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Ccs posted:I'm looking for feedback on the opening section of my novel. A lot of people have looked at it and I got a few sparse notes but I had one recent viewer that had an issue with almost every line. I was so thrown by the reaction that I'm now second guessing my ability to string a sentence together or construct a scene at all. Wondering if people here will have similar reactions. Thirding that I really liked this. I didn't have much to add on top of what has already been commented inline, so I just made two notes of my reactions as a reader. If you need beta readers later, let me know, I'd be game for this.
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# ¿ Oct 1, 2020 12:25 |
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# ¿ May 14, 2024 03:30 |
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I had a look when you first posted the link last week. My eyes glazed over pretty quickly and my brain went, this is way too hard to comment on. Here are some thoughts after rewatching Brandon Sanderson's 2020 lecture on plot (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrIogch5DBU) and a second pass. The lecture I linked specifically addresses hooking readers with plot. Sanderson may not be your cup of tea, but he is very good at explaining the basics of craft: your opening makes certain promises (tone, story) to the reader and it's on you as the author to convince them to keep reading by giving them a sense of progress towards satisfying payoffs (i.e. delivering on the promises you made at the beginning). Here are the tone and story promises I get from your opening:
I have no idea what your story is about. This "useless Prince" gave...some orders? To Guard and Help who then did stuff that pissed off the mob and the Errants and they're now on the run. The Prince seems to be a whiny delusional rich kid that Guard and Help (understandably) don't respect. Why should I care about these characters? Why should I keep reading? My answer to both of those questions are "I don't know" and that's not a good thing for your opening.
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# ¿ Oct 17, 2020 03:58 |
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animaldog posted:The narrator isn't quite omniscient and they despise the prince, in a way they are Guard's internal monologue. Ok, this is the missing piece! animaldog posted:Guard is the only reasonable character but he has no morals. A pure self-interest machine. It's more that I had NO IDEA that we're supposed to be in Guard's head. Your current opening is written in such a distant third that I mistook it for omniscient. Get closer, so that it's really clear who the POV character is. The journal entry is actually a red herring, because it made me assume that if we were in anybody's head, it was going to be the Prince. That was really off putting since he's unlikeable, incompetent and uninteresting. I'd suggesting watching this Sanderson lecture on characters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NCiuI6F5O0 - he talks about figuring out where your characters sit on 3 different sliding scales (likeability, proactivity and competence) and how that will change over their character arc. If Guard never develops morals over the course of the story, that decreases his likeability so you have to make up for it with his proactivity and competence - it's ok to have an unlikeable character if they are always doing badass and interesting things. If Guard does have an arc that ends with him developing some morals, then you'll need to show that he's got some hope of overcoming that flaw. That is your hook: Guard has the world's whiniest and most incompetent boss who just destroyed the kingdom. Somehow, he's got to keep his Prince (a ridiculous idiot rich kid who is completely out of touch with reality) alive for the ??? (insert period of time) drive across a rioting country over the ??? (insert direction) border to seek refuge with the closest ally while fighting mobs and dangerous Errants. Everybody knows somebody like the Prince - whether we've worked for them, been bullied by them, had some aspect of our life ruined by them - and we all hate them. That makes your reader immediately identify with Guard. Having a clear goal (direction of nearest ally) - and knowing how far away it is/how hard it is get there - establishes your stakes and gives me an idea of what the progress will be. We also then have a number of clear conflicts established: 1) conflict with the Prince - he's so incompetent that he's bound to blow their cover and Guard can't get rid of him for (insert reasons) 2) conflict with the mob 3) conflict with the Errants - they're armed and dangerous There wasn't enough in your opening for me to understand what the specific issue with #2 is, but you get the idea. I look forward to seeing your next version.
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# ¿ Oct 17, 2020 09:09 |
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FightingMongoose posted:https://docs.google.com/document/d/13o8wMpIWu8DpWcVFnbsS_Q5--opGrF9S1qfV_-3pqrc/edit?usp=sharing Works fine and I'm happy take a look over the weekend, though I might not read all 20k words. What sort of critique are you specifically looking for? EDIT: Alright, a quicker read of your 20k words than I thought it would be! Since you haven't specifically said you wanted a line critique, I'll just give you general comments (bear in mind that I don't normally read this genre unless you count Cassandra Clare).
Hope that helps and is what you were looking for! Leng fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Oct 24, 2020 |
# ¿ Oct 24, 2020 03:49 |
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I had a look and I would agree with the editor's comment but I think you also have a point. Your story comes in under 5k words but you've spent over 20% on the slice of life stuff but only these details matter:
Each of your scenes is only doing one distinct thing, but you're in short story land so your story needs to be more tightly written. I think you could probably get away with opening on a "slice of life" scene if it did all three things in 500-800 words. My other main observation is to do with the protagonist's motivation. We're supposed to buy that he sacrifices their relationship to save her because he loves her so much. But the only things we really see about their relationship is: 1) Kristian SAYS to Valerija that he's only the secretary/sales guy, but we're opening with him as a big shot sales exec closing deals which generally has an association with the character in question having a huge ego; 2) she calls him out on being intolerant; 3) he tries to make a run for it with her, without telling her the truth for...reasons? I'm not really sure. I mean yeah, it's classified but if he's asking her to go on the run with him all the while knowing the world's about to end... 4) when he's asked to make a decision, the details he thinks about are: her face and her perfume. Those are pretty superficial physical details and don't convey him thinking about her as a person 5) he has a thought about whether she's worth more with or without him; this was actually interesting but it got lost in the wrap up I have no idea how long they have been together, why they are actually in a relationship instead of just as cofounders in a start up, and what they actually love about each other. Here's what I would do with the opening if I were writing your story:
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# ¿ Apr 5, 2021 14:00 |
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FightingMongoose posted:I've now done the second draft of my urban fantasy (I never claimed to be a quick writer). Much better pacing and flow. Here's what stuck out to me on a second read:
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# ¿ Apr 9, 2021 13:19 |
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FightingMongoose posted:Thanks again so much for your feedback. Any time! And feedback is just feedback - take or leave it as you like. Keep in mind that I am probably not your target audience as I don't really read this genre, so there may be conventions that I'm not taking into account. FightingMongoose posted:Yeah I'm having trouble getting these two scenes to fit in properly, but Martha and Amy are both important characters later on (Martha's probably got almost as much screen time as Tom does). Okay, having now read the synopsis, I'd say that you need to work on your foreshadowing. I'm no expert, but I can tell you what I like and dislike as a reader. LIKE: Specific details (emotion, turn of phrase, object, action, myth, symbolism) that stick out from the rest of the descriptive detail (usually unique or given particular emphasis through focus or juxtaposition) that the character doesn't realize is important at the time, but will become Significant later (and usually, I as the reader work it out just before the character does: for non-complex foreshadowing, I like to figure it out maybe a page to a paragraph before the character does; for complex foreshadowing that goes across multiple books, I like being able to theorize about it in between books) DISLIKE: Vagueness. That really sums it up. This includes things like "X noticed something was off about Y but X couldn't figure out what it was". In the Amy scene, she's described as "mechanical" and "listless" after giving birth. I honestly didn't take that to have any supernatural overtones–I just thought she's probably sleep deprived and/or struggling with post-partum depression. If she's the common link between Tom and Martha and turns out to be the necromancer (so the Small Bad?), then it'd be cool if you seeded enough details (preferably not just her appearance) about Amy in both chapters so I could try and make that connection before the reveal. On Martha, I thought she was a fortune teller because of the tea leaves. Had no idea she was a witch and the coven stuff, because there's nothing so far that's prepared me for witches, and absent any specific hints, the concept of witches I'm bringing in is the usual pointy black hat, cauldron, weird ingredients, all of which were absent from her cottage. Martha's POV also doesn't read like she's anything other than a little old lady who's got psychic powers or something (is that what witches can do in this world?). You've got Tom riffing about cultists in his early POVs; that feels like a convenient place to put more infodumps about what things are/are not real supernatural things in this world, so you could do something there. You might also want to consider changing up how you're interleaving the Tom and Martha POVs. Because the Martha POV came in after so many Tom POVs without Tom and Martha interacting, I made the assumption that I'm was reading a single protagonist novel, so then got irritated about having to read about a little old lady taking a bus to London when I wanted to see Tom check out his first solo ghost report. Finally, not much happens in the Martha POV. She reads some tea leaves, decides she needs to leave, then we see the process of her leaving, and then there's something about finding a girl. Based on her POV alone, I don't understand the significance of the girl (her daughter? granddaughter?) or care. I don't get the sense of impending evil in the world, or any idea about a coven. You don't have to dump it all here, but I would find it more interesting if you dropped a hook or two I can latch on to. Like, how long has the coven been incomplete? Did she recently lose her mentor or has it been years? If Martha's been alone for years, is she tired from defeating evil all by herself or has it just been a particularly slow decade? If the coven is so necessary to protecting the world, why hasn't she found a new maiden and a new mother already? How does Amy becoming involved with a guy and getting pregnant result in her losing her credentials? Wouldn't that be a pre-requisite step to ascending to mother? Who grants the credentials in the first place? Other random observations on the synopsis: - unclear how Amy the necromancer is linked (or not linked) to Zanthir (the Big Bad) - there's mention of a prophecy that Martha follows, but does it relate to Zanthir, or to how the coven establishes and maintains itself? Was the prophecy in the tea leaves? - is the future maiden a random person Tom hooks up with or is it Megan (his gf/wife/partner as hinted in his POV)? FightingMongoose posted:The transformation was meant to be beyond his control, which was why he'd told Chris he was "going away". I maybe need to make that clearer? Or just drop it? This one's up to you, really. But if he's hiding, then why would he even answer the door? Surely easier to pretend he's already left? On a reread, I can see the involuntary jerking was supposed to indicate something's wrong, except Dave's a drug dealer, so I assumed that he had dosed up on something that impaired his motor skills. There's also a very abrupt switch from "Dave" telling them to "go away, it's a bad time" to "I told you so" and then killing Chris without any reluctance when he had gone out of his way to discourage them prior (and if he's undercover, what did he really want to do? Was "Dave" ever actually Dave or has he been a shell for a long time?). It doesn't really matter which way you go, but it does need to come across consistently. FightingMongoose posted:They're desperate to hire because shady organisations can't just advertise on TotalJobs, even if Tom is woefully unqualified! Again, it looks like this hasn't come across. Help. Ah! I thought they were official and government sanctioned but the kind of organization where you'd need high levels of security clearance to know about (because they're called "Unit 13" and the previous version had a fancy lobby and the office set up seems very governmental). Did not get shady vibes at all, in fact I thought they might have been like a S.H.I.E.L.D. like organization or something.
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# ¿ Apr 9, 2021 16:39 |
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FightingMongoose posted:I think I could use specific suggestions on this. My only thought is to do all of Tom's bit then all of Martha's bit. I tried that first and it ended up a bit disjointed since in the third act they're interacting. Any ideas? Or if Martha is more obviously supernatural might that be enough to keep it flowing? Broadly speaking, you've got a couple of options: 1. Interleave the POVs pretty early on, so it's clear there are two main characters 2. Do a self contained arc for one character, then switch to the other, ensuring the second one also gets a self contained arc that advances the overall plot, then bring them together 3. Start with one POV character, have them meet the other character, then switch to the second character's POV for the majority of the remaining chapters. You then have the option of going back to the first character in an epilogue or something. Figure out the point at which their plot lines will intersect in terms of where that sits with the overall plot structure, and that should give you some ideas of which options might work better. Also just read more, write more looking specifically at books in your genre that do this well and analyzing what they did and why it works.
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# ¿ Apr 10, 2021 10:53 |
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I like the new Glastonbury section! Reading that before the switch to Martha's POV makes it more seamless for me, though her directly mentioning Amy will mean that you lose a bit of the mystery straight away (I think you could get away with not naming her, and just let Tom/the reader put the clues together). Prologue has much better context for the characters as well. Chris's nonchalant reaction was a surprise (is Chris just that kind of guy?) but otherwise a big improvement. Still not sure how to take Tom's reaction to Chris's death (were they best friends? flatmates? or does he not like Chris that much and only puts up with him because he couldn't otherwise afford rent?), you maybe need a line of introspection to add to the dialogue.
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# ¿ Apr 11, 2021 22:48 |
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Mycroft Holmes posted:I'm writing kind of a silly fan-fiction and I'd like some feedback on my work. Others have been saying it's too rushed and I don't understand that criticism. I had a quick skim of it and I think it's a couple of things in combination:
If you'd like more detailed suggestions I can give those as well but hopefully this gives you enough of an idea to move forward.
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# ¿ May 15, 2021 05:27 |
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FightingMongoose posted:Leng would you be kind enough to drop me a line? Done!
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# ¿ Nov 13, 2021 06:50 |
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# ¿ May 14, 2024 03:30 |
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Alright I've read the first 7k too! Have left you some inline reactions in your doc. The only major thing that bothered me is the opening, same as penguin. The rest of the points, I'll disagree on, in the sense that yes, you can add all that in line edits but structurally, this is solid. When I'm reading something that's snarky and absurd, I'm not really hanging out for these details; as long as you keep the jokes coming (and boy, you sure did, this was hilarious), I'm down for the ride.Popeston posted:Book is pretty much done Send me the whole thing if you want another set of eyes! I really enjoyed the excerpt and I'd be happy to beta read for you. Email is the same one commenting in your doc.
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# ¿ Jan 13, 2023 12:40 |