Reading Excuses 20150810 Scholomancer Ch5 L

[rdpulfer]

Renfield has betrayed his Master Dracula and left him at the bottom of the ocean. One year later, he's still recovering from the psychological scars, under the care of his psychiatrist Evelyn and the mysterious Bannister. Meanwhile, vampire hunter Stephanie Van Helsing is still on Renfield's trail, until she has a mysterious vision. Confiding in only her partner Jason Harker and her mentor Hank Irving, Stephanie is determined to discover the meaning of these visions. However, Irving plans to use the visions as part of a sinister plan to heal his cancer-ridden wife Rebecca.

[Mandamon]

There was good description in the tunnel scene on this one.  I also liked the various monsters and what they were doing.  It gave a sense of life to the chapter.

That said, not a lot happens.  Renfield gets to the terminal, finds out Bannister hasn't done anything, and then remembers he knows all the exits.  All of these are good things, but I feel like they aren't really progressing the story any.  Since the first couple chapters where Renfield sinks Dracula and the hunters mess up a bust had some action, but since then, not really anything else of significance has happened--it's been more character building.  I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but fully developed characters that aren't actually doing anything are still not that interesting.

Anyway, hopefully I'm not being too harsh.  I still like the story concept, and I'm eager to see what happens when the hunters and monsters start to clash.

 

 

Notes (mostly grammar things--there were a few typos and unfinshed sentences this time around):

 

pg 1: "but the Renfield’s family "

--The Renfields, or Renfield's family

 

Pg 1: "Renfield stopped thinking about the past. He had more important things on his mind. "

--Unnecessary

 

Pg 1: "Renfield really didn’t want what these tunnels held escaping "

--incomplete sentece.

 

pg 2: "fireless locomotive, powered by hot water which coursed through the rounding cylinder. "

--how old is Renfield?

 

pg 2: "He kept the phone pressed to his face."

--maybe to his ear?  I have this visual of a phone smushed right into his nose.

 

pg 3: "Freudian sick."

--Freudan slip (Is that error itself a Freudian slip?)

 

The humor with the wall/gorilla seems a little forced.

 

pg 4: Is there some significance to Gill being put out of commission by a chupacabra?  I was hoping to see more of him.

 

pg 5: "Renfield watched the gorilla’s blocky form depart, and then made his move."

--This makes it sound like Renfield was planning to be intimidated by a gorilla...

 

pg 6: "Fury"

-Furry

 

pg 6: "giant man with a bald head and electric eyes strode into a tab carrying a slab of meat"

-electric eyes?  Tab=lab?

 

pg 7: "There were hammers in one hand and several nails."

--one of his hands?  Where where the nails?

 

pg 8: "Bannister reached for a towel and began to dry off his hands."

--Were his hands wet while he was hammering?

 

pg 9: "Renfield’s mouth dropped into a smirk"

--I don't think a face can drop into a smirk...

[rdpulfer]

This isn't being too harsh at all, Manadmon. I'm still trying to figure out how to build the world while also progress the story. I know things start to get moving in a couple chapters, but the real issue is will they be reading for that long? Thanks for the feedback! 

[Shrike76]

I enjoyed this entry more than I did the previous chapter. The pacing was better, and I found the grammar and spelling improved, though still with some errors.

 

Some story/plot issues:

 - I'm not sure if Louis was introduced earlier but regardless, I don't feel that the phone conversation accomplishes much. Moreover, I'm not sure why Renfield would wait until he was down underground to start such a conversation.

 - The gorilla scene. This feels forced to me. It seems set up to give us information about what has happened before, but that makes it mostly exposition, and somewhat transparent. Also, the gorilla threatens Renfield, but I never get much of a sense that Renfield actually feels threatened, which would have been more effective.

 - Renfield & Bannister: This may be a function of my not having seen the first few chapters, but I don't get the relationship between these two. Renfield needs Bannister's help to have a bounty removed, but Bannister hates him? What's in it for Bannister?

 - The Bounty: In one paragraph it's 100 million, and in another it's one hundred g's (a g is a thousand, so one hundred thousand). In either case, that's an awful lot of money, why doesn't it seem like anyone's trying hard to cash it in. Does a giant underground gorilla who hates Renfield not want the money, or does he not know about the bounty?

 

In general I would have liked to learn more in this chapter through the characters' actions. Renfield and Bannister are interesting, but they don't do anything interesting here. Coming on the heels of the last chapter where Irving thought a lot but didn't do much, you want to avoid having too many chapter in sequence where the characters aren't actively driving the action forward. You can work on this fairly easily without changing too much around. If we know early on exactly why Renfield is in the tunnels and what he hopes to accomplish, his accomplishing it or failing to (or risking failing to because there's a giant gorilla in the way) becomes character-driven action, and gives us a sense of fulfillment when it happens, rather than taking the information we got and waiting for it to come into play later.

 

Tense: You write in past tense, so when you refer to events in the past, from the point of view of the story, you need to use past perfect. This happens a few times, but here's a couple of examples:

 - "the undergroung railways were used to carry...": should be "had been used"

 - "The Master used the Terminal": should be "had used:

 

 

P1:

 - "the Renfield's family": either "Renfield's family" or "the Renfields" or "the Renfield family"

 - "...bottom of the Marina Trench"

 - "How they exactly they had ended up in the tunnels": This sentence needs some editing love.

P2:

 - "like a bullet, straight and rounded" Is it straight or rounded? There's probably a better word entirely. Cylindrical?

 - "fireless locomotive": This sounded wrong and I had to google it. A better description here would help.

 - "wrecking hell": wreaking

P3:

 - "breathing hot air into his face, and by extension, the face": what?

P5:

 - "Renfield starred at his hands - his very, very, very big hands.": should be "stared", and "very, very, very big hands" reads as comical and cuts all the tension out of this encounter.

P6:

 - "Fury, rat-like" should be "furry"

 - "strode into a tab carrying a slab of meat": I don't know what word was supposed to be there instead of tab

 - The last paragraph repeats "the train car" three times. Try to cut at least one usage.

P8:

 - "Richard clinched his fist": clenched

 

All that being said, I enjoyed it, and I look forward to the next chapter. Good work.

[rdpulfer]

Thanks Shrike! I honestly didn't know there was this much build-up in my book I really appreciate you recommending ways to fix this problem. Thanks again for the feedback!

[Shrike76]

No problem. In general I try to avoid making specific suggestions on how to change things, but some people do appreciate it. If there are ever things I'm putting in my response which you'd prefer I avoid doing, please mention that as well. I don't want to put anybody off.

[Kammererite]

I don't have much to add.

I liked concept of the tunnels being used to store Dracula coffin and how it is now a monster refugee camp. Make me wonder about why are there refugee monsters all of a sudden.

 

At the end of the first scene when Renfield made his move I was like "Oh, its going down now."  The sentence implied to me that something happened off-screen. However, the next scene it feels like his move was to walk away.

 

Bannister and Renfield felt like they were acting out of character to me. Based on the earilier chapter i would not think  Bannister would help Renfield or that Renfield would even go to him for help. . The only reason I can see is that maybe the council ordered Bannisters to do it. He didn't seem like he would help Renfield out of the goodness of his heart.

 

I look forward to the next one.

 

[Robinski]

Once again, it was interesting to read the submission. I was bothered by some grammar stuff, some disconnects in the narrative (I thought) and some of the word choice, but I never feel that I know what’s going to happen next, which is good in these early stages, I think. I'm still entertained, the rest is fixable.

 

When I got to the part about the refugees, I realised that I do not understand how this world works. I feel like I'm lacking a bunch of basic set-up knowledge. Now if I’ve been given that and forgotten then my bad, however I don’t feel that I have a grasp of this society works. I think it is essentially our world now, but with supernatural creatures. I don’t know however how many of them there are. Are they universally hunted or just the aggressive ones? What do governments / the UN do with them?

 

You say “train car” three times in two lines. I would suggest just saying “car” the second two times – or alternate, but the repetition is awkward to read.

 

Example of awkward word choice. “Meat hooks filled the car” sounds like a huge pile of meat hooks tipped on the floor. I presume you mean something like “lined the walls of the car.” I think stuff like that underlines how important it is to refine description in the edit to help the flow.

 

Finally, I know this is a detailed point and should be below the line, but it comes under my Tense Matters campaign. “It was had been his Master’s long before it was the Council’s.” There are times when one can get away with ‘was’, but here I think here it affects the flow of the sentence.

 

To conclude, I continue to enjoy it, but I think it could be quite a bit tighter. There are numerous characters, and I have trouble remembering them. I'm not convinced they stand out as individuals. Most of the voices are similar. For example, they are all quite quip-y, seems to hold grudges and talk in a pretty aggressive way. Also, I'm often not sure of what role they play in their society, and how this Council works.

 

Hope that these comments are helpful.

 

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

 

Pg.1 – You refer to railways plural, then Renfield family using ‘it’ singular.

 

Marina Marianas Trench.

 

Something paragraph 2 is mixed up.

 

Repetition of the reference to rats. Also, wouldn’t the rats eat all the mice? And, are mice likely to like in that sort of presumably damp environment?

 

In my experience phone reception would be nil. I’ve been in buildings above ground and had no reception. This felt implausible to me, to get phone reception in an underground tunnel. As the conversation with his supervisor goes on I get less and less convinced. It seems a bit pointless

 

You don’t need to repeat large black wall – sounds weird the second time. Ah, okay.

 

“by extension, the face phone”

 

I like the ‘leech / you’re not bleeding’ line, and later the ‘time of the month’ line – excellent.

 

I was confused by mention of the Master (of the Council) and also to Renfield’s former Master (Dracula) in this submission. That’s going to be confusing going forward.

 

Renfield says $100M, but Bannister says 100 G’s – not the same thing of course, but a factor of 1000, which is it?

 

Renfield’s handcuff joke fell flat for me. It just wasn’t funny, imho.

[rdpulfer]

Thanks Robinski. This is all my first draft, so the grammar is going to be all over the place - along with the voice. Thanks for letting me know the characters aren't working. I'm starting to think Bannister and Renfield's adversarial relationship isn't going to make it to draft 2, but we'll see what feedback it gets as chapters go by. I think I was definitely figuring out things (and characters) myself in these first few chapters, hence some the confusion.

 

I did want to thank everyone for the feedback though. Even if it feels kinda harsh, everything so far are things I haven't considered - which exactly what I want from a writer's group. 

[Shrike76]

I did want to thank everyone for the feedback though. Even if it feels kinda harsh, everything so far are things I haven't considered - which exactly what I want from a writer's group. 

 

Chin up, you're doing fine! And you're doing the most important thing, which is writing.

Something to keep in mind, always - Writing is a skill, and like all skills it can be improved. You WILL get better at it, even if you don't see it on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, and having good feedback is very important. I look at the last thing I wrote, still just a first draft, and I look at what I was writing years ago and I wish that I could send the new stuff to myself in the past so that I could see the difference. I'm not saying I'm a master now, but I can see easily now some of the things I was doing terribly then, and those early mistakes are ones I don't make so often anymore.

[rdpulfer]

Yeah, I think it's extra-painful because I'm also looking also presently sending a finished draft of a previous, unrelated novel to agents. Whenever I look at that novel, and then back at my first draft for "Scholomancer", I constantly wonder "Did Godtown suck this much in the first draft?" But I think I'm also challenging myself to try new things - multiple POV's, third person limited, slightly different sub-genre. Like you said, I'm by no means a master either . . . but I am definitely learning. Thanks for the encouragement!

[Mandamon]

Yeah, I think it's extra-painful because I'm also looking also presently sending a finished draft of a previous, unrelated novel to agents. 

Ugh.  This exactly.  I've queried each novel I've written, but I always stop once I start getting into writing the next one and realize all the problems the last submission had.  Then I can't imagine querying the old one with all its mistakes.

On the good side, I know I'm getting better each time I write something new!