TKWade - 10/31/16 - Source (Chapter1/Prologue)(V)

[TKWade]

Hello again!

Let me know how you feel about the POV change from last revision(if you read last revision).

Also, do you like the characters and does the dialog feel more natural?

This is my last revision for now on this chapter. I'll be moving on to continue progress.

Thanks!

[kais]

Let's do this!

Overall

Um. Hrm. Allandria reads still like just a method to develop Lyzell. It's getting better, please don't think it's not, it's just still got issues. I think you could cut about half the length and not lose any content. Some of the dialogue is redundant with the internal monologues. I'm still really bothered by Allandria, in that she still has no motivation of her own, or drive. She exists in this chapter entirely to wax about her husband and his goals. 

The fridging is better at the end, although still there are smatters of it here and there. You're getting better! Nice work with revising. Keep at it!

As I go

- surprisingly tender opening

- page three: awkward sentences with 'his voice tremulous'

- the prophetic stone info dump on page four is a lot of words for very little information

- heavy redundancy on page five. If she knows he'd be disgusted for putting her in danger, we don't need to hear him say it. One or the other

- she's sort of full of herself, no? Thinking about how he thinks she is strong and fearless?

- page six and this is very awkward. We're in the wife's POV but all she thinks about is her husband. Does she have any thoughts of her own? Any motivation of her own? What are her goals and purposes in life?

- page six: all this war around them and they still haven't left. This needs to move faster. It appears to be drawn out only for authorial info dumping

- page eight: I like that she now checks the door first. Makes more sense

- page ten, top of page: She's paralyzed by fear. My fridge sensors are tingling. How is a trained warrior panicking this much, and the scholar is the one who has to settle her?

- Lyzell doesn't believe her. She's definitely going to be fridged

- page 13 hit textbook fridging. Her injury drives our male protag

- In a strange twist, we appear to have a double fridging...

- Why does she need her dead/almost-dead husband to tell her what is going on? Intuit, woman, please

[TKWade]

10 hours ago, kaisa said:

- page three: awkward sentences with 'his voice tremulous'

I was looking for a way to describe his voice as shaken, but maybe it needs to be reworded. Improper usage?

11 hours ago, kaisa said:

- she's sort of full of herself, no? Thinking about how he thinks she is strong and fearless?

I don't think so here and maybe I have a problem with my story structure. The first paragraph of page 6 explains why she may think this. It would be like me thinking my wife thinks I know a lot about computers and can fix most computer related issues. It makes sense based on my occupation and what I enjoy spending my time doing. In the same way Lyzell knows what his wife does and what she enjoys. They know each other intimately which allows them to make general assumptions about what they may think of each other. I don't think that's being full of yourself as much as logical reasoning and an intimate knowledge of how your partner feels about you.

12 hours ago, kaisa said:

- page ten, top of page: She's paralyzed by fear. My fridge sensors are tingling. How is a trained warrior panicking this much, and the scholar is the one who has to settle her?

 

If you recall, Lyzell was also paralysed by fear. This is an ability of the Drouvlan - it's not a sign of weakness or even a plot device. They're married. In love. They're safe places for each other. Not being a warrior or some super strong dude doesn't mean that a person can't find strength in your presence or even that you can't project strength onto someone else. He helps bring her back, i don't see it as 'settling her down'.

11 hours ago, kaisa said:

- page six and this is very awkward. We're in the wife's POV but all she thinks about is her husband. Does she have any thoughts of her own? Any motivation of her own? What are her goals and purposes in life?

 

 

Here i'm getting a bit confused. The majority of this page is focused on her watching the fight out the window. It's basically just an exposition and her irritation with Lyzell for taking too long. In fact, there is a sentence that literally says "her desire to be on the move." The whole scene is about how she wants to get out of there and put distance between them and the army, and how Lyzell seems to be taking his time about it.  Can you elborate on what you mean by all she thinks about is him? 

 

12 hours ago, kaisa said:

- page six: all this war around them and they still haven't left. This needs to move faster. It appears to be drawn out only for authorial info dumping

This has been a really hard balance to find. Sort of one of those - damned if i do, damned if i don't - sort of things. He has to get all this information into these letters and he suddenly has no time. He's trying to get every second he can with these stones before they have to leave the city because the letter can't leave the city with them. If i rush it i don't have enough character development or world development. Some of it is definitely for me. I will totally concede that lol.

 

Quote

- page 13 hit textbook fridging. Her injury drives our male protag

This is where I have to disagree completely. OF COURSE her getting hurt is going to drive some kind of emotion out of her lover, that is an incredibly logical response. I could write where she doesn't get injured, however, it wouldn't make sense. The creature is after both of them, not one of them. She can't just run because it's faster than she. Is she going to stand idly by while it tries to kill her husband? How much sense would that make? How much sense would it make for Lyzell to just stand there while the creature brutalizes his wife? Those actions don't make sense, but their reactions to what happens doesn't exactly influence the plot either. I could have her escape unscathed. It would ruin the drouvlan, but i could do it.

I mean, they're fighting this unstoppable creature, trying to escape, but they can't. What's going to happen? Alandria is obviously more than just a sexy lamp, and she more to the story than some damsel that has to die. She has wants and desires - they're to escape, because in the immediate future that's all that matters. 

I also want to point out that this is chapter one of a larger story. They have important roles in the plot and those will come to light. I just don't feel like i'm making the same mistake i made initially, so if it's still fridging you're going to have to explain to me how it is. I just don't see it.

 

Quote

- In a strange twist, we appear to have a double fridging..

 

Again, you'll have to explain this to me in greater detail - i'm just not seeing it. His transformation has nothing to do with either of them being injured or hurt - his compelled basically, his mind made a slave. So his killing her isn't really fridging. But again, her reaction to what is or isn't happening to him. It makes sense and i don't see a problem with this.

These are two people who care about each other. They're going to respond accordingly when one of them is suffering. I don't feel like this is a fight that can be won. It's like - as long as suffering happens because one person is in trouble and it drives the other individual's emotions - then it's fridging automatically. These are two people who are people of their own volition, but their wants and desires include each other.

[TKWade]

Wanted to add - 

Thank you Kaisa! I always really appreciate your critique and opinions

I'm just really frustrated because I thought I had the fridging thing on lockdown and I'm just not getting it. Perhaps it'll click later on

[TKWade]

I had a question about punctuating something.

On page two there is a line "She wondered the same thing-"

it then cuts to a brief flash back. I didn't do this in the submission but originally i had italicized all of that flash back to notate it as such. Is that a poor way of doing a brief flash back like that? or is it punctuated correctly as is? 

[kais]

5 hours ago, TKWade said:

I'm just not getting it

Would you be open to me doing an LBL on your submitted doc? I can be a lot more specific in an actual document and better show you how some simple rewording could fix a lot of this.

[TKWade]

Kaisa, I would love that, thank you! I really want to get it. Seeing it may make it easier for me to understand.

[rdpulfer]

- Okay, I'm really excited to see this POV switch. It feels stronger, even in the opening paragraphs.

- "The letter was more important than any sacrifice the Allurians people had to make." - I think this was meant to emphasize the letter's significance, but it feels like it makes Alandria seem more cold than anything else.

- I'd like some more description when Alandria describes the front gates. How does she know they are "holding"? What do they look like, from her perspective?

- "I get the sense we're being watched." - feels a little cliche, especially after the really cool detail about the fog not being affected by the wind.

- The ending is much, much strong, especially from Alandria's perspective.

- I'd like a little more description and tension leading up to Lyzel apparently killing Alandria. It feels like it comes out of nowhere, but building up the dread and tension of what her husband is about to do could really help hook the reader. 

[TKWade]

@rdpulfer Thanks for the critique!

I'm glad it came off stronger. I'm hoping in the final I can tinker some more to make it really shine. Remove some more of the redundancy and elaborate on some of the areas you mentioned.

Maybe there needs to be less focus on writing the letter and the banter back and forth and do more with the battle. I could also create more of the escape through the city, have them make it further for instance instead of just to the alleyway.

I see what you're saying though and I completely agree.

Thanks again!

[EthanBassett]

Well, pretty much everything wrote I down while reading this has been said, but I'm invested in this so I have to say something.

Prologue/Chapter 1: It's probably time to decide if its chapter one or a prologue. Personly, I don't write prologues unless I have a specific reason to. If the rest of the story evolves a significant change in scene, time, or characters then make it a prologue. If not then don't write a prologue simply for the purpose of having one.

This piece has come a long way since I first read it and I'm looking forward to more.   

Edited November 2, 2016 by EthanBassett

[Robinski]

In the interests of freeing up time for writing, I'm going to try a more summarised commenting style on some submissions. Apologies if this seems briefer than usual, but hopefully there is still something useful in here! Mainly, I am trying to rein back LBL grammar comments. I’ll do my best.

Also, please forgive how late I am coming to this, I hope the comments are still useful. No doubt I’ll be repeating things others have said, but it’s another perspective, so I make no apology for that  

• Straight away, I am more engaged with character and perspective than the first time I read this. Being in Alandria’s POV makes a big difference, I think.

• Halfway down page one, you repeat ‘hand’ in the same sentence, which I found jarring, In fact, there are quite a few words repeated, often close together. Personally, I try to avoid this at all costs, searching for a different word to use, certainly if it was in the same sentence. ‘She wiped her hand on the window cill and looked at her hand...’ – I don’t know, I think are four main aspects to it, (a) it smacks a little of laziness on the writer’s part; (b) it sounds weird in the ear to hear the same word again; (c) the character is using their hand, it’s the active part, so it’s obvious they will look at the hand; (d) it’s an opportunity for the writer to be more descriptive without adding words, here for example, you could say ‘Wiped her calloused fingers on the cill and looked at the tips’. Maybe her fingers aren’t calloused, but I’m just trying to illustrate my point, of course.

• I would have thought that ‘sadness and anger’ had been pervading her thoughts for some time, since she woke that day, and in all the days before. This sounds like they are coming to her for the first time, which isn’t likely, I think.

• Lyzell is very specific about the 500 years. I expect this to be explained, why it’s not 400 or 600, or ‘until the reawakening’ or whatever.

• “It would be nice if he at least acted as if he were in a hurry” – This gives a great ‘shot’ of personality, of both of them, very quickly and comfortably for the reader, imho.

• WHOA! What just happened!!! Is this a flashback I’m in now, when they wake up in their beds? I didn’t understand what happened. Is it a jump forward? But no, I can’t be when she was agitating for them to leave immediately.

• I appreciate the outline of Osha, or the little they know about it. I would not complain if it came a bit sooner.

• I feel like there is an inconsistency in the timeline, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. You say that Lyzell has been looking at the stones for weeks, but he’s only just started writing the letter? The ash he been falling for weeks, but the enemy has only just attacked? Maybe I’ve picked something up wrongly, but something seems odd with the chain of events, even before the jarring of my perspective with the time leap.

• You use the word ‘coat’ four times in three lines.

• “This isn’t right. This fog - it’s untouched by the wind, it feels wrong”– I feel that this line says the same thing three times. Actually, I believe the character might say this, but on the page it looks rather awkward.

• “Lyzell scanned the alley to either side rubbing his short red beard and clearly considering” – This bit at the end, I think, is unnecessary. It’s telling the reader how to interpret the sentence instead of letting them do it themselves, which is more satisfying. There are times for telling, of course, but I think it’s better to leave out all telling, and let Alpha/beta readers tell you if something’s not clear. That way readers will be more satisfied if they feel like they are ‘reading’ and interpreting for themselves.

• The description of the Drouvlan remains very effective, I think. Sometimes villains/enemies are a bit tame, lame, stereotyped in their appearance or, hardly described at all, so I like having a good, clear image of this nasty thing.

• “Drouvlan were a new creation, only created in the last few years” – another example of my earlier point about word repetition, it’s a good opportunity to give us something more than the same word again, you could say ‘a new nightmare’; ‘a new enemy’; ‘a new threat’ – I think anything is better than using the same word again.

• You repeat ‘corner’ in the same sentence shortly after. ‘She stepped up to the corner and looked around the corner’ – sorry I’m harping on about this, but I think it is because it’s one of the few if not the only thing in the style of the piece that is really hurting the flow, otherwise I think the language is very smooth and pleasing the read (usual minor typos, etc.), but this is like a horse’s head in the soup every page or two.

• “How’d it get behind us so quickly!” – This is horribly ‘tell-y’, there must be a better way to show this than just saying, ‘Oh no, the Drouvlan has managed to get behind us without us noticing’ – which is how this sounds to me.

• I like the competence she shows in knowing that she will not make it to the temple, after considering the tactical elements of the situation, including the value of Lyzell as a fighter. It’s the kind of cold calculation I would want from a competent fighter, putting emotion aside.

• Towards the end (last couple of pages) there are lots of typos and missing punctuation.

• The repetition of ‘glow’ sticks out for me.

• I like the ending, it’s dramatic and full of failure, which I think can be a powerful motivator to keep reading, because I don’t want it to end like that. I think the way you set up the letter as the hope of the city, then it seems that it must have been destroyed at the end, but we don’t see that, also is effective. It sets up a question in the reader’s mind. What happened to it? Did the drouvlan or Lyzell destroy it? Surely it must have, but maybe, just maybe it was preserved.

In enjoyed this version much, much more than the previous one I read. I think the characters are much better, and the dynamic between them more interesting. There were some style issues that I find troublesome, the repetition of words, and some of the phrasing was a little clichéd, I thought. I didn’t pick many out in the notes above, but I remember ‘chilled to the core’. It seems like when something is chilled now in many works it’s always ‘to the core’. I think as writers we are obliged to try harder to surprise the reader, not give them the phrases they expect to hear, even if we like the sound of them.

So, anyway, sorry for the delay, and great to see such a big improvement (I think) in the piece. I’m looking forward to reading more.

R

[Robinski]

On 01/11/2016 at 2:52 AM, kaisa said:

Allandria reads still like just a method to develop Lyzell.

This is interesting (I can't say enough, sorry to be only chipping in now). I certainly always listen to Kaisa on these gender issues as my lightning rod, but this time I don't see it the same way, which I find, unusual, because I can't recall disagreeing now that I'm so much more aware of 'fridging' etc. For me, Lyzell is much more a secondary character now, and I did not see how her actions developed him. I didn't really care about him much at all. She was in charge and making the decisions. He was gone, defeated, before she was.

For that reason, and again I recognise that I am less experienced in these matters than others here, but I struggle to see how the end is fridging. I've got no sympathy for Lyzell as a result of what happened to Alandria, because he's already 'gone'. Now, if Chapter 1 starts with Lyzell still alive and all guilt-wracked because of what he did to her, then I can see the problem but, as it is, we don't know that she is dead. Is the way around the fridging, @kaisa, to make it clear that they are both dead? There must be a way for the drumlin to kill them both so that her death is not fridging, surely.

On 01/11/2016 at 8:04 PM, TKWade said:

On page two there is a line "She wondered the same thing-"

it then cuts to a brief flash back. I didn't do this in the submission but originally i had italicized all of that flash back to notate it as such. Is that a poor way of doing a brief flash back like that? or is it punctuated correctly as is? 

Poor way - sorry if I'm treading old ground, but I found it completely unclear. It's like a whole block of text is missing that explains how we got from one line to the next. I must say I thought there were quite a few punctuation issue. I've said before that I get royalties on comma's so maybe I overuse them, but I did feel their lack in this. I have always taken from the texts I read, and maybe from back in school that, is nesting description and listing characteristics (or anything else), items should be separated by commas, which also should be used whenever there is a pause. For example, 'the big, tall, lazy man sat down again and slept'. Perhaps other opinions are available.

Like Kaisa, I would be happy to do LBLs, I love that stuff. I think however that, because I have so much to catch up with, I will not go back into this piece, but maybe look to do LBLs on one of the next bits, if that would be helpful.  

[kais]

9 hours ago, Robinski said:

Is the way around the fridging, @kaisa, to make it clear that they are both dead? There must be a way for the drumlin to kill them both so that her death is not fridging, surely.

You'll have to forgive me, because it has been a long time since I read this and we've been through a number of revisions. I think this is the first revision? If so, from what I remember, the wife was problematic because she lacked any form of agency. She was a lens through which we learned and gained empathy for the husband. She had to be led. She had to have things explained to her. This version did not pass the 'Sexy Lampshade' test. 

It was still fridging because her death drove her husband into a berserker rage and was used to develop his character. In the last round of this story the issue was completely removed and the whole thing worked. Basically to not be fridging, she can still die (certainly!) but her death needs to not be the sole driving force for a male, nor drive reader sympathy into an otherwise flat character. It was the husbands rage fight thing that really put it over the top for fridging.

BUT with that said, I did some LBLs with @TKWade, who is a real sport, and we worked through the issue. The ending in his most recent is fridge free, Allandria is a real person, and the narrative really cleaned up!

[Robinski]

7 minutes ago, kaisa said:

It was the husbands rage fight thing that really put it over the top for fridgin

That's interesting, because I think that kind of fits with my reaction, that there weren't an avalanche of different things that clearly led to fridging. Fair enough. I'm happy with that. I shall search out the newest version, if it was submitted.

[TKWade]

@Robinski

I submitted it again on 12/5 with the second chapter. I haven't submitted anything in a few weeks, but when or if you get time, I would love an LBL.

Thanks!

[Robinski]

It's a deal. When I get caught up to the resubmit, I'll sharpen my pencil