Reading Excuses - 11072016 - Tsidqiyah - Hero's Mantle Ch1 (V)

[Tsidqiyah]

My first submission. Chapter 1.

I am looking for clarity. I know this world really well so i don't see gaps in the descriptions for the use of magic (which is all over) or the environment itself. 

Characters are also free game if someone, or everyone, is confusing you let me know

[rdpulfer]

- I liked the opening. It's suspenseful as both the reader and Alex try to piece together what's going on.

- It's conscious, not conscience, in the second paragraph.

- I can't help but feel you are telling us a little too much about Marda's when it would be much more effective for the reader to come to this conclusion on her own.

- I do like the bit about how Alex's father saved the nurse's life.

- Some of the character's dialogue seems to go on a bit too long. It doesn't feel very realistic, and sometimes in crosses into "telling" territory, in particular during Alex and Marda's conversation.

- It's a little strange when the POV suddenly shifts to Marda. At first, I thought Alex was overhearing all of this without their knowledge, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

- It's an interesting set-up. I definitely want to read more. I like how the world and story slowly pieces itself together. 

[aeromancer]

Just some quick thoughts.

Your description is good, but make sure it’s on the tech level. “Expanded diaphragm” is something a doctor would say, something like ‘hollow under his lungs’ is more suited for a medieval environment. “Electric-blue tones” has the same problem, it clashes with the rustic setting.

Auras could use a bit more work. I take it it’s some manifestation of personality.

Alex is can either hear someone hissing at him to stay quiet at the beginning, but “I wrapped your ears tight enough to deafen you unless we were right next to you.”

 

Overall, I think your magic system looks interesting, as it looks like it’s set up for subtlety. Your text feels a bit block-y as a whole, though.

[kais]

Welcome to RE!

Overall

First, good for you for having the courage to submit. I know it can be intimidating the first time, so just know that we all have to take that big first step. Nice job.

For this piece.... I was bored. I was bored and confused. There are three POV switches, no buy-in for any of them, and no hook. I don't know why I care about any of these people, or what the stakes are in the narrative. also find many of your sentences to be constructed in such a way as that they are difficult to read. I see @aeromancer commented on the same thing. 

For edits, I suggest keeping to one POV per chapter and really building tension and empathy, especially early on. Maybe try to shorten your sentences and use fewer commas.

Keep at it! It's a good start!

As I go

- inhalation isn't a great cold open sentence. You generally want to start each chapter and end each chapter with a strong sentence, especially the cold open of your book.

- the second sentence has far too many adjectives

- there's a ton of info dump right off. It's making me want to skim

- why is there a smell of creosote in a cave? Does a railroad track go through it?

- page three: she wins the argument that easily? Doesn't really seem like an argument then

- I don't know anything about our MC so I really have no empathy for them at this current time

- there is a lot of comma splicing and awkward phrasing going on. It makes this hard to read

- “Sonny, you already gave yourself away. So before we unbind any part of you, you will need to convince me you are not demon-bound. I could just turn you over for execution. So convince me to spare your life.” What is happening? I have no buy-in, I don't know what demon bound is, and Alex appears to just be penetrating auras without consent so my empathy for his situation right now is like -5.

- page five: the dialogue is moving so fast without character development that I am completely lost. Too much info dumping

- why are the cave walls coated in creosote? 

- page six: I think I figured out why I am confused. There is no hook. What is the purpose of this story? Why should I care about Alex? 

- page six. Head hopping. Three POVs in one chapter, especially the first chapter, is very confusing. Stick with building buy-in with one character at a time

- page seven: we've had the same conversation in each POV. He gets to stay alive. We get it.

- 'savages' is a pretty loaded word. Be careful with it

- the women serve and prostitute only? This isn't endearing me to the book

[Eagle of the Forest Path]

A bit late to chip in, but here I go:

This shows promise as the start of a story, but IMO you're going too fast. There's the info-dumping to begin with, and related to that, revealing that Alex is related to Peter right now has basically no impact whatsoever. If you postpone it until the reader knows more about Peter, Alex's relation to him will be a bigger deal.
Then, you're overloading on promises: the religious conflict, the secret group in the hidden chamber, probably a slave rebellion...; you can spread these out a little more.

In the first 3 sections you appear to be using 3rd person limited, but at the start of Alex's second POV you suddenly switch to 3rd person omniscient.

I hope I'm not too harsh in this, but your use of commas is atrocious. You put in commas where they have no right to be and leave them out where they are actually needed. There are too many places where you do this to begin listing them.
I won't mention spelling errors, since those would get caught by a proofreader anyway, but adding or losing commas can really change the meaning of a sentence, and it's not always clear which meaning is correct.

You also have a tendency to... I don't know if there is a proper term for this... "switch negatives".
For example: “We will let him live for now but neither will we help him." should be either “We won't kill him for now but neither will we help him." or “We will let him live for now but we won't help him either."

On the plus side, I really liked the bit of scripture. It feels authentic and it's fun that they have different interpretations.

Finally, I agree with Kaisa that this lacks a good hook. It think that's why it feels more like the start of an RPG than of a book to me. You're building good characters and have the start of a good setting, but while there are hints at a conflict, you're lacking something to make the reader care about the conflict.

I'd like to read more of this.

Edited November 9, 2016 by Eagle of the Forest Path

[TKWade]

It looks like most of the points I seen have been touched upon.

I agree with Eagle and Kaisa, the hook just wasn't there. You could probably cut the whole first paragraph, not lose anything, and start on the second with a stronger hook. 

The last page really dragged. The last few paragraphs were particularly hard to get through, and mind, this might just be my reading style. I get anxious towards the end of the chapter because I'm ready for that climax, that buy in, that gotch-ya moment that makes me want to keep reading to find out what is going to happen. It wasn't there. I felt let down, waiting to be hit in the face with this little twist or something new, and we basically got what we already knew - he was going to wake up to a difficult time in the mines the next day.

Keep at it. I think you have some cool potential with your concepts. 

Edited November 9, 2016 by TKWade

[Mandamon]

Welcome to Reading Excuses!

Kudos on submitting for the first time.  I know it can be hard.
That said, I'm with the others on the comments put forward so far.  The biggest issues I see are:

-Lack of hook

-POV switches

-Way too infodumpy on the first page (and through the rest of the submission)

-I don't have an insight into the characters, so I don't connect with them

-Comma usage!  If you haven't read Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, I would recommend reading that before you write anything else.  It helped me immensely.
I have to admit I skimmed the last five pages or so.  There wasn't anything holding me to the story.  But this has potential, so keep at it.

[TKWade]

I will 100% second Mandamon on the use of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. I've started using it as a constant reference.

One thing you could do during your revision that would help is go through each sentence and ask yourself these questions:

Does this sentence drive the plot?
Does this sentence drive character development?
Does this sentence drive world building?

If it does one or less of those things you may consider removing it or rewriting it. Ideally, you want to hit all three points with every sentence. It makes revisions take forever, but the more you do it the faster you'll become at it. That's basically where I'm at myself. My hope is that eventually do it as a second nature even in my rough drafts.

Here's a great lecture Sanderson gave where he spoke on this:
 

 

It's two hours long, but I would encourage you to watch all of it. It was really helpful to me.

I'm really new to writing and recently made my first submission as well. It can be hard getting the first critiques; they can seem quite brutal, but take them in stride. Don't let your voice get lost in attempting to incorporate all of the critiques; keep submitting.

Edited November 9, 2016 by TKWade

[Tsidqiyah]

Thanks you @rdpulfer, @aeromancer, @kaisa, @Eagle of the Forest Path, @TKWade, @Mandamon for the reviews and your thoughts.

I am sorry i didn't say anything sooner. Right after subbing this my wife was diagnosed with some serious stuff. This stuff finally resulted in the preterm birth of our second son. As such I haven't even got around to reading your reviews. I plan to though, and will edit / update accordingly .

Sebastian was born on Pearl Harbor day 5-weeks early by emergency C-section. Mom is nearly fully recovered and at home doing well. Baby is doing good very with a small chance he will be home for Christmas, but currently we expect him by new years.

 

 

Edited December 22, 2016 by Tsidqiyah

[aeromancer]

Congratulations!

[kais]

@Tsidqiyah I am so sorry to hear about the scare, but sounds like all is well? CONGRATULATIONS on your son! Make sure mom gets lots of rest, and we look forward to seeing you on the board again when things settle.

[neongrey]

Oh, congratulations! I'm glad he's doing well, that's a really scary situation.

My stepsister's got the same birthday too, it's a busy day.

[rdpulfer]

Congratulations. I'm sorry to hear about all the scary stuff, but I'm glad things are going well now!

[Eagle of the Forest Path]

Congratulations on the new baby.

[Robinski]

Hi there, apologies for the very late comments as I catch up with my two-month backlog. I hope there are comments here that are useful to you.

• A few typos here and there, but I’ll skate over those to save time, not doing Line-by-lines at the moment.

• Initial, I am engaged by the immediacy of Alex’s situation but, as he goes into some pretty detailed stuff about magic, I lose the tension of the situation. I feel like you had my attention, but lost it when you went into detail on the first page.

• Also, while the description of the magic is interesting, I feel it’s rather amorphous, blurred, like I’m reading the words, but they don’t give me a clear sense of what is going on.

• I’m finding punctuation difficult to deal with. There are a lot or run-on phrases. Do not fear the comma, the comma is you friend

• “while the woman’s general body language stiffened with distrust” – I’m increasingly feeling there is a fair bit of over-description. The language is very dense, unnecessarily so in places, I think. Here for example, you describe the woman stiffening with distrust which is a clear image. You don’t need to duplicate by telling the reader this is body language, that is absolutely implicit in your description of her reaction.

• Nice reveal about Alex’s father, contraindicated by his preceding harsh words. Enjoyed that.

• By the point at which Marda exits scoffing, about 6 pages in, I still don’t have a clear image of the set up here. I can infer subjugation by the guards, and religious intolerance but, at the start of a novel, I want a clearer understanding of the situation. That doesn’t mean info-dump though.

• There seems to be a disproportionate number of names beginning with ‘A’. That’s going to be confusing for many readers. It’s all very fell being true to some societal trend, if that’s what it is, but such things still lead to confusion, whether there’s a valid reason or not.

• I didn’t get a sense that Alex was a boy. How old are we talking? I don’t remember any markers for that. His reactions made me think 20 to 30 age range.

• I can’t believe that his hair is perfect if he’s had bandages wrapped around his head for days, just not plausible.

• I find I have a sense of claustrophobia, probably because of the paucity of description of the surroundings. That’s good, I should feel that way, I think that is highly effective. Perhaps the lack of clarity about the background is also effective in the same way, I don’t like the feeling of disorientation, because I feel like the character should be more aware but maybe, as a ‘trick’ to engender appropriate reaction, this approach is okay.

In summary, I feel like this could do with quite a bit of tightening up (cutting down) and tidying up, language-wise, and also in terms of content. I like the general arc of the chapter, there is a certain tension implicit the situation of slavery without needing to add ‘action’ moments. Also, I’m interested to see where things are going, maybe not enthralled, but interested enough to keep reading.

As an engineer, I enjoy the complexity of the load system, and the need to earn a certain amount to cover certain ‘commitments’. One of my favourite authors is Jack Vance, and he wrote a great story called Wyst: Alastor 1716, in which the main character had to earn a certain amount of money to (if I remember) get off planet, and Vance takes us through how he earns a certain amount from this and that, and it’s pretty detailed, but you can really feel the guy striving. Anyway, digression, but this starts to remind me a little of that, which is great in my book.

So, mixed feelings, but ready for another chapter.

<R>

[Robinski]

Ahem, and this is why not reading the comments on the forum before critiquing can be..., awkward.

Sorry to hear about that scare, @Tsidqiyah. As a father of a 22-yr-old who was taken to ECU, but only for a day or two thankfully, I can feel for your situation. That's a horrible feeling. Glad to hear it is working out and hope all is well now.

Maybe sometime you will find your way back to RE, and we'll be very pleased to welcome you again.

Best wishes, R

[Tsidqiyah]

Thank you for the review @Robinski. Life is finally calmed down. Our little one came home on 12/26 and two weeks later was off oxygen. He is healthy and normally happy. 

And with the slow season at work finally here I can get to revisions and rewrites. Additional chapters will need to wait for a for review. Many of the issues you brought up are rampant and need pruning.

 

Thank you again to everyone's comments and thoughts.