akoebel

Thanks to you both. Neda has a very crude understanding of Shrouds. Stopping sounds is not what I would call a "classical Shroud use case", but someone ingenious enough could achieve such an effect. For the pot of urine, it came out of my head. I wanted some of the cults to have very weird rites. As there are over 50 religions, I tried to differentiate them on some aspect or another (either temple architecture, priesthood names, or ... rites). For the gods attributes : being god of vengeance doesn't mean one is vengeful, but that you become attuned to people asking for revenge. As everywhere, you will find strong and weak personalities within gods and priests. The pope is a really weak person and kind of a sycophant. @andyk : I can send you the previous chapters if you want.

The first sentence actually made me laugh, because "petting the dog" is an old Hollywood tradition for characters. My first point will be that I didn't get from the first sentences that the character was actually blind (and I kept wondering why a dog would be allowed inside an airplane). I think you could draw more heavily on senses like smell and touch to convey at once this is not a normal character we're dealing with. There is a bit more spanish being thrown around that I thought necessary. As I don't understand spanish myself, this was a bit disorienting and I was wondering if I wasn't losing important information there. Maybe you wanted the reader to be as disoriented as the character. If it's the case : good job. The decision to throw all his planning away and go up the volcano didn't seem motivated enough to me. At least, he could have hired local assistance instead of going alone. I actually liked the vision part and the fact that the vision makes him see different things than what is there. It was a good source of potential problems for the character. Then we come to the end and I don't really understand what happened (especially at the last sentence). The vision didn't grant him anything (more or less felt like a dream) and he's going back to the hotel - maybe even home. That didn't seem to match what I knew of the character.

With such an alias, I would have expected a SF story, so I was lucky to read your notice before starting the story. I do love a good con story, so I felt at home in yours, even if it's not the usual genre we see here. I'm not particularly fond of descriptions, so the number of descriptions you used was OK for me, except when the "boss" first talks to the protagonist. You kept describing him as either "the voice" or "the man" and I had trouble following what was happening because I needed some visual cue here. For the timing the device takes to copy the data, even if I don't believe it would be so short for a raw block copy, you established that the character did test it over and over, so I expected it to either fail or take exactly that time (you established the magic system, so to speak, so it was all right). For the ending, this feels like a character story where the protagonist decides to trade some of his principles over stability. If you want this to be a character story through and through, you might want to establish his principles right away. You do this over the course of several pages, so it doesn't feel like this will be the focus of the story. If you establish this earlier, I think the character story will come out much stronger. Aside from that, very good story with the right pacing and an interesting character. I really enjoyed it.

Hi, My next chapter is ready for Monday.

Hi, This is chapter 4, second part from Shrouds, a fantasy mystery. Mahau, god of vengeance was asked to investigate three gods disappearances. In the previous chapter, he uncovered the first body. Arlon, a mostly dishinherited regional god asked Mahau to prove he didn't have anything to do with the disappearances. In Chapter 5, first part, Mahau and Arlon met before going to the second crime scene and Arlon almost strangled Mahau. Now, they're going together to the next crime scene. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Shrouds Chapter 5 part 2 is ready for submission for tomorrow.

Thanks Mandamon. I think some of your remarks are coming from our submission process where it's difficult to remember what I submitted a month ago. Arlon for instance is described in chapter 1 as someone - rather large - who likes to dress in purple so much that most people think of him as the purple colossus or purple god. I think you're right anyway and I'll try to add a bit more description (which I tend not to do much since the story in my head is almost completely dialog). Arlon has a violent temper, which I forgot to mention up until now. You're right to assume he's not the killer - he prefers to get physical in his violence and would never use a Shroud to kill a victim. For the partition between gods, there are basically 2 different sorts of gods : the ones responsible for an area ("regionals" like Arlon) and the ones supposed to represent an aspect of life (like war or vengeance like Mahau). I called them 'Attributals' but I'm not too fond of the word. The two need followers to survive, but don't use the same methods to acquire followers. Regionals tend to set up rules to enroll followers as they are born within their territories, while Attributals work to convince people to follow them.

I will agree with the others. The piece was well written until the end where it fell flat. You might want to apply the MICE quotient to your story. As this obviously isn't an Idea or Character story, it leaves you with an Event story or a Milieu story. For a Milieu story, the story should end once the voyage is done and in your story, he still hasn't reached his destination (and also the beginning would need to emphasize from the start that he's decided to run in case he gets a daughter). For an Event story, the story should end when a new balance has been achieved, which isn't the case here (I expected the gods to make his boat capsize and claim their tribute no matter what his actions were - thus restoring the balance). Anyway, looking at the story with the quotient should help you find the right ending.

Pretty much everything has been said and I agree with the others about the ending and the promises made by introducing the killer. I was expecting the raised dead to stay and do all kinds of bad things because really, the dead should stay dead. All I can add is about the description in the first scene : it reads as if the narrator isn't really experiencing it and each time he describes another injury, he fails to mention the next one. If I sum up the scene, he says : "My eye really hurt me in this way... but the eye was nothing when compared with my broken arm which felt this way ... but the worst was my foot." To begin with, someone hurt would have started with the worst and not the lightest and maybe mentioned the other. Also, when someone is damaged this much, pain tends to blend and you aren't really able to distinguish between aching parts.

Hi, This is chapter 5, first part from Shrouds, a fantasy mystery. Mahau, god of vengeance was asked to investigate three gods disappearances. In the previous chapter, he uncovered the first body. Arlon, a mostly dishinherited regional god asked Mahau to prove he didn't have anything to do with the disappearances. In Chapter 5, Mahau and Arlon meet before going to the second crime scene. I hope you'll enjoy it.

My next chapter is ready, but it's a big one (8k). I will split it in 2 parts - 3k and 5k. I'll submit the first part tomorrow if it's all right.

As an exercise about description, it was good. It's difficult to balance description without getting into over flowery language and you've managed it very well. As it's description, it reads slowly, but it's not that much of a problem on such a small length. Now, for a short story opening, you've spent 1000 words on pretty much no action, so that might be a problem. I like that you described begging as a job - with accessories and stories to tell in order to enhance your begging efficiency. As for where the story is going, you gave us little information. I suppose that if you don't want to switch POV (which is rare in short stories), it could be about the POV character hearing something he's not supposed to hear. Of course, it's just a very wild guess and I could be very far from what you plan to write about.

Thanks to you both. I tried to have Mahau and Neda behave a bit differently when there are other people around and when they're alone. For Mahau's part, he's used to her behavior and accepts it, but he's bothered by what he believes should be proper etiquette when they're not alone. He doesn't want to antagonize her too much, but at times, he wishes she would be more conventional. That was the idea. I might have mixed things up a bit, so I'll have to check if each reaction is the right one for the context. For the magic system, I worried a bit about that part. If you read the previous chapters, you know pretty much everything you need to know (they create pockets where the laws of the universe inside differ from those outside by changing distances - having created a Shroud leaves a mark proportional to the change that can be detected). The point here is that someone very skilled can add effects from more than one Shroud. In this case, the two were exact opposites so they would cancel one another from the outside, but not exactly in a very small area (I based this behavior on Gauss' Theorem). As I was trained as a physicist, this is very natural to me, and my alpha readers (physicists too) didn't notice this would be hard to understand for someone else. I'll have to think a bit about explaining it better. Thanks for pointing it out. @cetriya : Since this story is a mystery, describing it would spoil things. What I wanted to do was a God-Detective story, which I found a funny juxtaposition. For the overall mechanics of godhood, it works pretty much as the Returned in Warbreaker - humans do become gods sometimes and stop ageing. Their status is very dependent on them maintaining a solid worshiping base. For Neda, let's just say that she has her own reasons to come and that Mahau is in no position to refuse her.

Hi, This is chapter 4 from Shrouds, a fantasy mystery. Mahau, god of Vengeance, has been asked to investigate three gods disappearances. In this chapter, Mahau and his priestess Neda go to the first crime scene. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Hi, I have my next chapter ready for Monday.

Thanks Mandamon. I have to watch out for those instances of show and tell. I worried that introducing five characters at once (even if I only had 3 of them talking) was a bit much. Did you have trouble with their voices or are they distinct enough?

I liked this story a lot. You've managed to convey this character very well. I have two small issues : * the voice at the beginning seems a bit remote. The character says he's in pain - and I could feel some of it - but I got the feeling he's not experiencing it at the moment. It's almost as if he was telling me after the facts, even if the present tense is tells me it's happening right now. This took me some time to be used to. * he never questions Marina's motives. He never even suspects she might be working for his jailers I completely expected him to be betrayed in the end - I expected Marina to be only a henchman and not The Enemy herself (nice touch) - so why someone who is obviously smart never questioned Marina's motives. Her comments about her husband are what made me suspicious to begin with and when she mentioned he needed some artifact, I was sure of her loyalties. Yet, never once did he consider he might be delivering the stone to his enemies. Aside from that, really nice piece!

Hi, This is chapter 3 from Shrouds, a fantasy mystery. In chapters 1 and 2, I introduced the major characters : Mahau - god of vengeance, his priestess Neda, Arlon - a disinherited god, his priest Forys. In chapter 2, Mahau was called on an important and secret matter by his superiors. Chapter 3 starts the plot rolling. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Thanks Adolin. I'll agree that the two scenes are wildly different in tones - which reflects the characters in those scenes. One of my problems with this novel is that Arlon is in some sense too sympathetic, as my alpha readers pointed out - but they knew who I modeled him after, so their reaction might have been biased. I'm interested to know what you will think about his character arc, given the fact that you don't see him as that sympathetic yet.

Thanks for these interesting comments. The saying is not "Show, then tell"? :-) You're right, I tend to do that a lot. Looks like I missed a couple during the rewrite. For Neda referring to Mahau as a man : I intended it to show her peculiar relationship with him. In her head, she considers him pretty much like a regular person, so she can curse at him, berate him, ... For the message, you're right, I should change this to show there is a message case which can only contain one message - the case isn't in the coat as I've written by mistake.

My main issues here are the tenses switches which made the piece very frustrating to read, and the POV changes who kept me confused. I'm used to strong POV demarcation, so each time I see what looks like a POV error, I stop reading, go back to the start of the scene, and make sure I got the right POV at the start. The best example here is your phone scene which opens with Mrs Luwon entering the room, slides into Stravo, and ends up with seeing what his girlfriend sees - she's not even in the room! A couple of other minor remarks: * Some of the dialog seems too much like a real conversation ("how are you?" "fine, thank you",... I'm caricaturing here, but look at the scene in the monorail - it's pretty much like that) These can be removed. * For the breakfast scene, Ace knows who is in the kitchen, so she can think 'Dad stood there' instead of 'A man stood there'. Once you change that, you can still have Mrs Luwon being referred to 'A woman', which will show how much Ace despises her stepmother. I don't care much for the ending because even if it's been foreshadowed, I don't see what impact it has on the characters. I took it as a short story, so there's no resolution for me there. If it's the opening of a novel, then I'm fine with it. That being said, the descriptions were good and the world intriguing. My own first story was much worse than yours. Keep writing!

I'd like to submit Shrouds, Chapter 3 next Monday.

Mandamon pretty much summed it up. Even if I still found the same likable - almost cynical - voice, the piece felt awkward. At the beginning, It's almost as if you're in fast forward where Pythia explains to herself what's she's doing - it's a big tell. Things start to become easier near the end where you have some dialog, but even there, there is this frustration about knowing I'm not in Ashera's POV, yet I can see her thoughts. Some elements might also have worked slightly better in present tense, but in past tense, it only sounds weird. I agree with Mandamon that the Pythia POV might be a good idea on paper, but I don't know how it could work. If you switch to another POV, you can deal with your story like in a mystery - something strange is going on; people start having strange ideas. Pythia's interference is subtle, so you can string this on for a while - maybe even through 2 acts. Then, you drop the big reveal. Once the reader knows Pythia is pulling the strings, you can have some of her POV, but only in a few scenes, I think. Anyway, you're the writer here, so you decide which way you'll want to go.

This is chapter 2 for Shrouds. Last time, I introduced two gods : Mahau and Arlon. Now, I'm getting into the priesthood with the third POV Character Neda. I'd love to have your thoughts on her character and relationship with her god.

I don't mind seeing an inactive narrator as long as there is someone stirring up the action (a Watson character can work well). It only requires that you establish early on this is not the protagonist - which means giving up on the ending twist. For the twist itself, I didn't see it coming. I went back to the beginning after and saw the first paragraph. Everything is pretty much there, but since it's in the first paragraph, I couldn't understand it. When a reader begins a story, he doesn't have bearings yet, so unless the first sentences are so strong they'll be remembered, pretty much everything you put early gets dismissed. If you want to foreshadow something, I'd suggest putting it a few pages later, once the reader is set in. Brandon also often says you have to foreshadow like 3 times if you want something to stick in the reader's mind. Some of the setting feels a bit too much D&D (who actually talks about quests for a living?). I think it's only a word-choice problem there, but I'd be weary about things like these. Aside from that, I enjoyed the humorous voice quite a lot.