11_14_2016 - Dreamt and Lost - Chapter 6 - 3,151 Words - Vreeah

[Vreeah]

Hey guys! Thanks for dropping by!

I misspelled one of the "sentries" as "sentires" in my email. The shame is overwhelming. Feel free to now imagine all the sentries as living tires with little shield emblems.

Haha, in any case, dropped a bit of the lore here. I'm always concerned when I get into backstory and lore, because they tend to be the parts that bore me when I'm reading other books. Hopefully that's not the case here, but it's a worry nonetheless.

Also, dangit, I forgot to shift the format so that it's double-spaced, again. My bad.

Edited November 15, 2016 by Vreeah

[kais]

Ahh, I've been wondering when I'd get to see more of this!

Overall

I appreciate the world building, and the story was good. I did however feel that the chapter lacked tension. I wasn't sure why I was reading what I was reading, and didn't see the purpose to the story until almost the end of the chapter. I still am very interested in this world, and would love to see more of it. Keep at it!

As I go

- woah. Page one, too much dialogue to start. Where are they. When are they. What is happening?

- Ovalum sounds like a pretty petty god

- page four: this magic system is still confusing to me. I think it needs a hard definition sometime soon

- by the top of page five it is hard not to skim. There doesn't seem to be a direction to this chapter and I'm not invested enough in the world to really get into the story here

- bottom of page five: ah, the purpose of the story. It might be nice to give some context to the reader before this. Drop these names or bits of the story or something like that earlier (maybe you did and this is WRS), so that we know why this story is so long

[Mandamon he/him]

I seem to have similar comments to Kaisa, as usual.

A little confused as to where we are on the first page, but then, this is chapter 6.

What are the ages of the siblings? Maybe it's just that they're talking with and about kids a lot, but Sofia especially has some pretty young-sounding dialogue and actions.

More evidence for Sofia being immature: she starts on the story and then collapses from--too much dreamwork?  Not quite sure what happened to her. Seems like she's asleep, but she keeps adding to the story. Can she just not move?

Putting the lore of the world into a story works well, especially here. Glad to see the origins for all the dreams. The magic does seem a little unbounded.  I guess they are dreams, but I'd like to see some consequence to using too much or misusing the ability to work with dreams.

pg 6: "No, come on, it's not even a long walk."
"And you can't even carry me, such a weakling."
--more immaturity from Sofia. Ellis is almost condescending to her, not that she doesn't deserve it.

I like reading this story. It's very light and has lots of cool ideas. I'm not really sure where it's heading, however. I might be missing some things since we haven't seen all the chapters, though. As this is chapter 6, I wouldn't mind seeing some more plot development rather than just putting children to sleep. Though the story is good, it could probably be condensed to allow more room for plot

[rdpulfer he/him]

- The bit about rallying a field of wild rabbits seems a bit of a throwaway line. It's a good image - I'd like to see more on this, like Ellis and Sofia commenting how that actually went down.

- I really like the surreal nature of this dreamworld.

- I like the story of Lumitica and Ovalum. The only suggestion I had is maybe some more interaction from the kids - building more suspense that they will in fact fall asleep? 

- I really want to see more of this story. I hope it helps! 

[Robinski he/him]

The catch up continues, but I’ll be honest, I can’t exactly remember where I was before. Did you skip submitting some chapters? I’m not even reading the forum posts before doing this so how the heck would I know? Anyway, I’ll just leap back up with both feet. I hope there is some useful stuff here amid the rambling.

• Okay, typos all over the place, but I’m trying not to get drawn into LBLs as I catch up my backlog, so the grammar will have to fend for itself. I’m sure the others won’t let you off the hook.

• “I'll get them to bed with Sofia” – Lol, okay, I got about two paragraphs, but I’ll just mention this one thing, but it goes beyond typos. The phrasing is often off, I feel. Like here, where it sounds like all the children are going to be tucked up in bed with Sophia. I presume what you mean is that Sophia is going to help get them tucked up. I think a great way to pick this stuff up is to read it out loud, all of it, a chapter at a time or whatever.

• “That's exactly what they're for” – I think that’s lullabies rather than nursery rhymes.

• “Ellis held back one of the girls who was late slow to run” – I get snagged on the word choice sometimes, like here, for example.

I enjoyed the chapter. Much more of a sequel than a scene, but good if it comes after the action-packed battle I remember from before (still not sure where the other chapter numbers went). Anyway, I enjoy the lyrical style, there’s definitely a particular voice there, I feel, although as noted, I think the language needs tidying up and tightening up.

Thanks for sharing!

<R>

p.s. - I see comments above about defining the magic system - I'm going to disagree. Not every source or application magic needs to be defined, imho, I think that can lessen the effect - certainly the mystique - and would change the gentle / airy tone of the story. Sometimes magic is just magic, mysterious and unknown, but it just works. I though it was good to see magic exacting a price in terms of Sofia's fatigue. That's the real problem, I think, when there appear to be no limits and no cost. So, you should have rules. I don't think you need to put them in, but do apply them.

LotR is frequently the cited example of magic applied to suit the author's need, but with no rhyme or reason to it. At that level, I think you can start to equate it with divine intervention and draw in religious debate. Why did God feed the 500 but not save famine victims in Africa? Why did Gandalf intervene on some occasions but not others? Sanderson's Law is that you can't use magic to solve a problem if you haven't demonstrated how it works (I'm paraphrasing). I go along with that, but it doesn't mean you can't use magic at all, or that you need a pseudo-scientific explanation of the energy budget for casting, etc.