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AuthorityHellas16 - When Good Angels Do Nothing - Part 2, Chapter 2 - 3747 words [V,D] (Re-submission)


AuthorityHellas16

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Hey everyone,

 

As many mentioned last week, the last chapter I submitted wasn't my best one to date. Having reviewed your feedback (excellent as always), I went and re-read the chapter and found it to be, well, kinda crap. So, I overhauled it. The changes were fairly different and I wanted to re-submit it to see if it was better than before. Main points of emphasis:

 

- Was it more fast-paced and did it flow better

- Was World’s End more believable

- Was Hellas’ entry and exit into World’s End more believable? Did you enjoy the sneaking segment?

 

I've also been considering a couple of changes to the story and characters overall that I wanted to run by you (kinda cheating, I know). 

 

1. I wasn't really satisfied with Hellas' dark-and-brooding heavy-drinking character. It brought up unwanted memories of Antonio Banderas' character in Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (possibly the WORST movie ever made). So I changed his character to much more of a Sad Clown, someone who makes jokes to cover up their inner pain, using characters like Chandler from Friends or Iroh from Avatar the Last Airbender as my inspiration. I changed this because it's a less common character archetype than the Batman-esque character. Let me know how it feels to you

 

2. Just a general question, also relating to the above. Some of you may remember that Hellas has a dead wife (Jessica). Again, I thought that this may be a little excessive, essentially since Hellas is already the proud owner of a DARK AND TROUBLED PAST!! I'm worried that this is turning him into a bit of a Sympathetic Sue (i.e. someone who has a ridiculous amount of misfortune to generate sympathy from the audience). Therefore, I’m considering cutting the wife out, and having him haunted by a much more standard (but no less harrowing) soldier's PTSD. What are you thoughts on this?

 

Any-hoozle, hope you enjoy this week's submission. There is much more to come (hope not many people groaned when they read that...)

 

AH16

 

Last Time:

After accepting Lucifer’s armour and his request to work towards a shared goal (the removal of the Council from Heaven), Hellas seeks the advice of his old mentor, the Mor’kai Scrios. Scrios reveals knowledge of a group of elite soldiers who had been taken prisoner by the hellspawn and were held within World’s End. In order to find a way into the blasted plateau, Hellas confronted the terrifying Keeper of Secrets, an abomination with whom he seemed to share some history. The Keeper tested Hellas, clearly trying to nudge him towards remembering his long-lost identity, without success. In return for successfully completing his challenges, the monster told Hellas of a second labyrinth beneath Mount Majesty that would lead him into World’s End. 

 

Armed with this knowledge, Hellas and Rakha travel west, in hopes of finding the entrance into World’s End and freeing the important soldiers. From there, Hellas hopes to start his rebellion against Heaven in earnest. 

 

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pg 1: "golden energy torch"

--this just sort of sounds funny.

 

Getting through the mountain is better this time around.  It doesn't seem so fast.

 

Better description of World's End as well.  No meteors, but I still have the sense of continuous fighting and corruption.

 

pg 4: "The two bloated angels"

--Are they angels?  I thought they were Hellspawn?

 

pg 4: "Abholos"

--what are these?

 

pg 4: "‘That’s going to attract attention,’ Hellas muttered, dissolving the White Faces with a wave of his hand"

--I'm still not sold on Hellas' ability to summon multiple proficient fighters from nothing.

 

pg 6: "his glaive clutched tightly in his hand"

--has he had this the whole time?

 

pg 8: Much better reveal with Hellas taking off the mask.

 

Two things at the end:

1) It still is extremely easy for Eirael and her army to escape.  I still don't believe that they couldn't have made some escape attempt, especially since they spent years there losing people to horrible experiments.

 

2) I don't understand where they went at the end.  I thought they were in a giant cavern already.  Did Hellas open a path into a different cavern?  Also, this again begs the question: why didn't the entire army that could have escaped at any time do the same thing, at some point in the last ten years?

 

I think on the whole this is much better, in a technical and readability sense.  However, the big underlying logical problems are still there.  I think you can give a satisfactory explanation for it--just need to figure out what it is.

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P2 - "Rivers of lava coursed through the earth like glowing veins of molten rock." - Not like molten rock, that's exactly what lava is.

 

Agreed with Mandamon above that this is more readable than the first, but still leaves me feeling more or less the same way as I did about the first submission.

I can see some of the changes you made, but I still feel like the whole endeavour was too easy. Yes, there was a fight to get into the manhole, but that replaces the fight you had before that took place after all the prisoners were freed, and both were incredibly easy.

I remarked last time that it strained belief that prisoners for decades would be fit to fight after their captivity, but seeing that they've been exercising for decades didn't strike me as more believable.

Eirael ripping the bars off her own cage was more of the same. After decades in this place they never tried to leave? Lucifer's picking them off one at a time for experiments, and as a matter of pride they're just going to let him instead of going down without a fight? I don't see what's so pointless about a "pointless death" trying to escape, compared to what would happen to them during Lucifer's experiments.

I think what I need to know most is why it's so impossible to get out of this place that they never even bothered.

 

Again, Hellas got in extremely easily, and got them out again with even less fuss. I don't see what he can do that Eirael can't, and why this army would have been trapped there this whole time if they're fit to fight.

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Straight into the comments:

 

I like that the passageway opens near the top of a hill, much less likely that anyone would be passing to notice.

 

I repeat my earlier comment about how the heck Hellas can see the detail that he can, when he is presumably at a significant distance with respect to the power of the human eye. I'm thinking he must be at least 100 yards away or more. Although you describe the scene, I don’t have much blocking to go on, I don’t understand the distances.

 

Not sure why his pal owes him a favour. Surely, the little sprite thingy got him into World’s End undetected.

 

He gritted his teeth

 

The Fallen were slow to react” – It’s often the case in stories and movies that the enemy are useless henchmen, but why should this be? It can be a real problem for writers much greater than us as well. We all know Bond is not going to die, for example. It can really rob a scene of any feeling of threat or tension.

 

Hellas briefly considered taking off his mask to convince her that he was not a threat” – If he is wearing a disguise, why did he need to attack the squad of bad guys? Could he not have walked past them?

 

And replacing the Council?” – With what? This is still an issue. Surely, he cannot be so short-sighted as to not consider what will follow.

 

I always make a point of considering every eventuality,’ Hellas explained. ‘That way I’m never surprised” – I feel some of the dialogue is a bit wooden. I can imagine Arnie saying this line.

 

You had the wisdom to be prepared for the possibility of war” – I dislike this stream of ego-inflating stuff from Eirael. She’s been in a cage for hundreds of years and the first thing she does is fawn all over Hellas? It comes back to my problem with the dialogue. I just don’t find it convincing. Others do it too, telling Hellas how great he is. I find it a turn-off.

 

The short version is I tracked down the Keeper of Secrets, who told me about hidden underground catacombs that I could use to circumvent the dome.” – I forget if I’ve mentioned this before, but it all seems a bit too easy. Nowhere that I can think of has Hellas been thwarted. There’s no ‘try-fail’, it seems to be all ‘try-succeed’. I think that’s one reason I'm not really engaged in the story.

 

It took ten short minutes before the cages were finally empty” – I can believe this much more easily because the rate of freeing prisoners will increase in a doubling relationship. If they were all healthy and could free another, and assuming it takes one minute to free someone, they could free 1,024 in 10 minutes.

 

Same way I came in” – Huh? So the cavern he was in extends over the whole of World’s End? I'm back to my issues with the blocking and not having a sense of scale. In physical terms, it seems to me that the whole place would collapse if it’s all one cavern. There may be something else going on, but I don’t really have a grip on it.

I’ve been poking at the holes in my comments, but here are some of the things that I liked:

  • The reaction of the soldiers at the end of the chapter;
  • Eirael seems like a good character with the presence to challenge Hellas if he does something dumb. She seems like by far the strongest secondary character in the story so far;
  • World’s End is suitably nasty. I wouldn’t mind you playing that up some more. The problem I have is with the layout, not the description as such;

My major issues remain:

  • It’s too easy for Hellas, no ‘failing’;
  • Everybody fawns over how great he is (that’s my impression anyway);
  • Dialogue could be more dynamic.
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