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December 19th 2011- ACharles78- The Incarni chapter 1


ACharles78

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Hey guys,

Hopefully you got my story today. This is my first time submitting in reading excuses, and I have to say I was looking forward to this, because I really wanted exposure to the story outside my family (and from what I've read, KateJ, Yados, and others, you all sound like great writers in the making :) so I'm a little intimidated. I've been writing this book for over a year now, 1st draft, 2nd draft, and now I'm on that crucial 3rd draft. Just a heads up, the book is long. And its been through a lot of stages of revision, so I'm willing to keep sending it so long as Silk allows me. You're guy's thoughts on it of course, is what is important. And this is the first in a series in which I've already got the second book in its 1st draft. A little bit about the story if you have or haven't read the 1st chapter already.

The story is set in world ruled by a branching governmental hierarchy called the Dominion Earths. As far as technology is concerned, they are advanced in the science of alchemy (thanks to our protagonists) but analogous to the late 19th century/early 20th century in sciences such as medicine, transportation and information. Our world plays a crucial role in the story, as it seems to those inhabiting the Dominion Earths that our world, (called the Old World) was a predecessor to their world before two elementary particles called the Fona and Incantra came into prominence. But not to give too much of it away, the first chapter tells you everything you need to know.

I'm a graduate of the Columbus College of Art and Design, so being an art student, being critiqued and critiquing is in my nature. Please, I beg of you, don't hold back on anything you have to say. And above all else, I hope you enjoy the story.

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First of all, I think you've done a good job of establishing both of the protagonists (Adalir and Albertus) as likeable. I didn't see anywhere that you explicitly stated what their relationship is; I assume Albertus is Adalir's guardian.

I like how Albertus' diction and sentence complexity changes between his speech and his conversation with Adalir, but the speech may be a bit too formal and too complex. (Just a little bit.) His description of the Fona and Incantra makes me want to hear more.

At this point the attempt to make the philosopher's stone looks like it will be one of the main conflicts of the book, so I assume it's not going to be as straightforward as Albertus says it will be in the speech. I don't know if it will fit your later plot, but you might consider having Albertus admit to Adalir that he's not as confident as he claims --- there's something about the two forces hise that he doesn't understand. This would give the reader something specific to wonder about, and would likely be more realistic (depending on Albertus' character), as in my experience good scientists are acutely aware of the limits of their knowledge (at least they try to be).

Generally, bullies in fiction just make me tired, so it's not a surprise that that was my least favorite scene. In other words... I may not be qualified to make negative comments about it. But here's one anyway: I'd recommend writing out 'should have', 'going to', etc. The bullies' choice of words establishes their voices well enough that the reader will hear those contractions anyway. (I just noticed I've been thinking of the bullies as interchangeable; that may be a problem, it may be my fault for not reading that scene closely enough, or it may be what you want)

Looking forward to chapter 2

EDIT: I left out a few things that I wanted to say (paragraph 4).

Edited by Rayonn
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Thanks Rayonn,

You'd be correct. Albertus is Adalir's guardian, but she lives in a foster family (which you'll see in the upcoming chapters). If you're not 100% sure then I need to make that clear in chapter 1. The true nature of their relationship is one of the driving mysterious of the book (at least for the first two parts).

I fully realize that I did throw a lot at the reader right from the get go. My goal was to really establish the groundwork of what will eventually be the book's primary magic system, which is alchemic transmuation (which I have done serious measures to make sure its scientifically sound) but we'll get to all that later. As far as Albertus's speech goes, I can make things a little more simplistic. The board of officials in which he's speaking to are already well versed in alchemy (because of Albertus's previous history) so I was straddling the line between explanation to both the reader and Adalir (who knows nothing about it). I'm going for the idiot lecture without it being idiot lecture like, if that makes any sense. But I'm glad it didn't bore you and made you want to learn more. So this is a mini accomplishment. It goes without saying that Albertus is highly intelligent, so naturally he will sound much more articulate than others, as this is part of his character, but thanks for telling me if I'm overdoing it.

The philosopher stone is definitely a big factor in the plot of this novel. Although Albertus is an intelligent man, he doesn't have all the answers and things go horribly wrong. If you are already wondering about this then I'll play up on that wonderment.

Yea the bully scene was my least favorite to write actually. To be honest, I could care less about Sterwood and the Cranklands. I've come to learn that we can have sympathy for protagonists that kill for a living, but if he is a bully, all empathy/sympathy is lost (even though they are not meant to be sympathetic in any way, I wanted the reader to at least understand why they bully Adalir in particular). Basically, I just needed a reason for Adalir to get into more trouble and shows how she is preyed upon at school. Thankfully, these guys only show up in two scenes out of the whole book. For me, that's already a problem. If you hate them and I hate them, I should make the scene stronger. I'll make note to go back in and make their voices more distinguishable, as this was not my intention to make them indistinguishable.

Thanks for taking the time to read and critique. It was very helpful

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This story reminds me very much of Philip Pullman's Golden Compass. I liked that book although the sequels degenerated into polemics. If you were not aware of the similarities, I wanted to point them out. Have you done a lot of writing before this story? Your work is missing a lot of the telltale flaws that really new writers make. It needs some polishing but there is a diamond in there for you once you've put the work in.

Who is your audience for this story? Is it young adult or adult fantasy? If it's YA then you definitely need to reduce the amount of information you're trying to convey in the first few pages and change a lot of the wording.

Some phrases are awkward: "running at her heels beside her", "Adalir said sarcastically, thinking aloud", "Soon enough, maybe it wouldn’t be meetings she would be spying on, but boys. To Penny, they were all the rage at this year in their life. On second thought, she didn’t think so." - There are other examples too where things just sound... awkward. Not things that people actually say or think. I highly recommend reading your work aloud or getting someone else to read it aloud, and listen to it. I've found that an incredibly helpful tool myself.

"Sebastian answered, in the unmistakably drawl of John Wayne. Not knowing who or what world John Wayne came from, Adalir merely accepted it as a source of amusement." - Sorry, this needs to go. You are supposed to be in Adalir's point of view and she could not possibly think this.

I vaguely get the sense that a lot of words you use are almost but not quite the word you really want. Like " most adamant interest" - adamant really doesn't seem like a word someone would use here. Or in the same speech you use "verbalize" - if you want to tell the reader that the person speaking is incredibly pompous and thinks highly of his own intellect, keep it, but it's a really awkward word. Why not just use "tell"?

Albertus's speech is an infodump. It's pretty well done and you've set it up well - it's believable that he would give some of this information, with an academic setting and all - but there's too much here for the reader to process. I know you want to give the reader a basis for understanding how the magic works but perhaps Albertus isn't the one to do this. Or this format. Later when Albertus and Adalir are interacting, what I was really wanting to see was a tutoring lesson where Albertus is getting Adalir to review whatshe knows, correcting her when she makes stupid mistakes, etcetera. That would let you put in some character development and phrase the whole thing as a conversation which is always more interesting to read than a speech.

The speech is well done, like I said, but I think it's just too much to process.

"When I picked up where my father left off at the age of 16" - did he pick up the work at 16, or did his father abandon the work when the father was 16?

Somewhere on page 7 I got lost in all the names. There's just too much here. I can't take it in.

"shouldn’t of" - is actually "shouldn't have" and if you have to abbreviate it would be something awkward like "shouldn't've" - this is a pet peeve of mine.

"He methodically combed his gelled hair with his father’s switchblade." - a switchblade is a knife, not a comb. You can't comb your hair with it.

"held a switch that had blood dripping from the end" - a switch is used to whip someone. It would not draw blood unless the person was really seriously injured. Do you mean to imply to the reader that this gang had just implied and savagely beaten someone. I like Rayann really hate bully scenes so I was kind of not wanting to like this anyway but it's just too much. These aren't childhood bullies these are psychopaths and delinquents and if no adult is willing to stop them then... that says something bad about the adults in your story.

"What she had mistaken for rain water wasn’t rain water at all. It was a dampness between her legs, and she saw she had her first flow and hadn’t even realized it." - She's 16? I had the impression that this world was fairly like ours and it would be very unusual for a girl to first menstruate that late in our world. Also if she's bleeding enough to leave a trail? She'd know it. If the first menstruation is a big deal - between this being her birthday and the later hints about her parents it might be - keep it but change it. Maybe have her realize when she gets to the bathroom why there's blood on her or something - but it really makes me cringe like this.

First Albertus scolds her for throwing the bully through a window, then for not standing up for herself? It feels a bit incoherent. I do like Albertus and Adalir both - but I would like to know more about their relationship too.

Hope that was helpful! Like I said you've got a fascinating world here and some real interesting ideas, but there's roughness in the delivery. I got a lot of good advice from a book called "The Art of Fiction" by John Gardner which taught me to use hard, earthy Anglo-Saxon words in place of ten-dollar Latin/French words whenever I could - in your story the example I mentioned was you said "verbalize" when the word "tell" or something similiarly short and punchy would be better.

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Thanks KateJ,

This is very helpful, you've given me some good things to consider. Thank you for the compliment. I've been writing for awhile now and this is far from my first book (although it is my first fantasy book). I've been rewriting this book for over a year now, so I'm glad it doesn't have those novice flaws.

It's funny you should point that out about the Golden Compass because I'm writing to that particular audience, without all the atheist/anti-religion themes and plot line. It's similar that in this book, our world plays a big role in Adalir's world. In terms of the structure of the first novel, it is no coincidence that Adalir's spying on Albertus is reminiscent of Lyra spying on Lord Asriel. I liked the idea of throwing the protagonist (Adalir) into something bigger than herself was a great way to introduce the reader as well as the main character that there are larger things at stake. But that's where the similarities end.

My intended audience is young adult, but it is also mature enough for adult readers as well. I'm 23 years old and I wrote it for people my age (the readers who have grown up and moved past the Harry Potter books and are now digging through more fantasy). A lot of research went into alchemy and what not, so if it is too wordy then I'm glad to hear that. It is actually somewhat of a relief to hear me error on the side of too much information, and not enough.

Perhaps instead of "running at her heels beside her," I'll just say "running beside her." Again, its funny you should say reading things aloud because honestly, I do that very often, but was in a rush to get this chapter rewritten and posted on this site so I didn't for this chapter (Whoops). Thanks though, I'll go back and catch the sentences that aren't working.

About Sebastian; I've been struggling with how to deliver this for awhile now. On one hand, this creature mimics whatever it hears, and it says things (from televisions Adalir's friend made that gets signals from our world) that our characters don't understand. I tried having him just say famous lines from movies/television shows, without saying who it was he was imitating and it didn't work either. But in order for me to say who it is he is imitating, I have to break some viewpoint rules. Honestly, I don't know how to make it work without breaking the 4th wall, but I'll worry about it on the edit.

Word usage; "adamant interest" I agree. I changed it to best interest. Verbalize... I think if it draws too much attention from the story, then I'll consider changing it to articulate, or something along those lines. Albertus (as I'm sure you already know), has a penchant for being preachy and wordy. This is more of a character attribute and less of a show of arrogance. He doesn't try to come off as smart, that's just how he talks (at least, that's the goal of my portrayal of him-but if you think I'm failing at it then please, continue to tell me so). I would not use the word if I were narrating it, but he said it himself. Someone like Adalir would have said the same thing in a very different way. But this is your critique, so I'll definitely take it into consideration.

The speech; (sigh) haha, I'm glad you told me that. Yea I tried my best to make it as less infodumpy as possible. Through writing this book and reading some other fantasy, I realize, sometimes you have to brace yourself for a little infodumping, but like you said, its how the infodump is portrayed that I think makes it meaningful or well...just boring. After I read your critique a few times, I came up with the solution of perhaps truncating some of it and making it an active discussion between Albertus and the board. Speeches are pretty inaccessible after all. As for Albertus and Adalir, I'm glad you feel that way because he does begin to explain to her later in the book. His view of Adalir as a child is one of the driving factors of her wanting to prove him wrong throughout the book.

That sentence about his father meant that Albertus picked up where his father left off, when Albertus was 16 and not his father. This is kind of confusing, didn't really notice. Will fix. And yea, I threw a lot of terms at you on page 7. I checked onto the edit page to-do list.

The bloody switch was actually implied that one of the bullies beat a squirrel to death with it and was dripping with blood (when she threw it at Adalir's feet). I agree with you both on the bullies. They are not meant to be liked at all, and maybe I went overboard with their cruelty.

There is actually a reason for her menstruating so late. And while it is uncommon, it has happened to girls this late (I did research on it). I do agree that there has to be a ridiculous amount of blood for their to be a trail, I'll change that. Adalir's naivety about her own sexuality is another character attribute (I tried to show this in the narrative when I talked about her not taking a liking to boys). Your right though, the execution of this obviously needs changing.

This was very helpful KateJ. Thanks for your time and critique.

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  • 2 weeks later...

At this point, I'd be very worried that there are too many similarities between your work and Pullman's : you have a teenage girl with a magical pet spying on a father figure who wants to go on a scientific expedition in the north. And you also have our own world in the mix. Maybe you can try to distance yourself from that, unless you want to draw on the similarities.

I read the piece as a YA, so the voice was about right for that age segment. I agree that the speech part was way too complex for that audience (maybe it was too complex for an adult audience even). If nothing on the plot hinges on Adalir (sorry, I almost said "Lyra") hearing the beginning of the speech, maybe she can come in at a later stage before her mentor starts taking questions. I felt it was a little strange that she arrived on time after all the climbing to hear the beginning, so no problem if she comes late.

The John Wayne line threw me out of the story. It actually reads like a viewpoint error (which I hate). Now that you've explained it a little, it does make a little more sense, but since we haven't got the context yet, I think it's a little too early to mention this aspect of your worldbuilding.

You have a tad too many adverbs (one instance where there are 2 next to one another). I also think you can remove the parenthesis and replace them with comas.

The MC bleeding made me stop. It is so rare that I'd expect a woman that age in this situation would actually feel relief at seeing her body start to work as expected. Instead, it only looks like an inconvenience for her.

You mention that the bully sends the squirrel on packed dirt. Aren't we on a rooftop? Should be slates or something like that, not packed dirt.

Adalir's relationship with her tutor felt a little strange, at least coming from her. He's obviously a father figure, but at times, she treats him almost as if she was his wife. On his side, he didn't seem to make up his mind about whether he was angry at her or not.

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My main impression from this submission was confusion. I'll grant that in places you were probably trying to go for curiosity, or possibly wonder, but I just ended up confused, and I didn't think it boded well for the rest of the story. Please bear in mind that this critique may range from high-level to very low as I try to work through my confusion.

It starts with action, with Adalir running across what I assume at the time to be school buildings (this later seems to be born out). I had a slight switch when realizing Adalir was a girl, not a boy, but this isn't really your fault. It just happened to be similar to Adalin (or was it Adolin?) from the Way of Kings, and I must have mentally made the association that way. This was an easy one to overcome.

Sebastian is also mentioned right away. This is the first spot of my confusion, and it has to do with the "(ferret formed)" text. From the way the text is positioned, I originally thought the ferret formed one was another character running at Sebastian's heels. This is due to it following the comma, separate from the phrase where Sebastian was mentioned as running beside Adalir, instead of with the phrase. I wasn't sure, though, so I immediately stopped and tried to decide if it was Sebastian who was ferret formed, or what else it might be. I eventually settled on Sebastian, but this is the beginning of the confusion.

Since I was already considering and questioning things, I wondered who or what Sebastian was. There is no relationship mentioned between Adalir and Sebastian, so I have nothing to go on, and what Sebastian is was also not mentioned for quite some time. I think it would have been fine to give a very brief overview of Sebastian at this point, to clear up some further confusion. This is especially true in that you immediately diverge into Adalir's history of climbing, which I would recommend be shortened in favor of more information about Sebastian.

After an apparent diversion into other details about what form Sebastian was in and Adalir's climbing history and current view of the school, "the meeting" was very generic. If you wanted to make it a mystery, it is presented as if she knows all about it -- or at least, all about it besides what was going to be said there. If you intended to have the audience know about it, some more details would be nice. As it was, this was my next point of confusion -- what meeting? With who? Was she invited or gate-crashing? The only thing that is covered within the next few paragraphs about this is her role in the meeting, that of spying on it.

You mention that Adalir is sarcastic about how important meetings must be high, but a paragraph later you describe her feelings about being in the heights such that I thought she wasn't being sarcastic, but instead stating what might be a personal belief in a joking manner. Sort of like saying all boys are clumsy, or something along those lines.

Why in the world would Adalir not consider herself a risk-taker if she climbs everything in sight, as more or less described in the first paragraph? This might fly if it was truly a character trait developed later, although I think it would be hard to reconcile with the climbing and spying on meetings. However, it then immediately diverges into the bit about spying on boys, mentions Penny, then swings around again. Here was where I felt myself losing confidence in the writing. It has now confused me more than made me curious, not delivered on the details I wanted to learn, given me what I view as unsupported contradictions in the main character, and changed the topic of a paragraph mid-stream (with a throw-away reference to somebody else thrown in at that change). All this, and it's just the end of the second paragraph. I'm not even on to the next page yet.

If I were browsing books in a bookstore and read this page, I would be putting the book down at this point and moving on to something else.

Had I continued reading, a couple paragraphs later I would read that Adalir didn't want to hide or be coy (that is, shy or reluctant to give details, right?), so of course she pulls her hood up. At this point, I changed from reading to find out what will happen to reading to find out if things will make any more sense later.

The John Wayne part was confusing. Even more so was the end of the paragraph, where you state she (Adalir) understood his language to know the confirmation when she heard it. So, did Sebastian say words, or didn't he? If he did, why didn't she understand the words? It sure read to me like he answered in the affirmative; how much language interpretation does it really take?

The following paragraph was not particularly confusing, especially compared to the previous one, but it was difficult to read. I think it was primarily due to the phrasing, especially the sentence "Never had she been old enough nor smart enough to comprehend the gravity of his life of alchemy in her prior years, but she had always known it was his possessor." So, he was owned? Looking back on it now, I question the word choice. Did you perhaps mean it was his obsession?

You state that both Albertus and Adalir's lives depend on what Albertus was up to, and she planned to find out what he was up to in the meeting. I didn't see any support that her life really did depend on it, and what we found out in the meeting was actually quite dull. From all I could tell, it could have been any sort of meeting, not some secret super-special one.

Also, a minor point but by now I'm on a role. At the beginning of the piece Adalir's age was given as sixteen, but her sixteenth birthday is coming up. Now, if she hasn't had her 16th birthday yet, she hasn't lived sixteen years yet.

I'm kind of curious if stain-glass skylights generally open at all, especially ones high in a dome above a board room. It seems like those would be permanently mounted.

It really surprised me to find out that the secret meeting, and the elaborate introduction to the meeting, was a grant request. It seemed anticlimactic after the buildup to the meeting. I also expected fireworks in the meeting, especially after Adalir ruminates on the attitudes of the attendees and then Albertus begins by basically stating he and the board don't get along (they continue to not support his bid to join them).

I'll skip over most of the speech, except to say I only found nitpicks confusing, and that it was much like an info dump. I think the addition of more (obvious or dramatic) conflict between Albertus and the board members would improve this part.

I see this is placed roughly equivalent to our late-19th century. I would think that the religion (or religions) of the place would figure on people's minds, especially if Albertus has 1) completely revolutionized what they can accomplish with his Fona stone, and 2) proposed to read the mind of God with an Incantra stone. This would have profound implications throughout all of the religions of the place. In fact, I would expect to see attempts to completely shut Alberta down because of it, and likely right from the get-go with the Dean doing so out of fear of what political and monetary power the religions of the region could bring to bear. They do object, and partially on those grounds, but in far to reasonable of a way to create good conflict.

Why in the world did Sebastian continue to imitate a bird in order to warn Adalir of the approaching bullies, instead of, you know, talking to her like he did at least once before?

Besides the concerns other people have expressed in Adalir not noticing her flow (and other items in the bully's section), her sore stomach wasn't foreshadowed well. I know vertigo or nausea was previously described in terms of her stomach; it would have been good to mention the soreness then also. As it was, to me it read like "surprise! this had also been happening, just to allow the bad guys to show up".

I didn't like having the break between chapters 1 and 2 (or so I assume) with the bullies converging on her, only to have the explosion of light and her own flight from the battle be done in only three paragraphs of the new chapter. It felt like one of those tricks to keep people reading through the chapter break. I thought it would have been much more natural to include those paragraphs in the first chapter, then have another chapter for the confrontation with Albertus.

If Adalir knows about bursting, why does she not consider it when in the restroom?

I think that about covers it for now, and this is getting to be long anyway. In the end, some of my confusion was cleared up, but a lot of it remains, and I'm not sure I see the consistency of tone and of detail to give me any more confidence in the writing at the end of the piece than I had at the beginning.

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@akoebel and @cjhuitt, thanks guys, you really slammed me. lol but in a good way. You know, I'm up to about 130,000 words of this in the rewrite, and I'll tell you the beginning part for me has been the most difficult (it gets better, I promise). This beginning is the least developed of the book, and you've shown me what I need to work on. I thank you both for spending the time to read and critique it. If I would have known we were submitting for this week I would have added the second part and beginning of the 1st and 2nd chapter, but whatever. Again, thank you both. I'll have it to revise on it when I'm through writing.

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