shatteredsmooth

Content Warning: L (some swears) Hi Everyone, This weeks submission is a little rougher than I'd like, but I'm stuck and I need help. I read it over and over. I know there is a loose or missing thread (or several of these), but I can't figure out what it is. There are sentences that just feel wrong, but the words won't arrange right in my mind. I can't tell if the bigger issues are content, at the sentence level, or both. I know what I want the chapter to do, but I'm not sure if it is doing it. I'm also uncertain about how the telepathy is working. When Mel is around wordy thinkers, it's easy because I just put the word-thoughts in italics. But that doesn't really work where Mike is a more abstract thinker and her narrative voice is interpreting the thoughts. Any kind of feedback will be helpful! Just don't get too carried away with grammar in case the content comments prompt to delete half (or all) of the chapter and rewrite it. Thank you! Recap: Ch. 1 (last time): Mel, Angel-Elf-Human hybrid is nervous about her first day of class, so she goes out for a jog and ends up saving some random guy from a Demon. The next day Mel's hung over from healing the guy. She meets a girl who is very into her and then realizes guy-she-saved is the TA for one of her classes. Ch. 2 (this time): Food trucks, suspicion, pizza, and flirting? Ch. 3 (next time): Two weeks later, Mel grows a conscience and feels guilty about reading Mike's mind. Tasha is in denial about a broken arm. Ally (Mel's roomate) forgets to warn Mel about late night company.

Definitely something I'll put some thought into. I was hoping the reader would get both the impression that he is odd and is involved in something odd. He also doesn't fully understand what happened the previous night and definitely doesn't realize he almost died. More about that in Ch. 2. :-) Well, since this story happens four years before Power Surge (published 2018) the latest year it could be set in is 2014, years before the Captain Marvel movie came out. So it's not that one. I was imagining it as a combination of several comic versions of her, but not quite exactly like any of them. I won't be mentioning it over and over again. I figure once I've described the knife once, I don't need to go into detail about it again. There is some cosplay in the book, but based on what I've seen in published books I'm hoping it won't be too much. It was supposed to say "red" LOL Not all demons are the same. There are some Mel can defeat pretty easily, some that would absolutely murder her, and everything in between. This was one of the easier ones to kill. Do you think I should work in a sentence about this around when she's fighting it? Good. :-) I think this will make a little more sense as the book goes on. Maybe. Hopefully. I'll refrain from the wordy explanation I'm tempted to write out. That is what I had been picturing when I wrote the scene. I can work in a few words to describe the shorts better. LOL Harry Dresden would NEVER leave a piece of his hair in someone's pin. So far, in this universe, the only thing people have done with hair is use it to track others. I wasn't intending to set anything up with it, but I completely understand paying attention to it. This makes me think of something I've been grappling with throughout drafting this. There are some very light hearted chapters, and then bam someone tries to kill Mi or M fights a demon and things get really dark, and then off of a sudden its pizza and flirting and very light. A lot of the things that were at the end of chapter 1 got moved to the second half of chapter 2. And unless it gets cut, there is a scene in a future chapter where M actually eats bacon pizza...and bacon ice cream. Thank you @Snakenaps @CherishLarain and @Silk!!

Yes! So much of turning a draft into a good story is in the revision process. Sometimes I revise so much I've lost count of what draft I'm really on...though that probably has something to do with how disorganized I am. But on a more serious note, I have stories where if I compared the first draft to final draft, you would hardly recognize them as they same story. Sometimes it takes me writing five or six or ten thousands words of writing one to figure out what story I really want or need to tell about characters within a particular world or idea.

I like this idea!

I wasn't quite sure what to make of this when I started reading. My impression of it changed as I went through. I liked the point you were trying to make at the very end, but I think most of the story sort of missed the mark, and that maybe the concept is a little too big for this short of a story. I didn't read all the feedback other people gave you, but I noticed some people saying it felt like a summary of a longer story. By the second half, after he accepted the hunt, it certainly did feel like a summary. Even if you did keep it a short story, I think you could trim a lot of the begining and expand more of the later elements. Here are my "as I read" notes / reactions : "...killed a monster. And he is good at it." Tense shift. "M.. is the best." At this point, I couldn't quite tell how seriously I was supposed to take the narrative voice. I thought maybe it was a parody of a certain type of fairy tale night. "M...contained one flaw...things that looked like monsters." This felt like a more omniscient narrator. I was having trouble figuring out if it was omniscient or close third before. "Drenched in rich fabric..." In this whole section when he meets with these people, you use a lot of abstract descriptions, but you don't really give us concrete details. You mention the finest food, but what kind of food is that? What do rich fabrics look like in this world? "Those filthy g...! Growled S..." I was hoping when I read this that S was going to be one of the monsters because of how he was talking about these people, including using a slur. I am okay with the bad guys being bad, but the narrative and the hero need to react to it a little more. M does speak up for the villagers, but doesn't react to the word used to describe them, and his reaction is just words. There isn't much emotion shown, or really much thought. It's too surface. "...now boys." Queen E..." Had she been introduced yet? She seemed to come out of nowhere. If she was introduced I'd already forgotten. "L C's hair." Did you mean heir? The sentence structure makes me think so, but with the context, she might be playing with kid's hair. "all his needs." Are all the maids in this world prostitutes? Did they know that when they signed onto to be maids they were going to sex workers, not just regular servants? Am I reading this completely wrong? I like that M is clearly not comfortable in the situation and going forward, but some of that discomfort gets written off as being related to clothing. I'd like it to be more clearly a reaction to specific things that are going on. "We'll be eating like kinds!" road H..." Who is this? "...finest imported wines!" Moaned W... Who is this? I got lost in this scene with all the different characters. With the right balance, purpose, and description, a feast scene can be fantastic in fantasy, but this one was hard to follow and some of the royalty made me cringe. And the narrative voice wasn't cringing enough with me. "I don't think" Based on the first page, he thinks he is the best. "M... did think. "We'll leave... It took me a minute to realize the scene with the Elves was a flash back, was him thinking. I had to reread a couple times. "Witches...once held beauty..." So does he think beauty is what gives people value? What makes them good? I'm not sure I want to root for him if that is case. I'm hoping this attitude changes. "...signs of mental illness..." So were they actually possessed? Or is he implying they were falsely labeled that way? "M's monsters were not real monsters." While I am inclined to agree with this it completely contradicts what was on page 1, but nothing has actually happened to drive him to have this kind of change. The more the nobles talk and whatnot, the more I hope he is going realize they are the monsters and murder them. "compromise the trade sales" Hmm these people think their economy is more important than safety. Sounds familiar. I hope they get overthrown. :-) "hankerchief with her initials..." cliche but it works "Women are known for being corrupted..." Yes, this dude is one of the real monsters. "...proper marriage age...adultery..."Yup. Duke is a monster. Monsters can say stuff like this but the narrative voice needs to react to it. M is upset about killing a woman but he doesn't seem to care at all or react to all this other bs the nobles are spewing. I want him to react specifically to some of the sexism and whatnot, even if only the reader sees the reaction. "No woman is known to have this kind of bloodlust" I was laughing at this. "How could M kill someone who didn't look like a monster?" If there weren't already so many side characters with horrible views, I might be okay with the mc thinking things like this as long as he changed by the end, but it's hard to stomach all the bad rich people being so horrible and having the main character equate goodness to looking nice. "could retire tomorrow" This seems to contradict something he said earlier. "little chainmail as he dared" The transition seemed abrupt. I got lost and had to re read to realize there was a scene break. I like L! She is the real hero, and I would love to read a story from her POV. Or, one that alternates between his POV and hers. "And L killed each target." Yay! Go L! This part feels like a summary, but it is also where I feel like the scene where L had M in a net is where the story was finally getting going, I feel like we are just getting to the heart of it when it ends. I wish I had more positive things to say, for most of the story. I think there is potential here, but in its current form, the story really isn't working for me. However, the concept does have potential, and if you ever rewrote it, I would be happy to read it again.

I'd like to submit Ch. 2 on Monday May 4 if that is okay.

OK, that makes sense. I haven't read Turning the Symphony yet. Hooray!! Happy kitties!

I was thinking they were long shorts and it was a shorter knife. I actually had a line in my head about her complaining about the shorts being too long, but needing to hide the knife. Still, it might be easier for her to be wearing pants, and instead of complaining about the scabbard being irritating, she can complain it being too hot to run in pants.

Yay! Sounds good. I can work on that. :-) Good question. I need to think about whether this is actually how she would normally carry a weapon or if it is new. Makes sense. I can take out the part where she sees him outside. Good idea. That would also hopefully make the end less meh. Maybe I've channeled too much of the 22-year-old version of her into this scene. I just finished Evanstar Chronicles two, where she is a prominent side character and four years older. Your comment has me thinking this scene might be more how she would've reacted at 22, not 18. I'll adjust accordingly. Yay! That's what I was going for. While the romance plot is kind of fluffy, the b-plot has a has noir urban fantasy vibes that in my initial draft, didn't come out until...maybe half-way through? AKA way to late. I'm trying to thread them in sooner. It seems like the bigger picture things are actually working, so the style comments are helpful. Of course, I didn't know that was going to be the case when I sent out the sub. Mel is not the mc in PS, so having read it would not help you know what it means. What I was trying to show is that Mel can't always stop herself from healing people. The injury sort of fills her mind, she feels like it is talking to her or calling her to hear it. I'll think on how I can make this a little clearer. Hmm she is only 18, but she also is convinced she is going to die young, which I tried to hint at on page 1. I guess I was thinking M was that one person, and she only hesitated because she was hiding from Mi. Though I have taught classes where there is a very long stretch of awkward silence before someone finally volunteers. Yay! He is a character that has smallish appearances in the other books in this world. He is always more prominent in my first drafts, but then a lot of him gets trimmed out in revision. I'm excited to have him finally be on the page more. Makes sense. This is how she turns her telepathy "off" -- you had asked about that in one of her earlier comments. But it takes effort to keep other people's thoughts out of her head like this, so she doesn't always bother. That is a good compliment, especially from you. ;-) I will add more description of the demon. Yes, this is set in the same world as Evanstar Chronicles, but it is not actually part of the series, so it needs to read like it is a Book 1. As you go through, if you notice any other places where you feel like you are missing things because you haven't read my other books, please let me know. :-) @kais @Mandamon @Robinski and @Turin Turambar Thank you very much for your comments!

This would make a much better first chapter than the other one. I think you could trim the opening with all the details about the restaurant a little, but otherwise, I was very engaged with most of the chapter and didn't make too many notes. The voice was stronger, the characters felt more alive and vivid. I'm excited to read more! As I read: "The restaurant business as brutal" Did you mean was? "...didn't matter what monarchy...back pain would follow you..." Great line; great detail! "...drawings of each ingredient..." The whole literacy thing described in this section is interesting. How much of a disadvantage is it in this world? How do they get around it with the business side of managing the restaurant? I don't need these answers right away, but I am curious. The kind of curious that pulls me more into the book. "...humans to dragons..." How big are the dragons? How big does the restaurant have to be to fit them? "A slowly swam..." With the timing and the way the manuscript was formatted, I started reading this thinking it was a dream. It didn't take long to realize it was a POV switch, but that interrupted the flow of my reading. I'm also exhausted. I didn't sleep much last night and read way too many student essays over the course of the day. I had to re-read a few passages in A's section. At first, I was confused about which side he was on. "...that was not loyal to the throne..." was the line that made it clear he was working for the new monarch that everyone seemed to hate in Ch. 1. I can see what you set up for here creating some good tension between the mc and her rebel relatives. I'm looking forward to the next chapter.

That is absolutely fine. :-)

I forgot to make notes as I was reading, so that is probably a good thing. For the most part, I thoroughly enjoyed this chapter. I felt a little adrift for the first page or two. I was having trouble orienting myself back in M's timeline. However, that could just be WRS. By the time they were on the roof, I was grounded and engaged. There were some nice subtle details where M displayed more emotion. The switch to R's POV worked well for me. I was excited when the two groups met. I was thrown a little by R's reaction to M. I remebered her being on the council, but didn't recall if she had any kind of connection or relationship with him. Her reaction here made me think they were close, that he was a sort of grandfatherly mentor, not just a colleague. However, it has been a while since I read Seeds. This could very well be a lapse in my memory. If this were already published and it had been a couple years since I read the first book, I would assume I had just forgotten. The end of the chapter left me very excited to read on. If this were something I had bought, I would not be able to stop without turing the page.

Here is my second attempt at Chapter 1. Please let me know if it feels more like a first chapter now than it did before. Do you get a sense of what M wants and what might get in her way? Of what the stakes are? Is there more of a hook? I'm open to whatever other feedback you have. However, I'm still more focused on content than grammar, so I apologize if there are still some clunky sentence and typos. I kept changing my mind about where the fight scene was going to happen. At first it was an alley, but I thought that was too cliche, so I changed it to a construction site. The description of that setting might be sparse. I'm still thinking about changing it. Content warnings for language (a few swears) and violence (in the first four pages). Also, I love imagining fight scenes, but I'm not so good at writing them. Feel free to tear this one apart if you think it's worth keeping. I am trying to find a balance between M seeming competent enough for the reader to believe she'd been trained to fight Demons since she was a kid while still having tension and the sense that she is in danger.

This chapter was good last time but it is even better now! In the first section especially, I felt like every sentence, even every word was pulling its weight. There was lots of tension. I loved how S, I, and A all worked together. While they were going through the wall, I was really believing it was going to work, worried that meant you had cut the chapter when E poses as one of the El, and then bam, she goes through and the others can't. It was well done! I'm on the fence about the last part, the one where S is running up the wall. I got a good visual of that, but I'm wondering if it is enough, or if there could be a little more. More description, more of the moment. I've been re-watching all the MCU movies, and while I was reading that part, I kept thinking of the Mirror Dimension from Dr. Strange. I am very much looking forward to the next chapter.

I'm fine with it because I'm into the story. And I haven't decided if I am resubmitting all of chapter 1 or just the section I added (about 1600 words). It will depend on what condition everything is in on Sunday night and what the total word count for the chapter turns out to be. If I don't submit the whole thing, it will kind of be like we are splitting a spot.

That would work. At first, I liked the description better than I had at other times, but then I got bored with it. However, part of that could be because I've read those description before in other chapters, so it lacked the sense of wonder it might have had if it I'd never seen it before.

I had a similar reaction to @kais. I found myself rereading some parts in the begining to make sure I hadn't read something wrong. I was getting a little impatient on the walk and just wanted to get to the wall. We had a nice quieter scene with these character already, so I found myself wanting to get to the action sooner. Once the got in the wall, it was great. The description of the Elg on the wall was awesome and terrifying! And I loved the little moments between the trio in the last scene. "She grinned and...teeth were pointed." I loved this line and the whole moment surrounding it!

@CherishLarain Sorry if that was too long a response. Sometimes I can't stop myself from answering questions, especially when they are good questions. I'll try to refrain next time or just keep my answers in my private notes. Because this story is set in an existing world I've written and published other stories in, I have a ton of world-building in my head. Too much, maybe, and it's hard to figure out what the reader actually needs / wants to know. Your questions gave me some insight about that. :-) Thank you!

I'd like to send a new version of Ch. 1, or at least the new begining of it, on the 27th, if if there is room.

LOL I am the exactly opposite. I am terrified of children, but enjoy teaching adults. I teach night classes, so my students aren't fresh out of high school. Most of them are in their twenties or thirties. I like that better than when I taught 18-year olds at a university.

I had an explanation of this and took it out before I sent the chapter because I thought it felt like an info dump, and because the paragraph was really clunky. I can try to work it back in if this is something that might pull readers out of the story. As I type, I'm getting an idea of how to do that. This was one of the details that was supposed set him apart as not your typical TA. In this version of the chapter, they had never met before, though her last name was familiar to him. I'm in the process of rewriting the opening and doing some reorganizing, so in the new version, they will have already met by the time they get to this scene. I can try to work this in more. There is a reason. If I try to explain it here, I will write way more than necessary. It comes up later in the book, but it probably needs to come up sooner. I'm glad you asked. It's killing her. Literally. I really need to work that detail into Ch. 1 instead of waiting until Ch. 3. That is a big part of the stakes many of the others noted I was missing. I should be able to do that in the new version I'm working on. Complicated. They love, but they are are disaster. They're self destructing and dragging her down with them. They know and she knows that the best thing is for her to have time away from them. This is true about supernatural creatures in this book's universe, but there isn't exactly a welcoming community of them on earth that Mel can go hang out with. There are some Elf-hybrids around, but most of the ones she knows are her grandpa's friends. Beings the specific mix that she is are rare and don't always live long, even though they could potentially live thousands of years, because their healing magic can kill them if they overuse it and/or use it wrong. I could ramble about this a lot of I don't stop myself now. I'll see if I can find a way to drop a few hints about this early on without a big info dump. @CherishLarainThank you very much for your questions! They pointed out some details I shouldn't have left out. Thinking about and answering them gave me ideas about how to make the stakes clearer.

I'm happy to hear this!! I think I can work on making him come across a little more interesting in this chapter. Thank you very much for your comments. :-)

Thanks for letting me know! Prophecy doesn't have too much of a role in the book. The epithets are more like little pieces of advice he never got to give her and hopefully some world building as the story gets on. I hadn't been thinking that literally when I said drown, but these are some good questions. They're more relevant to the other books set in this world than this story. More the later. And also because brains are the one thing she can't really heal, though at this point, her healing ability hasn't been mentioned yet. Snicker snicker snicker Let's say her family is happy that she is away at college for a little while. Another way. I need to get more of this in chapter 1 because her healing powers are very dangerous for her and could kill her if she over uses them. And she overuses them. A lot. Sometimes, she can't stop herself from healing people. You don't have to ignore all the grammar errors. I just don't want people spending lots of time finding or explaining them when there is a chance the thing they are reading could get cut and not make it to the final draft. I don't spend too much time proofreading my work until I am fairly certain no one is going to tell me "hey, you really don't need this scene" or give me feedback that would prompt me to make drastic changes. My brain and my eyes don't always get along, so it takes me a long, long time to catch errors like the one you just pointed out. If that line stays, now the error is caught and it's one less thing I have to worry about later. :-) I'm a teacher too! I teach freshmen English at a community college. What do you teach? Yes. There most certainly is. I'm happy to hear this, and see from your comments. You get Mel and appreciate all the things I love about her. LOL It's horrendous. @Snakenaps Thank you so much for the comments! It made me so happy to see how you reacted to Mel and the chapter as a whole. And the questions you asked were fantastic and will help me clarify so things. Thanks again!

Got it. The B plot does exist, but in the current draft, it comes later. When I revise chapter 1, I will make sure that and the stakes get set up. I know that the B plot is all over the place and a mess later in the draft, so bringing it into chapter 1 will be a good starting point for me to revise and tighten it up. I think my buried B plot will do this once I clean/tighten it up and it and bring it in earlier. Much earlier. Will do. I'll probably resubmit a revised version of this chapter before I send the next chapter. Many of these are answered in 2, so fixing 1 will have big ripples for 2. It will defintily be better to resub 1 before sending 2. I'll work on this. He's should sound more Gen X, would be in his late 40s or early 50s if he wasn't dead. I think I confused myself in this whole section. I'll fix it. There is plenty more of it in this book. Good idea. I think I can make that work. Okay. I can bring more conflict. Thank you, @kais! Your comments were super helpful and are not only helping me think about how to improve chapter 1, but they are also helping me see the bigger picture.

Makes sense. This comment also got me thinking about the book as a whole and not just the first chapter. Because there are some action scenes, but they are secondary to the romance. I see a lot of revision and rewrites in my future when it comes to finding the right balance of that and making it all come together. I do have an idea about how to balance this better in the first chapter and maybe offer more of a hook. Good idea! Good point. I think this will make a huge difference. Yup. That is more or less what I thought I wrote, but like usual, my brain and eyes did not cooperate. Thank you for catching it! :-) Yes, yes, and yes. Thank you very much for all the helpful comments. When I revise, I'll make M's motives clearer, create more of a hook, and clean up some of the clunky sentences.