1/22/24 - Ace of Hearts - Everlasting Sunset sub 17, L (3243 words)

[Appol PhD they/he]

Hi everyone,

 

This submission focuses once more on A connecting with her soldiers while they infodump, which I'll probably change in revisions due to the consensus being that those scenes don't work for the story that well. If it feels the same way here feel free to skim since I'll need to revamp a lot of these kinds of scenes anyways.

 

Thanks as always!

[Silk she/her]

On 1/22/2024 at 12:35 PM, Ace of Hearts said:

which I'll probably change in revisions due to the consensus being that those scenes don't work for the story that well.

Yeah, I found I felt pretty similarly about these scenes as previous ones. I think it's a mix of there just being so many of them, these scenes often adhering to the same formula of 'everybody has a trinket,' and the fact that we often get several of them at once. 

In this chapter, the thing I missed most was the sense of forward motion. Last chapter was talking about finding the dspeaker--down to having a culprit even!--and I was looking forward to some sort of confrontation, but that didn't happen. You do bring the referendum back at the end, but we don't seem to have made any progress on it aside from it being closer in time. 

As I read:

P1 I had completely forgotten that L was here. Where has she been this whole time?

P3 “I know you see [trees] all the time as a minister.” Not sure why this is different for ministers vs soldiers? Even if the soldiers are confined to the beach (not sure on that one?) the beach in J did not seem to be so far from town that they wouldn’t see trees.

P4 “I did mean to hurt him” this seems like a fairly sudden change of heart.

P6 “How could she get through to X” if she’s having trouble getting through to X, why was he helping her with g?

“She needed someone to don the mantle of leadership… and X didn’t seem interested” then why X?

Also not sure whether the focus of this scene was supposed to be D or X.

P7 “Not alone alone…” Harassing them into volunteering seems kind of counter to the point?

P9 “A normal life” so I think the overall sentiment here works well, is this something the soldiers think of as “normal”?

I forgot all about the deal she had made with D. I suspect this needs to either be made more of or less of, depending on the changes you make elsewhere. But, keeping it might be one way to mix up one of the “A connects with her people” scenes if need be, and maybe draw in some of the larger threats?

[Mandamon he/him]

Sorry for the late response--I was neck deep in a developmental edit all week...

Seems I have similar reactions to @Silk. There's some good stuff here, but the story is sort of languishing while we look specifically at character development. Can the soldiers developing be tied into their actions rather than a static thing they've bought or found? That might move things along more.

Notes while reading:

pg 1: Was L here before? I don't remember her being in the last couple chapters.

pg 3: "I know you see them all the time as a minister."
This is something I haven't been clear on so far. Are the soldiers kept in barracks or something so that they never see the city that's a short walk from where they're fighting?

pg 4: “Even with a minister lifespan"
--so we know how long this is?

pg 7: Yes, lots of talking by this point, but not a lot happening.

pg 10: Some good development with D.

pg 14: A lot of talk through here and some character development, but yes, I think things can be punched up a lot to get back to some action.

[Appol PhD they/he]

Thanks @Silk @Mandamon for the feedback! As an update, I'd like to continue submitting this story but I had some chronic health issues flare up so we'll see how long it is until I'm in a place to keep submitting. Thanks as always for your all your comments so far!

[Silk she/her]

14 hours ago, Ace of Hearts said:

Thanks @Silk @Mandamon for the feedback! As an update, I'd like to continue submitting this story but I had some chronic health issues flare up so we'll see how long it is until I'm in a place to keep submitting. Thanks as always for your all your comments so far!

I hope you have everything under control soon!