17 Feb 2014 - neongrey - The Execution of the Traitor (etc) [V]

[neongrey]

Okay, like I said in my email, this is already making the rounds, but I could use some more eyes on it. Thanks!

[andyk]

I really liked this. It had a really strong start with good description, clear conflict and character, and kept going along those lines all the way through.

 

I do think that the title's too long. I can see what you're trying to do with it, but I think something that long loses some of its impact and ability to lure readers in by succinctly conveying something about the story.

 

You have quite a lot of speech starting mid-paragraph. Given that the norm is for a new paragraph whenever someone starts speaking it reads oddly to see this so often. Once or twice is something a bit different, this much pushes me out of the story by drawing attention to the odd approach to speech.

 

The ending is very bleak. I don't have a problem with that in itself, but a story of struggle against the odds feels, to me at least, like something that should finish with a little hope - maybe just a small sign that she has succeeded in passing on the struggle?

 

And one minor point of phrasing - 'his back facing her' (p.10) - seems an odd way of phrasing it given that a person's face is at the front, it makes sense and yet doesn't quite work - maybe 'his back to her'?

[Mandamon]

First, welcome to Reading Excuses!  On to the comments...

 

I thought this was well written technically, and the plot was consistent throughout.  I could tell enough of the worldbuilding in the little hints you dropped to get a feeling for what was going on, even if you didn't have a lot of description for that and for the magic system.

I do agree with Andyk about the ending.  I got the impression that Jorani was smiling because she passed her magic on to the smuggler's girl, but you never really say that.

 

This is a personal preference, but I don't really like reading present tense.  It often comes across as overdramatic, which I think happens here a little, and some of the descriptions come off strange.

 

For example:

pg 2: "Jorani stops by a tree for a moment, just a moment. She presses her forehead to the trunk and pants. Fingers reach up and brush at the corners of her eyes, but she has no tears to give. "

--I first thought she was somehow pressing her forehead to what she was wearing on her legs (as it would have been 'panted' in past tense).  Also, I'm assuming that's her fingers that are reaching up, and not someone else's.

 

My biggest problem is that we don't really get into Jorani's head.  I see from the description that her humming leads to silvery vision, but I have no idea why because I'm not in her head, where it would be easy to give an explanation.  You then have to do a lot of telling, and the story comes across as almost lacking in emotion, even though you are telling me about how Jorani is crying, and running, and wishing she wasn't doing what she's doing.  This is a very emotional story, but comes across as a little mechanical simply because of the way its narrated.  To me, being inside the character's head is much more personal.

 

Especially for such a bleak ending, you could then have her think of what will come next, even though her part in this is over.

[jagabond]

Since you're sending it out to places (good luck!) I tried to comment like I do on slush, although now I get to be thorough!

 

General impressions first:

 

I have two big issues with the story. First, I'm not sure what I learned. I know what Jorani can do and why, but it would be easy to have a one-sentence plot summary. There are a lot of nice images, and here the lyrical prose serves a purpose because the magic is song/humming, but beneath that, it's like Mandamon said, it feels too technical.

 

Which leads to my second issue. There are a lot of weighty, almost--I dunno, writery?--sentences here. They're so packed, and it's that much more noticeable since you're using present tense. I think you could really benefit from a more liberal use of basic, small sentences. With present tense,, the momentum slows down with all these weighty descriptions.

 

Having said that, I love the prose, and the world I saw glimpses of was totally awesome. Magic was great, too, and you never gave too much of how it worked away, so well done there.

 

Now for the nitpicking!

 

"Let them know the tiniest fraction of the pain they have poured like water upon the Rothani people." An interesting image except that pouring water on someone doesn't seem to go well with inflicting this deluge of pain (really minor critique).

 

"So long as they fight she cannot bring herself to care." I think you could drop this line, actually. If her actions can show she's fighting for them, not caring about herself, we can intuit it.

 

 

 

The jungle is afire, bright as noon. Smoke tears at her eyes. Sweat pours down her body. She can wait no longer. Jorani straightens her fingers, one at a time, and raises into a crouch. She runs. She barely looks where she is going, only enough to avoid the trees. The only place she needs to go is away. She can plan out her next move later.

This paragraph is a good example of my problem with the story's flow. You're working with present tense, which is tricky, but you compound it with description. There will be one action, then active descriptions of how it affects Jorani. It makes her feel more reactive than proactive.

 

"Fingers reach up and brush at the corners of her eyes," you could specify that it's her fingers. The reader will pick it up, but there's a moment of doubt that it's someone else.

 

 

 

There are enough labour camps that she does not much need to worry about how to find them. So many camps. Her humming never ceases, matching her breaths like a cat's purr. Jorani devotes all attention to her breath. It is safer to think of that than of how she will be dead long before all the camps are gone.

See, this is good stuff, I think. The earlier you can put this in, the quicker I will be engaged in what's going on. As it is, the opening feels too in media res for me. Her prayers to mother, her determination, can all come out in her action as she interacts with the environment.

 

"She can taste the famine in the soup." -- This is a great line!

 

"Such a simple thing, but she lives no better than an animal most days. With a hot meal, and a scarf freshly set? She is human again." The editor in me wants to combine the first and third sentence here, because "she is human again" says a lot of what you show.

 

 

 

The girl screams and runs for the hut, toward her grandfather. Jorani glances back at him, sees him backing toward the dock. She still is between the two of them. How many soldiers still stand? Three she can see. An arrow slams into the wall, inches from her cheek. The crimson feathers still quiver when Jorani looks the girl right in the eye. Jorani slows her song, and the words she draws up from the well of the world become an elegy. She sings the grave of history, of the ruin of the beautiful. (this sentence seems super awkward to me). She sings the words that raised up the river to flood the paddies, the words that banished the ravaging summer rains. The girl's eyes go wide, resonance moving her lips faintly. Jorani will never forgive the girl her betrayal. (is this literal or metaphor? Or is the song of these things what has power? What power is she calling on, is it all pure force?) She does not need to forgive to sing to this girl the moon's bright hymn.

 

"They keep the sun and the moon from her, and she cannot tell whether it is day or night" The first half of this informs the second half, and does so quite well.

 

I tried not to use the quote boxes for everything. Hope that's not too confusing

[neongrey]

No I can definitely follow what you're doing there. And my own advice about shorter sentences returns to bite me! Haha, so you know I can't ignore that.

 

But I'm still figuratively scribbling notes, so don't mind me for not saying much more than that yet. This is a huge help, all of you, thanks.

[jParker]

Thanks for joining the gang neon. Glad to have you.

 

While this piece is definitely full of energy, it's still mostly potential at the moment.

 

I agree with the spirit of what everyone's said--that we struggle to empathize with Jorani and that your style needs some work. However, I disagree with what jagabond said about simple sentences. Simplicity is often confused with plain language; you can use really good words (like )and still have simple sentences. Especially since you're going for the short story format, economy of language is vital.

 

A couple of examples of how to economize:

 

"She cannot take the risk of being seen." can become "She cannot risk being seen." Boom, 3/8 of the sentence is gone. 

 

Conversely, the way a sentence is structured can create vastly different meaning. But Mary does a much better job of explaining. (I think that's the right episode. If not, it's at least very close.)

 

Finally, a suggestion for a different title. I really like the allusion to The Assassination of Jesse James, but have you thought about eliminating "for Crimes against the Republic of Sathea" and testing various synonyms of "execution" (e.g. I really like "damnation"). That way you have an automatic hook in the title, but enough mystery to keep somebody interested. 

[Robinski]

I enjoyed this story. It made me ask questions about the wider world, some of which were answered (or hinted at), but left me with a desire to know more, which must be a good thing.

 

I thought you handled the magic well, giving enough description to make it believable, but not too much, which would have derailed the story and dispelled the sense of mystery and, well, magic!

 

I liked the moral dilemma angle at the start and, as noted, found that the first paragraph in particular really grabbed my attention, I found it very powerful. The ending too was very effective but, for me, something happened in the middle that caused the power and tension to slip away. I'm not sure I can quite put my finger on it. I think it was perhaps that things seemed a bit too comfortable in the hut. It’s only a short scene, and has its place of course, but it seemed to kill the momentum.

 

The later scenes have their own power for different reasons to the opening ones. I like the exchange with Veha, I think because from what we see of the republic, while there are signs that their methods are cruel and that the people are now down-trodden, it is not presented as a crackpot dictatorship, and it’s possible to believe that Veha thinks he is acting from good motives.

 

All in all well written, although the tone and the language / dialogue are a little staid and formal in places, but I did enjoy it and would like to read more of your writing.

 

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Reading the other comments, I would differ with one or two. I didn’t think the ending was bleak, because I took it that Jorani had passed on the magical song to the smuggler’s daughter, with the implication that this would convert her into a warrior against the republic.

 

I agree with JP, the first thing that I got from the title was ‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford’, not least because of the subject matter. Then I segued on to those long rambling Fall Out Boy song titles. Since I'm a big FOB fan, I liked the title, I have no problem with someone trying to take a poke at convention in that way.

 

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Page 1 – Wow, what a first paragraph, superb, has me gripped instantly, laden with action, but gives the reader an outline of the situation, through some assumption certainly, but without any exposition.

 

Page 1 – I'm not sure about Jorani’s tongue ‘stumbling’, to me implies the presence of legs.

 

Page 1 – The comment about her not caring jarred a little for me, because it seemed from her emotional reaction to the act of destruction that she cares a great deal. I suppose then that it is that she has no care about herself being lauded, but I'm not sure that’s immediately clear.

 

‘...and raises rises into a crouch.’

 

Page 2 – ‘Her shoulders shake but she does not think of them.’ Think of what, her shoulders? Why would she?

 

Page 10 – I think she would 'atone' for Veha’s sins rather than 'amending' them.

 

Page 10 – ‘...he shows it not.’ This is a very archaic phrase, it sounded out of place to me.

 

Page 10 – The last scene and the line ‘No more sorcerers.’ are very powerful.

 

Page 11 – I can see what you’re going for in the last line, but I think it would actually have more impact if Jorani finished the word ‘nothing’. Then, you are ending on the word ‘nothing’, which to me is more powerful, and less gimmicky, and it would just hang there, leaving more for the reader to think about than an unfinished thought.

[hawkedup]

Here are my thoughts on the opening section of your story (I haven't read the previous comments so that I could go into your story fresh) so pardon me if I repeat something someone else has already said. I will critique the rest later today.

 

Opening sentence: Take out the word "will" and it becomes much stronger. Such a tiny change, but it is so much more immediate.

 

I feel the beginning 3 paragraphs are a bit redundant, especially considering this is a short. I think you could probably get everything. I think you could probably get all that info into one really good paragraph. I notice this throughout the piece, where you say something, and then say the same thing with different words and better in the very next sentence. You perfect your ideas from sentence to sentence, but by the time you get to the good sentence, you've heard that little bit of info before so it takes away some of the impact. So early into a short story you are going for impact over everything else, I'd think.

 

The 5th paragraph might be better if it came right after the first sentence, then explain Jorani's reluctance and regrets, that way you hook the reader with action, then explain why the action is even more than just words.

 

I assume we're dealing with third person limited here so the sentence "Her shoulders shake but she does not think of them." feels a bit out of place.

 

The paragraph beginning "She has known it for so long..." has some awkward train of thought problems.

 

By this point I feel she has too much reverie considering how little has actually happened.

 

Why is she moving so slow? I can't imagine the difference between moving carefully and "slow as she can and still be moving" can be that big of a difference. Not to mention she keeps pointing out that nobody is following.

 

Why doesn't she have supplies? Up until this point I felt like, even though she wasn't completely in control of the situation, she at least knew what she was doing. Perhaps this is explained later?

[hawkedup]

Second section:

 

This first paragraph back feels off. Like, why doesn't she open her eyes? Is she trying not to give herself away? If so, why can she keep her eyes closes voluntarily but forgets to breath (which would just as soon give her away). Also, she notices the wrinkled skin on his back, so I have to assume this man is naked.

 

How can a stomach rumble louder if it has not yet rumbled to begin with?

 

How can someone standing tuck their feet up under them?

 

Why can't she wear long sleeves?

 

Something is wrong with the soup scene. Maybe the words pathetic excuse? I get that you're trying to say, hey this soup isn't very good, but it's still the best thing she's ever eaten, but she goes on about how bad it is just a little too long, I think.

 

Sleeping with a scarf on doesn't seem overly safe. And why was she being so sneaky earlier if she lets her guard down so easily? Where has she gotten food from before?

 

Why do your characters use each other's names so much? Or at all? I can understand once for the reader's benefit, but after that it makes the dialogue feel stilted.

 

Who is the ground familiar to? Certainly not her.

 

Your characters go from sitting in a small hut to battling outside by the dock without actually going outside. Also, I don't understand your action scenes. Why is she running around at all, considering her power, except to run away?

 

Who is this smuggler girl and what betrayal? Seems kinda random.

 

 

 

 

Third section:

 

Why is she surprised that they lift her so easily? Was she a fat or something?

 

 

 

Fourth section:

 

Not sure why this one is separate from the third section...

The elephant threw me, but I didn't know why at first. Then that one detail made me realize that up to now your setting has been so vague that this detail feels jarring.

 

Okay, you gotta step back and actually explain this bell sounder.

 

By now the present tense is starting to weigh on me.

 

 

Fifth Section:

 

Strong ending, but the impact is lost on me for a few reasons. Everything that comes before it feels too generic. Evil world government. Random magic that I still don't actually understand. This can be fixed pretty easily with some more eye catching detail early on. Like how I never really get the sense of who this character is. What was she like before running away? Why should I care about her? What if she really is a villain and there's no way to tell? With a short story, you have to make every word count, but for most of this story I have no idea what's going on and no direction. The title kinda helps, but not really since it makes the stuff that comes between the final scene and it seem like filler.

 

Your skill as a writer definitely shows, but this can be much much tighter. Tighter action, more direction thematically (you don't even have to change anything that happens to give the sense of direction), and a little bit more information about your world and characters and why I should care about them. Also, the redundancy issue comes into play in these sections. I think you could probably cut it back a few pages, throw in some exposition, and have a solid short.

Edited February 21, 2014 by hawkedup

[neongrey]

Okay, you guys have given me a lot to chew on; I think I'll probably hold off my next draft until after I get my next rejection slip. Partly for superstition's sake, but mostly prioritization; I've got other things to be working on too.

 

This is gonna take a thorough think-over anyway, the trouble with allegory for history that's so recent is that there's so many people who are still alive and not very old who went through the real thing. It takes a really delicate touch, and while I think I can do that, in the end it won't be for me to judge. I'll offer more thoughts on comments in specific, if there's any I need to, when I pick up the piece again.