Writer's Dump: Post and Critique

[First of My Name]

1 hour ago, JEORDHl said:

Yeah, I'd gotten busy and forgot about it too.

And, I didn't mean predictable in a bad way. It just has that --old detective ruminating over his career on his last day before retirement-- kind of vibe to it, and you always know what's about to happen then. Maybe change it up a bit. Somehow. Not sure. 

I'm currently working way further down the line, and it's far from polished-- but I'll match you Prologue for Prologue.

Feel free to cut away.

 

Oh yeah, that's more or less what I was aiming for. The character ruminates like that constantly in his later years but never does anything about his situation. There's a small irony in that he dreams of dying a fairytale death, and then gets a death that is (literally) straight out of a story, just a very different kind of story.

On your prologue:
This might just be me but had a little trouble visualising it, and it feels like I was dropped in the middle of the a chapter rather than a prologue (then again, that might have been what you were going for). It definitely makes you wonder about the rest of the story though.

[JGP]

7 hours ago, First of My Name said:

This might just be me but had a little trouble visualising it, and it feels like I was dropped in the middle of the a chapter rather than a prologue (then again, that might have been what you were going for). It definitely makes you wonder about the rest of the story though.

Ok, that's good feedback. So what was the issue, you think... 

i. re: visualization, i.e. not enough description, confused description, some thing(s) else/otherwise 

ii. I did drop intentionally but tried to keep it limited, meaning, embedding some elements not necessarily relevant to that particular scene but hint at a bigger story. If it's too busy though...

I mean, seeing it through the lens of my PoV, of course I don't see it as too much in comparison to how broad the scope gets. Which doesn't mean, in any way, that I handled it well, or as well as I could've. I appreciate the feedback and will look at it critically [and hopefully as objectively] when I do more backtracking/polishing.

Thanks.

edited for formatting

[First of My Name]

7 hours ago, JEORDHl said:

Ok, that's good feedback. So what was the issue, you think... 

i. re: visualization, i.e. not enough description, confused description, some thing(s) else/otherwise 

ii. I did drop intentionally but tried to keep it limited, meaning, embedding some elements not necessarily relevant to that particular scene but hint at a bigger story. If it's too busy though...

I mean, seeing it through the lens of my PoV, of course I don't see it as too much in comparison to how broad the scope gets. Which doesn't mean, in any way, that I handled it well, or as well as I could've. I appreciate the feedback and will look at it critically [and hopefully as objectively] when I do more backtracking/polishing.

Thanks.

edited for formatting

Confused description would the best word for it, I think. This might just be my limited command of the English language talking, there were some words in there I didn't know, but I couldn't realy form a picture in my head of the surroundings despite the description of it.

It does feel like this scene is a part of a greater whole, but you might want to restrain the references a little. If you want to hook readers with this, any confusion on their part is going to make that harder.

Yeah, I know what you mean, sometimes you need to remind yourself that the reader doesn't know everything you know, and the line gets a little blurry.

You're welcome, and of course this is al just personal. The next poster might want more references in the prologue.

[Andrew Gilfellon]

Something short. A character description from the second chapter.

Spoiler

"And you are?" demanded the secretary in a shrill voice, looking at her like she was some beggar come in off the street and not someone so rich she could sell his entire family into slavery a dozen times or more.

She thought about how she must look to such a self-important little man as this. A woman of average height and slender build with skin the colour of those obsidian blades they used on suspected Magi. A savage from the far south dressed in a traditional Alethi body wrap hooked around the left shoulder by a brass ring. Bangles going from wrist to elbow that to them appeared only as jewellery but to an Alethi girl signified an important marker in her life: Red for first blood and white for virginity. White and red combined for no longer being a virgin. Sometime in the future, should the Goddess bless her, there might be blue for becoming a mother. A savage with hair plaited and moulded into locks by red clay and paste, shaped into a small crescent across the forehead indicating she was marriage ready. Her face was a narrow oval with eyes icy blue and too round with a noble nose to be considered beautiful by a Delthik man who preferred rounder faces, narrower eyes and smaller noses. She was by no means beautiful, a lesson taught time and time again by her younger and prettier sister, Sarana.

These were the things she imagined the man saw and the reason behind his condescending sneer. "Nikita Sarakus," she said slowly, slow enough that it should leave no one in doubt how she felt about this man's mental capacity to understand her. "Nikita Sarakus."

 

[JGP]

On 6/24/2016 at 3:08 PM, Andrew Gilfellon said:

Something short. A character description from the second chapter.

  Reveal hidden contents

"And you are?" demanded the secretary in a shrill voice, looking at her like she was some beggar come in off the street and not someone so rich she could sell his entire family into slavery a dozen times or more.

She thought about how she must look to such a self-important little man as this. A woman of average height and slender build with skin the colour of those obsidian blades they used on suspected Magi. A savage from the far south dressed in a traditional Alethi body wrap hooked around the left shoulder by a brass ring. Bangles going from wrist to elbow that to them appeared only as jewellery but to an Alethi girl signified an important marker in her life: Red for first blood and white for virginity. White and red combined for no longer being a virgin. Sometime in the future, should the Goddess bless her, there might be blue for becoming a mother. A savage with hair plaited and moulded into locks by red clay and paste, shaped into a small crescent across the forehead indicating she was marriage ready. Her face was a narrow oval with eyes icy blue and too round with a noble nose to be considered beautiful by a Delthik man who preferred rounder faces, narrower eyes and smaller noses. She was by no means beautiful, a lesson taught time and time again by her younger and prettier sister, Sarana.

These were the things she imagined the man saw and the reason behind his condescending sneer. "Nikita Sarakus," she said slowly, slow enough that it should leave no one in doubt how she felt about this man's mental capacity to understand her. "Nikita Sarakus."

 

What kind of critique are you looking for on that?

I mean, I could limit it to things like this: ' ...looking at her like she was some beggar come in off the street and not someone so rich she could sell his entire family into slavery a dozen times or more.' I'd personally swap rich for powerful or influential or something. Fits the context better.

Stuff like that, but it depends what you're looking for.

[JGP]

It may be weird posting snippets, but there’s no denying how helpful critiques on them when can be when applied broadly going forward.

Here’s another clip, about a ¼ of the introductory chapter of a PoV.

For any takers, the types of feedback I’m looking for are:

i.                     Does it effectively introduce the PoV or is it too cluttered

ii.                   Is there a sense of actual character

iii.                  Does it hook interest in the character

iv.                 As well, does it hook interest in the potential of the character’s storyline

v.                   Any commentary/suggestions on the actual crafting

 

 

 

The Tyrant Ahzar et Haidar beckoned from his purple sofa. “Come, Uyezir.”

Uyezir et Necdet, the Raptor of Brood, nodded as the Shepherds uncrossed their crooks, yet one held up a forestalling hand. He glanced at Uyezir’s lance “Apologies, my lord.”

From the great fortress of Brood in answer to the Imperial summons, Uyezir and a quarter complement select of his Rag Bearers had ridden a night and a day through. He may have been tired and his ass was sore, but his mute alarm at the unrest in Nest had distracted him from protocol. 

Uyezir understood and held out the blacklance. There was a cough, but none moved to take it. At least one Shepherd had the grace to look uncomfortable, scratching absently at his beard.

“Let him by,” the Tyrant commanded impatiently.

Uyezir had been beneath the mosaicked vaults of this pillared chamber many times over the years, when duty or the Tyrant demanded, but he had never seen it so empty. Splitting the Hall of Two Truths, he strode down its center and instead of the typical susurration of the gathered aristocracy his boots echoed loudly. Not even a single member of the Black Nobility or the White was present. This was troubling as well.

He took a knee before the dais with his full attention upon this foreign lion who, upon ascension, had renamed himself Ahzar et Haidar. The Tyrant was a small but well-proportioned, middle aged man. One of his legs was up on a divan as a young Kusenean woman kneaded the obvious gout in his knee joint with oil. He winced as she dug her thumbs in. Uyezir had grown somewhat accustomed to Ahzar’s unsettling eyes -one a dull grey, the other a bright green brilliant as agate- though even pinched in pain his eerie regard did not waver.

“You must be thirsty, Uyezir. I would serve you myself, but, as you can see,” the Tyrant said as if embarrassed, “I am currently afflicted.”

Uyezir placed the blacklance upon the marble floor and went to a side table. Rinsed his hands in the large terra cotta bowl filled with lemon water and patted them dry with a towel. As he folded the linen back up he composed his thoughts before the orange glow out the east window. Even from here, he could hear the discord.

Given the circumstances, he was not surprised that Ahzar had taken up the poor humors of drink again. Nor that the healing hands of Isrolke were withheld so that he had to endure the consequence of that choice. If that was his niece’s judgment, Uyezir would not contribute either. So he poured himself a glass of cold tea, then a second. “You know, I would have brought a full complement had I been made aware it was this bad.”

“And I would have asked were it so,” the Tyrant waved the sentiment away and the Kusenean woman with it. She gathered her oils and padded out on bare feet. “It is not so bad as that, insofar as far as riots go.”

Uyezir handed Ahzar a glass, his tone skeptical. “A man must believe his eyes.”

“Just so, my friend.” The Tyrant sipped. “But it was worse yesterday, and my Shepherds will keep the peace and calm will prevail. Or they will not and my grand experiment will be threatened. It would not be the first time. Yet there are tidings of greater importance.”

Uyezir arched a brow at this, but before he could judge whether it was a bit of theater the Shepherds admitted three more to the Hall of Two Truths. He noted the Great Bastard Inzadi Apart. Her step faltered only a moment at seeing Uyezir present. The Great Bastard was at least a hand taller than her two companions, being almost of a size with Uyezir. A powerful woman, humbled by the generosity of the man who had taken the Empire that, with the right maneuvering, could one day have been hers.

The three stopped cautiously short of the blacklance and knelt before the dais. Uyezir recognized the glass sorcerer Faiensii Abel, but not the third. This one was a stranger to him, but with his cinnamon skin, onyx eyes and tightly coiled beard looked to hail from far Amutyri. Inzadi’s dark hair was disheveled, her armor spattered with grime and she smelled of smoke. But when Ahzar et Haidar saw the blood on her hands his expression hardened. .

She cleared her throat. “We put every Bullfinch zealot to the question, Tyrant. Razed every corner and hidey hole in the Old City and the Cathedral of Twigs. The Vulture of Clutch has not been seen in at least three days.”

Ahzar et Haidar snarled and threw his glass at her. Inzadi flinched as it shattered against her grey lamellar cuirass, tea splashing across both the black chain of her hauberk and her two companions.

Ahzar stood with a grunt of pain. “And judging by the current unrest you questioned the functionaries and acolytes of the Faith gently, no doubt.” He turned and stabbed his cane toward the window. “You live. I suffer. And Kusen burns, Inzadi."

Uyezir glanced between the two, yet did not fail to note the darkening complexion of the Amutyri. Inzadi reached a hand out to calm him. Ah. Stung, the Raptor looked away sharply. The new lover.

The Tyrant turned his back to them and eventually sighed. “Apologies, Inzadi Apart. That was unworthy of me.”

“I tried.” Inzadi said, softly. “We tried."

The Faiensii unbent slowly. Withered and wizened, the glass sorcerer that had served the last four Tyrants of Kusen had a feathery voice. “I too, have tried.” With an expression of distaste he wiped tea from his white silks. “I looked for them here at the Capitol, in the Old City, at his various country estates. There are many places however that I could not descry through my lens, obscured like so many spots on the sun.” The old man was thoughtfully fingering one of the glass beads threaded into his long white beard. “The Vulture has gone to ground and hidden his tracks well.”

Uyezir was tired, but something Abel said struck him. “Wait. Them?” And it slid into place. The summons of all haste. The missing Pontifex. The capitol in riot and the Tyrant Ahzar et Haidar otherwise alone in the Hall of Two Truths. “Isrolke?”

Ahzar turned. There were tears in his mismatched eyes.

“First my sister,” -Uyezir’s teeth ground- “and now Isrolke, Ahzar?” Inzadi’s lover leapt back with a curse as the blacklance dissipated into curls of oily black smoke. The nine feet of ebony rematerialized in the Raptor of Brood’s right hand. “This was not worth mentioning?”

Ahzar et Haidar forestalled the Shepherds’ concern. “It gets worse.”

“Worse?” Uyezir’s nostrils flared. “The fuck is worse than that?”

The Tyrant’s gaze hardened. “The Vulture looted the Papyri Theurgi as well.”

Inzadi took a cautious step between them. “Uye- ”

“And I should care about your fucking precious scrolls?” Uyezir ignored Inzadi and grabbed the horn hanging at his side, brought it to his lips.

“The Cu Sidat are missing too.”

Uyezir paused. “Her hounds.”  A decade earlier he had given three years of his life to the king of the deadlands. In return, the blacklance, the horn and a pair of the intelligent white hounds were his. Uyezir had later pledged the Cu Sidat to his niece as birth gift. When his sister Werekh’s milk had dried up the great bitch had even suckled Isrolke as infant and young child,  the sweet little child running around on all fours as barking wild as the pair’s three pups.

The Kusenean Empire and its vassal city-states of Amutyri, Bakhtri, Ush and Horn-- it all might turn on this. Despite the bloody and diplomatic history of the lion conqueror, it was the Faith of Twigs and their appropriated sacral promise of the Tyrant's daughter by Werekh that kept it all together. Isrolke ahn Werekh, Daughter Imperial, whose hands could heal.

His duty had been tested before. But the last living member of his family was missing now. Kusen could burn. Uyezir et Necdet did not give a fuck..  

So he sounded the bone horn. It pealed an unearthly note that was lost eventually in the air, accompanied by yet another year of his life. Uyezir felt it leave him, a few new aches settling into the absence.

“They won’t answer,” Ahzar said dejectedly.

Uyezir glared. The martial brilliance of this man conquered a continent, and his will had united it. Uyezir had never seen him defeated. But in the manner that the power of rule often tied hands instead of liberating them, he saw it now.

"No, you are right." The Raptor of Brood clenched his jaw. "If only because the Cu Sidat clearly sanctioned this," -Why- "else the Pontifex would be ripped to bloody pieces and Isrolke would be here. But it does not matter where they are, or will go. The hounds will hear the horn of the deadlands... and know that I am coming."

The Vulture has my niece.

 

[Minaku]

You still open to commentary, @JEORDHl?

[JGP]

Yup! Fire away, @Minaku