Reading Excuses - 18-06-2018 - A Demon in the Silver City - Chapters 1 and 2 (3480)

[Majestic Fox]

Better late than never, they say.

 

This is a first draft for a novella. I'm tagging it as rough.

Please ignore any typos and grammatical errors. I'd much rather you spent your precious and limited feedback words on your moment by moment experience. 

 

Much appreciated  : )

[Mandamon]

I'm going to put all my replies into the topic for this week, just so it's all together.

[shatteredsmooth]

Sorry for the delay in this. Here is my response to the first two chapters:

What I like:

·      The concept. Right away, you have a main character that wants something with high stakes. It’s easy to conceive what the plot is going to be.

·      The world also seems well developed. I don’t know all the details yet, which is going to keep me reading, but I know enough to be comfortable following the mc through the world.

·      The stakes are very clear.

·      Chapter two had a great opening line and in an interesting blend of characters. Seeing how the MC, obviously from a more well off setting, interacted with residents of the slum showed what kind of person he is: arrogant, entitled, clue-less, and jerk. I don’t like him, but I don’t have to like a character to like a book. What this tells me is that the narrator has a lot of potential for growth and change. 

Problems

·      Chapter 1. Get rid of it. Instinct is to open with him losing his demon. It’s probably what I would do on my first draft, and I’d probably fight everyone who told me to do anything differently until three revisions later, but it really isn’t working, and chapter 2 pulled me right in. Starting with the MC hiring someone to find the demon works as an opening. Seeing him fail to haggle shows the stakes, and he can remember how bad he felt after first losing the demon in the first place.

·      Chapter opens like waking up – he comes to and his demon is gone. Is he waking up from sleep or from passing out? Or was he working in the lab and just realized it was gone? I didn’t catch this from one quick read. I may figure it out when I go back and reread, but I suspect the average reader isn’t going to want to do that. If they don’t get the opening, then they are just not going to buy or download the whole book.

·      Don’t know enough to care about this dudes initial reaction to loosing his demo. A lot of people hate books that with some kind of wake up, but I think there can be value in seeing how people wake up in some cases. This is not one of them. There isn’t any character development. Just that this person lost something, and I don’t know them or comprehend what they lost so I don’t care.

• I had to reread the first page or two a couple times to realize losing a demon was a bad thing, particularly because of this line "but on this day his body was utterly his own. " 

·      I don’t like way the narrator talks to secretary, who seems like a cliché female secretary from a few decades ago.

·      In both chapters, you have a tendency to use fancy adjectives and adverbs instead of showing things. Example “trying not to look too out of place amidst the cavalcade of unsavoury individuals swaggering about the black market's northern quarter.”  What makes the individuals unsavoury, particularly in the world. How does he know they are unsavoury? Their clothing? Are they flaunting illegal magical artefacts? You need more concrete details. Of course, this isn’t something you necessarily need to worry too much about and finish a first draft. If it fits better with your process, you can go back later as you revise and replace to clusters of modifiers with more concrete details.

 

P.S. I tend to not let people look at drafts until I have written them through to the end. I might skip chunks in the middle of my first draft, but I really need to have a beginning, end, and most of the middle before I can get feedback or I never finish the project.  Of course, that means my complete first drafts are really messy disasters. You will probably have a much cleaner draft by the time you are done, and a lot of feedback to help you get right into your second draft. I admire that you can work like this!

[Majestic Fox]

@shatteredsmooth Thanks a lot. I like receiving intelligent comments. I can tell you have a good handle on the craft. 

Probably agree on losing chapter 1. Trying to practice turning my internal editor off until the end of the first draft.

Why do you need to have most of your first draft written before getting feedback? Because the comments you get won't reflect your skill? I can sympathise with that if so. 

For me, I need deadline pressure to write anything. Submitting to RE gives me that. Well worth a damaged ego : )

Edited June 26, 2018 by Majestic Fox

[shatteredsmooth]

5 hours ago, Majestic Fox said:

Why do you need to have most of your first draft written before getting feedback? Because the comments you get won't reflect your skill? I can sympathise with that if so. 

Its not about skill so much as my process. I've found that either I finish a draft in a month or two, or it takes years to finish one draft. If I get feedback too early, I obsess about getting that chapter perfect before moving on and lose track of the big picture, even if I do have an outline. For example, the novel I am seeking feedback on now is something I wrote during NaNoWriMo. It's only about 50K words right now, and will probably be 80 or 90K by the end of the second draft, especially since some "chapters" are really just summaries. Still, I have a begining, most of the middle, and an end, so now I can slowly chip away at making it a coherent piece that I can send out to beta readers.

Last year, I wrote a few chapters of a book and started working with a CP on it. I couldn't make myself move forward without fixing the issues she pointed out, and since I was spending so much time rewriting those chapters, I didn't write new content, and when I ran out of what I had written, I couldn't figure out what more to write because I still struggling with some plot issues in the earlier chapters -- issues that I probably could've fixed later if I had kept writing and figured out of what I had outlined was really going to work. And we stopped exchanging chapters since I had no new chapters to send.

I don't need pressure or deadlines to finish a book. Once I get immersed enough in the story, I have to keep writing to see how it plays out, even if that means losing sleep or letting the dirty laundry pile up until I'm out of clean clothes. Stopping for feedback breaks that focus and then I struggle to finish the book. 

What I do need pressure and deadlines for is revision. Without a group like this, I might just think the book is too messy to read and not go back to it. But with something like this, I can clean up a chapter or two, send it out, revise it, and repeat with the next unless I make extremely drastic changes, like condensing four chapters into one. 

5 hours ago, Majestic Fox said:

Trying to practice turning my internal editor off until the end of the first draft

Most of the feedback I gave you is probably stuff you can set aside until you finish the draft. But I wouldn't be able to, hence needing to finish the draft before anyone sees it. I am great at silencing my internal editor until someone else sees the draft. Then I can't turn it off, and I can't generate good content. 

[Robinski]

Sooo, I finally got here. Sorry for the delay.

Firstly, I like the title, it makes me ask questions like what is the city, what is demon and why is it there?

Chapter 1

Good first line: I'm intrigued.

I find the second line less clear. Is the demon in him our outside being held out?

I really like the special conditions for keeping the demon bound. Nice.

I know you don't want LBLs, but I'm going to objection to 'murking' right here, right now. That and, it's 'mirking' anyway, Papa Tolkein said so  

"their lifeless gaze mocking his inability to finish them" - ooh, nice.

There's some really nice writing here. The bit about him going to the door; nailed it.

I don't think a month is a long time to be at capacity. Also, I'd caution again dismissing a character descriptively as 'fat man'. I've done that in the past, but it's insufficiently generic, and borderline size-ist, I think.

"malleable eyes" - ...<shudder> not the right word, not the right word.

There's a big disconnect, I think, when she asks him what will he do. I don't follow the train or thought/conversation here.

I like the characterisation. If anything, her's is better than his. I feel like I have a clearer idea of who she is than him. Perhaps that's as it should be though, as the m/c should be revealed in more depth and a somewhat longer time frame.

Anyway, I'm engaged. I like the style, I like the feel and the concept is interesting, although I'm still unclear on many details. I will note that the punishment for losing a demon seems quite extreme. I think I feel this because I don't really understand the consequences, or how demons behave. For all I know at the moment, it's like the genie from Aladdin.

Chapter 2

Gah. Burning iron? Not sure about that. Sipping lemon juice? Ziiiiinnnngggggg! I reckon his face would implode. Maybe lemon cordial?

I'm going to buy you a bag of hyphens for Christmas.

"stench of charred meat" - Is he a vegetarian? I'm pretty partial to the stench of charred meat myself. More seriously, I'm not sure of the tech level now. I was assuming standard fantasy, but the use of the word 'train' has me confused.

"helping himself the scraps of Seb's pastry" - I didn't realise Seb was sitting down, I thought he was walking through the market.

"his blackened teeth showing in his rotten mouth" - and yet he has a crimson cape, which sounds very dashing (and expensive)?

What other seeker?

Please, can I just have one? - 'want' > 'wont'.

Okay, I certainly was pulled through the last part of this chapter by the encounter with the old woman, which was good. Pretty untidy, as you promised(!), but entertaining. There were some connections that I simply didn't follow, but I'm sure you can tidy those up. Specifically, the biggest confusion I had was at the end. What happened? Did he take the orb with him? I thought she was challenging him to open it in her presence. 

His obsession with pork seems strange. I didn't really believe that. he's at risk of death and he has this appetite that he's willing to set aside his most urgent task to walk all the way home for a plate of pork? Seems unlikely to me.

Summary 

I am definitely entertained. There is a clear style in your writing, I think, which no doubt has to develop some more personality in edits and practice, but I can see the DNA of The Green Ocean here, I think.

Not sure the m/c is all that compelling yet. His plight is pretty urgent, and engaging, but he's a bit of a blank. I suppose he showed some sympathy for his assistant, but in a sort of cold way.

Clearly, this will be a lot stronger when it's edited a bit, but I certainly has my attention. The biggest failing so far, I think, is not to build up the significance of the demon escaping. There are some passing references, but I'd like to know more about it. Maybe one or two more noted example of colourful incidents around escaped demons?

Nice work here though. I'm enjoying it, despite the fact that bone marrow seems to be significant  

<R>

[Majestic Fox]

Thanks for the comments @Robinski , insightful as always : ) 

5 hours ago, Robinski said:

. I'm enjoying it, despite the fact that bone marrow seems to be significant

Not really. It's the kind of place-holder concrete description that comes out on a first draft. Just felt demon-ish. Nothing important ; ) 

5 hours ago, Robinski said:

His obsession with pork seems strange.

Think I was hungry when I wrote that. 

5 hours ago, Robinski said:

The biggest failing so far, I think, is not to build up the significance of the demon escaping.

Yeah, this was bothering me. Since it was supposed to be a novella I thought I'd cut past that and launch straight in, but it needs weaving in there one way or another. I think it's possible to braid it into the action, but I've not done that yet. 

[Majestic Fox]

16 hours ago, shatteredsmooth said:

I couldn't make myself move forward without fixing the issues she pointed out, and since I was spending so much time rewriting those chapters, I didn't write new content

I can relate to this. I've been re-writing the first part of another book for far too long, in part because of issues pointed out in feedback. 

I think first-draft feedback can be dangerous, especially for perfectionists, exactly for the reasons you pointed out. This novella project is an attempt to give my ego the finger and just blaze through to the end of the first draft regardless of quality and plot issues (something I've historically been terrible at). Suppose I'm still figuring out my process. I know I need deadline pressure, and to be excited about what I'm writing. RE creates deadline pressure, but I'm still undecided on whether or not its worth it on a first draft, considering how feedback has a tendency to stir the combined forces of my inner perfectionist, critic and editor. 

17 hours ago, shatteredsmooth said:

Most of the feedback I gave you is probably stuff you can set aside until you finish the draft.

Good idea   : ) 

 

[kais]

Ahh, here's the first part!

Overall

Having read this in reverse (chapters 3,4,5 first), I think you could cut chapters 1 and 2 entirely. It's a more interesting start on chapter 3, and since there's not a lot of emoting here, that could easily be added to the later chapters for more of a punch.

While I appreciate that this is a first draft, between this and the other sub there are some troublesome issues with the female characters that are cropping up. I'm still unsure if this is purely POV, in which case S is not going to be a compelling narrator for a sizable subset of the reading population, or whether it is unintentional. It might be worth considering why the women are being written this way, and then tweak S as needed. 

Most generally, I feel like this piece suffers from a lack of voice. I need more from S, and more from the writing, in terms of why this story is unique. S is an easy fix, voice is a bit harder, but you'll get there with revision!

On 6/26/2018 at 6:40 AM, shatteredsmooth said:

  I don’t like way the narrator talks to secretary, who seems like a cliché female secretary from a few decades ago.

Yuuuup

On 6/27/2018 at 0:00 AM, Robinski said:

I'm going to buy you a bag of hyphens for Christmas.

OMG love this

 

As I go

- immediately thrown out by the first line, since, without context, it looks like his heart is in fact, literally exiting his skull

- page 3: I have a quick dislike of P with the 'Oh it's my fault' line. It's fine to have a passive secretary type, but a bit of nuance would be nice

- page four: why is P crying?? I don't see any reason for it, especially since the MC is really really calm. I'm not convinced this missing demon is any more than an inconvenience right now

- page five: at the end of chapter one, I'm confused. S doesn't seem that concerned about his missing demon, all things considered. I am having a hard time caring as well, because I don't truly understand what is at stake. I think a bit more worldbuilding would be helpful. You have a great opportunity to do that in terms of P's reactions to the news, which I think is currently wasted on her stereotypical 1950s office secretary responses.

- I'm not sure I actually know what burning iron smells like. Could you describe it just a bit?

- page three: S is just thinking about things, not emoting about them. I think that's leading to this sort of detached feeling I get from him

- page four: pork in this one as well? That's actually the most solid characterization of S that I've noticed between this sub and the later chapters

- page six: so I've noticed that the female characters are routinely described either as emotional, or as sex objects. Since we're always in S's POV this could be reasonable, but it doesn't make him even remotely likable as a character unless you give him some redeemable qualities. For instance, @Robinski's Q character objectifies basically everyone of consenting age, but has a solid quirky personality and a soft spot for his ward. If you want to keep the sexist nature of S, he'll need to be more rounded out

- page nine: wait, so he just... leaves? The ending doesn't make sense. Why not at least try to open the thing or ask her the questions that will tell him if she's sane or super powerful or whatever?