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2012 May 21 - cjhuitt - Blue Crystals Chapters 1-2


cjhuitt

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Blue Crystals is my project name for a (relatively) new novel, written mostly during NaNoWriMo last year. The first two chapters have problems. I'm aware of some, and I'm probably missing others. Please don't hold back on the critique, since this is the beginning of the story, and I want to get things right. I'm open to all suggestions, including axing some or all of the opening part (since I was partially discovering the starting place for myself when I wrote it).

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I can see what you mean by you trying to get a fix on where to start the story. You’re doing some things I recognize in my own chapters when I’m feeling things out – abundance of background information, elaborate thinking instead of acting and the language was a little rough in places. The chapter has some problems, but it also contains things I like.

Slow start: The start of the chapter is something of a pet peeve of mine, a character standing around doing nothing for a page except reminisce of something that is better integrated elsewhere in the story. If there’s one thing I’d cut it’s the beginning. The chapter might as well have started with Molly speaking up and Jorah startled from his recollections – without going into the recollections. To me Molly’s first line would look good as a first line for the chapter.

Show instead of Tell: You’ve got quite some instances of telling instead of showing. The whole start with Jorah’s past for example. The way it is now it reads like an info-dump flashback. I think it’s better to paint the picture of where he came from in smaller chunks. At this point the reader doesn’t need to know this yet and frankly I don’t care about Jorah enough to care about his lost love.

Another instance of telling is with Jorah’s conflicting feelings about Kat and Violetta. You tell us that Kat’s affectionate behaviour towards others makes Jorah uncomfortable. It would be more subtle to show this when Kat is actually being affectionate with another man. Jorah would feel a pang in his heart. Then he’d admonish himself for feeling something for someone other than Violetta. Again, you don’t need to tell us all about Violetta, but with such a simple showy scene we’d know Jorah has feelings for two women which creates an emotional conflict for him. We’d know a bit about Kat, because we’d just seen her with someone and there would be a mystery about who this Violetta person is (rather than info-dumping Violetta’s past at the start of the story and taking away all questions).

Setting placement: I’m not quite sure about the setting, timeline wise and architecturally. Cobbled streets, wooden warehouse doors, make me think medieval fantasy setting. The mention of business men and the sensibility of Jorah wanting to marry makes me think something closer to Victorian times. At first I wasn’t even sure this was fantasy, not until the mention of reincarnated gods and monsters. I’d like a bit more description on where the story takes place, just so my mental image is consistent.

Thieving crew: I liked the thieving crew, especially Molly with her concerns, so I hope to see more of them. The banter between them and Molly’s realistic worries about moving on to bigger things and thus getting closer to getting inevitably caught is a nice counterpoint to usual thieving crews. And to me it’s one of the highlights of the chapter.

While I liked the crew personality wise they don’t stick out to me visually. The most I got for descriptions are genders, Molly’s height, Jorah’s beard and some assumed appearances based on names (a little racial profiling). I don’t need to know what they look like in close detail, but I’d like more than a name and a gender. Just a small visual aide, if the characters become more important later on there’s plenty of opportunity to describe more.

Proving ground: The second highlight is the proving ground. Monsters in the ground, reaching up like zombies in the night, paints a powerful picture and raises a lot of questions. What are they? Why are they there, in a park, in the middle of a city? It’s a proving ground for what? Good hooks and based on what Jorah thinks of his companions it’s a place we’ll see more of if the crew wants the wine back.

Jorah: Not sure about him yet, so far he seems easily distracted, wistful and a bit of a whiner. I don’t dislike him, but I’m not rooting for him yet, though with the recollections I know where he’s coming from and can sympathize a bit. Still, to me, the chapter (and story so far) is being carried by Molly and the proving ground.

So, yes, the chapter is a little rough but it has good points and I’d like to read more of this.

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Thanks for the time you put into this. This sort of critique is almost exactly what I was looking for -- a mix of stuff I knew with stuff I hadn't considered before, along with an outside perspective on the story elements.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So I started making notes while catching up on your story, and I figured I might as well post them. I know punctuation and word choice aren't a big issue now, but there were a couple things that caught my attention, so I noted those as well.

Chaper 1:

-I would agree that the intro is a bit vague/unfocussed in the first page. The writing is tense; it's a heist, but then Jorah drifts off into a daydream. I understand the character-building, but it ruins the tension of "will they get caught." Maybe a little less exposition?

-you have "Well on his way" twice on the first page, in the same paragraph.

-"He was only a little sad to have disappointed her" This seems a little at odds with pining over Violetta...does he want to get back to her or not?

-Molly's height is "110" centimeters. Not sure what I think about this. From a U.S. reader perspective, I'm not sure whether she's tall or short at first glance (and I work in metric at my job...). Maybe mention where her head is in relation to Jorah, and leave out the exact measurement. (Ok, so I looked up the conversion later...she's really short. Now that I know, it gets my interest why a three and a half foot tall person is calling the shots. Definitely point this out so everyone can understand.)

-Jer/Jerimiah and Jorah's names were too similar for me when just starting out a story. I could tell them apart, but had to think about it.

-Overall, I think the resolution of the chapter is good, but the beginning (especially for the beginning of a book) needs some more tension to draw the reader into the fact that Jorah is basically caught goofing off when it could mean <whatever the punishment for thieving is>. Possibly shift him getting caught to the beginning and move some daydreaming/exposition later on in the chapter. It would be even worse if he were caught, and then Molly has to chide him AGAIN for drifting off while she was talking to him!

Chapter 2:

-Your use of "Little green men" feels strange to me. I thought this was fantasy and now I'm confused. I don't think the idea is foreign to fantasy, but maybe find a different set of words more similar to the rest of the setting, like "other places among the stars where strange beings lived." etc. It might be what Asmodemon mentions, that the setting is a little unfinished.

-"He wondered how he had never come to this part of the city before?" I think this should be a period.

-A page and a half of Jorah thinking about things is certainly too much for the beginning of the story, and starts to sound like fluff.

-Pushing through underbrush in a city park? That's pretty overgrown. I understand this later on, but it pulled me out a little at the time. Again, explaining the setting better will let me see whether I should expect some rampant plant growth in the broken-down parts of the city.

-A general sentence construct nitpick: watch out for stuff like,

"before swinging down to the ground and helping push the attached bodies up from the interior of the ground."

and even your first sentence,

"Jorah never dreamed of spending his twenty-first birthday helping rob a warehouse."

They just sound awkward. Also,

"The houses decaying more as they approach a central spot, combined with the restrictive terrain next to a wide-open clearing; he’d stumbled on one of the testing grounds."

I think it's the "ing" that's getting to me. For example, what if you said, "The houses decayed as they approached the center. That and the restrictive terrain near a clearing meant he'd stumbled on one of the testing grounds."

-I like the testing grounds--it put some much needed tension into the story. However, where is Jorah and how did he get separated from the rest of the group with his loot in this chapter? Is he going home?

-"Which was worse, though — robberies, or monsters." This does need a question mark...

-There's a lot of wishy washy pining over Kat/Violetta when Jorah's just been chased by monsters. I would be thinking about the monsters at a time like this.

-Jorah stood around counting waving monster arms? If there were that much time, I would be like, these things seem pretty slow, I'll just run and get my bag, thank you. I think this is another spot where toning down the explanation will help.

-Again, good resolution to the chapter. I like the last zing of getting startled by an innocent bystander--my heart actually jumped! I think the biggest thing to do is to cut out the excess thought, show, don't tell, and fix some of the awkward wording, like I mentioned above.

-I think Jorah has a lot of room to grow. He does seem whiny and wishy-washy, but if you focus on accentuating his competencies while showing the whiny-ness getting smaller, as the story progresses, I think Jorah can become a great character.

I like the story so far! I'm excited to read more, and I'll post as I catch up to the most recent chapter.

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