CommandanteLemming - Millenial Reign - Chapter 4 (L) 2080 Words

[CommandanteLemming]

Last Week on "Millenial Reign": It's early 2034, and  young reporter Nina Constantinos has just arrived for her first day as a national correspondent for a major news network (WWN). However, her morning meeting with editor-in-chief Priscilla Davis has been interrupted by breaking news of the death of Pope Stephen XI. Davis has made the snap decision to invite Nina to participate in the story as a sort of baptism-by-fire. Worth noting that the other character you met last week is Sinead Szerbiak, Priscilla's overly-blunt secretary. 

 

This week you'll see the rest of that meeting, and meet most of the rest of my cast (although Nina's sidekick/co-protagonist is going to have to wait until next week). Given some of the feedback I've recieved in the past few weeks, this may be more time spent leading up to the action rather than jumping into it, but it's also a chance to introduce most of the supporting cast. So thoughts on whether this is the best way to do that. 

 

Also would appreciate input on whether I'm introducing too many characters at once, as I'm, doing exposition on three of them in this chapter (Dan, Madison, and Sinead). 

 

Lastly, you will find an awkward gap labeled "TRANSITION" in bold letters. I was hoping to write some action in here before feeding this to you all - but I've been stuck here for some time, so maybe it's better to ask you how to fill it. 

 

Note that certain characters have pretty vulgar vocabularies, so this edition does come with a "Rated R for Language" warning.

 

[Mandamon]

You have distinct characters, and I don't think there are too many.  I got a little confused with the consistency of the addresses.  In the first half you refer to "Priscilla," and in the second half "Davis."  I had to check back to make sure someone else didn't enter the room.

 

This scene is a lot of sitting and talking, and while I understand you're introducing characters, nothing really happens except for Dan and Priscilla arguing.  Nina is not active, and doesn't even speak for most of the chapter.  I feel like a lot of this could have happened off screen without us really missing anything.

 

The argument between Dan and Priscilla was rather trivial for the amount of arguing and stomping around.  Sinead is also overly hostile.  Maybe that's the norm for newsrooms, but it seems like everyone needs to take a deep breath.

 

On the "transition" section, I don't think you necessarily need anything else.  It cuts some of the non-relevant information to get back to forward movement.

 

 

Some notes:

 

pg 4: "laconically sank into"

--I don't think you can laconically sink...

 

pg 6: "Nina didn't seem to hear her,"

It's Ninas POV so she either did or didn't hear.

 

There are a lot of "well"s in this chapter.

[jParker]

I actually really liked this chapter. You've got a lot of interesting personalities coming into the mix and while I wish Nina was a little more active, I'm not sure it would be a character-consistent direction. 

 

Strengths

As above, characters. But also doing exposition without overdoing it--e.g. setting up expectations re: Dan and Madison to be fulfilled or subverted. Your prose felt a lot tighter here than it has in the past. And while it may not be the most ideal scene, it felt like it would be at home in a more popular-style novel (someone like Jasper Fforde, for instance).

 

Opportunities

Again, external references. I get that making post-hoc references to currently popular personalities is fun, but it's cheap and in a year or two, could become a drag on the actual storytelling. I find it highly unlikely that Justin Bieber is still going to be relevant in twenty years--most celebrities from '94 are gone from the spotlight, save the infamous like O.J. Simpson. You're gambling hard on something that doesn't have that big of a payoff and that drops me out of the story.

And as above, I wish Nina was an active participant in her world. Even just having opinions on the interactions taking place before her would be nice. Straight narration doesn't do a whole lot for me.

Edit: Is it just me or are there inconsistent tenses too? I've seen it done for dramatic effect really well, but without scene breaks, it comes across as careless.

 

tl;dr While there's still room to improve, you're getting a lot better.

Edited September 3, 2014 by jParker

[CommandanteLemming]

Thanks both of your for the input. Since both of you flagged tense inconsistencies and one of you caught the Davis/Priscilla dichotomy - sorry about that. I've been retrofitting this and trying to remove all of my "Davis" and "Dragovich" references in favor of "Priscilla" and "Dan", and adding and cutting paragraphs, so hopefully I'll get it cleaned up soon.  

 

Also I'm definitely working on making Nina more active - I'm trying to figure out how to get her "protagging" when she's at a point where she hasn't yet figured out that she has a problem.  

 

Mandamon: I'll work on the stomping around - Dan and Priscilla have a pretty openly hostile and contemptuous relationship by this point in the story, but I can see taking the edge off. As for Sinead, I'm definitely going to work on taking the edge off her, but she's a weird one to handle because her behavior is supposed to seem unnaturally hostile and somewhat non-sensical - half the office thinks she's psychotic. She's a walking red-flag, and she doesn't make sense until you realize that you've only seen the tip of a very large iceberg. But she still probably needs cranked down from 11 - so thanks. 

 

Jparker: Glad you liked it and liked the characters. The Justin Bieber thing is definitely getting cut - almost cut it before sending it this week but figured I'd see how it played. I have a lot of post-hoc references on purpose but I need to cut out the ones that don't actually move the story (Bieber) so that you aren't sick of them when I get to the ones that are actually important (Madison's extensive collection of vintage Taylor Swift memorabilia *oops spoiler* :-P ). 

[Robinski]

Sorry for taking so long to get to this, but I'm glad that I did. My excuse (I mean we've got to have one, it's the name at the top of the forum) is that I'm really caught up in the Write About Dragons course, which is really good, and he got me writing almost every day - awesome!).

 

So, I've been uploading the files to my Google Docs folder, because it's so much easier to make in-line comments and suggestions. I'll email you the file back, I hope you don't mind.

 

I agree with Mandamon (there it is again, <sigh>) that you don't need anything for the transition, I think it follows on fine. I'm going to disagree with Manda and JP on Nina's activity level however. She is first time in a new workplace, confronted by the boss of bosses and some really strong personalities. I think I would do exactly as she does, keep my yap shut and let them rip chunks out of each other.

 

Totally agree with JP on the pop 'culture' references, those will burn you down the line, if not straight away.

 

In terms of the writing, phew, that was a real humdinger. I really enjoyed the conflict, which was just all over the place, in a good way. It really did feel that Nina was the innocent country girl dropped into the maelstrom of the global news room. I thought it worked very well, and some of the quips were tremendous.

I enjoyed this so much more, that I think it reinforces my feelings about the earlier submissions. The initial set up fair enough, although I struggled with the tone a bit to begin with. The next two submissions were, I think all about bringing Nina up to this point, but I would have liked to get to Chapter 4 much quicker, with less of the hometown tweeness.

You've got some great characters going in this chapter, but I think it would engaged readers more immediately if that material was closer to the start. I suspect some if the readers might not get past the slower, schmaltzier stuff.

In summary, still interested to see where it all goes. I'm still really not sure at all what the plot is, but I would be disappointed if it was just about reporting on the death of a pope. I'm sure it's not, but these good characters need to be doing interesting stuff to retain the reader interest. I think dropping some main plot intrigue really soon would be a good idea.

[CommandanteLemming]

Thanks so much for the feedback and especially for the tracked changes. Hopefully it gets moving at a better clip from here on out. I think the "shmaltz chapters" are going to have to get relegated to flashback later in the book and heavily re-written. It's good background for me as an author but for the readers it slows things down - and I have other (less shmaltzy) Appleton flashbacks planned, so this could easily be one of them - that or I could shorten it to one chapter. Either way - future drafts will jump in faster. 

 

And it's not just about the election of the pope - that certainly plays a role but it's not the main plot. Actually I've already dropped a lot of main plot intrigue, you just have to be looking for it. 

 

I'm not sure how much to drop here - but the main plot is internal to WWN. The stories they cover are catalysts.