20150627 - Robinski - Hold the Bridge (Redux) - Part 1 of 2 - 4090 words (V)

[Robinski]

Maybe there are some new faces who did not see this last time around, or maybe one or two of the old hands will be up for reading it again - there's a different ending for one thing :-D

If you've read it before you'll know what the main issues were, and if you haven't - I'm not going to tell you!

The usual what works, what doesn't stuff would be much appreciated, and basically anything you care to say about it is fine by me.

Thanks for reading, in anticipation.

Cheers, Robinski

 

[kais]

Overall

This flowed a lot better than the first time around, and I enjoyed this first half a lot. A few minor stumbles, detailed below. Looking forward to reading part two again. Nice cleanups!

 

As I go

- page 3: the tags get confusing at the first dialogue section. It took me a minute to realize that 'the soldier' was Harth, not the approaching character. If you referred to Harth earlier as a solider, directly, that would fix it.

- page 4: I like that Harth now makes a solid choice about hell or more battle, but I'm still confused as to why he makes the choice he does. He was tired of battle, and the imagery you provided was great. Why not just choose hell? A line or two of what he thinks the alternative might be like should he make it through the battle would be excellent.

- I still enjoy the survey of the 'troops'

- Are we supposed to known who the hoard represent, or are they just nameless/faceless?

[spieles]

Like Kaisa, I thought this flowed much smoother, and I had a better sense of Harth. I'm still wanting more details about his life and who he is so I included places in my notes below where I specifically found myself wanting more.

p. 2 I like the opening line

p. 2 the paragraph about the gorse and the tree. So you go gorse – tree – gorse flowers – tree berries. Better I think to describe the hills as being gorse covered (especially since I have no idea what gorse is) – then say they’re not in bloom – and then describe the tree.

p. 3 "but he was unarmed" - Maybe tell us what specific weapon that Harth is reaching for – an axe? A sword?

p. 3 when the soldier tells him he's in hell, I need a reaction from Harth He just got told he’s in hell! Did he expect this? Does he not believe it? Does he think this is a test?

p. 4 when Harth asks "what choice do I have?"  I’d like to see more internal conflict here. How much does he hate battle? And how much does he secretly crave it? Does he even think he has the right to leave Hell? Does he consider himself a good man? All of that….

p. 6 once the two of them "walked in silence."  You lose me for the paragraph here. I’m way more interested – tension-wise – in his getting to the Citadel and finding out what is going on in this crazy afterlife.

p. 6 The imagery gets confusing on the second half of the page. We get this description of an endless bright plain and then suddenly there’s a chasm and mist acting as borders. I think you could make this a little clearer.

p. 7 "Here it was, the command that he had always wanted. The irony was bitter. He wanted to laugh, but thought better of it."  Need more here! Did he always dream of being a commander? What happened to his last commander? What has stopped Harth from rising in the ranks? Was there a particular incident? He takes this WAY too in stride. I want to feel his pride – the play upon his vanity – and his attempt to quash that feeling – which is what happens here with Harth focusing on the irony, but it’d be better if we felt his desire first.

p.7-8 This paragraph and then the first on p. 8... "More questions rose, but Harth quashed them, time for those later, if this really was eternity." I don’t need a flashback per se, but I want something much more specific from his life. Everything here is in general, cerebral terms and it’s distancing. I want to know a specific thing he loved about his homeland. I want a thought on his parents or siblings. What was the reason he became a solider in the first place? These sorts of things.

p. 8 "He had told himself he would give it up, settle down with a wife in some quiet village and farm cows, but it was only a dream with which he had deluded himself." I want a specific town. I want an image of him with his son doing something cool – and I want to feel his despair over that never coming to fruition.

p. 9 The list of descriptions of all the soldiers beginning with "The young man opposite..." Break this up and apply to characters as we meet them. A sense of the group would be better here since most of these people are “spear carriers” as the Writing Excuses podcast would label them.

p. 10 The two paragraphs starting with "The names meant nothing to..." and then "Harth strove..." I need anchors for these people – really, just give me a general sense until you get to Magdi.

p. 10-11 - Magdi! What is she wearing? And what is her reaction upon seeing him? I want to feel their mutual disbelief. Did she know he was dead? Because Magdi is suddenly angry and snappish with him – I need a bit more information as to how she gets there. Is he surprised at her reaction?

p. 14 "The sound of rattling armour..."  Harth is a new commander. There has to be a great deal of curiosity about him, and Harth, even with all his experience, has to be wrestling with a certain amount of anxiety about suddenly getting what he always wanted – the lead command of a battle. I’d like some of that interiority here.

p. 14 "This one does,": snapped Harth. "Take your place." I like this exchange. It makes me like Harth, which begs the question, what does Harth think of the last commander? Less of him? And how does that mesh with the last commander “moving on.”

p. 15 "The bridge was massively wide, at least fifty yards" - Previously when he observed the bridge in the valley – he said it was almost 100 yards.

So bravo. I hope these help. I'm finally caught up on the forums! /wipes brow

Edited June 29, 2016 by spieles

[Carcinios]

This time around I felt like I was reading the same story but somehow it clicked better. Looking forward to part 2.

I think I only noticed to things that still didn't quite gel. The first was the introduction of Dumkald, Cresca and Fermarald. The troops are dismissed and then there is no indication that anyone stayed behind to have the conversation that then starts.

The second was the speed at which Harth adjusts to leading an unfamiliar force of soldiers. I don't know if that was due to the supernatural nature of the place and the Creator's influence but it felt a bit odd, as if he had been commanding them for years. I'm still not sure if Harth is a great commander or a failed one given a chance at redemption. Either way you have the tough job of showing him being that rather than just telling us how good or bad he is.

My favourite bit this time around (other than the conversation with the Traveller which I really enjoyed the first time around as well) was the battle. I felt really grounded in Harth's perspective and that completely dictated the pace of the scene. Really well done for that.

[Robinski]

5 hours ago, kaisa said:

This flowed a lot better than the first time around, and I enjoyed this first half a lot. A few minor stumbles, detailed below. Looking forward to reading part two again. Nice cleanups!

Are we supposed to known who the hoard represent, or are they just nameless/faceless?

Thank you, Kaisa, for reading again, and for those very helpful comments. I must admit that I was feeling trepidation as I opened up this thread, so I'm relieved that thing words better after the revisions. Take your share of the credit for that!

Your points of detail will really help me refine again. There are some great comments coming out, but I'm so glad we are talking about what I think is fine tuning.

On your question, I'm reluctant to get into specifics about the horde or the story might morph out of control in terms of word count and form. That said, I'm sure I can give you a little more. Fermarald's comment about them are supposed to pain an unreliable picture, but I don't think I have quite landed that idea at the point of pay-off.

Great comments, thank you so much

[Robinski]

4 hours ago, spieles said:

Like Kaisa, I thought this flowed much smoother, and I had a better sense of Harth. I'm still wanting more details about his life and who he is so I included places in my notes below where I specifically found myself wanting more.

So bravo. I hope these help. I'm finally caught up on the forums! /wipes brow

Thank you, Spieles. Wowza, some really great comments there. Looking at the length of your post, I was properly worried at first, but going through it, I'm really confident I can drag the story up another level or two by addressing your points. I think I can 'solve' most of them without knocking the thing out of shape with too much extra detail or backstory, those are all good question to pose.

Your sterling effort in getting caught up did not go unnoticed. Having been behind by 3 or 4 weeks myself in the past, I know that it's no small undertaking to make that ground up - well done!

 

[Robinski]

55 minutes ago, Carcinios said:

This time around I felt like I was reading the same story but somehow it clicked better. Looking forward to part 2.

I think I only noticed to things that still didn't quite gel. The first was the introduction of Dumkald, Cresca and Fermarald. The troops are dismissed and then there is no indication that anyone stayed behind to have the conversation that then starts.

The second was the speed at which Harth adjusts to leading an unfamiliar force of soldiers. I don't know if that was due to the supernatural nature of the place and the Creator's influence but it felt a bit odd, as if he had been commanding them for years. I'm still not sure if Harth is a great commander or a failed one given a chance at redemption. Either way you have the tough job of showing him being that rather than just telling us how good or bad he is.

My favourite bit this time around (other than the conversation with the Traveller which I really enjoyed the first time around as well) was the battle. I felt really grounded in Harth's perspective and that completely dictated the pace of the scene. Really well done for that.

Thank you, Carcinios, it's really pleasing to get such great comments. I know I'm not supposed to 'rest on the laurels' of positive feedback, but I feel okay in enjoying the positives, because there are some really great pointers coming back for ways to improve yet further.

Your second comment is a cracker, something that had kind of fallen off the apple cart, and no-one else has picked on it yet (that I can remember!). So, to answer that, I feel that I can touch on a handful of Spieles' comments at the same time in terms of Harth's background by better addressing how he deploys his troops so effectively so quickly.

Thank you so much

[spieles]

17 minutes ago, Robinski said:

Thank you, Spieles. Wowza, some really great comments there. Looking at the length of your post, I was properly worried at first, but going through it, I'm really confident I can drag the story up another level or two by addressing your points. I think I can 'solve' most of them without knocking the thing out of shape with too much extra detail or backstory, those are all good question to pose.

Your sterling effort in getting caught up did not go unnoticed. Having been behind by 3 or 4 weeks myself in the past, I know that it's no small undertaking to make that ground up - well done!

Oh good. Yeah, I just feel you need to sink a few more hooks into the reader. All very doable, in my opinion, and I'm glad you agree.

[rdpulfer]

Nice to read this story again. I liked the first incarnation and I'm curious to see what changes you made.

- I really like the way Harth smarts off to the gray man in the opening, but I feel like it ceases too quickly. I know he is despondent over more fighting, but the switch seems too quick, and it feels like he agrees a little too quickly.

- On page eighteen, I think it should be "Dismissed!" instead of "Dismiss!"

Overall, I thought this was a solid story before the revisions, and it feels even more taunt now. I can't wait to see how it ends

[Robinski]

I'm gratified to hear that, thanks for reading again, much appreciated.

Those are good suggestions. I will take those into the fourth edit, after which, I really think I will try submitting this story.

 

[Mandamon]

This flowed better that what I remember reading the first time around.  I think the conversation with the traveler was more informative and pointed, but I don't completely recall.

I'll second Carcinios' confusion.  I think something was skipped in the edit about how many sergeants remain.

I think you said last time as well that you didn't want to get into specifics of the hoard, but there's two points that drag me out:
Pg 13 “They are monstrous – twisted by pain and anger. They are foul creatures, and desperate. A horde fit for hell, but stuck here and desperate to destroy us.”

Then in the fight, you give a description of the horde, and it seems like they are people just like the ones on this side of the bridge, if a little bigger (from a different area of the world?)  Anyway, this disconnect pulled me out because now I'm wondering what exactly they are--people or demons?  Do they represent Hell, or are they just antagonists to this side of the bridge.

I would also have expected a little more more Magdi.  She doesn't seem at all surprised to see him, just angry, and I'm not sure why (or maybe that's in the next part?)

Anyway, looking forward to the second part, especially with a new and improved ending!

[Robinski]

Thanks Mandamon, great comments.

I'll certainly look at the Sergeant Disconnect (clearly a Robert Ludlum book, or episode of Big Bang Theory).

The idea was for Fermarald to paint a picture of the horde that gave one impression then for it to turn out to be unreliable when Harth realises that they are just people. It seems like I'm half way there, but haven't landed the resonance of the relisation through Harths reaction. More work to do there.

Magdi's reaction is something I can adjust. I'll look at that again.

Thanks again!

[neongrey]

Well... I've got sort of a different take; I haven't read the original submission, so, I don't know what got covered. Sorry if I get kind of snappy, I started pretty late and the sun was up before I finished lol.

Overall I'd say that this reads more like an outline than a finished piece; it avoids context like the plague and frequently goes for straight-up telling when the POV character is experiencing an emotion. This sort of prevents the narrative from ever actually conveying feeling of its own, and the result is a text that just says what happens without giving a reason to care. The POV character is frequently contradictory in ways that would almost make me think they're not actually intended to be perceived as a single character but a conglomeration of multiple individuals or archetypes-- if internal conflict is intended instead, it's undercut by telling outright what is being felt, delivering emotion as factoids. Any chance the text does have or come close to conveying emotion in a more fully realized way, it sort of nopes out of it-- I might almost think this was an intentional narrative device but I think that's a bit at odds with how this is presented. And if you're doing something with the afterlife stripping away all emotion, you're going too frequently into 'x felt y' constructions. You're putting cliche in narratively load-bearing locations and you're not providing enough context or backing to be be able to support it.

P. 2

Mmm. The style here is very bland, very direct, the sentences very choppy, basically voiceless, and I'm already kind of put off. I don't love starting off with waking up in the first place-- it's kind of cliche as these things go. I get that the story conceit pretty much mandates it, but, ehh, archetypes forced to fight in the afterlife is a cliche too. Right off, you're not conveying a freedom from the battle, there's not a sense of recent newness to this silence. We're just getting told all this.

You're doing all your description as simple declaratives, and they're, again, very bland-- it seems like you're going for a detachment in feel right here? But I think you're less accomplishing that than you are making something that's actually somewhat difficult, visually to read. The sentence openers, he, he, he, the, etc. You're not really conveying the calm with the description, because the description is just fact, fact, fact. And this 'deeply, painlessly, relief palpable' bit, that's so very telly-- you're leaning hard on this adverbial phrase here and not really selling it.

Going onto p. 3, this first paragraph gets narratively tangled-- you're using multiple hes in the same sentence, it's difficult to follow. 'Harth felt good, strong', please, this is cheaty, this is telly, this doesn't convey anything meaningful. So many sentences consecutively starting with 'he was', 'he was', the verb to be is inherently boring, and that can be used to your advantage but you're not doing it here. Just a little verb variation here would give this some soul.

The dialogue-- we've long been over and over again my thoughts about chains of unnarrated, untagged dialogue. It doesn't help give any weight to the dialogue, and you haven't thoroughly established character voice well enough for this to be well-conveyed here. There's nothing to dig into; I need to count lines to tell who is talking. And the couple narrations here are... again, declarative, factive descriptions of action.

'the grey man nodded' period, not comma.

I'm not feeling this bit about the creator-- there's no weight to this afterlife, there's no weight to the religion that bears it out-- Harth is presented with the reality of these deep existential things and he's so blase, and even in the face of what can only be an unnatural external calm, I don't buy that there's not so much as a single thought about this. The lack of context here is killing this for me-- his creator, the world's creator, his own faith, I can only presume because there's no question about that, but, ehh.

The paragraph going from 3-4... ooh, yeah, you're not selling this at all. 'free of it, dead and free of the slaughter', like he clearly remembers what his life was before, this is all a recent reality for him, but you're not giving any emotional weight to it-- presumably this had been his life but we don't have anything about it, it is devoid of context. And you're definitely not selling 'lightened his heart in moments', because that really never came through at any point previously.

'it was saddening that', why was it saddening exactly? And please, please, 'two copper' as currency is so very d&d. But here, you're relying solely on the fact that this woman takes money for sex as a reason for it to be sad to him, this is lazy and it's telly. If the only way you convey that the character is sad or feeling anything is directly stating 'he felt emotion', it's killing any weight to the sentiment.

As they start walking, I'm just gonna stop calling out description done solely as declarative fact-sentences.

onto p 5-- 'horde'? What horde? This is an awfully big thing to drop down and it just kinda gets an 'oh ok'.

'Harth felt cheated' again, if this is the only way you have of conveying that he is feeling something, you're being lazy. 'I thought I'd found an end to strife' -- well he sure didn't convey this through his narration! He never even suggested that he cared much either way. The overriding emotion conveyed by the narration is apathy punctuated with straight-up telling emotion, which again, carries no narrative weight; the dialogue can't make up for it.

You've got this bit here further down the page with 'feel the buzz of excitement' and 'come to hate these emotions', and man, I don't think emotions work this way so much, I get feeling bad that you like something, I really get that, but when you're full on into the point of feeling sick at this sort of thing it's not exciting anymore.

Going onto 6-- this bit about what a faithless man deserved, but this feels weirdly contradictory-- so he doesn't believe in this god at all? That's fine, but it feels very much at odds with when you told us he was feeling cheated by the situation. How could he be cheated out of something he didn't believe in at all?

Ooh lower down on the page I'm sort of regretting wanting a bit more life to the description. The way this is conveyed here 'away to the end of time' is reaching for imagery but without providing any imagery; again, it's a cheat and it's the sort of thing that will catch a casual reader and maybe make them go 'ooh' but the moment you actually poke the sentence it falls apart. 'only the sky was wider' this is kind of nonsense, tbh. This whole paragraph feels like it doesn't know what a horizon is.

'perhaps five miles away, given scale...' ooh no this is your engineer talking, this is kind of precise for an eyeballing

'the command he had always wanted' well this is the first time we've heard of it, and if you're trying to sell that he hates war, you're gonna have to do work selling that this is a legitimate ambition for him. What sort of command? How big, how small, etc, etc, etc

p.7 'unfamiliar emotion' is a total cheat, okay, I can absolutely believe the character as written doesn't know what feelings are, but really, there's no weight, he can't describe anything at all of what he is feeling? I can't buy that with an actual character; we know basically nothing about him-- we're getting factoids out of nowhere, and we're getting direct 'he felt x', but it's entirely surface level. So maybe he can't fully comprehend the nature of this deep sorrow that's overtaken him, but if you're going that route, we the reader absolutely must be able to know it, and we must feel sorrow for this inability to comprehend in order for it to mean anything. And you're not doing that at all.

You really seem to like this 'had he ever x? no' construction, and, ehh, again, it's telly, it's very telly. 'All optimism and aspiration had drained from his life'? But he's always wanted a command. 'Optimism and aspiration' are both probably a bit about this archetype's habitual register, too.

More 'Harth experienced an emotion', and I'm gonna stop commenting on these too, as the road broadens; this one I think wouldn't be so bad if it were the exception rather than the norm.

He had told himself he would give it up, settle down with a wife... and he'd always wanted a command? He'd always wanted it, but this is the first we've heard of it and we're only knowing of it because he's saying so directly. Honestly, it feels like you're writing less a character than an archetype, and it feels more like two separate archetypes mashed together and we can very easily see the seams.

p.8 The citadel's description, ooh, yeah, no, it's back to strings of facts for description.

'presence that had cowed countless recruits' again, this is brand new information, and modestly at odds with the command he had always desired. unwavering belief in his authority, now from the Creator? But by his own admission he has no faith in this creator.

p.9 Ehhh so you're describing a bunch of these people initially as individuals, but when you get to the only ones whom you at all specifically call out as being of colour, they're a massed group, without appreciable differentiation between them.

And I don't know that you've sold well enough Harth as having any sort of a character to be getting away with such a specific-to-a-certain-personality-type word as 'youngster'.

Really don't like that (a few) parenthetical after the women. really? What benefit to the text is going to come from you going out of your way to specifically call out that there's only a few women? There's no other suggestion in the text that it's unusual, so, ehh.

p.10 I don't think you've laid the groundwork well enough to give this confrontation between Harth and Magdi real emotional weight. You almost approach it, but you really undercut the bitter 'high-and-mighty' line by just plopping it down there with nothing to carry it. Same with 'the town had fallen', you're just giving it as fact here, the narration is devoid of sensation.

'lines betrayed nothing but stubbornness' very telly, doesn't give us anything really.

p.11 if you want me to believe that a career soldier who's lived down in it for long enough he's ground down all hopes and dreams' first choice of word for that any bodily functions are 'perspired' or 'defecated', you've got a lot of heavy narrative lifting to do that just hasn't been done here.

Honestly, the tonal mismatch for the POV we're occupying and the character he supposedly is is so huge I'm honestly not sure how to fix it with just spot edits. This doesn't read like a finished piece, it reads like an outline.

'a portentous mark on eternity' an overwrought line like this sticks out really badly against the bland backdrop, and it's a sort of faux-poeticism that I think sort of fails; it doesn't convey any meaning, it doesn't convey any weight, it doesn't give any sense of place.

p.12 'just like before', by this point you've told us, but you haven't sold it, you haven't made it feel.

'had expected death to be different' but again, up to this point, we know nothing about what harth has expected or how this differs or how this goes with his nonbelief.

'Fermarald nodded,' period not comma

'surprised at the young man's vehemence' but the narration paints him as being detached, and at this point we have no particular reason to believe that he was doing anything other than simply stating facts-- we have no reason to believe the previous statement was presented vehemently.

'about twenty minutes' but we've already been over that minutes are meaningless and immeasurable here.

p.13 said-bookisms.

'fight for the creator' if you want us to believe this is sincere, then this is very much at odds with his nonbelief. the creator thing is honestly really, really lazy, you're placing a cliche of some overgod, I can only assume, overhead and expecting that to take the narrative weight, but without the context of the society that has faith in this god, without knowing anything of the nature of the faith, 'creator' is effectively meaningless here-- we could subsititute, I don't know, 'jim' and it would carry the same narrative weight.

'old tightness' but new to the narrative

"Fermarald with me" fermarald comma with

p.14 'no fire in the afterlife it seemed' afterlife comma, or just delete 'it seemed'

retching then hurrying? all bodily functions are suspended, but not puking?

'feel hollow fear' you're skimming over all of this way too sketchily, I think, to sell that there's any sort of conflict about this. If it's driving him that much-- then I have a hard time buying that he's hating it in the same moment. If the rush is that powerful, he's got no space to hate it until later.

p.15 so many declarative facts and nothing but

The last paragraph here is nearly effective, but you're undercut again by not doing the work in establishing the religion that's being invoked, and the way the internal conflict all along has fallen flat takes what should be a majour moment of decision and kind of fizzles it.

p.16 Honestly, it feels like the last paragraph from the last and this page were what you really wanted to write, and everything leading up to it was just kind of there because there was an obligation to give a reason for it. There's still similar style issues that I'm going to call out here, but overall this feels far less mechanical than all the rest of the piece.

'dark flood blacker still than the gloom' this has some kind of unfortunate connotations, especially with what I noted before about the bit where harth was going over the troops. If it's just the armour that's black that's one thing but as it stands there's no way to tell, and said unfortunate connotations remain.

'dark red like dried blood' similes lack urgency

'seemed taller, harder, they were terrifying' aha! a comma splice! and 'they were terrifying' is again, just lazy.

'fifty yards, the roar...' this sentence works, this sentence does get it across, this is good, it feels, it lives.

'Harth's shield' comma splice after broadsword, semicolon best for the job here.

I've got some trouble buying tight formation fighting with effectively random weaponry.

There being no blood at the end is a kind of apt metaphor for the rest of the piece, I'm sorry to say. 

[Robinski]

Well, don't I feel silly.

[neongrey]

Oh, gosh, I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to be a jerk with this, it just didn't really work for me and in large part for for sentence-level structural reasons, which is just impossible to go over in summary without being uselessly vague. 

[krystalynn03]

Hey Robinski,

This is much improved in many aspects over HTB 1.0 (or is this 3.0--I saw you mention going forward with a 4th revision?).

I made LBL comments way earlier in the week, but I've been on the road and hauling in and cleaning crappie with my dad, so I got a bit distracted from the writing world this week (and last).

 

Awesome:

• I still feel really engaged by the opening. The eternal, sunless light makes the world feel tangible and yet surreal at the same time. You do a really great job evoking the feeling of the afterlife in very few words.
• "Welcome to hell, Harth." -- I don't remember this line from before; it does deliver a nice punch.
• The conversation of explanation is much tighter and easier to follow; also, Harth's motives seem clearer. Not 100% better, but still improved.
• The step-by-step revelation that his army consists of the villager who died in the war is a nice punch
• Magdi's dialogue is much improved

Bored:

• The walk to the citadel has some moments that are repetitive--the internal monologue cycling on itself a bit
• The description of the inside of the citadel-- I fussed about this the first time and I stick to my guns on this one. I feel like it's a let down that nothing feels surreal inside the castle after I feel so transported by the unnatural landscape. I still want some kind of surprise or creative image here or half the description.
• The battle: I don't feel like you're upping the stakes here enough yet in this version--yet. While reading, I realized, I wanted to know where Magdi was in the fray. I think if you pulled her in here, like Harth worrying about where she is in the battle or if she can carry herself through it before getting wounded, maybe due to distraction, would bring me back into the narrative

Confused:

• I still don't know why you need 3 named deputies when none of them do anything integral
• Why is the horde described early on as monsters and then they're just largish, angry people? Still struggling to reconcile those two different details in the narrative

Don't Believe:

• Didn't hit this button this time!

 

Overall, hang in there! You're headed in the right direction. This version isn't perfect yet, but you've made really big strides in the right direction with the narrative. I just think there are a few things that need streamlining still, but I'm waiting to see part 2. Wish you were still planning to submit, but I certainly respect taking your time to get the product you want before presenting it.

Also, thanks for always being a constructive voice for everyone's submissions. You set a good example.

 

 

[Robinski]

Brilliant comments. Thank you, Krystalynn. I take great confidence from these and the other feedback that I am making strides. There are some clear and specific targets for further revision emerging from these responses that I will target in another edit.

- Fermarald's unreliable description of the horde does not land;

- Harth's choices could be more convincing;

- I suppose I could cut Cresca, but she is there for a reason - to highlight Fermarald's detachment;

I've taken a couple of days to reflect and I think there are only four submissions this week...

 

[krystalynn03]

On 7/2/2016 at 4:55 PM, neongrey said:

Oh, gosh, I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to be a jerk with this, it just didn't really work for me and in large part for for sentence-level structural reasons, which is just impossible to go over in summary without being uselessly vague. 

For sake of balance in feedback when you get to revising, I have to mention I disagree with this. There are a couple sentences here and there that are a bit winding with unclear antecedents and such, but typically, your sentences are structurally sound. Making every last one perfect is very late revision work; letting a few slide by until you're 100% sure you're satisfied with your content is fine. Otherwise, you could spend hours laboring over edit level work only to cut them in a huge swath due to a revision choice. 

My two cents.

[Robinski]

Duly noted

[Robinski]

Well, you certainly weren't vague, NeonGrey. There are some good points in there.

On 02/07/2016 at 0:16 PM, neongrey said:

Well... I've got sort of a different take; I haven't read the original submission, so, I don't know what got covered. Sorry if I get kind of snappy, I started pretty late and the sun was up before I finished lol. – I can understand that. 2,500 word critique of a 4,000 word submission is going to take some time. You may not be surprised to hear that this story got a strong reaction first time around, for one very different reason, now amended. I’ve deleted simple line edits from your text to make this post as short as possible.

Overall I'd say that this reads more like an outline than a finished piece; it avoids context like the plague (I don’t think you need context to have the reader think about the ideas in play) and frequently goes for straight-up telling when the POV character is experiencing an emotion. (I accept this to some extent and will aim to address it in the next edit). This sort of prevents the narrative from ever actually conveying feeling of its own, and the result is a text that just says what happens without giving a reason to care (I dunno. Stories don’t connect with everyone, of course. The majority seem to find something in it to like). The POV character is frequently contradictory in ways that would almost make me think they're not actually intended to be perceived as a single character but a conglomeration of multiple individuals or archetypes-- if internal conflict is intended instead, it's undercut by telling outright what is being felt, delivering emotion as factoids (This is something I will seek to address. I can see your point to some degree). Any chance the text does have or come close to conveying emotion in a more fully realized way, it sort of nopes out of it-- I might almost think this was an intentional narrative device but I think that's a bit at odds with how this is presented. And if you're doing something with the afterlife stripping away all emotion, you're going too frequently into 'x felt y' constructions. You're putting cliche in narratively load-bearing locations (Noted, will consider) and you're not providing enough context or backing to be be able to support it.

P. 2 - Mmm. The style here is very bland, very direct, the sentences very choppy, basically voiceless, and I'm already kind of put off. I don't love starting off with waking up in the first place-- it's kind of cliche as these things go. I get that the story conceit pretty much mandates it, but, ehh, archetypes forced to fight in the afterlife is a cliche too (This is the hub of the story. I appreciate you would have skipped it if coming across it in an anthology). Right off, you're not conveying a freedom from the battle, there's not a sense of recent newness to this silence (Good point. I will fix this). We're just getting told all this.

You're doing all your description as simple declaratives, and they're, again, very bland-- it seems like you're going for a detachment in feel right here? But I think you're less accomplishing that than you are making something that's actually somewhat difficult, visually to read. The sentence openers, he, he, he, the, etc. You're not really conveying the calm with the description, because the description is just fact, fact, fact. And this 'deeply, painlessly, relief palpable' bit, that's so very telly-- you're leaning hard on this adverbial phrase here and not really selling it. (I'm not going to weigh a 9,000 word story down with description. I think most readers can extrapolate from the facts. This said, there are key parts of the setting that need to work better. Krystalynn made a good comment about the citadel lacking an ethereal quality, which I very much want to introduce, and some of the emotions don’t land properly, I agree).

Going onto p. 3, this first paragraph gets narratively tangled... Just a little verb variation here would give this some soul. (I’ll consider it in the edit).

The dialogue-- we've long been over and over again my thoughts about chains of unnarrated, untagged dialogue. It doesn't help give any weight to the dialogue, and you haven't thoroughly established character voice well enough for this to be well-conveyed here. There's nothing to dig into; I need to count lines to tell who is talking. And the couple narrations here are... again, declarative, factive descriptions of action. (We differ here in that I dislike the clutter of unnecessary tags. The majority seems to have coped with it well enough).

I'm not feeling this bit about the creator-- there's no weight to this afterlife, there's no weight to the religion that bears it out-- Harth is presented with the reality of these deep existential things and he's so blase, and even in the face of what can only be an unnatural external calm, I don't buy that there's not so much as a single thought about this. The lack of context here is killing this for me-- his creator, the world's creator, his own faith, I can only presume because there's no question about that, but, ehh. (Good point – that’s a cop out in relation to Harth, but I'm not going into a treatise about the Creator and religion in general – it’s not about that. I see no issue with Harth not being religious but being unsurprised that there is an afterlife. It is, after all, presented to him in very much the same format that life was).

The paragraph going from 3-4... ooh, yeah, you're not selling this at all. 'free of it, dead and free of the slaughter', like he clearly remembers what his life was before, this is all a recent reality for him, but you're not giving any emotional weight to it-- presumably this had been his life but we don't have anything about it, it is devoid of context. And you're definitely not selling 'lightened his heart in moments', because that really never came through at any point previously. (I’ll consider this. Others have mentioned including something about Harth’s background, but I'm not going to add hundreds of words on the subject. There are a couple of small nuggets. I’ll probably include a few more.)

'it was saddening that', why was it saddening exactly? And please, please, 'two copper' as currency is so very d&d. (It doesn’t matter. The currency is another detail that doesn’t deserve an explanation.) But here, you're relying solely on the fact that this woman takes money for sex as a reason for it to be sad to him, this is lazy and it's telly. (It’s not about her, it’s about the fact that she was the only thing approaching human tenderness in his life, and it really wasn’t at all.)

onto p 5-- 'horde'? What horde? This is an awfully big thing to drop down and it just kinda gets an 'oh ok'. (It’s another enemy. It means little to Harth, who was always fighting someone.)

You've got this bit here further down the page with 'feel the buzz of excitement' and 'come to hate these emotions', and man, I don't think emotions work this way so much, I get feeling bad that you like something, I really get that, but when you're full on into the point of feeling sick at this sort of thing it's not exciting anymore. (I disagree.)

Going onto 6-- this bit about what a faithless man deserved, but this feels weirdly contradictory-- so he doesn't believe in this god at all? That's fine, but it feels very much at odds with when you told us he was feeling cheated by the situation. How could he be cheated out of something he didn't believe in at all? (Whether he believed in it or not before, once he finds himself in the afterlife, he reasonably can question any other promises made by the Creator.

Ooh lower down on the page I'm sort of regretting wanting a bit more life to the description. The way this is conveyed here 'away to the end of time' is reaching for imagery but without providing any imagery; again, it's a cheat and it's the sort of thing that will catch a casual reader and maybe make them go 'ooh' but the moment you actually poke the sentence it falls apart. 'only the sky was wider' this is kind of nonsense, tbh. This whole paragraph feels like it doesn't know what a horizon is. (I guess the rest of the folks on here must be those casual readers you refer to.)

'perhaps five miles away, given scale...' ooh no this is your engineer talking, this is kind of precise for an eyeballing (Nope. The man is a trained soldier who has been plying his trade on battlefields for decades. He knows what a mile looks like, as do many people.)

'the command he had always wanted' well this is the first time we've heard of it, and if you're trying to sell that he hates war, you're gonna have to do work selling that this is a legitimate ambition for him. What sort of command? How big, how small, etc, etc, etc (Yes, there is a thread to tie off on this point. Harth has commanded soldiers for a long time, but it’s the distinction between leading part of a force and the buck stopping with him. I need to explain that better.)

'presence that had cowed countless recruits' again, this is brand new information, and modestly at odds with the command he had always desired. unwavering belief in his authority, now from the Creator? But by his own admission he has no faith in this creator. (Doesn’t matter, that’s where the authority comes from regardless. The source of the authority matters more to the recruits, less to the leader.)

p.9 Ehhh so you're describing a bunch of these people initially as individuals, but when you get to the only ones whom you at all specifically call out as being of colour, they're a massed group, without appreciable differentiation between them. (Yeah, that’s lazy at best. I’ll fix that.)

And I don't know that you've sold well enough Harth as having any sort of a character to be getting away with such a specific-to-a-certain-personality-type word as 'youngster'. (I don’t see your point here at all. What personality type would you say can legitimately use the word ‘youngster’?)

Really don't like that (a few) parenthetical after the women. really? What benefit to the text is going to come from you going out of your way to specifically call out that there's only a few women? There's no other suggestion in the text that it's unusual, so, ehh. (I'm relying on that doing way more work than it’s up to. It was there to confirm that women soldiers are usual and that there might have been more. Because of the genre stereotypes, I don’t think that readers go in with the expectation that there will be women soldiers.)

p.10 I don't think you've laid the groundwork well enough to give this confrontation between Harth and Magdi real emotional weight. You almost approach it, but you really undercut the bitter 'high-and-mighty' line by just plopping it down there with nothing to carry it. Same with 'the town had fallen', you're just giving it as fact here, the narration is devoid of sensation. (Yeah, dialogue is something that I always refine numerous times.)

p.11 if you want me to believe that a career soldier who's lived down in it for long enough he's ground down all hopes and dreams' first choice of word for that any bodily functions are 'perspired' or 'defecated', you've got a lot of heavy narrative lifting to do that just hasn't been done here. (Yeah, okay, I’ll slide a bit further down the crudity index.)

'a portentous mark on eternity' an overwrought line like this sticks out really badly against the bland backdrop, and it's a sort of faux-poeticism that I think sort of fails; it doesn't convey any meaning, it doesn't convey any weight, it doesn't give any sense of place. (Meh.)

'surprised at the young man's vehemence' but the narration paints him as being detached, and at this point we have no particular reason to believe that he was doing anything other than simply stating facts-- we have no reason to believe the previous statement was presented vehemently.

'about twenty minutes' but we've already been over that minutes are meaningless and immeasurable here. (Absolutely not. Time is relative. The fact that there are no clocks is irrelevant, a human is conditioned to think in those terms.)

'fight for the creator' if you want us to believe this is sincere, then this is very much at odds with his nonbelief. (He doesn’t need to believe it to make them believe it.) the creator thing is honestly really, really lazy, you're placing a cliche of some overgod, I can only assume, overhead and expecting that to take the narrative weight, but without the context of the society that has faith in this god, without knowing anything of the nature of the faith, 'creator' is effectively meaningless here-- we could subsititute, I don't know, 'jim' and it would carry the same narrative weight. (This is not a treatise on religion. What is the point of me including five pages of exposition about the nature of the Creator? The story is not about him. I use the term Creator specifically because I want to signpost that He is not something that you need to know more about for the purposes of this story.)

retching then hurrying? all bodily functions are suspended, but not puking? (Fair comment, I’ll cut this.)

p.16 Honestly, it feels like the last paragraph from the last and this page were what you really wanted to write, and everything leading up to it was just kind of there because there was an obligation to give a reason for it. There's still similar style issues that I'm going to call out here, but overall this feels far less mechanical than all the rest of the piece. (Jeez, even your compliments suck :op )

'seemed taller, harder, they were terrifying' aha! a comma splice! and 'they were terrifying' is again, just lazy. (I’ll accept that one.)

 

Edited July 4, 2016 by Robinski

[neongrey]

I think you might be misunderstanding some of what I'm getting at with some of these things: by and large, when I'm saying that you haven't established this or that, I'm not saying you need more content entirely, but that in the wordspace that has been used, it hasn't been put towards selling the weight or stakes or meaning of what's going on-- you're using implied space but the space hasn't been filled with meaning-- for example, this is hinging on a majour religious conflict but we the reader know nothing about the religion.

There's by no means a dichotomy between mounds of spoonfeeding information and elegantly establishing a setting, and honestly I think you're letting your initial reaction paint this unnecessarily into that either/or corner. That said, do what you wanna, of course.  

That said, there's a couple specific things...

"(I guess the rest of the folks on here must be those casual readers you refer to.)"

Actually, by and large, yes! That's not a knock on anyone-- but you notice how people rarely mention the actual prose or language use in people's submissions? There's comments on the odd word sticking out, or occasionally you'll get 'I liked this sentence', but even then there's rarely much articulation of why something is working for the reader. More often when it didn't-- but it's usually 'this word is out of the story's theme' or 'this sentence was confusing'. There's not really a lot of close examination of how the words come together to make something meaningful, and the very structure of sentences can go a long way to giving an impression to the reader.

And if people don't notice that, that's fine-- oftentimes the sentence-level craftsmanship is supposed to be invisible (hence why it catches most often when something's wrong) and there's a lot of valuable insights to be gained by not digging deep into syntax or the semantics but they're absolutely there and can be worked to one's advantage.

I don't necessarily expect anyone else to be quite so interested in paragraph aesthetics, however.

"(It doesn’t matter. The currency is another detail that doesn’t deserve an explanation.) "

You'll notice I didn't say explanation-- just that the currency used here is one that speaks primarily to d&d, which is a problem in a piece too thin on world building, since the hallmark of d&d is genericism. A different word here could cast so many different lights on the implied setting! What a culture names its currency has meaning-- here it has no name at all.

This is the sort of thing I'm meaning when I'm talking about missing context-- there's a lot more that can be done with the space that's already there, I think.

"(It’s not about her, it’s about the fact that she was the only thing approaching human tenderness in his life, and it really wasn’t at all.)"

Well, you don't say that, or even imply that. What you give us in the text is that it's sad that it was a prostitute who was the last decent person to him. Also, this is kind of adjuncting the only significant female character's whole existence within the story into being about the main character's pain. You've got the other named one but she doesn't really do much of anything.

"(I'm relying on that doing way more work than it’s up to. It was there to confirm that women soldiers are usual and that there might have been more. Because of the genre stereotypes, I don’t think that readers go in with the expectation that there will be women soldiers.)"

Yeah, the issue I'm having here is that the "(a few)" parenthetical undercuts that somewhat-- by having 'men and women', that's suggesting he expects it's normal that they're there; by appending 'a few' you're going back into making it weird and unexpected that they're present. It's Harth's eyes you're using here, and you're not taking advantage of that-- if he's expecting them there, that '(a few)' implies otherwise. Or are there fewer than he expects? If that's so, then it should probably be framed that way?

" (Absolutely not. Time is relative. The fact that there are no clocks is irrelevant, a human is conditioned to think in those terms.)"

Conditioned to think in those terms, sure-- but this is after you've gone out of your way to have someone call out the main character for using precise timeframes. You give so few details that presenting one and revoking it casually shortly thereafter is odd.

Edited July 5, 2016 by neongrey

[Robinski]

Thanks NG, I do appreciate you taking the time, and there are some good comments that I will certainly make use of. Also, thanks for taking the time to explain further in relation to my response, that is helpful.

Much appreciated.

<R>

[neongrey]

No prob! I certainly have no expectation that everything I say's gonna be helpful, but-- well, you've gathered by now on my end that I like to look at what I get and figure out how to use it to make a thing closer to perfect vision that can only exist in our heads, haha. A wide spray of bullets helps, some of them've gotta land on target.

[king007]

Hey Robinski, I enjoyed reading your submission. I don't really have much to say other than these two remarks.

- The scarcity of commas made it difficult, sometimes, to grasp the meaning of your sentences.

- The battle speech was good, but it felt awkward for Harth to be saying it with so much seeming conviction. He didn't appear to care much about the whole thing in the first place. Was he just fooling the soldiers into bravery? If so, then conveying that explicitly would be better in my opinion.

Hope I helped a bit. I'll grab the second part another time, and give you some feedback.

[Robinski]

Hey King, great to hear from you and thanks so much to reading this.

Yeah, I've got quite a bit of work to do on this story, but I feel like it's progressed from the first submission, and can progress again, thanks to all the great comments I've received, including yours!!

Best, R