December 2nd Trizee- The Winter Wars Chapter 5

[Trizee]

Well after a long tike without being able to find time to write, I've finally finished chapter 5. Hopefully it came out good despite the long wait- now go and prove that it didn't!

[Syme]

Overall I like the chapter. However, the beginning seems a bit rough. The conversation at the start feels a bit unnatural to me, especially the reactions to Fen's jokes seem excessive. Maybe there's stuff going on that I don't realize because I didn't read the previous chapters, but at least to me it just doesn't seem anywhere near as funny or offensive as the characters' reactions suggest.

As far as craft goes, your dialog does work very well though.

Then there are some minor nitpicks I have with the first couple of sentences:

In the second sentence, why is it surprising that Aken's glass is full? It seems to me, you're implying that he's a heavy drinker, but even so that doesn't make it any more likely for his glass to be not full. He might just as well have refilled it very recently.

Also in this sentence, Aken is drinking from a glass. This might just be my ignorance of your setting talking, but it seems to me that your setting is based on Antiquity or the Middle Ages. While glass did exist back then, it was too expensive to be used for drinking.

The third sentence uses passive voice for no apparent good reason.

The rest of the chapter is much better. You show Fen as a young and inexperienced leader making several newbie mistakes, which should set you up nicely for either showing how Fen improves and becomes a better king or having him fail and stay an ineffective ruler who crashes and burns.

The dialog in the council sounds realistic and plausible. The councilors are quite disrespectful towards Fen, but with his obvious inexperience and the aforementioned mistakes, it is quite plausible.

[Mandamon]

I agree with Syme, the beginning of this chapter seems forced. The whole "insult people for fun" is not really novel. It's not a bad personality trait for a character, and I generally like Aken, but try to do something with it instead of having a four-page explanation of it.

Page 5, Aidel couldn't insult Aken, but now seems really adept at getting on Fen's nerves. He preferred the "subtle" insult, but now plays obvious words games with titles. I know they're friends, but it seems a big personality shift.

having read the other chapters, I'm not a fan of this one. Fen runs through the palace? Really? Maybe if the palace was under attack. I can't imagine there's an emergency so big that the king would need to run through the palace without even knowing what it is. My immediate thought was that Fen thought he was going to get deposed in the emergency session. But it's just some reports of border villages being attacked. This hardly even seems a reason for an emergency session, or at least one that can't wait a couple hours to give the king the proper advance notice so he doesn't look like a fool.

Reading a little further, Fen suddenly seems just hysterical. He has to take the fight to the enemy. Maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but this doesn't seem like him. Maybe give some more reason for why he's acting like this? Again, a sort of shift in personality.

After the first outbust he calms down again and offers measured suggestions and even manipulates against a rival. This seems more like him from the first few chapters. This isn't the same personality as someone who runs through the corridors and gets hysterical that he thinks his country might be at war.

I think either make the threat more immediate and give him advance notice ("Your Majesty, there is a raiding party at out gates!") or have the emergency session not called quite so quickly. You can still have an emergency session if you call it for an hour from now. But this latter suggestion sucks some tension out of the story, so I would lean more toward the first idea.

[akoebel]

I agree with the others : my two main issues with this chapter are Fen's wild running and his hysterical response to the council news.

For the running part. First, I doubt that a council would be called without the king being informed first. In most kingdoms, councils were only an advisory body meeting at regular intervals to deal with day to day affairs. The king might ask for one if he wanted some advice, but often, he wouldn't even call for a council in the first place. Messengers would first go to some castle official, then to the prime minister. Then if the situation warranted it, the king would be informed. There, the members of the council called for a meeting summoning the king as if it was usual. I doubt Henry VIII would have stood it. Then, instead of going in a stately pace (some kings would probably have made a point to make the council wait for a long time), he goes into a sprint which is probably going to alarm everyone in the castle and create some panic.

Note : when he comes to the council chamber, he's not even out of breath.

Now for his reaction at the news. As Mandamon said before, I thought he was going to be deposed. Instead, I get some mild news about raids on the border (such news could have waited for a few hours btw). Out of the blue, Fen screams war and you've lost me as a reader. Not only does it seem like completely out of character, but it's not even foreshadowed on the scene itself and I haven't any shred of idea about why he behaves this way. The best explanation I can find is that he's high or something like that.

"And slaughter those shattered Erian dogs" : who said that? The line break before suggests it's someone else talking but this doesn't really fit with someone else in the assembly.

After that, the council treats him as little more than a child. The condescension isn't even veiled and even if I'm ready to accept it coming from his wife, I don't buy it from the others. The king could probably have them executed on the spot without trouble and seeing his unstable state of mind, I'm not sure any sane man would have dared.

Then, he's back to his old self and again, I don't understand why. People don't go crazy one second and calm the next especially if you're seeing inside their head. He might appear calmer, but I expect his thoughts to show some signs of his earlier state. There, I see only a calculating person trying to get rid of his problems.

Aside from all that, the piece is engaging and I'm waiting for the next installment.

[cjhuitt]

I agree with most of what the others said, but I'm going to take it a step further, perhaps. Not only was I expecting the emergency council to somehow show that he had been outmaneuvered and deposed, or something as vital, I was looking forward to it. So far, all Fen has done is walk around the castle and apparently not know how to lead at all. Getting booted would potentially have solved that issue. (In fact, I was looking forward to it so much that I was already mentally composing my suggestion that you compress the chapters between the king's death and Fen being deposed.)

As to the council scene, again I agree with all the others, but beyond the problem with Fen suddenly becoming a war-fixated maniac, it shows him as not having been trained to rule at all. This is especially evident in that he doesn't know why he can't send the whole army (I could think of a few more reasons, off the top of my head), it shows in that he doesn't know where his coin comes from, and it shows in that he doesn't know how to approach a council meeting. This is in addition to the previous parts that I could believe him being bad at; newly wed and maybe not relating well to the council members. As a result, I end up not caring about the character much at all.

I would also point out that this seems very unusual for a country whose customs are to only have one son in order to prevent succession problems. Wouldn't the custom also include some thought of statecraft with it? After all, it's not like there would be a second or third son to step up to the plate if the first one screws things up.

My best suggestion to fix this is to give Fen a goal he is trying to pursue himself. Something beyond finding who betrayed his father, since he's delegated that. In fact, he should probably have a few goals, such as gaining the respect of his wife (failed in this chapter), gaining the respect and trust of his councilors (failed in this chapter), etc. It would be better to see him have a credible plan to do each of them, only to have them go awry.

Finally, many people who give advice on writing suggest having a strong antagonist, who's actions impact the protagonist's life. Right now, from the number of chapters, it seems like Fen is the protagonist, and the mercenary leader (whom I can't remember the name of) the antagonist, but aside from the one action of killing the king, there has been no noticeable impact. I could see one or two of the councilors also becoming lessor antagonists, which may also help, but as a reader at this point I'd like to see stronger action in opposition to Fen, so that he is forced to take action to go after his goals.