9.28.20 - ginger_reckoning - ALITC - prologue v2 (5100) (V)

[ginger_reckoning Arbiter]

Well, ladies and non-ladies, after one very hefty rewrite, here is the new and (hopefully) improved prologue! Thanks so much for all of your critiques last week, I tried to incorporate as many as I could. Here are the patch notes:

Spoiler

Cut a lot of info-dumping and description

Fight is significantly shorter (and less emphasis on magic)

Fathers-->Keepers

Ch’s pronouns changed to they/them

Shift in tone (side effect is that it’s slightly more violent)

“Bump” plot hole fixed (hopefully)

More emphasis on stakes

Slightly more political background

Added POV to the end to show consequences

More foreshadowing/Big Bad hints

Anyway, eager to hear what you think. Also, another note is that I originally took out Al’s pov but then changed my mind and brought it back. (which is why this is v3 and not v2)  Does it work? If not, I’ll most likely cut it. Also, a point of this draft is to make you sympathetic to J but not G. Mission accomplished?

Thanks!

 

 

 

 

 

[Mandamon Radiant Squire]

Definitely heading in the right direction. I had much less desire to skim with the fight scene. I'm fine with the shifting POV, but others might not be. I think the largest positive is the extra tension at the end, which gives us a lot of stakes for gods and the reincarnated gifted. Al's new POV makes this into more of a definite prologue.

At this point, I'm interested to start the story and see what the first couple chapters are like, vs. this part which is coming before.

 

Notes while reading:

pg 1: "with this makeup on her dark brown skin"
--what makeup? Is it making her look more or less brown? The way this is constructed looks like it's just there to call out her skin color.

pg 3: "And as Supreme Gifted, it is our duty to protect the people, should things get ugly."
--this is pretty Maid and Butler. They all know that's their duty. Is there a way to show this so it doesn't sound so obvious?

pg 3: "Why had A. left her?"
--In the previous paragraph, it seems like A. drew away because she cracked down on the protesters.

pg 13: Much better tension with C begging to be let into J's mind. Good stakes with the god losing parts of themself as well.

pg 14: Also some better stakes at the end. This makes it sound a lot more like a prologue.

[ginger_reckoning Arbiter]

18 minutes ago, Mandamon said:

Definitely heading in the right direction. I had much less desire to skim with the fight scene

Sweet! That's good to hear!

19 minutes ago, Mandamon said:

The way this is constructed looks like it's just there to call out her skin color.

That's because it is. @Snakenapsmentioned in the last thread that I should try to mention skin color to combat white default, but I guess this comes off as clunky

20 minutes ago, Mandamon said:

this is pretty Maid and Butler. They all know that's their duty. Is there a way to show this so it doesn't sound so obvious?

Hahaha the classic blunder. I'll try to fix this

22 minutes ago, Mandamon said:

g 13: Much better tension with C begging to be let into J's mind. Good stakes with the god losing parts of themself as well.

pg 14: Also some better stakes at the end. This makes it sound a lot more like a prologue.

sweet!

[ima willshaper Crew Leader]

Hi! I'm new to this, but here's what I've got. First off, I loved how the magic was explained and how the fight scene worked out. It really drew me into the story and has me excited for what comes next. As for more specific ideas, I think I'm definitely feeling more sympathetic towards J than towards G, but having not read previous drafts I can't compare it with anything that came before. 

On page 7, J uses the word "disconcerting" at the same time as he's kind of wondering what P means by tyranny and oppression. Would an eleven y/o know what disconcerting means, especially when he's unsure about tyranny and oppression?

In two places, J seems to be using really modern words/gestures (page 4 - "c'mon, man" and pg 10 - a thumbs up) that seem kind of at odds with the rest of the feel of the world, which feels kind of Victorian-era-esque. I can tell you're trying to get him to sound younger and more modern, but it seems jarring compared to everything else happening in the story.

pg 12 - I really like the tension here, and how the phrasing of the sentences just makes you feel J's apathy.

pg 14 - It almost sounds like Al is saying that she's now dead, and that was confusing for me as I read the rest of the page. Just a slight change in phrasing there would really clear it up.

Anyway, that's what I have as a newbie to this group. Hope it was helpful!

*edit: I just thought I'd mention as per your question in the email that Al's POV works great, especially because her input on what's going on in the world as an older adult is helpful so we can make sense of some of the more political stuff going on. I also love how she ends it because it does give more of a sense of regret that I think is a great hook for anything that comes after. It makes me want to see her emotions resolved as opposed to ending it with a death, which just seems like a sort of resolution in itself.

Edited September 28, 2020 by ima willshaper
I forgot to answer one of the questions from the email.

[ginger_reckoning Arbiter]

Thanks @ima willshaper, and welcome to reading excuses! This is actually just my second week, so we have being new in common XD. 

Quote

In two places, J seems to be using really modern words/gestures (page 4 - "c'mon, man" and pg 10 - a thumbs up) that seem kind of at odds with the rest of the feel of the world, which feels kind of Victorian-era-esque. I can tell you're trying to get him to sound younger and more modern, but it seems jarring compared to everything else happening in the story.

The anachronistic dialogue is a style I'm trying out with this story....hopefully it becomes less jarring as it progresses

2 hours ago, ima willshaper said:

pg 14 - It almost sounds like Al is saying that she's now dead, and that was confusing for me as I read the rest of the page. Just a slight change in phrasing there would really clear it up

I can see what you mean. Yeah, she is not a ghost right here haha

2 hours ago, ima willshaper said:

Hope it was helpful!

Very helpful!

[kais Truthless]

Overall

The changes were great and the narrative moves along at a much better pace. Now what I think could use focusing is really getting the reader invested in either the world or the characters. With a POV switch, you naturally are going to have to work harder at this, because we don't have enough time with either POV character to get invested. The stakes, the world, are also fairly generic thus far so I can't get a foothold there, either. This could be an issue, more than anything, of voice. I can't find it. The narrative reads very basic sword and sorcery fantasy, and I want that hook of uniqueness to pull me into the narrative.

Still, very good edits! It's come a long way!

 

As I go

- still a good opening line

- pg 2 and we have three named characters, but only skin tone on one and it's brown. Yellow flag

- I like the start as a short interlude. Much cleaner!

- pg 7: getting antsy now for the plot. Still too slow coming, I think, both the plot and the inciting incident

- pg 8: okay we have an inciting incident, but no real stakes. I don't feel much for this fight because I am not invested in the health or safety of the characters, and I don't know enough about the world. From all the big words being thrown around our three named characters seem Very Powerful, which makes me wonder if any of this is even a threat

- pg 10: I do not know enough about the current system of governance to care about the overthrow. I need something solid to latch onto here, either the world stakes or character stakes

- pg 11: another skin tone mention of brown. Still don't have skin tones on our two named men, and no white skin tone has been called out. Red flag

- pg 12: And being this near to it, J felt…nothing. No anger. No fear. No curiosity. He just felt…empty. <-- the problem is, if he feels nothing, neither do I. Why should I be scared if the character isn't?

 

[Silk King's Tester]

P1 minor, but “…ruin everything” seems a bit overly dramatic about a somewhat disheveled outfit, and A doesn’t strike me as someone generally prone to dramatics.

P3… “[the protestors] took no violent action.” Saying it outright like this suggests to me that A was expecting violence, or at least prepared for the possibility.

This reveal of info we didn’t have in the first draft is a good start. Still not totally sure I’m sympathetic to these characters; the description of attempting to “crush” protests, in particular, sounds violent. Which is fine if that’s the effect you want, of course, but if not, maybe a less aggressive word like “quash” would do as well?

P4 did you mention J’s surname twice in the previous draft? I don’t remember it coming up more than once, but either way, you probably don’t need to have it said twice in the first few pages.

I realize that J is young, but given that the protests have been going on for a while and are a fairly Big Deal, would he really have absolutely no idea what they were about?

“He was already twenty-three—ancient” – snort.

Gotta admit, I’m totally with G on this let’s-find-you-a-girlfriend thing. Tell the little brat to knock it off

P6 “G gave him a very odd look.” Yeah, I’m still coming down on the side of probably not sympathizing with these characters very much.

P7 “GP stood by with his hands behind his back.” He’s not even going to pretend to be surprised?

“…as they were technically alive…” Not something I’d want to see in this chapter, certainly, but I’m curious as to what technical definition these characters are using of life, since neither “reanimated” nor “automaton” is particularly suggestive of “alive” to me.

I still think there are opportunities to tighten up the writing where there’s a tendency to repeat the same information in a few different ways, often very close together. For example in the middle of P10, G says “A is struggling for some reason…” and then in the next paragraph J spends three sentences thinking about, effectively, how weird it is that she seems to be struggling. This is after we’ve already gotten the same information from A’s POV in a way that is much more explicit than what we saw in the previous draft. You could probably trim this from several sentences to just one or two.

GP was inside, right? Why can J still see him if he’s now gone outside? Conversely, why do A and G not seem to see whatever GP is doing?

“Without GP—who had secretly been the leader…” I would have assumed from his speech at the party (and lack of reaction from the crowd to what would have been a revelation) that this was well-known.

This ending works better for me than ending on the explosion did.

Overall:

This draft is definitely much improved from the first!  I had a better sense of the overall context in which things were happening and was a little more engaged. I still had some trouble buying all the way in, I think because I’m not totally sure that I should be, or that I want to as a reader, sympathize with the POV characters. The narrative seems to be presenting them as benevolent dictators who are legitimately doing their best, but the characters themselves say things that make me wonder if they’re really the good guys.

The other thing that’s still pinging me a bit is J’s voice, which hasn’t quite settled for me. I think it’s because the narrative really relies on him asking questions to establish his POV as young/curious and it’s not quite enough to carry the character voice for me. Obviously, it’s going to be some time before we see him again and he might be much different by then, but he’s one of the first characters that we meet and he gets the lion’s share of the prologue so I do think it matters.

[Sarah B Cobalt Guard]

I love the new ending in Al's perspective! So much better and sets a clear point to flash forward from. 

There are still a couple parts that feel like 'telling the reader.' Specifically Al identifying that the two boys with her are apprentices and their qualities etc, and when J is thinking to himself that he and G aren't brothers. 

These parts aren't terrible, they just caught my eye as odd things for these characters to be dwelling on when it would be just a part of life for them. 

Great job on the new draft!

[ginger_reckoning Arbiter]

Thanks @kais

On 10/2/2020 at 11:54 AM, kais said:

pg 2 and we have three named characters, but only skin tone on one and it's brown. Yellow flag

On 10/2/2020 at 11:54 AM, kais said:

pg 11: another skin tone mention of brown. Still don't have skin tones on our two named men, and no white skin tone has been called out. Red flag

 yikes, that is definitely something I'll change for the next rewrite. Racism is the opposite of what i'm going for. 

On 10/2/2020 at 11:54 AM, kais said:

pg 8: okay we have an inciting incident, but no real stakes. I don't feel much for this fight because I am not invested in the health or safety of the characters, and I don't know enough about the world. From all the big words being thrown around our three named characters seem Very Powerful, which makes me wonder if any of this is even a threat

- pg 10: I do not know enough about the current system of governance to care about the overthrow. I need something solid to latch onto here, either the world stakes or character stakes

I think stakes are going to be a recurring thing I need to work on...the joys of writing

On 10/2/2020 at 11:54 AM, kais said:

Still, very good edits! It's come a long way!

Thanks!

 

[Robinski Savant]

Ooh, I do like opening the first file from a new author. 'Every day is Christmas Eve' to quote a well known UK movie podcast (the Empire Magazine podcast).

Welcome again, GingerReckoning (love that handle. I am excite to read!! And love a map, just love a map  

(page 1)

- Great first line. I like it. Loads of questions bubble up. I has a nice punch. As I have no real gauge of your style, or the quality of the prose, at this point, I'm tempted to launch into full LBL mode (Line by line comments on grammar, punctuation, word choice, etc.) I just love to do that, but it takes time. I'll try and rein it in. I appreciate that not everyone wants that, and it sometimes (depending on the author) adds a lot of time to the critiquing. We'll see.

Suffice it to say that, here, the second sentence is not a complete sentence grammatically Clearly, rules are made to be broken, however in doing that you need to have a clear intent, otherwise, readers (and critiques) will get frustrated, and editors/agents/slush readers will simply dump your MS and go onto the next one.

Taking the first line, I'd go: "The night of the Chaos started with a party, as many disasters do." (I suggest 'as' because 'like' does not land softly on the ear, IMO.)

- Don't worry, I'm not going to write 178 words about each line 

- Confused: so, is she the most powerful woman in the world? Unclear, IMO. Because she would not suppose this if she was the most powerful woman, she would know it for a fact.

- "Months of a protesting populace" - passive.

- "had double-teamed her, seemingly, " - (a) If you're writing fantasy, I would strongly recommend not using modern phrases, as it undermines any sense of setting that you create through world-building. Imagine watching Game of Thrones and Jaime Lannister says 'Let's double-team that dragon.' (b) This is her POV, she knows what has happened to her and what she is feeling. Using vague words like 'seemingly' in this context is very disengaging for the reader.

- "He could at least pretend to have regal bearing. She certainly did." - I guess this means she is pretending to be regal. Not completely clear. It could mean she has a regal bearing, or it could mean she is pretending to have a regal bearing.

- About a page in and I think your prose is decent, is uncomplicated, and therefore flows pretty well. that's good. The dialogue too is believable. I thin maybe (early days, too soon to judge really) there is a tendency for all the characters to sound the same, because of their speech patterns. A strong means of characterisation is to think about different ways or rather habits that each character has when they speak. One might use no contractions at all, another might use them all the time. If they are of different nationalities, the way in which a visitor from another country speaks the local language may be different in some way.

- "twenty years past her prime" - LOL. Define prime please. I'm not nearer knowing what age she is really. Okay, she has grey hair. Maybe she's 60? Let me tell you that, the older you get, the more your definition of 'prime' changes  

- "eleven years old" - Ah, interesting. I did not get that immediately from his first line, but I can see it now. I'd maybe simplify his first line, maybe something like 'Why are you two (always) mopey?', because I think youngster use fewer words (and usually, that is to their credit!).

- "His long brown hair was styled tonight, though it was usually just a jumbled mess" - This doesn't do anything, maybe even confuses the sense. I'd make this two sentences for clarity. 'His brown hair was style tonight. Usually, it was a jumbled mess.'

- FIRST PAGE COMMENTS - Okay, so, I've got three characters, I know they're going to a party, and it seems like an official function of some kind. There is civil unrest, and there is going to be a disaster. This seems to be a very powerful woman, but I don't know what kind of power that is.

The issue I have is that I don't know there are psychic power until I get to Page Two. That needs to be clear right up near the top of Page One. Also, there is going to be a disaster, BUT, I've forgotten that by the time I'm half way down the page. Fair enough, but I wonder if the lack of further mentions or dire portents erodes the impact of that first line.

(page 2)

- The name 'Kar...' made me smile. It does tend to specify the tone of the work as having a lighthearted feel, which maybe entirely what you're intending.

- Repetition of 'since' in same sentence. I've seen such word repetition in mainstream published works but, to me, it's kind of clumsy, and doesn't flow nicely unless it's a dramatic device, which it isn't here.

- "They were the future" - This line here strikes me as very important and worthy of appearing in the first half of Page One. Also, it define the relationship of these three, and confirms the presence of magic/powers which is equally if not more important. This paragraph should be much higher up, IMO.

- Also: issue. If these two boys are her apprentices, how do they get to be important members of the quorum? I think these things are mutually exclusive. Apprentices, by definition, are in training and therefore not fully qualified to act in the field they're training in. I don't see how they can participate in 'running the show'. Okay, I can see one way. If the quorum membership had previously been decimated by some disaster, there might be a crippling shortage of people with powers to sit on the quorum, forcing the leadership into promoting these two. The thing is, if you're going to promote a junior like that, usually they would drop the apprentice tag, I think.

- "“Yeah! Joseph said" - Typo: missing inverted commas.

- "Ah. So they had arrived" - Has the carriage stopped? I missed that.

- "She couldn’t claim this eagerness to her training" - I'd say this should be 'claim it for her training' or 'attribute' it to her training'.

- SECOND PAGE COMMENTS - Interesting: continues to flow well. Narrator is somewhat unreliable in withholding info she know from the reader. I don't feel much threat, a bit of tension. The jury's out on tone at the moment, and stakes. Motivation seems clear enough, protect the people.

(page 3)

- If it's something 'big' surely it would not only be the partygoers who were at risk.

- "earth-shattering" - Yes. This underlines my point about stakes and threat, I think. Also, there is a difference between 'earth-shattering' and 'Earth-shattering'.

- "the whole future of the world hung by a thread" - Okay, 90% of all stories written seem to be about the whole world being in danger. It's kinda boring. Stakes need to be personal as well. Yes, we can have a backdrop of end of the world if we have to, but character stakes are more compelling, and can be more original. End-of-the-world is the low-hanging fruit of stakes. It's too easy, too ubiquitous. At the very least, the mode of destruction should be original, the means of the end should be inventive, and should be front and centre so the reader can evaluate the threat and be scared of specifics. E.g. (1) The world is going to end on Thursday; (2) Monitoring stations confirm that the San Andreas fault will be ripped apart by a massive earthquake and the western seaboard will fall into the Pacific on Thursday (Sorry, @Snakenaps, it's just an analogy!!).

- "on the other side of the street as the partygoers" - from the partygoers.

- "They shouted and chanted" - Who did?

- "She had originally tried to crush the protests" - Whoa, whoa, whoa. This rocks my whole perspective of the premise. I feel it's set up that Al is a force for good, but crushing protests smacks of authoritarianism. Crushing the right to free speech, bad; engaging with protestors to hear them out and debate them*, good. (Okay, maybe not standing in the middle of them, but meeting with their reps at least.)

(page 6)

- "We’re heads of state" - I'm struggling with this. For one thing, really, there can be only one Head of State, in this case it would seem to be the leader of the SG, which is Al. It's been stated in her internal monologue that she was the one chosen. Also, these two being heads of state is kind of ridiculous, as they seem to know next to nothing.

- "start the ******* cycle again" - Hmm, interesting.

- "gods; They wouldn’t even know how to run a country properly without our help" - (a) This is not correct semi-colon usage. There's one before this too. I'd suggest not trying anything fancy with punctuation. Editors don't want to see fancy from a first time author. Keep it simple, IMO. These are two separate sentences. (b) You've lost me completely here. These two have done nothing to convince me that they know even the first thing about running a country. Plausibility is important. If something is implausible, like this (IMO), you need to have a really good explanation or justification of how this came about. Nobody in their right mind would choose these two to run a country and, if I was in the population, I'd be protesting too. It's not about power, it's about leadership; statesmanship; politics.

(page 8)

- "they got stuck" - Not very evocative of the horror of this situation.

- "he saw them" - Who? What? Confused.

(page 9)

- "there was no reason to kill these people" - Hmm. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. J's POV is unreliable, right? The way I see it, the people of arguing for, protesting about and willing to fight for their freedom, and this room is full of a bunch of rich aristocrats that the people seem to see as abusing their influence and position? Don't get me wrong, I don't hold with bloody revolution or the excoriation of rich people just because they are rich, but what I'm expecting to happen is that G and J discover at some point that they are on the 'wrong' side.

- "forcing all the heat he had just drawn from the air into the metal" - This is directly and offensively attacking the automaton. How is this different from using telekinesis? I don't see the distinction.

- "hitting the heated portion of metal and causing it to cave in" - Neat idea. Quick thinking, but still seems to me like attacking with abilities.

(page 10)

- "He then quickly took care of the other automaton" - Who did, G or J? Unclear, IMO. Also, the auto goes down very easily. This is quite dismissive, considering they are fifteen feet tall.

- "He’s trying to take out the old regime" - This implies a former regime to me, not the current one.

- "But do we really need to stop them from making a republic?" - Yes! Good. This is good. M?C has doubts about the instructions he's been given. I'm pleased about this (see above), but...(see conclusions*).

(page 11)

- "finishing off the automatons" - Again, this sounds quite blasé, casual, easy.

- "it was all a distraction" - Oooh, nicely done if this is the case.

- "had gotten off" - Grammar: gotten off what? This form is inelegant, rough-sounding. I guess it kind of works with J's youth though. 

(page 12)

- "He lighted next to the stage" - I'd say 'alighted'.

- "He drew with his finger on the wall, somehow leaving a glowing purple line, as if finger painting" - Clunky grammar and phrasing, missing word at least, but this whole line can be simpler, easier to read.

- See, when they are sitting in a carriage chinwagging, and you say the end of the world, it doesn't resonate. It resonate more here, in the heat of battle, especially since there has been a twist, also good. I still don't think this lands as effectively as it could do though, if we were more invested in the characters, the world, personal motivations, etc. For example, if J had an older sister who was getting married tomorrow and his father had just bought his own fishing boat, finally after years of striving, and there was a brave new alliance across the continent to promote peace and prosperity, and then the general is trying to 'blow it all up', the end of the world means more, has more weight. Here, we don't know the world, or the people, so the stakes don't really pack the punch you would want.

The qualification that I would put on this is that, given we are right at the start of the story, there must be something more going to happen. Clearly, it will not be the end of the world, or the book will be very short, but this event might transform the world into something different. So, in summary, I'm kind of on the fence and interested to see what happens.

- "though he laughed madly" - So, not emotionless then...but wait, "monotone and flat" - these things seem inconsistent, contradictory.

- "And you never will,” The general" - 'the general', no CAPS.

- "What was he talking about?" - New paragraph, IMO.

(page 13)

- "burst like a melon" - Excellent image, totally conveys the pressure in his haead.

- "fell over himself" - Not quite sure what this looks like in this context. I get 'falling over himself to be helpful', but in a combat situation, fell over self seems vague to me.

- "relaxed" - This sounds kind of...well, relaxed, as in not urgent and vital as I think maybe it should. It sounds more like he's paralysed.

- "You will see" - Nicely maniacal dialogue from the general here. That's good.

(page 14)

- "Including herself" - Huh, weird.

- "She was leaving them forever" - Huh? But she said she was dead. If she's not, why would she leave?

- "than you did in this one" - They fought for a cause they believe in, how did they not have dignity?

OVERALL

Good style, clean and easily readable, which is no small achievement. I would say there is room for refinement, of course there is, there always is, but I think this is a really solid start in terms of style. Where I felt the overall effect of the prose / narrative could have been stronger was in 'drawing the picture' and giving me an image of the setting to imagine. I had a loose image, but only in very basic blocking terms. It's not yet a strong, colourful, sensory impression, IMO.

The major issues that I have is that I don't really feel anything for characters, not much anyway; a little maybe. This is a really common problem in 'new' authors, IMO. Going straight into a fight before I am in any way invested in the characters, their motivations and their success, means that I don't care about the outcome of the fight, or whether the characters live or die, succeed or fail.

In this case, I do feel that I've got to know a little about the characters in the few pages before the fight starts, the problem is that I don't get enough of their motivations, hopes and dreams. There are some decent personal details: finding a boyfriend for G, for example. But the little that I do get about their aims, I'm not sure I agree with it (as noted above). So, by the fight, I am still in the position where I don't care enough about the outcome. I think that needs more work.

The thing that I think maybe you have done is show that J doubts whether he is fighting on the right side. Or at least he is maybe starting to doubt it? I think that needs to be better developed in this prologue(?), if my take is right. That the existing regime is bad (for the people), and that J perhaps agrees (or all come to agree) with the motives of the general, although not his methods of giving power to the people.

The fight has its good aspects, and there are moments that feel compelling, IMO but, there comes a point at which the autos are just crushed and it's very easy, making the enemy seems tame and weak. Similar is the case for the general, who is just knocked over, although he does have a last laugh moment, it seems. The use of the magic powers is sometimes quite inventive, but it does not seem to cost the user anything. I appreciate there are some limits, which appear to involve linking to the gods, and yet I don't understand the limits. Okay, you say these are the all-powerful magic users, but by the powers not having limits or costs, it makes the magic seems to easy, I think.

I enjoyed quite a bit about this, and I'm interested to read the next instalment, which I will now do!  

[Snakenaps King's Tester]

2 hours ago, Robinski said:

Monitoring stations confirm that the San Andreas fault will be ripped apart by a massive earthquake and the western seaboard will fall into the Pacific on Thursday (Sorry, @Snakenaps, it's just an analogy!!).

I have been wanting to see the ocean for a while now. 

[ginger_reckoning Arbiter]

Thanks @Robinski! That is a very in-depth analysis of the chapter, thanks for all of the feedback!