Scholomancer 26, 27 and 28 3255 words

[rdpulfer]

Robert Renfield has betrayed his Master Dracula and gone rogue, leaving his Master to rot at the bottom of the ocean. One year later, vampire hunter Stephanie Van Helsing is beset with mysterious visions and framed for the murder of a colleague. Going on the run, she tracks down Renfield for more information. After the two narrowly survive an attack by the werewolf Bannister, the two are taken to the Council, which consists of Evelyn - better known as the Bride of Frankenstein - and Rewer, the Mummy Lord. Stephanie agrees to assist the monsters on a peace deal with the humans in exchange for their aid. She then has another vision. 

[Mandamon]

I'll take a first stab at it.

 

pg 1: "Stephanie jerked outright"

--upright?

 

pg 3: "White strands of light cinched from the woman"

--not quite sure what this means.  

 

pg 4: "at least before she started having episodes and calling technology the Devil’s lasso"

--Would Stephanie think her episodes are related to this in any way? (glad you address this later).

 

pg 4: “And you think God just happened to give you all this . . . despite being made out of walking corpses from a madman.”

--I didn't jump to the conclusion that Evelyn believed this.  Was this following from the "good book" quote?

 

Evelyn's kindness actually makes me a little more suspicious.  She does say she wants to find out about Stephanie's visions, but I have to think she has some other agenda.  Someone that old probably has several irons in the fire at once.

 

The discussion of faith seems abrupt.  I'm not sure where the topic suddenly came up, unless I missed something.  Thus sentences like "her faith appeared so genuine" don't ring true because the reader hasn't actually observed that from Evelyn yet.  The whole discussion about faith and God in the last half of the chapter seemed a right turn from what I had read so far.  Has this even been brought up before?

 

pg 6: "much less more or less rational."

--repeated word

 

pg 8: "in case either or Bannister '

--missing word

 

pg 10: "That’s why he had his Contractors, assuming none of them killed Steph in the process. Just else can go wrong? "

--The Contractors, presumably...

 

pg 12: Maybe it's weekly reader syndrome, but I don't quite remember what happened between Jason and Irving and why Jason's so upset with him.

 

pg 14: "Renfield averted his eyes as she did so. Otherwise, they ran down her toned form"

--confusing

 

pg 17: “But if your mother and your sister had it . . . are you sure they weren’t having the same visions?”

--This nicely ties in to what I mentioned on page 4

 

I like the conversations here, giving more information and bringing in the question of Stephanie's mother and sister.  I enjoyed Evelyn's electricity tricks, but like I said, the faith conversation with Evelyn was a little sudden, and jarred me out of the story a little.  If there had been some other seeds planted before now, that would help.

Renfield is pitiful, as usual.  I wouldn't have put him on the Council...is he really a member, or just lying/confused about it?

Looking forward to more!

[rdpulfer]

Thanks Mandamon! 

 

I know I have a chapter where Irving takes Jason off the search team, but it's very possible it got skipped . . . I might have a missing Irving chapter.

 

The element of faith has been jarring for me as a writer, which is probably not a good sign. It's definitely something I'm going to have to streamline in further drafts, or cut out altogether.

 

Glad the information on Stephanie's mother and sister worked. i was afraid it would get over-complicated. I'm also glad Renfield seems pitiful. Robinski and I were brainstorming on ways I could clarify his position within the Council as a defector. 

[Shrike76]

I like Stephanie's re-evaluation of Evelyn as woman rather than monster. It's the sort of thing I was hoping for more of earlier as these enemies were forced together under strange circumstances.

Also, here we finally see her explaining her thoughts on the supernatural - she's always thought vampirism was caused by bacteria, not a curse. This sort of stuff should have come far earlier, and been woven into the fabric of the Westenra we're shown. That way when Stephanie begins to realize here that there's supernatural elements behind the whole mess, we're surprised to learn it with her and it brings us into both the character and the story. As it stands, this chapter reveals information and we're going "Well, duh. Where've you been, Stephanie?" It also makes the previous chapter, where I noted her dismissal of the bible seemed out of character, a little better in context.

 

As a perfect example: In Irving's chapter we learn vampires are blurry in cameras, how does bacteria explain it? If these phenomena are scientifically-explainable (as far as Westenra is concerned), you'll need to show the science (even if Westenra turns out to be wrong).

Irving's chapter is weaker than his most recent ones, but that's mostly because his intruder goes from furious to resigned so quickly that it feels strange.

 

Renfield's short chapter is interesting, and shows how little the Council respects him that they would lock him in the same room as Stephanie, but I don't know why Stephanie would react so strongly to his suggestion that what was thought to be mental illness was actually the visions. Wouldn't that be preferable?

[Shrike76]

Glad the information on Stephanie's mother and sister worked. i was afraid it would get over-complicated. I'm also glad Renfield seems pitiful. Robinski and I were brainstorming on ways I could clarify his position within the Council as a defector. 

 

I thought Dracula was on the Council, and Renfield was just some sort of lackey?

[rdpulfer]

Thanks Shrike76! I'm glad you liked the enemies forced to work together - that's something that also excited me about this novel.

 

Good catch on science as an explanation for the supernatural. I guess it needs to be a believable way of explaining the vampire traits on its one before it be compared with the supernatural.

 

Thanks for also pointing out that Irving's chapter seemed weaker due to the inconsistent moods.

 

Dracula was on the Council - but they booted him off when he started making them a target. This is something else I need to explain in the backstory. 

[Shrike76]

Right, so Renfield himself was never on the Council per se, he just had extensive knowledge because he was so close to Dracula?

Are the council sour on him because of his association with Dracula? Or because they knew that he more or less took Dracula down?

[rdpulfer]

The Council helped Renfield take down Dracula, but some of them are still sour on him for his association with Dracula, and the perception that he's only backing the most powerful player (which, at least in the beginning, isn't far from the truth.)

[Robinski]

Diving right in – summation at the end.

 

“Stephanie jerked outright upright”

 

“She had been moved to a different room. Stephanie She nearly slopped off of the leather couch, but Evelyn’s hands fell upon her shoulders, steadying her. She looked into the woman’s calm face. Up close, Stephanie She could see tiny incision marks even along the Evelyn’s cheek and forehead.” – We know it’s Stephanie – the heavy repetition of names is awkward. When we are in such a close POV it’s unnecessary, frequent naming is really only needed if they are two women in the conversation, and even then only when you’re mentioning them close together.

 

“I’m doing wonderful, Evie” – lol.

 

“interned with Victor Frankenstein” – lol.

 

“I researched every single one of my . . . donors” – Cool, and... icky.

 

The tea appears in her hand awful quickly.

 

“His Her father never spoke on the subject”

 

“Irving opened a drawer and pulled out a bottle of scotch he had saved for days like this” – It’s clichéd, it’s hackneyed, it reeks of all those 70’s and 80’s cop shows and I absolutely love it. Good place to leave the chapter too, and that was a great one, loads of tension and sparking between Irving and Harker. I'm still firmly of the belief that Irving is a better character, which more conflict than anyone else.

 

“her dark blonde hair falling off of the leather couch” – You need another word than ‘falling’, which sounds as if her wig fell off – try ‘spilling’.

 

“Renfield averted his eyes as she did so. Otherwise, they would have run ran down her toned form...” - ????? And I don’t think you need his thoughts thereafter. Let the reader’s imagination do the thinking here, don’t tell them what to feel.

 

“The grown-ups are talking and they locked us in the basement” – lol.

 

“blood-sucking elephant” – rofl.

 

Yup, good chapters, enjoyed these a good deal, even though they are short and sweet, there is barrel loads of personal conflict, which is fine by me. What I would say is that we’ve several chapters like this in a row, like at least six, I think, so I'm hoping we get some action next to avoid getting stuck in a rut tonally.

 

Bring it on!

[Kammererite]

I enjoyed the chapters. Nice characterization starting on Evelyn. and more on the Renfeild-Stephanie dynamic. I was pulled quickly through these chapters. It was nice to see Jason back.

 

 

The alternate history involving the monsters is very interesting, i like the odd tidbits your dropping. 

 

Supper Nit picky. The tea in chapter 26 boiled very fast and there wasn't much of an indication of a time lapse occurring. 

 

On page 6. who is analysing the tape? i might have missed somthing.

[rdpulfer]

Rewer is analyzing the tape. It looks like I need to clarify that. Thanks for the feedback. 

[Asmodemon]

Not much more to add than what the others have already said. Just a couple small points.

 

Language: The language is still rough, starting right at the start of chapter 26 with ‘her heart facing’. And I think Stephanie jerked ‘upright’ and not ‘outright’.  The second sentence of chapter 27 is even worse.

 

Books: Stephanie has just come out of her vision, she’s surrounded by her enemies in their base, and she notices that some books on the shelves are obscure works she had never heard of? From the spines of the books alone? How would she know which works are obscure? There are a lot of books in the world and it doesn’t seem like she had much of an interest in them before.

 

Ellipses: Lots of ellipses in this chapter. Not a big fan of them myself. And with the spacing between them they are very prominent.

 

Evie: Lots of sarcasm and flippant behavior, which doesn’t seem that smart being in the enemy base. Maybe it’s because only Evelyn is around her, but there is a very big switch to how she addressed Evelyn in the previous part, before she had her vision.

 

Mental illness: I was a bit surprised that Stephanie hadn’t looked into mental illnesses seeing as how her female relatives all suffered from it. And in all likelihood so would she at some point. Then she should have probably known how odd it was that only the women suffer from a hereditary mental disorder.

[rdpulfer]

Thanks Amsodemon - that really helps. I'm definitely going to make sure Stephanie reacts more realistically once in the "enemy" base. I think her character fits in too well in the first draft. I also like the notes on mental illness, which I'm also looking into more - and I made of note of my overuse . . . of . . . ellipses.