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Dec 10 - Halcyon - All's Fair (V)


Halcyon

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Hi all,This is my first submission on this forum. It's a short story I've been working on. It has a ways to go I think but I'm looking forward to your critiques. Cheers!

P.S. I'm obviously 2 days ahead of myself as it's the 10th not the 12th, which is the date I put on my email. Wishing for Friday to come early perhaps? :)

Edited by Halcyon
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First of all, I think your prose is quite good and your setting is interesting.

However, I found myself utterly confused. There are just so many questions in this that are never answered. Why is there a rebellion? What do the rebels want? Why is Maia regarded as being so valuable? Why is she in that rose and how did Hirundo's people obtain it? Why is conveying the false impression of Maia being dead so imporant? Why does Hirundo believe that his enemies believe him to have Maia, but will assume her dead upon merely seeing her rose destroyed? Why is he so angry at General Sun escaping? Presumably, General sun has recovered the destroyed rose and should then assume Maia dead, meaning that Hirundo's plan has gone as well as it could have and on top of that he's captured three copies of what I assume to be some sort of innovative weapon. Shouldn't that be cause for celebration, rather than embarrassment and anger? What are these flying machines and what is their significance?

Reading your story, I just did not have enough information to really appreciate your plot. Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, I don't know because I just didn't understand most of what went on.

I think this would be fine as the beginning of a novel, where I as the reader would accept being confused at the start in the expectation that you explain things later. Or it could be a short story set in an established world. As a stand alone however, it's just too confusing.

I suggest adding in some more explanation and in exchange simplifying and streamlining the story a bit, so it does not become bloated with the new info that you're adding.

Another thing I noticed was a rather high density of spelling and grammar mistakes, which always tend to pull one out of the story.

In summary, I think that this story has a ways to go, but with some more explanation, less confusion and some clean-up, this will be a good story.

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@Syme

Thanks for the comments. In regards to the punctuation and grammar, this was a first draft and I wasn't doing any sentence level edits.

You raise some really good questions and it's something I struggled with while writing this, i.e. how much is too much or too little info?

For example, I just finished reading Mary Robinette-Kowal's' "The Bound Man". It's a great short story but she doesn't give a tonne of history or back story. At the end, I had a lot of questions but mostly that just made me hungry to read more (if there had been more), but I accepted that it was a short story, so I probably wouldn't know those things unless she chose to expand it.

And therein lies a key detail I think, leaving enough questions for the reader to be hungry for more but not confused.

Thanks again Syme, definitely review your questions/suggestions on the next draft.

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I really enjoyed this short story. I was instantly sucked in my your writing, and your prose is easy to read.

Contrary to Syme, I wasn't confused at all. Maybe I've read more of this type of short fiction. No, there wasn't an explanation of why the war was being fought and what the world was like, but a lot of short stories are like that. There isn't room to expand the world in the wordcount for a short story. The story is all about the character reactions, which were definitely captured here. I got a good feeling for the personalities of both Hirundo and Maia. Your use of names also caught my attention. I had to look up Furin Kazan's name to figure out why it seemed so familiar to me. Using General Sun was very cool. I've read the Art of War and recognize some of the strategy you include here.

I like how you left hints of the larger backdrop of history and plot behind the story. It makes it feel like this is part of a larger ongoing story. The gearpunk/fae/Japanese mixture also caught my attention, both for originality and how their natures work together. All three tend toward small details and a more poetic nature, both of which I think were captured in your writing. It's very intriguing and makes me want to read a whole novel based on this idea.

two technical things I noticed:

pg 1, a small character confusion.

Hirundo signaled to his second.

"Open it!" she shouted, her strong voice muffled through the mask."

I assume you mean Nomura, but you probably want to put her name there to separate it from Hirundo.

Pg 4 and pg 6, the one paragraph summaries of Maia's past are a little off putting against the descriptive background and dialogue-rich setting of the rest of the story. I understand why you summarized, since this is a short story, but they might even be too short. More elaboration will help to connect even better with her character and plight.

I also wanted to know more about the flying machine and gear technology, but the amount of description you have now works well with the story length. It would be gratifying to the reader to know more, but at the same time, it will bloat up the story as Syme says. As it stands, I was left thinking about the world, and imagining its technology for myself, based on the hints you gave from Japanese culture and the gear technology references. This isn't a bad thing, as I usually like books better that I have to sit and think about a little after I finish them, to arrange all the hints and pieces in my mind.

Great piece, and I'd love to read more, especially in this world!

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Thanks Mandamon! I'm glad you liked it. Especially glad you got the Art of War references. I'm also really glad the Japanese gearpunk worked out. This is actually the first short story I've written and if the world is looking intriguing I'll definitely have to think of doing more in this setting and perhaps even expanding it into a novel. Thanks also for pointing out the character confusion and Maia's paragraph summaries, I will try to work those more subtly into the piece as well as a bit more description on the Elemental fliers. Thanks again for the great critique, I'm really looking forward to reworking this now. :)

Cheers!

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Sorry this is a bit late...

I'll begin by saying that I agree that your prose is very good and clear, making your story an easy read. Also, the setting you have created is interesting, and I do think that to tell this story in its fullest, you probably need to expand it into a novel. However, if you don't want to do that, then there are some things I think you can do to make this stand better as a short story of its own, mostly cut out the things that don't seem to have any relevance to the story's plot: the Elemantal flying machines and the letters from his father. But I do think that this is really deservant of a full novel, or at least a novellette/novella so that we can fully appreciate how much Maia's betrayal broke Hirundo's heart. If you give us more time for the realtionship to get built, we'll understand better what Maia meant to Hirundo.

As to Maia's betrayal and her umbrella actually being a weapon, I can say that it was kind of given away when you said Nomura wanted to tkae away her umbrella- the first thing I thought when reading that was that the umbrella was some secret weapon.

Another small thing is that when Maia whispers "Sorry, Kenshin" I'm fairly certain that it's the first time we hear Hirundo's first name, so that I wasn't sure who she was referruing to when she said this.

Otherwise, this is a great story and I look forward to seeing more from you!

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Overall, I really liked the story.

I know that short stories often leave questions, but there are a few I have that I think may help the story by being explained a bit more. The first is what being wingless means when dealing with the fae. It's one reason why Hirundo trusts Maia isn't a weapon. The second is what is supposed to be in the dispatches that he is receiving. Since the fae get them in the end, I have to assume that they are something important, but it would be nice to know what.

Finally, I wanted to know what happens to Hirundo -- the umbrella apparently carried something that would immobilize the general, but does it kill him? Does it leave him paralyzed? Does it wear off to let him live as a heartbroken man? I understand if you decide the story shouldn't answer this, but it was the biggest question I thought should be addressed.

Of course, now that I've had time to think about the story a bit more, there are a few potential plot holds that I completely didn't notice reading through it the first time. How did the fae know what is in the missives, or that they were worth obtaining? This was a large, intricate plot for potentially little gain. Being able to keep the umbrella seems a contrivance of plot, rather than well-grounded in the story. Why does Maia/Sun have to be the one to carry out the ploy? Does it have anything to do with the missing wings? It seems that, as the opponent general, she'd likewise be too valuable to risk like this. As pointed out by Syme, they captured three of the elemental flyers, but beyond that apparently nobody before knew that their opponents were so small, living in clockwork bodies. This seems to indicate they can't afford to let Hirundo live, since that would also be an invaluable piece of information, but it makes me wonder how much Hirundo's side really even knows about their enemy.

Regardless of those questions, I think the story stands up well enough on its own to not need them to be directly addressed. As I said, they didn't occur to me until at least 10 minutes after the story, which isn't too bad.

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  • 2 weeks later...

2:40 pm - @Trizee and @cjhuitt

I apologize for not responding sooner. Between travelingfor the holidays and the wireless being down, I havn’t had much chance to geton here.

2:55 pm – Arrggh!Apparently we’re still having wireless issues and the nice, long, detailedresponses I made to your critiques got deleted when I tried to post them.<sigh>

Ah well. Thank you bothfor your insightful comments. They were great questions and points that havemade me rethink a few elements of the story (for the better). Trizee, I agreethat it would be better fleshed out as a novel and I think I may do just that.I’m actually writing a novella about a different character in the same world,just for kicks. Cjhuitt, I think the plots holes you mention will be betteranswered in a longer form (though I still want to try and make this stand-aloneas best it can for now.)

So, again, thank youboth!

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