Jan 14 - Syme - The Second Son (V)

[Syme]

This topic is for my short story "The Second Son".

[Mandamon he/him]

I Think this is a solid story overall. It's consise, follows the intent you set out, and covers everything you promise. The only problem I could see was that it was very predictable. There was absolutely no surprise. You kept having Sigrun ask if her son could have done these horrible things, and I was mentally answering her, "Yes. Yes he did." It seems like you're trying to raise the level of tension by having Sigrun wonder, but it fell flat for me because I already know. Maybe it was because the gist of the story was rendered as a sort of prophecy by the god (?) in the beginning? We know Hilmar is evil, and we're just along for the ride seeing things play out. We even knew he would leave in the end--you already told us so.

I think this could be better if you made it more suspensful, and let us wonder if Hilmar is actually changed or not. I'm not sure how to do this with your setup, unless maybe you introduce a competing evil, or another killer? I don't know.

Also, I would take out the runes. I love seeing them and the nordic names, but I have no idea how to pronounce Þór or Þórður. I'm guessing this is a "Th" for Thor, but I keep wanting to say "P" while I'm reading and it throws me off.

[Syme]

Thanks for the critique.

This is pretty much also what I think of the story.

As for the "runes", those are just normal letters that don't exist in modern English. Thorn (Þ, þ) is pronounced as a voiceless th (e.g. in throw) and eth (Ð, ð) is pronounced as a voiced th (e.g. in this). Both letters were once used in English (as well as in Old Norse) and are today still used in Icelandic and eth is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

I'm still uncertain whether including them was a good idea. To me in makes the story feel more authentic as there were lots of names back then that included a thorn or and eth and not using any of that names would feel artificial and replacing them with "th" would make them look stupid. I mean Thorthur just looks dumb for instance. But I can definitely see how it would be confusing to readers not familiar with those letters.

[Mandamon he/him]

I mean Thorthur just looks dumb for instance.

This made me laugh. Although "Pordur" sounds just about as bad if you don't know the letters.

Edited January 16, 2013 by Mandamon

[cjhuitt he/him]

I agree with Mandamon on this one -- it's a lot like some of my stories: technically correct, but nothing to keep the reader reading. (In fact, that happens a little too often in my own stories, but I digress.) The only other thing I'll say about it is that there are a few times where things are somewhat repetitive, usually stated outright and then shown right away. The ruined relationship with his uncle comes to mind.

Tangentially related to the story, I had wondered how to pronounce those character also, and I also ended up substituting a P and a D for them. I like the intent, but you might want to make sure they work well enough with those sounds as well.