27/06/16 - AliasSheep - Death (V)

[AliasSheep]

Hey!  This is my first thing submitted to the writing group, so first things first, I hope you enjoy.

Secondly, specifically interested in whether you think the combat scene fit, and whether the length was appropriate, and also your opinion on the scene after Death kills the first guy, whether that was too long, and how, disturbing, you found it. Thanks!

[FormlessFox]

Hi Alias,

Glad you took the plunge with the writing group.  I have some general comments about your story:

1. The third sentence in the intro has too many commas segmenting it up and kind of stuttered in the way I read it. "A single boot, crafted of simple leather, against hard stone, built centuries afore, standing for years in this place, unmoving." (5 commas).  I'm not an expert on grammar rules but maybe something along the lines of  "A single boot crafted of simple leather pressed against the hard stone, which stood for centuries in this place, unmoving."
2. The whole "themself" thing really needs to be justified for me.  My brain reads these sentences and immediately gives me an itch that it sounds wrong.  Why themself?  My mind kind of cringes at it everytime.  If you are going for a non gender floating entity type thing maybe have him refer to himself as him then laugh that he is really neither a he or a she but he settles for one pronoun or the other because humans can't wrap their head around it.
3. I really liked the poem you included I thought it was cool.
4. The highlanderesque quickening aka the reaction to killing the guy was a bit confusing to me.  He seems to gain power from killing because now he can form the air into the stairway and he couldn't do that before.  Then he screams about Teylan so thats who is causing the reaction? Why would Teylan leave him someone to be killed so he could become stronger?  Or was that a victim Teylan was gonna sacrifice and he swooped in and got him?  Cael also mentions he is killing a friend which is kind of understated.  Maybe add in some friend knowledge that he disregards like "he knew the face of his son, the first girl he ever kissed, his hopes, his dreams but they killed the man anyway."
5. The Cael/Teylan showdown kind of reminded me of the Prologue to the Wheel of Time except theres not much defining dialogue like in the Wheel of Time.  I would really like someone to spell out what is happening for me here so I have something vested in the battle.  I'm not really sure if death is a good or just thinks so at this point until Teylan calls him a valiant hero attacking a "servant".  Servant of what?  What exactly is Cael not accomplishing by dying?  Can he rub it in his face a little more so I understand what is going on?

It was enjoyable to read but there were some things teased that I would have liked to know a little more about mainly the shape of the conflict.  Why do I care about this battle?  Who do I sympathize with because I really don't know the purpose of the main characters suffering or the destruction he is causing.  It seems like we are dealing with a burn the world to save it type thing but why should I get behind it?

Great job buddy sorry if my response was a bit lengthy in its questions.  Also I hope you don't feel discouraged by my misunderstandings the important part is that I found it interesting and am looking forward to the answers!

Best of luck,

Fox

[AliasSheep]

3 hours ago, FormlessFox said:

The third sentence in the intro has too many commas segmenting it up and kind of stuttered in the way I read it. "A single boot, crafted of simple leather, against hard stone, built centuries afore, standing for years in this place, unmoving." (5 commas).  I'm not an expert on grammar rules but maybe something along the lines of  "A single boot crafted of simple leather pressed against the hard stone, which stood for centuries in this place, unmoving."

That... yes, I need to change that
 

3 hours ago, FormlessFox said:

The whole "themself" thing really needs to be justified for me.  My brain reads these sentences and immediately gives me an itch that it sounds wrong.  Why themself?  My mind kind of cringes at it everytime.  If you are going for a non gender floating entity type thing maybe have him refer to himself as him then laugh that he is really neither a he or a she but he settles for one pronoun or the other because humans can't wrap their head around it.

I kind of disagree with you on this on a rather fundemenetal level, and it would feel really weird to me to have my character that's cast off their gender (along with all other aspects of their identity) using a gendered pronoun.

3 hours ago, FormlessFox said:

I really liked the poem you included I thought it was cool.

Thank you

3 hours ago, FormlessFox said:

he highlanderesque quickening aka the reaction to killing the guy was a bit confusing to me.  He seems to gain power from killing because now he can form the air into the stairway and he couldn't do that before.  Then he screams about Teylan so thats who is causing the reaction? Why would Teylan leave him someone to be killed so he could become stronger?  Or was that a victim Teylan was gonna sacrifice and he swooped in and got him?  Cael also mentions he is killing a friend which is kind of understated.  Maybe add in some friend knowledge that he disregards like "he knew the face of his son, the first girl he ever kissed, his hopes, his dreams but they killed the man anyway."

I can probably make that a bit clearer, yeah.  In essence, it's a close friend of Cael who they "need" to kill in order to get power which they use to attack Teylan with, who's there for... arbitrary reasons that I didn't really think through

Thanks for your criticism, I'll be sure to keep it in mind when I go back to edit it

[Robinski]

I enjoyed this submission in large part, as an action scene, but I'm not sure if it supposed to be a stand-alone story or part of something else. I only went to read your email after I had read the piece, which then told me the context.

Generally, I found that the language flowed pretty smoothly, although some editing would benefit it a good deal to improve flow where certain wording and phrasing is a bit awkward.

 

I found it a bit difficult at first to connect with Death as a character, as he is no sooner introduced than the narrative veers off into description, but that is a detail. There is some background but really not very much.

My main problem is that the piece has no real context. I don't know whether I'm supposed to sympathise with Death or with Telyan, but regardless of that, I don't know enough about them to be especially interested in what happen to either one.

 

I think this probably would work quite well as an action scene in a larger story, but I don't think it works particularly well as a stand-alone piece.

 

Thanks for sharing!!

 

<R>

 

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

"a sort of in joke" - I would have thought 'in-joke' would be hyphenated, otherwise the tendency is to read it incorrectly, I think.

 

"their meaningless compounded by the things that would rise to replace them" - should be meaninglessness.

 

"Just like Death would be." - I think.

 

"followed Death as he moved up." - 'they moved up' - I think, to remain consistent with the plural.

 

"grasping for desperate light." - it's not the light that's desperate, is it?

 

The phasing around the section where Death's skin is being burned seems awkward and repetitive.

 

"once perhaps providing a people to sit" - a place for people to sit, presumably.

 

"raising a few feet’s length off of the hard floor" - this is all kinds of awkward. Why not just say, 'rising three feet above the floor.' or something like that.

 

"They were struggling against the ropes that tied them there." - Hang on, I've sort of got over the weird pluralising of Death, but wouldn't others be in the normal singular?

 

"tornadoes that flung off in every destruction" - in every direction, i presume.

 

"He held a sword at its side," - at his side.

 

"breaking his concentration" - their concentration.

 

[spieles]

Welcome to the group!

Like Robinski, I thought that context is the main thing missing from this piece. Honestly, I was confused through most of it. I was wondering who took the first step? And from there I didn't understand why the pillars were significant except as some kind of metaphorical symbol. Is this a portal being opened for him to step through?

So then the poem is cool.

So my interest is engaged again when we get to the statues of the gods in the temple. I liked how Death notices the lover staring at the reaper. I was hoping something was going to grow out of that. A memory of a lost love?

But then Death kills the man. I don't understand why. Background to the ritual would be good, especially if this execution is actually Telyan setting up bait to lure in Death.

When Teylan calls him Cael - I think it might good for death to have a reaction. Is it an ancient name? Was he once human? 

On the last page, I'm very curious about accusation that Death is the "gallant hero." Does this tie into the lover and reaper statues? Teylan calling him Cael? The imagery of dark and light is okay but I was craving something more concrete. Like Formless Fox, I was also getting Wheel of Time vibes.  

[Eagle of the Forest Path]

On 6/28/2016 at 1:24 AM, AliasSheep said:

I kind of disagree with you on this on a rather fundamental level, and it would feel really weird to me to have my character that's cast off their gender (along with all other aspects of their identity) using a gendered pronoun.

In that case wouldn't "it" be better than "them"? To me, "them" implies that the gender is unknown (or perhaps bi/trans/multi-gendered).
If Death - or any other quasi-mystical being - had made a decision not to have a gender, I'd think they would think of themselves as an "it".
"It" might also give off a more inhuman vibe, which is sort of the point, if I read you right.

Your descriptions of the scenery are sometimes a bit awkward in their wording, there might also be just too much of it. (This is hypocritical of me to mention, since I do this myself, but that means I know what I'm talking about  )
You're doing a lot of interesting world-building in this piece, but I feel it's a bit wasted in a stand-alone text. If I knew the story and/or the setting would continue after this, I could be interested to know about the cultures and religions. As it stands, apart from the Reaper-Lover opposition (which is some powerful symbolism, appropriate to the story), I'm feeling a bit "Crumbling, mysterious temple... and?" 

How did the dark man get on the altar? It couldn't have been Cael/Death who brought him, from the exchange that follows. And I doubt that he tied himself up. Meaning that Death has followers or allies who trudged all the way through the jungle with the victim, and then for some reason didn't even stick around to watch the sacrifice.

I'm getting more Malazan Book of the Fallen from the confrontation than Wheel of Time, but I agree with FormlessFox that it needs more context for the reader to be invested in the outcome. The battle itself is pretty awesome.

There are solid bones in this piece, but it does require polishing. I'd like to read more of this.

[neongrey]

Could we, like, maybe not question the mere usage of non he/she pronouns for off-binary characters? Out of three stories we've been going through lately that have had non-binary characters every last one of them have had people questioning that fact alone on first occurence thereof. I don't think this is a beneficial line of critique in any capacity, and I know for my own part I feel less comfortable here seeing this sort of reaction. If there's actual grammatical confusion that needs correction there's one thing, but in no case I've seen has this come up.

 

Now then:

Okay, the first page is almost entirely a single paragraph. It's offputting from the getgo, not giving the eye anything to catch on to. And you've got a fair few scentence fragments. The 'a single boot' sentence actually is one such, despite its length-- the description in here doesn't actually go anywhere, grammatically speaking. The immediate follow-up is, too, fragmentary.

I actually stopped reading this paragraph entirely at 'as if in challenge'. If you want to be writing using a terse voice, I think you need to actually be terse, not going on forever while having shorter sentences. As it is, the syntax has an almost childish feel to it; very dick-and-jane in the sentence structure.

The second paragraph is not much better; this language is reaching for being evocative and, I think, failing to do so. You're basically just explaining what a jungle is, and again, you're still way into sentence fragments here. That sentence starting with 'and yet' should be a part of the previous sentence, eg.

'And so it begins' is cliche enough that I would avoid it; I just see it and am immediately whisked off to thinking of how I should rewatch babylon 5 again.

The poem does not scan; it holds to no particular meter and there's basically no flow to the words. It feels very, very rough.

Your descriptive paragraphs are way, way too long. I saw this next one overfilled the page again and straight-up did not read it.

'to plea' - should be plead

oh, please don't compress an entire fight scene into one single paragraph, please do not.

"so this is the end for..." this is some beyond cheesy phrasing, which doesn't do much for any weight this dialogue is supposed to have.

I can't much offer a lot of opinion on this as a whole, because just structurally there's very little for me to get a grip on. The sentence structure is too choppy, the paragraphs are massive, and i suspect the majority of the contents of them are superfluous description, but I can't say for sure.

[kais]

Welcome!

Overall

I'm not really certain as to the plot, and I don't have a firm grasp of the characters. A lot of time was spent in world building, and very little on personality and purpose. As a first draft it is intriguing, and I think with some expansion on character and motivation and some decrease in world, this would be a very compelling read. Looks like this feedback has been given above, as well.

Your questions

Death of guy 1: I liked this a lot. It was the one place I really felt tension in the narrative

Battle scene: I was confused and therefore not invested. Some backstory would have to be given for me to care about this scene.

As I go thoughts

- first paragraph is enormous. Please break it up. My eyes boggle. This is not a good look for me.

- page 1: 'the thing was bordered'. I understand and appreciate the use of 'they' as a non-gendered pronoun, but you will encounter a few more pitfalls with it over something like 'xie' or some other constructed pronoun. One such pitfall is this, where you have been referring to death (I think?), and then indicate something as 'the thing'. I assume you are referring to the steps? Yes? I'm not sure, because I could see where death could be considered a 'thing' as well, and sometimes 'they' is used to dehumanize instead of indicate non-gender (or outside binary gender). Long winded, but my point is this - you have to be a lot more careful with 'they' when writing. Make sure all your gender neutral nouns get strong descriptors, so that confusion is less likely to occur.

As an aside, I actually started with 'it' in AFD, then morphed to 'they', then finally 'xie', as I perpetually ran into this issue. Using new terms also opens up a whole new world of distinctions of gender, if that's your bag. A number of us here on the forum write non-gendered or non-binary characters (hell, I'm non binary myself), and we all come at it from slightly different angles. I think maybe we should start a thread about this, because it does keep coming up and it'd be fun to discuss.

- page 1: could I convince you to expand your jungle description? That's a pretty loose term, and I spend a great deal of time in jungles, so would love to see more on this. Not a lot more, but maybe, like, a sentence talking about canopies and tree type.

- while we're on the topic of jungles, I assume your 'vines' are actually liana, yes? You're referring to the ominous, slithering vine-like things that climb up trees and slowly choke the life from them? Liana is a better word, especially for the context you're presenting. Ivy is a vine. Liana... liana are killers of trees.

- page two, the poem: that the last two lines rhyme throws me off a little

- page 2, temples: what is the shape of the temple? They come in many shapes. Jungle Kaisa demands descriptors!

- page 2: internal temple descriptors getting longwinded, and paragraphs are very long.

- page 3: there is a man tied at the alter, yet you refer to him as 'they'. Typo, or is this world building?

- page 4: so now death can walk on air... I missed the power up. Confusion.

- page 4: death is referred to as 'he' in the largest paragraph. Assuming typo. Happens again top of page 5 in 'him'

[king007]

Hello, this was such a thrilling read. I absolutely love your writing style. I practically understood nothing of the story, but the air of magnificence in your writing carried your work enough for me. I kinda understood that this was just a random passage to be read and not a part of a whole story, so I didn't pay the context much heed. But context would have been nicer. I should also add that I like the way you use short sentences. I appreciate the tone it creates.

I'd like to make a few remarks though. Mentioning "Death" so many times was somewhat tiresome for me, and each time I read the word I slightly got out of my reading trance. Also, I think I enjoyed your work less, when the battle scene arrived. I'm not sure why, but I think it was less majestic in comparison to the description scenes that preceded it. I also don't quite understand the use of "them" and "themselves" when referring to death (if that's what you were referring to). It served only as a confusion for me.

"Darkness clouded their vision, like ink in water, making it hard for them to see." I think this part is unnecessary.

That's all I have to say. Thanks for submitting this. Good luck with your next work!

Edited June 30, 2016 by king007

[rdpulfer]

Hey Alias!

- The first paragraph seems way too long. You probably want to break it up into smaller paragraphs.

- "As if in challenge. Like a foretelling." This seems a bit too unconnected and interrupted the pace, and there's a couple spots the aside from the character's thoughts break the pace.

- "It was through the door where Dead was headed". This sounds a bit passive.

- Great action scenes. I really like your description and pacing, but I'd make sure you don't have any extra words clogging up the proceedings. 

 

[Mandamon]

On 6/29/2016 at 5:03 AM, neongrey said:

Could we, like, maybe not question the mere usage of non he/she pronouns for off-binary characters? Out of three stories we've been going through lately that have had non-binary characters every last one of them have had people questioning that fact alone on first occurence thereof. I don't think this is a beneficial line of critique in any capacity, and I know for my own part I feel less comfortable here seeing this sort of reaction. If there's actual grammatical confusion that needs correction there's one thing, but in no case I've seen has this come up.

Neon, normally I'd agree with you, however in this case specifically, I was confused at first whether this was a literal incarnation of Death (it) or if it was a non-gendered person (they).  I think the story points to the latter, but I'm not sure.  In this case I think it is a fair question.

 

I think I had the same concerns as everyone else, mainly that there wasn't a lot of character for me to enjoy.  There are the bones of a good story, though!

Notes while reading:

Pg 1: There's a lot of description on the first page, so much that I lost sight of the character until the raven mark comes in.  You've also got a very large and blocky paragraph.  Some separations and whitespace would help to keep the flow of reading going better.  This goes on after the poem as well.

Pg 3: "Upon the altar was tied a man. They were struggling against the ropes that tied them there."
--they/them -> he/him

This seems like the end of a long story that I haven't read.  Without knowing Death's motives, or character, or even why they are called "Death" (and is that actually the incarnation of death, or just a title), I am not drawn to care about the character.  I don't know how the magic works, or what access Death has to it, so I don't know whether to be impressed by all the fireworks. 

I think this line sums things up pretty well:
“So this is the end for the gallant hero, who sacrificed all just to die in failing to kill one simple servant. Such tragedy.”
--This sound like it could be a very cool reveal, but with nothing to back it up, it falls flat.  You say this is an excerpt from a novel.  I want to read the rest of it to see how the characters ended up here.

[neongrey]

Sure, but 'I'm confused by what you're going for here' is a far, far cry from "singular they, a grammatical construct that has been in use for about a thousand years, makes me cringe so you should use he and include a really hackneyed joke about it to justify it". That's not okay. Critique is not the place to be telling people to shove nonbinary characters back into a binary box.

(and the confusion, I think, is not inherently a flaw of the pronoun choice, so much as it is a construct of generally ambiguous writing; assuming for argument that the ambiguity is unintentional, there's no reason any of that can't be nailed down with the singular they, it's just all of the text space is devoted elsewhere; so I do object to centering that objection on that pronoun)

Edited July 1, 2016 by neongrey

[Mandamon]

Agree completely.  I also think using he and making a joke would be the wrong idea.  More that the premise was not fully expanded and caused confusion (for me).