Bay 12 Games Forum
Finally... => Creative Projects => Topic started by: Theoclymenus on July 26, 2008, 10:38:01 am
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Hi guys, I am in the process of writing a fantasy story and would love if a couple of people could read the twenty pages I have written so far. I need some constructive criticism and feedback on what works well in the story.
If anyone shows interest I will upload the pdf of what I have done so far for people to read. I like to think that one day I will manage to finish it (In theory it's the start of a trilogy) mostly for my own benefit.
The story is about a girl who ascends to godhood through a series of events revolving around her being chosen to learn magic. In the process of this she becomes immune to a force pervading the land that causes magic to be constricted to very arbitrary spells with costly components and lengthy rituals. Towards the end she will find out what this force is and will have to choose what to do about it.
EDIT: Here is the link: http://www.2shared.com/file/3656428/1a365467/Dhen_I_-_Broken_By_Choice.html (http://www.2shared.com/file/3656428/1a365467/Dhen_I_-_Broken_By_Choice.html)
It needs plenty of editing and I am going through it with a friend at the moment. Feedback greatly appreciated but please keep in mind that it needs work - most focus has been put on the plot at the moment, rather than grammar.
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I wouldn't mind if you uploaded, I seem to spend quite a bit of time rating writing.
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Brilliant, I will upload it once I have cleaned up what I have done so far (some bits of it are first pass). Should get it up within a few hours.
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I'll read it.
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Link = up
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OK, this is a rather large sample you've given, so I'm going to have to break my review down in parts. Also, an apology if my criticism seems personally harsh, if it does I'm not intending it to be.
First, there is a lot of unnecessary detail. I did that when I first wrote the first chapter of my second attempt at a first novel. I know, there's all those cool extras and reasons why everything is this way or that way (in my case, it was that everything was blue because of a clerical error), but the reader doesn't need to know it right away unless it's plot-relevant.
For example, we don't need to know about the exact types and qualities of food that the people in Erodale eat just yet on page 1 where no one is eating. The fact that there was a plague is important, and deserves its place.
Aside: It's important that every sentence has a purpose. What do you want the mood in the town to be? Rural? It seems rural enough right now as I'm reading it. But is there an undertone of discrimination? Or is it just all peaceful? Or both? It's a much better use of sentences to establish the mood than to talk about the obscurer parts of the world's lore.
Actually, I notice that you're really cramming information in. My honest opinion is that you should decide what's all that important and what isn't. You mention that Quina has a color-changed chawile feather in a parenthetical remark. Now, is this an important thing? If so, it shouldn't be parenthetical, for the reader might just run over it. Is it an unimportant thing? Then what is it doing here?
Two: You really need to vary your words. You use the words marsh or marshy about 4-5 times on page 2, and the exact phrase "marshy fields" is used twice. This is bad, because it makes reading monotonous.
I'll try to find time to read more, but that's all for now. Keep writing no matter what.
EDIT: More! Three: As far as you I have read, every instance of the word 'choice' is bold. Now, this is actually the sort of step that shows that you have a powerful vision in mind. However, bold letters will stand out and make it annoying to read. (See: the headache-causing horror of Septimus Heap.) Try using a different font or italics.
In addition, are you going to do this for the entire book? If so, it will lose its novelty fast.
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Whoa, thanks for the tip about the marsh overuse, that's pretty bad. Normally I vary my words but since I take it on a sentence by sentence basis I tend to miss things like that. The first page is the only one that my friend and I have gone over fully. The overuse of information is important because I am trying to give the impression of Quina's rambling mind that thinks too much, it becomes important later on. I'll try to make that idea clearer as I go.
Thanks a lot!
EDIT: I was actually going to remove the choice idea. It was a thought I had right at the start and I think that a greater sense of vision can be had with the quotes under the chapter numbers. I will probably remove the bold in my next edit.
And yes, the feather is important so I will restructure that part when I get there.
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You're welcome.
If you want to give the impression of over-thinking, there are better ways. If it was narrated from first person I would think that she would be detail-obsessed, but then again it would still be far too much to digest. If you want to keep your current narration-style, then perhaps you should show her having wandering thoughts.
And while I'm here and posting this, another piece of advice from someone who is writing a novel. Be prepared for major rewrites. About every hundreds-hundred-fifty or pages I've found that I 'level up' and increase in writing quality. Stuff that you think is great when you first write it you may come back to and say "What was I thinking!?" I know it's happened to me a lot.
EDIT: All right, I'm on page seven now. So I'm getting the impression that the gods/goddesses of the world will take petty revenge. If this is something unique to this world, you may want to step it up/mention it somehow far earlier. That will help separate your book from Tolkien High Fantasy Clone #37. In this day and age, you can assume that fantasy novels are generic cliches unless proven otherwise. I'm not saying your novel is, but you want to make sure that your unique elements shine as soon as possible to pull the reader in.
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Yeah, I'll give it a little trim and make sure it looks like Quina's thoughts. As for the levelling up idea, I definitly agree with that and sort of look forward to it. Making it more and more shiny (and super special awesome) is good!
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Technically speaking, "marsh" is the only word for a marsh. Bogs are different, swamps are different, and fens are different. I suppose you could just call it "wet". Or perhaps "squishy".
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I've got a couple things to work on here at home, but I was planning to sit down and give this a read through and offer my thoughts as well. Consider this space saved, since I'll wipe out all this text and replace it with thoughts once I've got a free moment.
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Thanks guys, it's great to have a few people reading it.
There's a couple of changes to the version I uploaded (aside from the hundreds of grammar ones):
"Chickens wobbled out of the way..." - There aren't chickens in the world. I used the word as a placeholder for another creature that would have a similar purpose.
I have removed the bolding of the word 'choice', prefering the sense of purpose that I hope the chapter quotes give. These quotes have two purposes: firstly, they are to add to a sense of mystery, giving information about the plot from a person who has more information than Quina. Secondly, they are so that I can explore the lore of the land in a small space where it won't clutter up the story too much - I have come up with most of the important history of the world, the ascendence of the gods being the most important.
Dhen uses a base seven numeral system based around the night sky, which has seven galaxies visible (And I mean big ones, not the tiny things we can see because they are so far away). This is shown in the clock which runs in the learning-town and also will be revealed in the chapter numbers. I need to hand draw those at some point and scan them in.
I have now written up the whole plot to the book in summary format split between three main arcs, it should allow me to reduce a feeling of railroading which might build up otherwise.
Do other people think it is necessary to have sections that aren't from Quina's perspective? Or do people think I can carry on like it is now?
Thanks again guys!
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I'll probably get around to reading it sometime, I've always considered myself something of a connoisseur when it comes to stories, maybe I'll put this to the test.
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EDIT: All right, I'm on page seven now. So I'm getting the impression that the gods/goddesses of the world will take petty revenge. If this is something unique to this world, you may want to step it up/mention it somehow far earlier. That will help separate your book from Tolkien High Fantasy Clone #37. In this day and age, you can assume that fantasy novels are generic cliches unless proven otherwise. I'm not saying your novel is, but you want to make sure that your unique elements shine as soon as possible to pull the reader in.
Okay... when have you read a fantasy book that laid out all of the cards on the table in the first few pages? The gods and goddesses have enough backstory to write a prologue about their ascendency and in the current book I would much rather slowly reveal the truth behind them and their pettiness (along with other things that will come up, I could spoil things in this thread but am not sure I want to...)
About all I can do as a comprimise is to insert a little bit more information about them in one of the chapter quotes. However, I am certain there is a line about them ascending, something that gives a hint to their pettiness - their original mortality.
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Can I post a story here? :)
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EDIT: All right, I'm on page seven now. So I'm getting the impression that the gods/goddesses of the world will take petty revenge. If this is something unique to this world, you may want to step it up/mention it somehow far earlier. That will help separate your book from Tolkien High Fantasy Clone #37. In this day and age, you can assume that fantasy novels are generic cliches unless proven otherwise. I'm not saying your novel is, but you want to make sure that your unique elements shine as soon as possible to pull the reader in.
Okay... when have you read a fantasy book that laid out all of the cards on the table in the first few pages? The gods and goddesses have enough backstory to write a prologue about their ascendency and in the current book I would much rather slowly reveal the truth behind them and their pettiness (along with other things that will come up, I could spoil things in this thread but am not sure I want to...)
About all I can do as a comprimise is to insert a little bit more information about them in one of the chapter quotes. However, I am certain there is a line about them ascending, something that gives a hint to their pettiness - their original mortality.
It's fine that you want to keep a mystery around your story. You should. What's I'm saying is that unique things like this are selling points in your story, and should be highlighted. And you are already doing that, so I guess I'm trying to say "This is good. Keep doing this."
I have more to say, but I don't have the time right now.
Little: Go ahead. Even if I don't read it, I think someone else probably will.
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I have no objection to anyone else posting a story up here. The thread title should probably changed to 'Writing Stories' or something...
Sorry about my almost rant there, I thought I was being encouraged to throw everything I had into the beginning of the story. There are two main worries I have with it (aside from the obvious not finishing): The first worry is that the book will look derivative, I hope that almost nothing within the book is taken from anywhere else. The second worry is that the book would burn out in the first fifty or so pages. So me being forced to spill all my secrets at the start feels a little like having to choose between my two biggest worries.
There is rather a lot of information that I could give that would hopefully take away the feeling that it is a little clichéd, information that might be placed on a back cover or sleeve thing. The magic system that Quina begins to learn is a lie. The world is being subjected to a force that changes the natural magic into something terribly arbitrary - time consuming and expensive to use. It is this that makes the gods, who are immune to this force for reasons I shall not reveal, so dangerous. So (for anyone who got far enough to notice this) if the book feels a little stereotypical in that someone gets picked to learn magic blah blah blah... I promise there is a lot more to it than that, there are some dark undertones to the world.
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I winced as I heard the crowd scream. My eyes saw that the signs were in the air, handles slick with blood and pus from the welts and blisters on my fellow student’s hands. There were a steady thousand of us, and about a hundred or so of them. Of course, those bastards were heavily armed and not half-dead from the fucking plague like we were….
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It had all started around two and a half weeks ago, according to the Port Pale news. Some stupid asshole of a country (I’m pretty sure it was Russia, but my memory hasn’t been that great recently, and who the fuck can blame me?) bombed Los Angles with some kind of germ and nerve gas. The thing that fucked you over was that symptoms didn’t show up for a week, and it took another three weeks to die. By then, you’d infected everyone else you’d come into contact with by even goddamn BREATHING on them. World’s a screwed up place when being breathed on is a death sentence, right?
It had hit the collage about two weeks after the bombing, with the first reports of people becoming seriously ill, and the oh-shit factor of everyone realizing that this wasn’t another cold. Another two days after that, and the reports of people dropping dead in the streets of big cities (with footage at eleven!)began to be reported, and that scared the shit out of everyone, because we all were having some odd fucking cold. The first casualty was Julia West. She just dropped dead in Physics, blood gushing out of her nose, mouth, ears, and a few other places blood shouldn’t come gushing out of. I liked Julia, I had known her quite well (went out with her in Grade 7), and to have her drop dead was a bitch of a shock.
The day after was the day I found my first blister, in my goddamn armpit. It scared the shit out of me, so I asked around. Turned out, everyone else had them (Tom had his in a place blister’s should never be), too. The next day, I found six more blisters, and woke up to cries of dismay and rage from Bryan and Patrick. I got up, my first blister bleeding and hurting like a bitch, and looked out the window.
The main entrance to the campus was blocked off by two large green tanks, with soldiers with what looked like gas masks and flamethrowers on sealing the place off with trucks and Jeeps. As it turned out, we weren’t allowed to leave and as Josh found out, trying to leave got you lit on fire and killed from a distance of twenty feet. That was the day we started making signs and scrounging for weapons….
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We managed to get outside safely, thank God. We started charging, and I guess Santy and a few of his dealer buddies had guns or something, because I heard the bang! of gunfire coming from our crowd. I couldn’t see that well, but I think a few soldiers went down before an Uzi from our side cranked in. The last thing you could hear for the next several minutes was the roar of massive mounted machineguns as the Army began to fire back. I managed to curl up into a ball beneath the stampede of screaming students. About three minutes later, the machine guns stopped. The silence had seemed ominous. A loudspeaker droned out in a heavily filtered voice: “RETURN TO YOUR CAMPUS! DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LEAVE! RETURN TO YOUR CAMPUS! STAND WITH YOUR HANDS UP!”
I stood up, hands on my head, shifting because I found I was uncomfortable. I was dismayed to find out I had wet myself. I heard the moaning of the wounded, and looked around. There were bodies littering the lawn, blood smeared on the ground. I recognized a few of the dead. My eyes started to blur with tears, which obscured exactly what happened next. All I managed to see was a huge flash of flame, and I fell to the ground, swearing because the flash hurt my eyes and blinded me. I heard someone scream, in a high pitched, cracking voice: “Holy shit, Santy, what did you eat?”
I began to laugh, tears streaming down my face.
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All right, I finished your sample. Here's the end of my critisism:
Four(I think): I strongly recommend you use some other term than 'spell components' to describe the physical stuff you use up. It's the exact same term that D&D uses, which makes it seem cliche. I would suggest the word 'reagent', because it means pretty much the same thing and actually sounds a bit cool.
Five: Most people need more description. Ghiram is not described except for his clothes. Quina is never described at all, which is something major for a main character. This goes for just about every other character too.
And now, a sub-section: Publishing Format Recommendations! Ignore this if you don't plan on publishing your book, but I suspect you do. It may be helpful anyway.
The blue text: No publisher is going to spend 2-3 times more money on the book just for a few blue lines. They wouldn't do it if the whole book was blue. You would be better off dropping it now, and just describing the blueness.
Page size: I'm not sure what size and font you are using, aside from that the 'e's are unreadable, but it's nowhere close to how much room you will have in a paperback novel (Being a first-time novelist, paperback is the best you can hope for in a first printing). You'll get about four regular size paragraphs to a page, and you have way more than that. Be aware of this, it means that your novel is a lot larger than you think. I'm guessing this is more like a 30-50 page sample.
Paragraphs: It's much more professional looking (and sadly, this is often a big point in how good the reader thinks your book is) if you tab the start of every paragraph and put no lines in between. It's easier on the eyes too.
Back to regular criticism:
I've finished talking about the book in particular, now I'm going to talk more about writing in general.
The thing that strikes me is that you are very vivid. I could easily imagine seeing some of your descriptive lines appearing in a published fantasy novel and not being able to tell the difference. However, you don't set the mood, which you need to do to make the reader feel like she's actually there.
You put a lot of information in your book, and this clogs the flow. Again, I've heard that you are trying to make it sound rambling, but honestly, it feels more like you want to put out all this information yourself. There are two things you can do to help this:
A: See if you can make a sentence do double or even triple duty. I can't think of an example off hand, but open any book by a famous author and you will probably find a large number of their lines having multiple meanings.
B: Prioritize. You will not be able to show every single detail of every single thing, and this is a sad fact of writing stories. Pick the details that the reader should know first, then things that show parts of the scene, and then other odd details.
That's the end of the general critisim, and now for yet another suggestion, which would affect the structure of your novel. Hear it out though:
I'd advise you cut Chapter 1 and distribute the important details to other chapters. Why?
Nothing happens. Quina doesn't actually do anything that appears to be outside of the ordinary, so why describe it? If you started reading right from Chapter Two, you wouldn't miss any action at all, in fact, you jump right into it.
Now, you may object that you want to start the book on the last normal day of Quina's life. This is fine, and many books start on day '1' of the adventure. However, this is more like day 0. Even Tolkien, whose writing can occasionally keep up with a glacier on a cold day, had the Lord of the Rings start with action, such as it was.
And that's it. That's all I have to say. Keep on writing, many of these things you can take care of in revision.
Little: The excessive profanity does nothing for your story. Tone it down some and look for a magazine that accepts short short fiction, such as Aoife's Kiss. Submit it. I'd say you have a pretty good chance with your quality of writing.
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Gee, right. There will be a mahoosive wall of text if I quote what you wrote, so I shall avoid doing so.
Ignore all the current formatting. It is currently in the shape it is in now so that if I print it off it is very easy to both read and put notes around the text. When I finish and polish it (if it is going to publishers) I would put it in a more conventional font/format once I get to that stage.
The blue text is... a format I am using in the same vein as bibles in which Jesus' words are written in red text. It's mainly because I want to avoid writing in block capitals. I suppose, with my description of how he talks the formatting isn't hugely necessary...
The font itself looks perfect on my moniter but I suppose I shall change it for my next update.
I am well aware of the size of the page and everything. In the current formatting I think I am aiming for 200-250 pages.
Onto the less format orientated stuff:
I might change the word component, reagent feels just as cliched to me though. I reckon I will get hold of a thesaurus and have a look through.
Ghiram doesn't have a great description at the moment, I will agree. However, a fair amount of information about Quina is found in the first few pages. I didn't want to stick a whole paragraph that was just describing her and so spread it out a bit. I'll pad out the descriptions of people a bit more.
As far as concising down the information, it's going to be one of the priorities of editing. I would much rather have it all out there to begin with and then I can pick and choose what I want. It's better than the alternative of forgetting something important.
Hmm, on to the comment about the first chapter. I don't think it would be such a problem if I went over the whole chapter and put a greater sense of tranquility and rural life. It's important to have plenty of it because later on Quina will be referencing it as her homesickness increases.
Thanks a lot for your feedback, I will definitly put this information to good use!
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Little: The excessive profanity does nothing for your story. Tone it down some and look for a magazine that accepts short short fiction, such as Aoife's Kiss. Submit it. I'd say you have a pretty good chance with your quality of writing.
Your kidding about the magizine, right?
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I actually disagree about the tone-the-profanity-part-down part. It adds a little bit of grit, which the story really needs ( more of ).
I like it, but I sighed when I read this...
Some stupid asshole of a country (I’m pretty sure it was Russia...
It seems a little bit stereotype, and very unlikely. Why the hell would any country bomb just one city with nerve gas and risk open war?
I know this is sort of nitpicking, but I couldn't resist mentioning this. It's still really good though. I like your style.
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I dunno why I said Russia. I'm a cold-war buff, so maybe that leaked in. After I wrote it, I did consider changing it, but decided not to.
I was thinking an anonymous Middle Eastern country, maybe Iran, maybe North Korea, but then decided Russia.
Anyone mind if I post another, completely diffrent one? It was one of the first things I ever wrote, and I went over it last month editing it.
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If you were to upload your stories (possibly onto something like deviant art) I could link to them in the OP. Then we can sort of have a compendium of stories.
What do you think?
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But uploading them encourages dirty, rotten thieves.
Oh, yeah, please don't steal my work. It's not that good, but it's mine just the same. Besides, I do regular Google checks.
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That's a bit backwards really. By uploading a file to deviant art you have undisputable proof that you wrote it. If anyone were to copy it their copy would have a later date attached to it which would allow you to win in a dispute.
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I've already posted it in another place, and this place, so I guess that's proof. But I'll host it anyway.
Edit: How the hell do you host it on Devianart?
Edit2: Nevermind.
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http://little1994.deviantart.com/art/Plague-93171962
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Theo: I like it so far. I think Giga makes a lot of good points. Taking constructive criticism at face value can be exceedingly hard to do, and I salute you for doing so.
As long as we're sharing writing, here's the beginning of a story I've been working on. I've never really tried writing anything more extensive than a short story/poem before, so I'm iffy about sharing, but I suppose the worst I can do is embarrass myself.
http://www.mediafire.com/?xyjvs22rr3c (Chapter 1)
http://www.mediafire.com/?mmxutfxgidw (Chapter 2) - just the start of this one.
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Little: The excessive profanity does nothing for your story. Tone it down some and look for a magazine that accepts short short fiction, such as Aoife's Kiss. Submit it. I'd say you have a pretty good chance with your quality of writing.
Your kidding about the magizine, right?
No. Think of it this way: If you submit, there are two possibilities:
A: You get rejected. It happens. It's happened to me. It's happened to my mom. It's happened to my grandma. Name any famous author, they've been rejected several times. If you choose not to take it as a personal rejection and keep on writing, the absolute worst case scenario is that you're out a few minutes to put together a letter and maybe a quarter for postage. You still have the story, and you can try again with another publisher if you want.
B: You get accepted. 'Nuff said.
I personally think that you have a decent chance, and again, you have nothing to lose by trying. So really, try.
Re: Profanity. The reason I bring it up is that some magazines don't like to see excessive amounts. But whatever. It's a personal preference.
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You actually think I have a chance? My writing isn't that good.
And how would I submit it? I don't exactly know how...Plus, none of my stuff is copyrighted.
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You actually think I have a chance? My writing isn't that good.
I'd say you have a shot. Maybe you'll hit, and maybe you'll miss, but if you never try you'll never succeed. And if you fail, what have you lost?
If you do decide to take the plunge, submitting is actually pretty easy.
First, Find the name of a magazine you're interested in. Google their name. Every magazine has a website these days, and usually they have a section called Writer's Guidelines or Submission Guidelines, or the like. There they have the exact specifications down to the letter of how they want story submissions made. Also, the often have certain things they want or don't want to see content-wise i.e. Analog won't accept fantasy.
Alternately, you could just click on this link because I so happen to have it bookmarked: http://www.samsdotpublishing.com/aoife/AKguidelines.htm
Either way, you follow their guidelines, and either email it if they accept email submissions or snail-mail it otherwise. Then you wait. And wait. It helps to forget that you submitted it in the first place, because then you won't be bitterly disappointed if you get rejected after all that. And that's basically it. Sooner or later you will get a letter either rejecting or accepting you, and that's that. If you don't get in, you can submit to another magazine you find, or you could just write another story.
And as for copyright? Don't worry about it. For a story that size, you'll get maybe a few dollars, and the magazine will register the copyright for you. (And you still own the story, what most magazines buy are called 'first rights' meaning they own the right to publish the story for the first time.) And U.S. copyright law automatically copyrights anything you create, the only point of registration is that it turns a one-sided battle (Any theoretical thief would not have your drafts and other versions) into a matter of paperwork.
P.S.: If you plan on making a career in writing, you will get rejected many times. It happens. So lay back and sing the Rejection Letter Blues (sung to the Dead Letter Blues):
I gotta letter this morning,
what ya reckon' it read?
it said: "Your story sucks.
and we're not gonna publish it."
Sadly, I haven't thought of any more verses.
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Thanks for the recomendations!
I submited a story to Aoife.