neongrey

Well, I have #3 ready-- and if we overfill too I'm more than happy to step back since I've had the last two weeks.

I'm not dismissing anything out of hand, no, just taking my own notes and setting aside so I have all of this for later when I go back to redrafting. I make a habit of not talking too much in response to critique unless i have something specific to say, lest that lead down the path of arguing, is all, lol. Rag curls, though, are quite a common means of setting a curl without heat, been around for ages. And blonde-haired and winged because it's not at all expected that they match (see Lasila, with blonde and black). Thanks!

Not for a while, mind-- I'd like to finish the thing first--, but notes like this don't go bad, haha.

Fair points, and I'll probably look at it, the noise at the very least, though I'll also note that water also doesn't naturally flow straight upwards, lol. Which might not have been as clear as I would have liked, so this certainly will need some adjustment-- the key points here are that this water is doing something it does not do under real-world conditions, and that this is perfectly normal, so within those tolerances I've got a fair bit of play. There absolutely are independent sources of propulsion, actually... and if you're coming away with the impression that it's inefficient and a display of form over function, that's not exactly unintentional! Much like Lasila not actually caring very much about what she's reading (though that's a bloated couple paragraphs), and, well, if Lasila's primary motive force wasn't her own self-interest, I wouldn't have a story here. Well, I would, probably, but not the legally blonde meets house of cards-esqe dealio I'm going for, lol.

The age of majority is the age of legal adulthood; probably the most common age real-world is eighteen. Here, it's nineteen.

Yeah, your dialogue is definitely in a different register than your narration, which I see is slated for adjustment so I won't harp on it. "think of him really hard" is another point of difference. I'd say the issue is less modernity so much as that the narration is done in a semi-formalistic style, 'business casual', let's say, and your dialogue is dropping hard into very casual usage. As far as the prologue thing really: yeah, I would ask yourself why you're calling it a prologue. If it's just a slightly different angle before getting into stuff for real, just rebrand it as a first chapter. If it's anything else at all, I'd seriously consider dropping it entirely. Thing about prologues is looking at why they're in disfavour: and that's mostly because they're usually wholly extraneous, and there's no real need to set it apart. Half a year's wages for a minor inconvenience definitely seems weird and not in a makes-me-wonder sort of way. Scrawny, I feel, is a word that connotes a little too young for a middle-aged man, fwiw. Other than that, flows well, do watch your run-on sentences, etc. Curious to see more of this.

I admit, I've had to skim this-- grammar is a dealbreaker for me on a readthrough as a general rule, as is sentence structure in general. I feel like a portable ballista would just be a crossbow. I dunno, I find the usage of the term distracting. I'm catching a lot of adverbs that are either unnecessary or where a more evocative phrase would do. Similarly, where you have speech tags at all a lot of them are very said-bookism-y. Using growl as a speech tag generally makes me check right out of a piece, eg-- it particularly stands out there because the dialogue is able to carry that particular weight. That said you're definitely avoiding dialogue tags far too much. Don't be afraid of the words 'say' and 'says', and don't be shy about including activity with a bit of dialogue; as it is the complete absence makes for a really... hmm, kind of bland feeling. 'work out more' is a really strange phrase here. I feel like this dialogue with Lumi does not scan; to me it reads less like dialogue and more like point notes of what information neededed to be delivered to the reader in this scene. Think about what sort of people are talking and the way they phrase things. Among other things it's too detailed and too specific, I think. The same goes with this dialogue with Rakella. All it's doing is conveying information. It's not giving me a reason to care about the person saying it; it reads less like dialogue and more like a summary of the location from a manual. That's most of what I got from this; this was a very difficult read for me.

There are probably more bisexual people than lesbians (and it's not a huge sexuality-as-identity culture) and Lasila has a soft preference for men but she definitely kisses girls. I think I'm good on readers for now but I might take you up on that as I get further along; I'm somewhere between a third done and halfway through, at least by my target word count... I just find it a lot easier to keep going as I have people reading, and it helps to have the notes for when I go back for revisions; certainly where exactly I need to go to tighten isn't going to change as a consequence of later stuff, haha.

No worries if you read the first, I just had some changes (some proper nouns shuffling) to finally commit but after I sent I noticed Word wanted me to save again; I don't know if there's any actual difference in the files, but I figured better safe than sorry. If you're not really confused by changes in terminology then we're probably good. 'Are they or are they not in trouble' is probably where you should be at right now, actually; Lasila isn't sure herself. She knows the money's been draining but she hasn't had access yet to see how fast and they've been frugal. And as should be growing clearer and clearer, Lasila wouldn't know actually poor if it threw her out into the street. That said, deffo room for tightening. I believe it says right off that the goddess is nude... yeah "she was nude, and her form a perfection" Lasila is regrettably maybe five, ten years too young for Maranthe to consider seriously. That said, I'm glad the vibe is there and, oh, I don't think you'll be displeased, at the very least. Thanks!

Previously: The city of Ilidria's living goddess is dead, one more drain upon a fatigued by decades of war. As Lasila, the last daughter of the faded Vahendra merchant family, makes plans to honour her remaining social obligations, her brother and guardian Varinen brings more news. He is to leave the city, seeing to the security of a Senator who hopes to bring an end to the war. Lasila is neither enthused nor hopeful; though he will leave her in control of the family finances, she is in no way prepared for this responsibility. She objects, but Varinen is resolute. He asks her to make her offering to the goddess in his name as well; he must prepare for his departure. Now: Lasila goes to the greatest temple of the goddess to make an offering unto her remains.She attracts attention, and is presented with an opportunity that is categorically too good to be true.

Among other things Lasila is extremely appearance-focused, and likes to think about things like infrastructure. This is a huge reason why I think I'm going to need to work in the second POV earlier than I do-- but that's a ways out yet so let's put a pin in that thought until we get there. It's a very much fraying patriarchy, and it's questionable how deeply-set it ever was in the first place; this will be gotten into much more thoroughly as we go, but it's only a little bit unusual at most that Lasila largely expects to be in the position of managing her own potential marriage. She has a number of expectations of her brother as far as his own situation goes, not all of which are reasonable. The text says outright she's seventeen, though. Age of majority is nineteen, though that's not terribly relevant, yet. Thanks for reading!

Okay, I'm hopping in cold so please forgive if some of this is addressed earlier on. Are golf cart/lunar rover appropriate analogies in this POV? I'm not sure if the impression I'm getting of the state of the world allows for golf at the very least to be much of a touchstone. There's a couple others that stick out to me (eiffel tower, chinese firecracker, etc) but without having read backwards I'm not sure what's appropriate. I'm not sure where the pings are getting information from or why they're outputting in this specific manner; they're telling Oz an apartment number and that it's home but there's no associated name? I get you're wanting to do a reveal here but it feels like you're visibly structuring to force it to be a reveal rather than letting it come naturally, if that makes sense. I'm not sure I associate 'witch hazel' with a particular colour more than I do just hazel, re Pascal's eyes. Something about this initial conversation feels off, specifically him pulling her curls and the 'you still look like a girl' line. This doesn't come off as endearing to me in the slightest, even allowing they're old/best friends, this comes off as boundary-pushing to me. The transition to italics is a bit weird to me-- I think you're going to flashback? But I'm not sure and it's sort of awkward, I feel. 'one-year-old cousin sleeps on that pallet'; palate is in your mouth and palette has paint on it 'the board is evil' is very casually dropped in there; is this established previously? Right now I'm not sure. No real problem catching on though, even hopping in late; it's not my normal speed but it's an easy read.

yeah probably a 'her brother, varinen' is probably the best way to lead into that first name mention; i just have wanted to hold off on that because visually i like it better without, but it's not a huge deal. Sounds like going at this bit with an axe will be a good idea, which fair cop. I dislike direct exposition a lot so when a fair bit of it is necessary for stage-setting as it is here, it's not my best, haha. The thing about Varinen and why I'm specifically asking about him is less so much that he's going to be a big main character so much as that he leaves the stage quite early but the relationship between the two of them needs to get sold pretty hard and it's modestly complex-- which, well, to be expected, given that he's significantly older and was placed in a more direct position of authority over her than is usual between siblings. If this were epic, he'd probably be the main character. But the story's not leaving the city and it's not a story where hitting dudes with swords is desirable or particularly cool. "semi-modern" is probably accurate; if I'm being more specific I'd call it on the edge of the industrial revolution, with the war having explicitly held a lot of things back, but it's also a place where technological development has been very different due to magical influences. If I'm being very specific the key difference is a lack of mechanization; I know what is and is not doable with magic and if it fits I run with it rather than adhering to certain real-world periods. This will actually become most obvious when it comes up to fashion... Thank you!

I'd like to send out my next too, please.

Our viewpoint character being somewhat petulant with the undertone of suggestion that she did not, in fact, actually give it a fair chance. I'll mark those paragraphs for rework; what those do is really say a lot about the sort of person her brother is but without him actually having shown up yet it's not necessarily doing the reader a lot of good. Interesting, because if I was going to look at that dialogue at the end it was going to be over how really expository I feel it is. It's flumphing a lot of stuff down-- the personal drain from the war, Lasila's extreme self-centredness, the very edge of the geopolitical quagmire that's looming over everyone, etc. Might be rework could handle this more elegantly though, I'll make a note. Okay, cool, it's just something that I did have someone specifically call out but it scans fine to me, so I try and get extra opinions, lol. That sentence could probably be a bit better, I will look at it. 'hard luck verbing' has always suggested that the verb would be an unlikely occurance, at least as far as I have always been aware. But if it's a difficult phrase it could be adjusted. Cash-poor is a direct modifier to artists so a comma's inappropriate but it's a weird inverted construction, I will allow; I do that sometimes without realizing. Swapping the two words would probably fix it. They're a staple meat animal, somewhere between rabbit and guinea pig; ubiquitous enough that pov doesn't give much thought to them unless they're actually alive and wheeking, so I'm not too terribly worried if it's not instantaneously obvious so long as it's not confusing. Break down is a pretty standard term for butchering a carcass, though, as far as I am aware? Might be a regionalism; if I were to rework it though I'd probably start the sentence over and do something else, 'there aren't' doesn't flow how I want it to there. It's standard format for Web text, which is how I've had people read it thus far. It's certainly possible to change the paragraphing when I pull from my drafts to put into Word format, though, if it's troublesome. Thanks, both of you, for reading!

So I'm shooting for 120k total on this work, presently a bit over a third of the way in terms of first-draft writing on it. It is a social/political fantasy, and it is, in a manner of speaking, a supervillain origin story. It is probably in the same subgenre family as The Traitor Baru Comorant but it similarly probably is more directly inspired by House of Cards, though that's not liable to shine through for a while. It's a story that involves high fashion and demon summoning in more or less equal measure. General questions: Were you particularly confused by anything? What did you think of Lasila? How about Varinen? One specific one: There's a point where the narration transitions from referring to Lasila's brother as 'her brother' and starts using his name. When this name pops up, is it obvious that it's her brother's name?

I've been using ampersands for that purpose, too-- it's something I'd personally never use in prose and it's visually distinct from letters so it sticks out even without ctrl-f.

Hi everyone! I've been away for ages-- I don't know if anyone remembers me-- but I've got something a bit long-form that I'm... oh, maybe a third of the way through that I'm trying to keep working on, and I was hoping to join back up here! I'm still on the list so everything's good on my end. Was wondering if I could maybe put in my first chapter next week?

All right, let's get back into the groove of reading these things~ Let's see, right from the start, I've loved legged mer-people ever since I was a kid and read a big book about mermaids that talked about how there's a lot of stories that have them with legs. Page three, the usage of the word heralds in successive sentences sticks out a bit, it's an uncommon enough word that idk, I might switch it up some. I'm not personally big on bunching up physical descriptions but it fits well enough so I wouldn't worry about it. I feel vaguely uncomfortable with the 'body started quickening' exchange but there's nothing really wrong with it and it's certainly appropriate in context so again, I wouldn't worry. Aria's lack of contractions makes her dialogue sound a bit stilted, especially given she's kind of indignant. I don't think it flows correctly without them. "Canon had gotten hurt on her dorsal fin and arms" sounds a bit stilted, probably from the passive voice. Try something like "Canon had hurt her dorsal etc" maybe? The bit between ship and blacking out is very nice, I like it quite a lot. Huh. On the ship, it's not going how I expected. This is interesting-- enough so it's pulling me away from a close reading, which is good. Annd... oop, it's over. Aside from a couple comma splices here and there in dialogue, it pulled me in and kept me going. Neat story, neat setting, I'd like to see more of this place. Very good, I like it quite a lot.

Hoo boy I feel like a jerk, not responding to anything the past couple weeks. Had some personal stuff going on. I should be able to squeeze in looking at this week's though!

Ughhh, hopefully this week I can actually get more reading time in. Between working days last week and a cold in the middle, I got absolutely nothing done.

Yeah, I'll think about that some-- there's probably better ways to start it. But the fact that nobody wants to be in a laundromat is in a lot of ways the soul of the piece, and I'm not convinced it would be better to state that outright, either. We'll see how rework on that goes, not liable to get a chance for a bit though, working days murders my brain.

Aaah, busy busy this week, not quite as in-depth as I would like, we'll see if I can squeeze in going back over it. Anyway... The nonlinearity of the story makes it feel almost like a fever dream. It's a bit hard to tell what's happening when; I would probably actually amp this up since that appears intentional. Iiiiii am not personally bothered by the lack of overt explanation, but as should be obvious by now I really favour stealthing info in rather than stating it outright. That being said it probably wouldn't hurt the piece to slide in more about the dirge and the wars and all that. Hm, I think I do have more to say here but it's not coming out of my head right now and I'm not feeling well so I'm leaving it at that for now.

Upgrading is an idiom I thought was fairly universal; it refers to going back to school for the purposes of improving your job skills and prospects. If it's not as well known as I thought or derivable from context, I'll look into swapping it out. The advances she's referring to, like the rise of computing etc, occurred in the 20th century, so that's why I explicitly refer to it there. The quantum physics line is actually me avoiding the dreadful cliche of Shroedinger's cat by merely obliquely referencing it (ie, the state of the cat is determined when the box is opened; what the state actually is is a fairy thing). Too oblique, it seems; I could do better there then. Troubles with science are definitely not the way that should be read, and using greater specificity would probably help a lot. I'll head back to youtube for research. :v And yeah, the ending was a bit of a trouble for me; I had sort of a moment of 'but wait, this doesn't have any plot' and figured I ought to at least enact some sort of action or decision on the part of the viewpoint character, so that's why it goes where it does. I can probably sell the ending harder by working it in better earlier on. Starting off with a job loss like Mandamon suggested is probably a good place to start with that, especially if it's loss via petty obsolecense.

And now for something completely different. Please forgive the wonky formatting, this is still very much an early draft and I write shorts in plaintext. Nothing should be unreadable, I think, I just hate maintaining separate formatting on multiple documents. Specific points on this one: a) titles- help, please? I had it suggested by someone who was reading it in process that stopping at the 'fairies are dicks' line might be better all around for the piece. I'm not sold either way, but it does cut out a lot of the most load-bearing dialogue (and there is a lot of load-bearing dialogue here) so I'm interested in second opinions on that. Thanks!