Coop - 9/5/2016 - Clouds pt. 3 - 3404 words

[Coop]

Hey everyone, thanks for reading!

 

Synopsis to this point:

 

Sira is a 12-year-old girl who finds an unusual path of moss in a forest. At the end of the path she discovers an underground chamber that contains a chest full of colorful costumes and strange bronze objects. She takes the golden-colored costume and leaves.

 

She reluctantly returns that night to her grandfather’s farmhouse where she is staying for the summer while her mother is overseas. She doesn’t like anything about being there, most particularly her grandfather, whose seriously disfigured appearance was the source of trauma for her as a young child.

 

She tries out the equipment on the golden costume but can’t figure out what it’s for. She is back inside the underground room when the only door suddenly shuts her in and she sees a flash of red pass outside. She is relieved to find the door unlocked and hurries away.

[kais]

Overall

Well, I am for sure engaged with the story now. The early issues still persist, but Sira's journey is continuing to delight. There are a number of instances of moving from Sira's POV to more author voice, and telling instead of showing, but that can all get fixed in edits. Right now, I'm enjoying it! Comments below.

 

As I go

- Love the first paragraph!

- page four: how old is Sira again? Is she old enough for sweaty pits? Fourteen, yes? That's old enough, but if you moved her age to like 11 or something, probably not

- page four: would love a little bit more mischief or misleading or foreshadowing with the grandpa. I was hoping he might be a part of all this and would help increase the magic tension. The section fell a bit flat without it.

- page seven: vines and branches? Is she in a rainforest with liana? Forestry nerd alert!

- page seven: this irrational fear still seems out of place

- Her firing was merely the product of nervous energy. - show, don't tell

- page 8: I like the idea behind this page, but the execution could be smoothed a little. I didn't feel any real fear of the pursuer, just Sira's irrationalness. I'd love for more tension, and then a better explanation of the triangulator before she ends up above the canopy.

- page nine: wait, what? She's thousands of feet above ground? What is she latched to?

- page ten: I did enjoy the section with the triagulator. Very cool!

- page 11: the writing gets a little shaky here, I think likely because you were excited to write this section. There are some tense changes and some areas where we lose Sira's POV to the author's POV. Also some 'tell' moments instead of 'show'.

- page 10: I have a cloud suit. damnation right you have a cloud suit!

- page 12: chapter nine seems...abrupt. I'm not sure what to think of it.

[Hobbit]

I really liked these chapters!  They were super fun.  I'm excited to read more.  Most of my comments are just places were I was confused about blocking.

Grandpa turned for the house and said...
When did he start working with her?  I thought she was by herself.

The samurais were eager to begin but, remembering their honor, waited patiently.
Hahaha, love this line!

To any observer, Sira was alone in the woods...
I think this line takes away some of the magic of the moment.  I was already clear that this was all in her head, so I didn't need the reminder.

...leaving her suspended horizontally over the earth.
I had a hard time picturing how she got stuck.  If this is a vine situation like kaisa said, I think I need more specific description, since I was picturing her in a North-eastern deciduous forest where it's harder to get stuck like this.

Sira felt a confusion as a newborn...
Something isn't working grammatically for me here.

Loops of golden thread rested on her legs.  
I wasn't sure what happened here.  Did the red person gather it there for her?

...looking like someone in need of a good psychiatrist.
Seems like an odd thought for a 14 year old to have.

Again, I really liked these chapters!  I was a little disappointed that we didn’t learn more about the red person, but I’ll wait a little more.   I loved the part where she was stuck to the cloud, and where she's playing inside her imagination.

13 hours ago, kaisa said:

Is she old enough for sweaty pits? Fourteen, yes? That's old enough, but if you moved her age to like 11 or something, probably not

I think I started needing and wearing deodorant at age 12, to give you a benchmark.

[Vreeah]

Alright, let's begin!

Ch 6 - Page 1

 

I'm with ya, Sira. Stick it to the adults! Funny speech and word substitutions. Kid being a kid.

Ch 6 - Page 2

 

Yay, the return of the favorite pie! The mean spirit in Sira's head is an evil overlord waiting to happen.

Ch 6 - Page 3

 

Oh, am I getting the impression of an otherworldly path? Grandpa, you must believe harder. Also, those warnings about the deathly river seem destined to fall on deaf ears.

Ch 6 - Page 4

 

I thought Sira would complain about being unbearably itchy instead of asking about dangerous forest stuff, but that's fine.

Questions about dangerous people or things in the forest sounds like a bigger red flag than it's being treated as.

Ch 6 - Page 5

 

Huh, the distances turned out to be farther than I expected.

Ch 7 - Page 1

 

Imagination battle! Yes! Pfft, remembered their honor indeed. I have not expected this, but I'm okay with it. As long as it doesn't read Disney levels of spontaneous song.

Ch 7 - Page 2

Lost it a bit there. I think it was the line mentioning "To any observer..." that broke me out of the moment. In any case, doom approaches, again.

Ch 7 - Page 3

 

Oh, that was actually pretty terrifying. Grating static, ugh. Hate imagining that, which is good in this case.

Ch 7 - Page 4

 

Grappling hook has entered the scene! The crowd goes wild! Whoa, that's a dangerous way to take off. Hopefully the suit has a flying feature.

Oh yeah, the story is called clouds. Did... did she grapple onto a cloud with the harpoon?

Ch 8 - Page 1

 

That's a weird first line. Yes, dead would be a logical conclusion in this situation.

Oh, wait, she did grapple onto a cloud? Assuming the estimates aren't exaggerated by her imagination.

I am happy with this. This is fun.

Ch 8 - Page 2

 

No Sira, turn the knob the other way! Ahhhh!

A dozen hands. That's frightening in its own ways.

Ch 8 - Page 3

 

I'm amazed by the speed and the doesn't-get-tangled-ness of this technology.

That's a good name for it. Now you need to figure out what the red lasers do.

Ch 8 - Page 4

 

Ouch. Well, I should expect no less from the girl who shot herself with a harpoon. Someone needs to give her safety lessons.

Ch 9 - Page 1

 

Hm, didn't expect a skip to sleep.

Ch 9 - Page 2

 

Well, I do wonder what's going on, so that's good.

===

Overall

 

Now that was nice. Some big insight on the suit that was related to the title. I'm enjoying myself. The imagination bit with the samurai got me to connect with Sira more, though there was that slight break as it teetered off in the end.

The transitions are better. I couldn't get into Sira's head during the bits where she was working with Grandpa, since both their reactions felt too tame. Sira wasn't in the moment, and I couldn't really understand why she was so focused on the mysteries at that moment, especially since the descriptions of the scene related to how the setting and activities were bothering her. Grandpa doesn't sound like he cares much for Sira, and I would understand if that were the case, but I'm not sure if it is.

The ninth chapter ended before I realized I was confused.

Edited September 9, 2016 by Vreeah

[Mandamon]

Seems like I have similar comments to everyone else.  There were a couple issues with blocking and placing the character, but for the most part this was very light and enjoyable.

pg 1: Loved the Work Ethic speech.

pg 2: "stuck to him by this ladder'
--Not sure what this means.
Ok, later on you're talking about working with a stepladder.  Both this and the sentence about slapping a pig's butt don't have description leading up to them, so they're a little confusing.

pg 8: The  blocking is not quite there when she's shooting the triangulator.  I'm not sure where she's sitting vs. the hill and the tree.

pg 9: is the thing she's attached to moving or stationary?  This high up,any small movement will put her far away from the farm. (Edit: did not get that this was a cloud.  I thought it was a spaceship of some sort)

Strange cut-off for chapter 9.  I was also a little confused that there was no transition between falling 8 feet to the ground and waking up from sleep.  I thought she was waking up from being knocked out at first.

[Robinski]

Once again, I enjoyed your submission. Good pacing and good progress of the plot, and also more rolling out of background, which is good. Once again, there were various things that bugged me, and I’ve noted the details below.

Principally, I think the mechanics of the triangulator and the movement of clouds need more work, I got quite confused by the first and disoriented by the second. I really did not believe that Sira at the end had completely forgotten that the second cloud would be moving.

Overall though, entertaining – I like where the story is going and I'm keen to read more.

<R>

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

Chapter 6

“next time she got the Kids Nowadays Don’t Have Good Work Ethic Speech she would have the perfect response” – I think the more common syntax here is kids-nowadays-don’t-have-good-work-ethic, I’ve seen this used a fair bit. There another instance on that same page.

“Why, back in my day when I was a grownup,” – I don’t understand this, Sira has never been a grownup.

“Grandpa turned for the house and said, “We’re all done for now” – I did not understand that Grandpa was with her, thought she was on her own.

“Meatloaf. There’s still some pie” – Pretty sure it’s one word.

“Your mother would skin me alive” – I laughed at the irony, given the damage to his epidermis.

“They set up the rickety, wooden stepladder in the hallway” – I had pictured the ladder as a large extending one, assuming they were going to use it outside. I went from that to confusion when they took it inside, because it didn’t think the ceilings were high enough. Then it becomes apparent it’s a stepladder. I think my confusion came from the fact that I would always carry a stepladder myself. Not really a two person job. If Grandpa is getting Sira’s assistance because he wants her to be involved in the task, that’s fine, but I think you should tell us it’s a stepladder up front.

“she could not escape the stench that radiated from his body” – has this been trailed before? It puzzles me and I would prefer to have an explanation now or earlier, so that I take the right impression from this comment. Is it poor personal hygiene on Grandpa’s part or some result of his injuries? Or is it something else? The answer makes a difference to how the reader perceives this section and Grandpa in general.

“and rummaged through things above” – I think, or maybe ‘among things’.

“She wished she had the nerve to just leave” – this line bothered me, because I think she knows why leaving would be bad, and it’s not just because she doesn’t have the nerve, but because of the really risk of serious injury to Granpda. The lack of acknowledgement of that here felt a bit like a cheat.

“The closest neighbors are your aunt and uncle” – Maybe it’s Weekly Reader Syndrome (WRS), but I'm not sure I knew her relatives were right ‘next door’. Did we?

“but I’d be surprised if you made it all the way out to their place” – She asked if there was something dangerous and he answers by saying this. it almost implies that there is something dangerous about her aunt and uncle, or at their place, but it doesn’t really seem that was the intention. It’s not really the answer to the question, it seems irrelevant to her question. I'm not saying the Grandpa wouldn’t say it, it just left me puzzled, which I don’t think was your intention.

The end of Chapter 6, for me, strikes a strange tone of fizzling out. It sounds like the start of another section then just stops.

Chapter 7

Excellent opening to Chapter 7, really good capture of how a child’s imagination works. I bet we can all remember playing pretend like this. Nice job, especially when reality ‘crashes’ with the sound that brings her back.

“she hurtled hurdled a bush” – or ‘hurtled over’, I suppose.

“her lungs already seemed unable to take in oxygen” – I feel suddenly out of her POV because of this word. Would she not more likely think ‘air’?

“but her legs exposed her mind’s lack of confidence in her ability to escape her pursuer” – much too complicated.

“Sira’s body went slack in defeat” – I believe this can happen, but I would also like more to be convinced at this point, like she’s absolutely breathless and can hardly lift herself up, for example.

The existing phrase feels is telling, not showing, I think.

“She thought of her phone, reached for it, but found the shoulder pocket empty” – meh, did she forget it or has it fallen out? Seems a bit convenient, however on the plus side, I'm glad this was her first thought, as phones are often forgotten about or ignored in such situations in modern fiction.

“the fingers landing on a triangulator” – was there more than one?

“she raised rose onto aching legs”

“She lost grip of the triangulator as the string that was attached to her sleeve dragged her upward and into tree limbs” – Eh? I thought the triangle shot out of the triangulator with the strong attached. Confused now.

“Then Sira burst through the canopy and into the open air” – Eh? But what’s the triangle attached to? – I'm left confused at the end of the chapter, and I feel a bit disgruntled, almost cheated, that the tech seems to work differently from the way I understood it being described before. It might by WRS, but that’s my reaction.

Chapter 8

“The river winded wound through the trees”

“She was thousands of feet over ground” – I think this would sound way better if you talked about her being ‘up’ or ‘above’, rather than referring the description to the ground.

“she reached up and took the baton grip of the triangulator” – This is part of the same confusion I now have over the line being attached to the suit, when I thought it was only attached to the baton.

“She began to lower” – grammar off here, I believe. Lowering is the act performed by the person or thing in control. The thing being lowered is passive. In this case, I think the device is lowering Sira, or she is lowering herself using the device. I'm not explain this well, but it sounds wrong to me.

“As she approached the treetops, they seemed to move sideways beneath her as the cloud pulled her along” – I think this is the first sense we’ve had that the cloud moving. I would have like this much earlier.

“The branch slid an inch through her fingers” – I'm confused by the description here and I think the problem is the lack of clarity on the movement of the cloud. If the cloud is moving laterally at so many feet per second, there’s no way her hands only move an inch unless the line is still playing out. Maybe it is, but I just think the description of this whole section where she’s going up and down from the cloud needs to be tighter.

“and she would freefall to her death” – using this word leaves me puzzled over why you would not just say ‘fall’ instead of thinking about the danger of her falling.

“the loops jumped into the triangulator” – more confusion, there’s no indication that the line is connected to the suit and that she is still attached even if not holding the baton.

“as her thoughts she tried to make sense of the last few minutes” – really not a fan of this ‘remote thinking’ and treating her thoughts as if they are independent of her. She is the entity doing the thinking, not her mind.

“looking like someone in need of a good psychiatrist” – Eh? Makes no sense. Did you mean physiotherapist? Are you saying all crazy people walk funny?

“BUT needs to keep me alive...in order to continue scaring the crap out of me” – lol, great line. I'm still uncertain about her age.

“Sira raised her arm and fired” – After her terror before, you haven’t done enough to convince me that she would try this again so soon.

“there was one problem with it” – Yeah, see this is what I meant. I don’t believe that she’s suddenly forgotten everything that happen 10 minutes ago, including that the cloud is moving. I don’t believe she’s that stupid.

“And then discovered she was eight feet off the ground” – no, you've really lost me here. In the moment when she pushes the release, she knows where she’s off the ground or not. I'm not convinced by this at all. It’s like you're making her stupid for effect in the story. It’s not consistent – I think.

Chapter 9

Good work with Grandpa’s nightmare. It really gave me more feeling for him, not the I wasn’t already sympathetic, but this will start to act on Sira’s attitude towards him, but not necessarily right away.

“Sira’s body shivered uncontrollably for the next half-hour” – And then what? She falls asleep again? it’s another chapter where the ending leaves me unsatisfied, kind of hanging.

[Coop]

@Ernei @kaisa @Mandamon @Vreeah @Hobbit @Robinski

Just wanted to send a big thank you to those of you who read and critiqued these chapters. It has been extremely eye-opening and informative to hear your reactions. Thank you all!