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01042016 rdpulfer Scholomancer Chapter 53, 54, 55 4129 words


rdpulfer

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Robert Renfield betrayed his Master Dracula and left him at the bottom of the ocean. One year later, the hunters of Westenra continue the search for Dracula, unaware of their development. Their lead agent, Stephanie Van Helsing, is suffering from mysterious visions and soon finds herself on the run after being framed for the death of a colleague. Tracking down Renfield, she is eventually brought before the Council, a group of monsters who opposed Dracula. Alongside the werewolf Bannister, the Bride of Frankenstein Evelyn and the mummy Rewer, Stephanie and Renfield find the Wisdom of Solomon responsible for triggering Stephanie's visions. 

 

After finding the scroll, they are attacked by rogue hunters sent by Stephanie's treacherous mentor Irving. Stephanie is forced to kill one of them to protect her allies. When more hunters arrive, Renfield provides a distraction while the others escape, planning to move the Wisdom of Solomon to a secure location. However, Stephanie is betrayed by Rewer - revealed to the be the Buyer - while the hunters catch up with Renfield, who escapes after learning of Rewer's treachery. Meanwhile, the captive Stephanie talks to Irving about the impending Scholomance and is apparently able to fool her captors into thinking she is having a vision. Though Irving discovers her ruse, Stephanie is able to escape, drugging Irving with the sedative meant for her. Meanwhile, Renfield and his allies plan to lure the hunters to the ceremony to stop the Scholomance. 

Edited by rdpulfer
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Ouch - I'm in first! Man, no other comments to crib from, oh well, here goes!!

 

Detailed comments below, in the usual fashion, but I was disappointed with this submission. We should be ramping up to the big conclusion, but I felt that there was very little happening of any interest or that brought any tension. Unless I'm mistaken, the actual ritual of the Scholomance has started, but the reader doesn’t get to see the beginning. Also, it seems like an enormous issue to me that Rewer must have started the ritual with about two of his attendants (Texas and East Coast), but doesn’t seem to be missing them, then allows one to stroll in during the ceremony. I was ripped out of the story by this.

 

I just felt that there was a lack of punch, that the phrasing often lacked urgency, and that the opportunity to massively ramp up the threat was overlooked. This is a ritual to summon the devil, but Evelyn seems to be the only one who is remotely scared of this possibility.

 

Still looking forward to next week’s submission, hoping that the ante will be doubled and redoubled!

 

--------------------------------------------------

 

So, Renfield is driving and Bannister is in the passenger seat beside him? I wasn’t clear on the blocking here, in part because Renfield appears not to be watching the road. It’s explained soon after, but I’d rather have a clear picture from the start.

 

Weariness lined her voice like a veil, muffling her words.” – awkward phrasing, ‘lined’ and ‘veil’ are both visual words, but we’re talking about a hearing situation.

 

Both Evelyn and Renfield said in unison” – self-evident.

 

I still don’t see why we couldn’t have gone back” – this form uses a double negative.

 

Renfield released a deep sigh himself” – awkward. What’s wrong with ‘Renfield sighed.’?

 

offered her the best chance of maneuvering through the camp unnoticed, without anyone noticing her.

 

as she gritted her lip” – not sure this is possible.

 

I don’t see any need for the section break in Stephanie’s section at the start of Chapter 54.

 

Who played him better – Jack Nicholson in that one movie with Cher or De Niro in that the one movie with Keanu Reeves” – also, no, it was PACINO.

 

I find the pop culture references interesting / amusing as a film buff, but they do date a story quite a bit. Hopefully, most of your audience has heard of JFK, but Tupac? And in 5 years time? If I’d written this story 10 years ago (okay, maybe 20), I’d have said Jimmy Hoffa. How many people on this here thread know who he is?

 

the number of squats she’d been doing done on Leg Day” – suggestion

 

What is Texas doing while Stephanie is grappling with East Coast? I don’t get what’s happening.

 

You said the sun was setting, then it’s night after about eight paragraphs – that’s a continuity issue for me.

 

I felt that the writing of this fight was rather loose and needs tidying up. I skipped through the second half.

 

His knife still lied lay or sat undisturbed in its scabbard

 

I'm skipping over the grammar stuff now. Now is there blood on Texas’ knife – I thought she just hit him with it – don’t remember her cutting him with it.

 

So this is the Scholomance? It started without any fanfare or announcement. I don’t mean in the story, but in the narrative. Also, they are a man short, because Stephanie downed two but she is only one, of course. There’s no way Rewer is going to miss that. Also, how in the hell can he start with ritual when he’s two people down, and someone just drops in when they’re ready? Struggled with this a lot.

 

What’d do you do” – I presume you mean ‘What did you do’?

 

There something off when Bannister seems to interject on his of comment about Stephanie being Jason’s chick – that was weird.

 

In the backseat, Renfield could hear Evelyn start to audibly pray” – he couldn’t hear her if she was praying inaudibly!

 

the billows clouds of smoke steam” – if the car has overheated in the classic sense, it’s not smoke coming from under the hood, but steam from the overheated cooling system. Also, I believe ‘billow’ is a verb. Some of the other words used in the description of the car expiring sounded odd to me.

 

Keeping quiet had been his specialty in the Marines.” – rofl, funniest line in some time.

 

turn such a crimson shade of scarlet” – these are two different shades of red, two different colours, in effect.

 

crimson binds on their mouths” – binds is a verb to me – I’ve never heard of a ‘bind’ used in the sense of a tie or a tether.

 

The man convulsed a bit before slumping over” – what purpose do the extra words serve, other than to slow the action down?

 

I suppose we’ll just have to think of something” – there are a few of these nothing lines. It’s stating the obvious and for me doesn’t add anything to the story.

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Well, fortunately Robinski was first so I can agree with him!

I also felt this lacked any urgency, and I was pulled out by lots of spelling, grammar, and consistency errors.

As Robinski says, this is the big finish!  The ritual has started (I assume this is about the end of the book?) and Our Heroes should be at their lowest point and starting to climb up that steep valley to Win Against Overwhelming Odds.

Instead, we get a sort of slow car chase and Stephanie running around by herself.  I was also confused by who should be in the ceremony and how/why it started.  I would assume there would be a lot of preparation.

 

I am still interested to see what happens to everyone...

 

 

pg 2: "looked at the beeping device in Evelyn’s arm."

--in her hand, presumably.

 

pg 4: "small Little Bird helicopter"

--maybe need a better adjective for this.

 

pg 7: "two cloaked figures to move away from the guards"

--I thought they were the guards?

 

pg 8: "their breaths from several yards away.

***

The dry grass crumbled beneath Stephanie’s weight as "

--not sure why there's an ellipsis here.  I don't get the sense any period of time passed.

 

pg 13: "the bedazzled Texas"

--I wouldn't call being hit in the nuts bedazzled, particularly.

 

pg 13: “Never! Joke! About! A! Woman’s! Weight!”

--Did he?  I don't think I caught that.

 

pg 15: "a guard shined right into her robe."

--shone a light?
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I was wondering if there was a problem when we have 11 chapters to go until the end (including the epilogue) and there seems to be a lack of urgency at this point. i have noted the disappointment with underlined and bold in my notes, so this seems like another chapter that needs to be reworked (or possibly cut altogether). Thanks for the feedback! 

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I agree with Mandamon and Robinski, the tension could be ramped up a lot more. I’m not feeling the end-of-the-world, the devil-is-coming, threat that I should feel at this point. The Scholomance is this big threat, because it could create another Dracula. Unfortunately we’ve only seen big-scary Dracula when Renfield sank him to the bottom of the ocean. And quite easily at that. We didn’t see what he could really do. The other thing this ritual can do is provide people with knowledge. Given what human knowledge is already capable of (atomic bombs, etc.) a little extra dark knowledge couldn’t hurt much more.

 

So the threat of the ritual isn’t as high as it could be.

 

Still I’m looking forward to where this is going. I hope to see more of Rewer’s power and, honestly, I want Dracula to show up :)

 

Some specific points/issues I had with this submission are the following.

 

Boys: Evelyn has to call Bannister and Renfield to order again. Still not a fan of how adversarial everyone is with each other in this story.

 

Alternative: Evelyn says it’s the ‘best alternative we have’. Alternative implies there was a primary plan and they didn’t follow it. What was that plan? And why didn’t they do that instead? Because on the one hand using one set of enemies to destroy another is a good plan, but on the other they’ve got the tracker on while they are still on route…and guess what, they get found on route.

Better plan: Activate tracker on target location.

 

Cloaks: Ah, so everyone is wearing robes to give Stephanie a disguise. Gotcha. Still a bit cliché though to have robes for the evil cultists to summon the devil.

 

Drunk: Rewer lets the patsies he needs to complete the ritual walk around unsupervised and worse, get drunk? Won’t that hurt his ritual at all?

 

Jokes: The dumb bad guys are not funny. Even joking those are the stupidest questions I’ve ever read. Sorry, I don’t want to sound harsh, but I hated that part.

 

Woods: Convenient to have the abandoned oil field in the woods.

 

Payback is a bitch: I’ve commented on this before, but all the characters keep on doing stupid things. This time it’s Stephanie against Texas, she could have killed him clean, but instead she wants to make him pay. Screw payback. She’s alone in the middle of nowhere, about to be used in a ritual to summon the devil. And it’s unlikely Rewer will let her go afterward. She needs to escape. That should have been her top priority, not payback.

 

Weight joke: I had to pause for a bit, then I remembered that I read Texas joking about how he expected a younger, thinner virgin for the ritual in the last submission, which I’d just read. I felt that there is a little too much time in between those two moments to immediately make her remark click.

 

Knives: Okay, so that’s why they need knives, to draw their own blood. A bit old fashioned, what’s wrong with a syringe and a needle?

 

Harker: Harker is starting to become a caricature of himself, coming in with a rocket launcher on a helicopter. Having him show up to have a go at Renfield every time, with manic glee it seems, is getting old. Also, there may be innocent victims inside the car with Renfield, but that doesn’t even seem to occur to Harker.

 

Westenra: Where is the rest of Westenra, certainly one helicopter can’t be the only resource they have? Whatever Renfield said when he called Westenra wasn’t very good, if they only send one helicopter.

 

Oh wait, I just realized he hadn’t called Westenra, he had just activated the tracker. Now I really wonder at Renfield’s plan, because there’s no way to know what kind of response Westenra would give to a tracker coming online.

 

Nine scholars: By my count, with Texas and East-Coast gone, and Stephanie stepping up for the ritual, we’re still one scholar down. Rewer should be able to count, so why is the ritual progressing if there is one guy missing? Does that mean you don’t need nine people?

 

Keep going:  For all Renfield, Bannister, and Evelyn know Stephanie seems to have escaped. They are stung by being betrayed by Rewer, but what is their motivation now to keep going on to stop the ritual? Payback? A misguided belief they should rescue Stephanie when really she has done nothing for them and is still a hunter? I had to scratch my head a little here. They are taking a big risk here. They could let Rewer do his thing and instead get moving to getting themselves and the Terminal into hiding.

 

Inconsistent guard patrols: The guard patrols around the facility are inconsistent and only there (or not there) to further the plot. There is a convenient guard (only one?) with a flashlight when Stephanie is walking away. Rather than approach him and take him down she instead goes to the ritual site with him. He also grabs her arm – that shows a lack of respect for the partners of his boss. Also, if they are that close, and Stephanie still has the knife, she could have made a surprise attack on him to escape. Sure she could have failed, but best case scenario she’d have gotten away, and worst case scenario the guard drags her to the ritual site, which is exactly what happens anyway.

On the other side of the spectrum, there are no guards at all when the others get to the forest and they can just walk in.

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