9/23/2024-ginger_reckoning-hivemind buddycop book-sub 4-l, v, g- 4996 words

[ginger_reckoning]

Hey all! Tags this time for suicide--concerns a man contemplating ending his life for most of a chapter, then deciding to go through with it. Also later, some heavy gore but in a "horde of zombies" kind of way. Other than that, standard tags for language and violence. 

 

My main concerns this chapter are with the characters of S and A. Do they work? Are they interesting? Is there enough build up before this point to be interested in them? A in particular, I'm picking up that she's feeling a little flat. (Though this chapter is mostly action with her lol) 

 

Anyway, thank you all again!

 

[Appol PhD they/he]

Overall: On the characters of S and A, what I like about them and my hangups about them are kind of the opposite of each other. S has a fun personality but I’m not always invested in its role in the story because we haven’t seen any real vulnerability from it so its victory feels inevitable with no real stakes. In contrast, I like A’s role in the story and her background as someone who channels pain through dance into magic, but her actual characterization feels too nonspecific for me. Here it seems like she wants to stop S because it’s going to destroy a big city and she is vulnerable to the image of her old guardian being used against her, neither of which give me a good feel for who she is as a distinct person.

I think that covers most of my big comments, actually. The fight felt a bit long without a lot of progress being made, but I think that ties back to the characterization comments more than the fight itself.  

As I go:

Pg 1. More fun commentary, though at this point I don’t totally trust the story to connect the social commentary to the main ideas or plot of the story.

Pg 3. One the one hand I do think it’s funny that B ascribes the city falling to basically karma when S is unrelated to all of that but at the same time it also makes it hard to feel like this scene matters to the story.

Pg 4-5. I like the idea of getting more of S’s characterization through B but because it feels like the plot is stalling for this I’m having a hard time staying engaged despite a lot of fun lines.

Pg 7. This does help to give the convo a bit more relevance, though it doesn’t have a big impact without knowing why S is incorporating people or what it plans to do with that.

Pg 8-10. The scene flows nicely though I think what’s holding me back is the lack of personal stakes for A. Which feels weird to say when she’s trying to stop the thing that killed her whole troupe but I’m not feeling a precise motivation from her beyond saving the city.

Pg 11. One of my rules of thumb is that if I have to rely on exclamation points, the dialogue isn’t strong enough on its own. Here, it feels like a symptom of A’s characterization being nonspecific.  

Pg 12. I do like the way magic can cut off her pain but that comes with big risks. Also could be very dangerous for her to get wounded and not even realize it.

Pg 13-14. I think the main holdup for me here is that I don’t really believe A’s actually making progress by fighting the different copies of S so counterintuitively it feels like the pace really slows here.

Pg 15. These lines from S are good, but they highlight my hangup that if there’s no progress being made here this scene doesn’t feel like it helps advance the story.

[Mandamon he/him]

Sorry for the long silence! I've been doing developmental edits, but hope to get caught up tomorrow.

This was a really interesting juxtaposition of chapters, and I have a longer explanation below, but yes, I think S and A are feeling a little flat. It's especially evident here because we have such a nice focus on a random character. I think he has more personality in seven pages than S and A have shown in several chapters.

Notes while reading:

pg 7: I really like the twist with the healing light.

pg 8: The chapter overall is interesting. it's sort of a side story, but does give a little more character to silence. I was going to say it could be cut, but I think it actually works.

pg 11: Conversely, this section seems a little weak. There's a lot of mana cost for spells, which I don't really understand, so it doesn't do a lot.

pg 18: It's a big contrast between the chapter with the MC and the chapter before it. I think the one with the random guy was a lot stronger. The MC chapter was basically just a big fight, and I didn't have much connection to what was happening or whether she got injured. On the other hand, I was concerned about B and whether he would jump. It's the difference between a short character focus and an action chapter with not a lot of character depth to connect to.

[ginger_reckoning]

On 10/4/2024 at 8:12 AM, Ace of Hearts said:

Pg 1. More fun commentary, though at this point I don’t totally trust the story to connect the social commentary to the main ideas or plot of the story.

That makes sense. I'm really considering taking out part of the prologue I originally posted to keep S's origins slightly more of a mystery because I do think that the specifics of the city play into why S is doing what it is doing, but that doesn't really come up as an important plot point until like another 50k words later. That and, as you have noticed, it's a way for me to provide some commentary haha. Hmm. I'll have to think about how to make this more relevant. 

 

On 10/4/2024 at 8:12 AM, Ace of Hearts said:

Pg 8-10. The scene flows nicely though I think what’s holding me back is the lack of personal stakes for A. Which feels weird to say when she’s trying to stop the thing that killed her whole troupe but I’m not feeling a precise motivation from her beyond saving the city.

 

Pg 11. One of my rules of thumb is that if I have to rely on exclamation points, the dialogue isn’t strong enough on its own. Here, it feels like a symptom of A’s characterization being nonspecific.  

Both of these are good points, thanks

 

On 10/28/2024 at 7:20 PM, Mandamon said:

Sorry for the long silence! I've been doing developmental edits, but hope to get caught up tomorrow.

All good! Are the developmental edits on something you think we will get to see? If so, I'm excited!

On 10/28/2024 at 7:20 PM, Mandamon said:

pg 8: The chapter overall is interesting. it's sort of a side story, but does give a little more character to silence. I was going to say it could be cut, but I think it actually works.

Nice! Glad to hear it! 

 

On 10/28/2024 at 7:20 PM, Mandamon said:

pg 11: Conversely, this section seems a little weak. There's a lot of mana cost for spells, which I don't really understand, so it doesn't do a lot.

Hmmm yeah, I think this ties to one of the biggest things I'll need to work on as I work on the second draft. Unfortunately, it also seems that I will need to work on developing the magic system more.

 

[Mandamon he/him]

On 10/31/2024 at 2:36 PM, ginger_reckoning said:

All good! Are the developmental edits on something you think we will get to see? If so, I'm excited!

Well, they're for my publishing house, so yes! I've been working on the books coming out next year.

[Silk she/her]

 P2 Are monsters a usual occurrence? Even considering his current state, B seems to be taking this very well.

P7 “I lied about the choice…” yeah, was wondering about that.

At this point I am really wondering why S does what it does.

“She hadn’t failed, at least not yet” I’m also wondering again what makes this moment different, since it’s been implied that there have been a bunch of instances like this over the course of the montage we got earlier. Does this city hold some special significance, is there a reason A thinks she’s more ready than any of the moments before, etc?

“I can take care of the monsters on the ground” – looking forward to seeing this, we really have no idea what her abilities actually are!

P12 “there would be a cost to this, of course” I really like this ideas a narrative arc, but it doesn’t feel very threatening yet because I don’t have idea what that cost actually entails.

P14 “plus a few extra [swords] she picked up off the ground” uhh, does she have multiple swords in each hand then?

“L’s face looked at her with horror.” I like this twist.

Overall: I enjoyed the action, but don’t quite feel grounded enough to make this chapter effective (I agree with the comments that the chapter about B was moreso!). I don’t know enough about the magic and its costs, so the magic doesn’t feel it doesn’t feel threatening. And I sort of touched n this in my LBLs, but I feel like I don’t quite know what led to this moment being the important one as opposed to any of the other atrocities S has committed/any of the other conflicts A's apparently had with it. 

I was more engaged at the second part of the chapter, when everything seems to be going A’s way and she’s suddenly faced with her mother’s face. It was a good way to reward the “she’s so unstoppable, something must be about to go horribly wrong” setup. And, I feel like we learned something interesting about S’s powers (in that it has to “keep” bodies around to make use of them apparently).