about this note. Any chance this could be moved up and/or we could get other tidbits like this sooner?

P12: He has named the wolves, but still wails on them with a big stick? I’m judging him.

Edit: wait, there are different packs of wolves. I’m having trouble tracking what’s happening. There’s also the man in the canoe who appears, and is disposed of, really abruptly.

S is being so (seemingly) deliberately obtuse that I keep expecting R to get annoyed with him for it.

P17 “Do I really need two protectors?” So up until R’s first comment about F being assigned to her, we hadn’t really had a hint that she was in danger. I know that some of this probably comes from the first book, but having reminders in here can also help to build up to stuff like this.

Similarly, if R has a sense of why this stuff is happening I’d really like to know what it is. The earlier parts of the chapter had prepared me for a family mystery being solved by research, whereas the latter half of the chapter feels like it’s taken a very different tack.

Overall:  I was much more engaged with this chapter, especially the first half, than the last one. I had a better sense of interpersonal dynamics and R had a specific task that she was working on – she wanted to do her job well and the assignment also seemed to line up with her own personal goals which did a lot to propel me along. I do think that it would be helpful to have a better understanding of the specifics of R’s role and assignment - I wasn’t sure if she was literally just pulling files off the shelves, or reading them and coming up with conclusions, or what, which I think is why some of the later library sequences felt more like telling than showing.

The second half of the chapter I wasn’t as prepared for – it felt like the chapter transitioned suddenly to adventure/intrigue.  I’m sure a lot of it comes from the last book, but I think there still needs to be a build towards it here; it’ll make it feel more like both parts of the chapter are the same story and give a better sense of forward motion. I would like a little more information than we actually got, too. If it hadn’t been for the weirdness of the wolves, I don’t think I’d be inclined to take S’s dialogue all that seriously—it seemed over the top without much to back it up.

[Cathy Lim Ardent]

5 hours ago, Silk said:

I don’t think I’d be inclined to take S’s dialogue all that seriously—it seemed over the top without much to back it up.

Excellent! Thank you! This is exactly what I need to know so I can smooth this over and make it flow better! 

[Cathy Lim Ardent]

12 hours ago, ginger_reckoning said:

’m predicting the white wolf is her transformed dad

Aw man- any ideas of how to hide this better? Thanks for your feedback- it's exactly what I needed! 

[Cathy Lim Ardent]

9 hours ago, Yuliya said:

I suspect the white wolf would be the man from R’s dream (her father?) and I felt a bit let down by how easy it was to figure out (unless it is a deliberate misdirection, of course)

Any ideas of how to hide this better? Or maybe I don't want to- hmmm. Thank you! I appreciate your insight! This will be very helpful!

[ginger_reckoning Stormwarden]

1 hour ago, Cathy Lim said:

Aw man- any ideas of how to hide this better? Thanks for your feedback- it's exactly what I needed! 

If you want to keep it hidden, I would say to cut the description of the wolf crying/seeming sad--at least for now. I think at this stage, the fact it is white is hint enough, and that the sadness can come at a later time as a more obvious hint

[Ace of Hearts Misting]

Excited to dig into this!

Overall: I feel like the encounter with S is where the story really gets rolling, and the scenes before about research don’t have much of an impact without knowing the connection between the shadowy organization and magical heritage. I do think we need a bit more from the encounter with S, either more information or R having a plan to figure out more, since right now it feels like there’s not a lot of forward motion carrying us into the next chapter. And somewhat relatedly, R feels fairly passive here, so there’s an opportunity to get her more involved right off the bat.

As I go:

Pg 2-3. I get that this is important setting info but with no plot hook I can see I’m not fully latched onto it

Pg 5. For a story with pretty simple language, the top half of the page feels bogged down by legal jargon. Also, I can see that the story is trying to set up a mystery but the emotional hook is still missing for me

Pg 9. The end feels like it could be a plot hook, and if it is I want to see this much sooner. Could even start the novel off with it

Pg 10-11. There’s a lot of description here and which makes it hard for me to pick out the important bits and get a real feeling of the scene

Pg 12. Are these wolves important for the world/plot? Right now it feels like an excuse to have R get saved

Pg 14-15. This feels like the first real bit of the larger plot we get. Since the wolves are important it might be good to highlight that when we first see them, that they act different from normal wolves

Pg 17. If I were R I’d be more concerned about what they think the threat that requires protection is. Does the library know that this shadowy organization is after R?

[Yuliya Gyorn]

10 hours ago, Cathy Lim said:

Any ideas of how to hide this better? Or maybe I don't want to- hmmm. Thank you! I appreciate your insight! This will be very helpful!

I would do something like "the wolf avoided approaching her - perhaps he was wary of strangers" or something like that. An unusual behavior that R would explain away incorrectly at that moment, but would make sense later when she learns he is her father.

[Cathy Lim Ardent]

10 hours ago, Yuliya said:

I would do something like "the wolf avoided approaching her - perhaps he was wary of strangers" or something like that. An unusual behavior that R would explain away incorrectly at that moment, but would make sense later when she learns he is her father.

Ok, I will ponder.

[Cathy Lim Ardent]

19 hours ago, ginger_reckoning said:

If you want to keep it hidden, I would say to cut the description of the wolf crying/seeming sad--at least for now. I think at this stage, the fact it is white is hint enough, and that the sadness can come at a later time as a more obvious hint

Hmmm. I can see that. He was floating around the shadows in book one and in my head he's been waiting for this moment for a long time so he's pretty emotional about it. I suppose I can come up with some other behavior. Thanks! 

[Cathy Lim Ardent]

On 1/31/2023 at 0:04 PM, Yuliya said:

 

I absolutely love your writing and have just way too many lines underlined and commented as "nice"!

 

Thank you! I need this so much today!

[Cathy Lim Ardent]

On 1/31/2023 at 3:41 PM, Silk said:

 I was much more engaged with this chapter, especially the first half, than the last one

I really love all of your feedback. It's helping me figure out my reactions to stuff. Thanks so much!

[Cathy Lim Ardent]

On 1/31/2023 at 11:10 PM, ginger_reckoning said:

If you want to keep it hidden, I would say to cut the description of the wolf crying/seeming sad--at least for now. I think at this stage, the fact it is white is hint enough, and that the sadness can come at a later time as a more obvious hint

Do you think it would work if I had the reader in on the secret, but kept it from R?

[Cathy Lim Ardent]

On 2/1/2023 at 6:06 AM, Ace of Hearts said:

Excited to dig into this!

Thanks! I appreciate your help!

[ginger_reckoning Stormwarden]

1 hour ago, Cathy Lim said:

Do you think it would work if I had the reader in on the secret, but kept it from R?

That's up to you! It would make for a lot of dramatic irony if the audience knew but she didn't, but then you don't get as big of a reveal later. Both have their pros and cons. Personally, I would rather go for a reveal later on, but that's my personal taste. 

[Silk Shade]

On 2/4/2023 at 11:15 AM, Cathy Lim said:

I really love all of your feedback. It's helping me figure out my reactions to stuff. Thanks so much!

Excellent, glad it helps!