Reading Excuses - 2015/16/06 - The Green Ocean, Chapter Five (5,070 words)

[Majestic Fox]

This is a bit rough, so apologies for the missing bits, the skeletal dialogue, the typos (don't worry about flagging those up). 

 

That said, hope you enjoy it!

Edited June 16, 2015 by Majestic Fox

[Mandamon]

Some notes first:

 

pg 1: "Willow forced herself to cry before meeting Lewis"

--why?  Seems an odd wording.  Would she not have cried otherwise?

 

pg 3: this may just be the "skeletal dialogue," but they seem to shift from poetry to singing.  Which one is it?

 

Lol.  I like the songs.  Very meta ;-)

 

pg 5: drinking mead.  I guess Willow's old enough to have a partner of some sort, but I don't really have a good grasp on her age.  I keep thinking of her as a little girl, but she's obviously older than that.

 

pg 7: I'm interested to see who this Emin is and how North Peak is different.  Do they follow the scripture, or is that something special to Willow's village?

 

pg 8: "something she needed to do before she left. "

--I thought this was going to be informing all the people she mentioned previously about leaving, not visiting the giant again.

 

pg 11:  We get a name for the attacking creature - Vora - but no description aside from it's a creature, and big.  How big?  Is it like a giant pig?  

 

pg 13-14: the giant puts Willow down, but then runs off with her clinging to his hands.  Does he pick her back up?

 

pg 14-15:  Still no description of the vora, and not a lot of the giant either, so using him as a comparison doesn't really help.  I guess Willow fits in his hand?  But that doesn't tell me a whole lot.

 

pg 16: "Kendrick squirmed in her arms but she held him fast"

Wasn't Willow too weak to run a few minutes ago?  

 

pg 20: I don't remember who Ewen is.

 

Overall, I liked where this chapter went.  It's certainly a departure from the previous ones, with a lot more action, as well as consequences.  However, whether it's the unfinished nature or what, this was a lot harder to follow than previous chapters.  Once they start being used, I don't understand why the scripture does what it does, or why the giant would be an abomination when there's other creatures like the vora around.  The lack of description made this suffer as well, since I had a hard time picturing sizes, and what the vora resembled. 

It looks like Willow is about to embark on an adventure with Lewis (assuming he's still alive), so I'm happy to see more of the world.  I think it would be easier to give a good assessment on chapters when they're a little more finished than this.

[Mr. Wednesday]

I'm trying to jump back into things after a month off, so a lot of my comments come from reading chapters 2-5 all in one week. The story is really good, and I can tell by how polished your first chapter was that once you do some revisions on the rest of the book it will be in really good shape.

 

Overall comments:

 

-I'm confused about the romantic subplot. I am reading these chapters straight through, and yet I feel like I'm missing bits and pieces. This is in line with Robinski's comment about the abundance of character names, and I agree with him. 

 

-As much as I like the detail you include about Willow's day-to-day responsibilities, those sections, particularly in Chapter 3, border on telling instead of showing. I could do with fewer tasks overall, and showing her attend to them in the present rather than listing them out to show the passage of time.

 

-The discovery of the black mark on her chest definitely shouldn't be brushed off as something that can wait until morning. I suspect that no matter how exhausted she was, that should have jolted her awake. It's a pretty big development. The same goes for her remembering it in the morning. She kind of goes through several other things in her mind before she remembers the mark.

 

-I agree that she takes too long to come to the conclusion that she should heal Myra in the forest. That should be the first thing that comes to mind if she had already spent so much time thinking about it prior to that interaction. These little questions about Willow's thought process and motivation are beginning to weaken her as a character, whereas in the first chapter she was very believable and sympathetic.

 

-I'm unclear about the religion. I think the idea of dropping the reader into this culture and not explaining things right off the bat is a good method, it certainly avoids info dumping, but at this point it's giving me the impression that I missed something along the way which weakens my faith in the story itself.

 

-In general, I get the impression that you're making a lot of things up as you go, which is fine for a first draft, but it's a little hard to follow as alpha readers. Like I mentioned before, this week I read chapters 2-5 all in one sitting and I still felt as if I had somehow missed several important details.

 

-There is no description of the vora other than the fact that it's vicious and has a skeletal head. By default I pictured something reptilian, along the lines of a dragon or a dinosaur, but I'm pretty sure there was nothing in the story to support that image. The action works well, and the tension between Willow and the townspeople is very well done, but without a better picture of what's happening the scene loses some of its effectiveness.

 

-"For once in her life, there was she could do to help." This chapter is full of typos and errors, which I know you'll catch on your revision, but this one in particular stuck out to me as missing a pretty crucial word. Is it "nothing" or "something"?? 

 

-Pg. 10 you repeat the phrase "crashing wind"

 

-Overall, nice work, but I agree with Mandamon that we'll be able to give more helpful feedback on something that isn't a first draft. Keep up the good work!

[Majestic Fox]

Thanks for the feedback Mandamon and Wednesday. 

 

And apologies for the confusion. You are right. I'm winging it through the first draft. I have a growing list of things to improve or add on the second draft. 

 

The best thing about this forum is it gives me a writing deadline. I'm getting more done than I did before. Also, knowing that the work is going to be read at the end of the week changes the experience of writing for the better - as if it's more real somehow. Know what I mean? 

[Robinski]

Yes, okay, I won't comment on the rough stuff, just don't stop writing! In fact, it's not all that rough, easy enough to read with the odd bump along the way.

I continue to enjoy the story and liked the pacing of this chapter. My main comment overall is in the relation to the vora, I think the description could be punched up a bit. I didn't have a clear picture of what was going on. What kind of creature is a vora, what does it look like? Also, the description of the destruction, people running, being killed and injured, could be dialled-up a bit (for me) to ram home the threat. Seems to me it's a big change point in the story and it deserves to be more 'cataclysmic'.

In general though, I continue to look forward to the next submission - which has got to be a good sign, right?

-----------------------------------

"He was sat on the floor..." > 'He was sitting on the floor...' - I know that views differ about such things but, to me, grammar should be correct, unless in dialogue.

‘Where would I stay?’ A suggestive spark shone in his eyes.

‘There’s room in the stables.’ Willow replied innocently. - Firstly, I like this exchange. This (so far) is to date the most natural-feeling conversation with romantic overtones. It seems that Lewis reciprocates Willow's feelings, presuming she interprets his 'suggestive spark' in the same way as the narrative does.

"Can't you do it?" is pretty darn suggestive (of his feelings towards her) unless he is too naive for words and/or socially inept.

Personally, I don't like phrases like "She searched her mind..." Where else is she going to search? And it's really her memory, accepting that's in her mind of course. It's something to do with stating the blindingly obvious, I think.

Why would they exchange poems or songs when they are eating? Maybe this is just a discontinuity in the narrative.

Are the italicised lines lyrics? Those words are particularly un-lyrical. Are they holding place or a description of Willow's feeling as she is singing? I'm a bit unclear. I think that section could be extended, either way.

She gives up very easily in trying to penetrate his self mockery.

For me, the 'spraying the drink' line is inappropriately comical. That's not the tone here and it threatened to crash the mood.

I'm not sure how she can "listen to the dull ache in her chest".

"He had neither moved nor *spoken*..."

Why is he a fool for caring enough about her to want to accompany her to this wise man?

I don't get all that much sense of what kind of creature the vora is. I think the description of the carnage it is causing could be a bit more visceral.

"Myra* was dead in an instant."

There's a real scatter of names on the last page, people talking or being described. I don't remember who they all or. I think its too much, robs from the pace of this section as the reader tries to remember who all the different names are.

[Robinski]

Also, knowing that the work is going to be read at the end of the week changes the experience of writing for the better - as if it's more real somehow. Know what I mean?

Absolutely, it's great motivator. I don't mind the first draft nature personally. My advice would be get it down rather than falling back into polishing. Having said that, switching on grammar checker would pick up the discontinuities.

Like Mr. Wednesday (welcome back!!), I enjoyed the tension between Willow and the powers that be, with Olga speaking out for her, trying to call Klyne off. Nicely done with the scene at the end of the chapter. Like Mandamon, I'm interested to see the wider world.