9/9/2024-ginger_reckoning-hivemind buddycop book, sub 2- L, V, G-5205 words

[ginger_reckoning]

Hey all, here’s the next few chapters. Nothing much to look for specifically, though I do wonder if the structure of chapter 3 works. Also just so you know, I did cut the last section of chapter 3 out to make it fit the word count (I know it’s still a little over, sorry) so just be aware there’s one more section in chapter 3 in which silence starts attacking the city and they go to save it 

 

Tags for violence, I think some gore in this one, language, and just a general warning for self harm and psychosis throughout this whole book 

 

Thank you so much everyone! 

[Silk she/her]

How common is the bone juice? (Ugh, it sounds like something totally different from what you meant when I phrase it like that.) Is it something that A might expect people to be able to brew up, or does it indicate some special knowledge on L’s part?

P5 “…close your eyes. Tell me what you see.” Until L clarifies in the next sentence, this is a somewhat baffling instruction…

P7 so I’m wondering how legit L is in her kindness, or if she’s just using A.

P7 “She understood why L needed a disguise, but why her?” I was surprised by this sentiment considering she’s from a group of people who are ostracized because of their disease.

I’m curious how much time has passed since the last chapter.

P9 “…lounging on her cloud” this makes me much more suspicious of L. She’s certainly not terribly considerate of A.

P11 “she knew what she would see if she looked at it.” Maybe WRS, but I’m missing why this is supposed to be ominous.

We seem to be moving pretty quickly from scene to scene. By the time we get to the bit with L reading from the tablet of R, I’m starting to feel this is a bit too easy.

Edit: Ah, it looks like they weren’t supposed to be there! A bit more buildup to that and/or them getting out might help. But then again the scene is over fairly quickly and easily too.

P13 “if S ate yet another town…” this implies that there have been multiple towns, not just where A came from. It feels like we’re skipping over a lot!

P14 “…an impossibly long snake from her throat.” Gross. But also, very effective.

I’m very curious as to how A thinks they’re going to stop this thing, though. Do they have any understanding of how to fight it? What’s been tried and failed? Has anything they’ve done been successful? L’s encountered it before, right?

P17 So uh… I’m just going to assume the Dragon Ball Z reference here is on purpose. I mean, even I got it.

Overall: I enjoyed the little snippets of various scenes that we got, but it felt like we were skipping over things much too quickly get a full story—or maybe lingering too long for it to be a montage. I like the little bits and pieces we got but by the end of the sub, really wanted more detail on how they are doing what they’re doing, what their plan is, how much of a chance they actually think they have, etc.  

[Ace of Hearts]

Excited to dig into this as well!

Overall: I continue to really like the contrast between the comedic tone and dark atmosphere. I don’t have a lot of overarching comments (especially with the chapters tackling lots of different events and ideas), so I’ll let my LBLs speak for themselves.

As I go:

Pg 1. Why wasn’t she taken care of properly before? It seemed like her relationship with Le was good; did they simply not have the means?

Pg 5. We’re getting some good characterization from Li here, though I’m still looking for more from A. Though maybe if the characters around her end up having big enough personalities it’s okay for her to be a bit more vanilla to balance them out.

Pg 6. The part about A’s goals is something I’d like to see more of earlier. Retroactively I can understand that the conversation with Le back in chapter 1 was aimed at establishing this but I wasn’t picking up on A’s emotions in the moment.

Pg 7. This ties A into the plot nicely, though I wonder if there’s a way to work in her skills/goals around music into this to tie her characterization to the plot. Guess I’ll have to wait and see!

Pg 8. Okay I just have to say that I love the racoon’s name. Powerful witches giving their familiars silly names is always a great gag.

Pg 11. I like the sign that A’s music is going to be useful but I think we need some context about what bards can do in this world. Are they just musicians or are we playing by D&D rules where they can channel their music as magic?

Pg 14. I like the thematic thread here about A trying to overcome her pain which doesn’t seem like it’s going to end well and having to learn she can’t just push through everything. Or at least that’s where it seems like it’s going to me.

Pg 17. …Is that a dragonball joke? On a more serious note I don’t tend to like precise quantifications of magical power/energy like this but I’ll try to keep an open mind.

Pg 18. This might be a hot take but I do like the modern colloquialisms in fantasy like the bit right before the scene break. I think the contrast with the dark nature of the setting also helps it here.

Pg 19. Fast forwarding years feels a bit jarring here given how quickly we’ve seen S move. I think I’d need at least a sentence speculating about what they’re up to (even if it’s nothing) and why. Also if years pass then I think we also need to know how this plays into L’s and A’s long term plans, even if that’s L refusing to tell A how things play into their long-term plans.

[ginger_reckoning]

23 hours ago, Silk said:

Is it something that A might expect people to be able to brew up, or does it indicate some special knowledge on L’s part?

The latter. thanks for pointing that out!

23 hours ago, Silk said:

P7 “She understood why L needed a disguise, but why her?” I was surprised by this sentiment considering she’s from a group of people who are ostracized because of their disease.

good point

23 hours ago, Silk said:

I’m curious how much time has passed since the last chapter

23 hours ago, Silk said:

enjoyed the little snippets of various scenes that we got, but it felt like we were skipping over things much too quickly get a full story—or maybe lingering too long for it to be a montage

Yes, the intention was to have it be more like a montage. Any suggestions to make it more like one? Would tags before each section like "5 ears and four months ago" etc be helpful, do you think?

23 hours ago, Silk said:

I’m very curious as to how A thinks they’re going to stop this thing, though. Do they have any understanding of how to fight it? What’s been tried and failed? Has anything they’ve done been successful? L’s encountered it before, right?

hmmm yeah this is also a good point

23 hours ago, Ace of Hearts said:

Pg 1. Why wasn’t she taken care of properly before? It seemed like her relationship with Le was good; did they simply not have the means?

Yeah, they simply didn't have the means. I think i should specify that

23 hours ago, Ace of Hearts said:

Retroactively I can understand that the conversation with Le back in chapter 1 was aimed at establishing this but I wasn’t picking up on A’s emotions in the moment.

good to know!

23 hours ago, Ace of Hearts said:

On a more serious note I don’t tend to like precise quantifications of magical power/energy like this but I’ll try to keep an open mind

Haha believe it or not, neither do I, and I kind of poke fun at the concept later. But i also kind of play it straight too, so maybe I can't really say anything

 

23 hours ago, Ace of Hearts said:

Pg 11. I like the sign that A’s music is going to be useful but I think we need some context about what bards can do in this world. Are they just musicians or are we playing by D&D rules where they can channel their music as magic?

I was kind of going off that assumption, since it seemed to me like bard is a pretty ubiquitous archetype, but based on everyone's comments I think I should do a little more showing what a bard is and can do? I think I can combine that with a little bit more of showing what A was up to before the monster attack too

23 hours ago, Ace of Hearts said:

Fast forwarding years feels a bit jarring here given how quickly we’ve seen S move. I think I’d need at least a sentence speculating about what they’re up to (even if it’s nothing) and why. Also if years pass then I think we also need to know how this plays into L’s and A’s long term plans, even if that’s L refusing to tell A how things play into their long-term plans.

Hmm I'll need to think on how to do this

Thank you for the responses! They are super helpful

 

[Silk she/her]

On 9/10/2024 at 12:45 PM, ginger_reckoning said:

Yes, the intention was to have it be more like a montage. Any suggestions to make it more like one? Would tags before each section like "5 ears and four months ago" etc be helpful, do you think?

This could potentially help, yes--and maybe shorter scenes, so it's clear we shouldn't be expecting as much detail as a full "detailed" scene? On the opposite side of the spectrum, the first thing that actually popped into my head was getting rid of a lot of the short scene breaks altogether, making it a single scene where it's clearly a summary of a long period of time with a few details peppered in. You could also/instead add an explanation that they're training over years or other bridging language (maybe you could work in something to address @Ace of Hearts's comments about why they're moving slowly to address what seems like the very immediate problem of S). 

Ultimately I think what I'm stumbling on right now is we get a bunch of short scenes with just enough detail that they feel like they're full scenes, rather than snippets in a montage, but don't quite get enough information to make them function as full scenes, so I was wondering why we weren't getting enough information but it took me too long to get the signal that this was a montage. There are a bunch of ways you could fix that. 

Or, totally off-the-cuff idea that may get way too far into structural stuff you don't want to change (especially since I've only read these few chapters you've submitted! but also, feel free to discard this kind of prescriptive suggestion if it's not useful for you): what if the training montage was turned into a prologue and Chapter 1 actually starts when the characters are ready to do their thing? 

Edited September 12 by Silk

[ginger_reckoning]

On 9/12/2024 at 3:02 PM, Silk said:

making it a single scene where it's clearly a summary of a long period of time with a few details peppered in. You could also/instead add an explanation that they're training over years or other bridging language (maybe you could work in something to address @Ace of Hearts's comments about why they're moving slowly to address what seems like the very immediate problem of S). 

Hmm yeah, I think this could work. I do a little of this in the last section of the chapter, which I cut for length this week. I wonder if it would work better throughout the chapter, but there is quite a bit going on in this chapter and I would need to find other ways to get the information across. Hmmm. 

On 9/12/2024 at 3:02 PM, Silk said:

what if the training montage was turned into a prologue and Chapter 1 actually starts when the characters are ready to do their thing? 

This could work too, but in the next couple of chapters it does immediately go into a big action scene and I think a little characterization before that is still helpful, since its already kind of sparse. I'll have to think more about this 

Thanks for the suggestions!

[Mandamon he/him]

Going to give feedback on this and the next one, since I've been busy finishing up edits on my latest story.

I think the tone of this is good, but I have generally the same concerns as @Silk and @Ace of Hearts. There's a lot of really cool stuff, but it's too short to get anything meaningful from it and too long to be a montage. I think condensing all of chapter 3 into a few sentences, briefly referencing the cool things they did, will make it more of a montage, and the reader will actually get more connection out of it, rather than being confused.

Notes while reading:

pg 4: "I heard that the archmage set you on fire.” 
--that's an opening question.

pg 5: "“I’m a changed woman now"
--okay, I'm actually more interested in that journey.

pg 6: "see the monsters walking beside her."
--what monsters are these? Confused.

pg 6: "You have a connection to it.”
--how does this make her see other monsters?

pg 7: Well, we have the quest set now. They're going to save the world from the monster. I feel like I don't have quite enough attachment to the characters though. Like I want to know more about L and how she changed her life.

pg 8: "the illusion of a fat monkey with golden fur"
--Any particular reason why? Seems like everyone has an illusion now. Is there any cost to it?
--edit: okay, A asks this herself in the next paragraph.

pg 9: "“The information we’re looking for..."
--What is this now? Were they looking for clue? I'm getting a bit lost in what's happening.

pg 10: was there more to climbing the mountain? We seem to be skipping through a lot of events.

pg 12: There are a lot of cool events happening here, but I only get the barest hint of them and then we go on to something else. It makes it hard for the story to hold my attention.

pg 14: "I teleported right into the town..."
--I'm still not connected to the characters here. It seems like a lot of actions are done for the plot, but we're not getting any of the moments that these developments change the characters. We just get bite-sized pieces of cool stories that we never learn anything more about.

pg 17: "Through her training, she had been able to cultivate twenty-three manna for herself,"
--this is a weird progression fantasy statistic sort of shoehorned into things. Will this matter later? I don't think it's been mentioned up until now.

pg 18: "but that is literally a whole other story."
--I'm feeling this way about most things in this chapter. They all seem really cool, but we aren't learning anything about them.

pg 19: "It took years, in fact."
--Yeah, I think this is the problem. The story keeps stopping and starting. Do we even need this part if we're going to pass through years? I don't get a sense of accomplishment from A beating L, because we haven't gotten to enjoy the journey.

[ginger_reckoning]

19 hours ago, Mandamon said:

pg 5: "“I’m a changed woman now"
--okay, I'm actually more interested in that journey.

Welllll.....I actually did write like 20k words of this story haha, but it just felt too much like a dnd campaign to me, so I never finished it. Maybe I will go back someday

19 hours ago, Mandamon said:

I feel like I don't have quite enough attachment to the characters though.

that's good to know

19 hours ago, Mandamon said:

--this is a weird progression fantasy statistic sort of shoehorned into things. Will this matter later? I don't think it's been mentioned up until now.

I'm going to be honest, I mainly use this as a shorthand because I didn't want to actually come up with a whole magic system (magic systems tend to be my least favorite thing, I know, shocking for a Sanderson fan haha), and I felt like most readers would be trope-aware enough for it to be useful. Yes, it does come up later. Idk, multiple people have mentioned it now, does it seem too tropey?

Thanks for the feedback! Based on what everyone says, I think I will do a major rewrite on this chapter on my second draft