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Good on you for posting!newts posted:Anyway, I would love any and all feedback If you want line edits or more granular feedback, it'd be good if you can turn commenting on in the Google Doc! Anyway, I'll give a range of crits to begin with, then you can let me know what you find the most helpful. So far, I've only read Chapter 1 of what's been posted.
quote:The sound [1] woke her [2] and she opened her eyes [3] to a room still deep in the orange glow of a city night [4]. [1]: Why begin with the abstract word "sound" when you have all of these much more specific noises later on? [2]: Why not say Lucia to begin with? This is your opening sentence and it'd be nice to know who "she" is. [3]: Same with the verb leading to the first instance of imagery. "Opened her eyes" is neutral and abstract, "squinted" is much stronger, or you could go stronger still with some metaphors. [4]: Here's your first visual. The "room" isn't important, but the "orange glow" and the "clock" are. "City night" feels a little on the nose - could you use more specific description to lead me to this conclusion? When you describe a generic orange glow, I immediately think sunrise, sunset, fire and then possibly neon lights in an entertainment or red light district. Anyway, the quality of the lights is what you're using to signify an urban environment, since you don't have any other sounds going on other than the phone and the rain. The night part becomes obvious when Lucia reads the clock. [5]: I think you could be more concise here. Also, you've used both direct and indirect thought, though I think the direct style would work better for you here. [6]: Would also suggest looking at how you use line breaks here. It took me a moment to figure out whether she was addressing the person calling her Kowalski, or whether she was answering the phone with her last name. [7]: Is this an important or relevant detail, or something that conveys character or backstory? I'm assuming it is on the basis that you've called Lucia and Rush psychic detectives in the thread title. If so, work some specifics of the dream into the opening sentence, otherwise I glaze over it as a reader. Edit: fixed bad BB code! Leng fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Dec 29, 2020 |
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Dec 29, 2020 12:21
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Get mean if you like. I can handle it. Let me know if my dumb alternate world makes no sense or is boring or whatever. Or if my characters suck. Or if my murder plot is dumb, because that's been the hardest part so far. If I get no feedback, I'm still gonna keep posting. If I do get feedback then, yay!
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Okay, I've finished reading the rest of the chapters you posted!newts posted:I agree that the beginning is very slow. I think I've recognized that as a fundamental problem with my plot. I've decided not to change it at this point and just keep it in mind for the next thing I write. This is a learning experience and I don't really plan on doing anything with the book after I'm done. After getting 4 chapters in, I don't think your plot is actually slow. It's more that your scenes/dialogue are a little longer/blow by blow in some places than they probably need to be. Your characters are also doing a lot of running around from location to location, which I get is part of the murder procedural genre, though I wonder whether you need to have so much bouncing around locations. Here are some of the things that made me feel like the pacing dragged a bit:
newts posted:I think the problem is that I was actually trying to convey the opposite of what you got from the the story: that there's nothing special or interesting about the case, at least at first. The case is a typical boring dead, junkie hooker case, but with extra annoying added red tape because the dead hooker is a sleeper. The only person who's excited about it is Lucia and that's just because it's her first case. Which... still doesn't make the beginning an interesting hook for the reader. The way you introduce the backstory of the world is a good balance for me. The juxtaposition between everyone else dismissing the case and Lucia being super excited is good, though it takes a while for her to get going on that angle. Some of the stuff she says later on to Rush when he challenges her might feel more natural if she pushed back on everyone else's dismissal earlier. I think it's about framing. Since we're in Lucia's POV, if she feels strongly about the case, it doesn't matter that nobody else does. Show us the reasons for why she's excited - and it's okay for those to simply be a desire to prove herself vs the old boys' club. That gives us immediate tension rather than a feeling of going through the motions.
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Dec 30, 2020 01:33
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newts posted:
Yeah I think this is the right call. There's nothing wrong with your plot. If you improve your characters and your prose a bunch, I won't really care too much about the plot, I'll just be happy to be along for the ride. newts posted:
At the risk of being known as that person who posts this in every crit thread, I'm gonna plug Brandon Sanderson's lectures again, mainly because I found them so helpful myself. He may or may not be your cup of tea but he does a good job of covering the craft of writing. And in his lectures, he does address introspection specifically, see Sanderson’s 2020 BYU Lecture 10: https://youtu.be/fJfE-HMfSkk?t=1135 and https://youtu.be/fJfE-HMfSkk?t=2079
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Dec 30, 2020 11:06
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The latest chapter is much stronger than the earlier ones. Better characterization, done more concisely. Keep it up!
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Jan 1, 2021 02:06
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Popping back in to let you know I've read the other chapters that you've posted. Generally, Chapters 6-11 feel like things are dragging a lot more. I think it's because even though you have stuff happening, as a reader I feel like I'm no closer to unravelling the mystery than I was in Chapter 5. I know you've put stuff in there for a reason, though here's what I'm feeling at the end of each chapter as a reader: Chapter 6: I want to read more about what NorthSide/nocturnum culture is like, and I felt like this was way too brief a glimpse. But in terms of the overall case, it's a dead end. So, drat. Chapter 7: Another dead body in a related death. Yay! The bar scene in the middle doesn't really interest me, because all I want is to find out more about the latest murder. The National Defense stuff feels like a good kind of foreboding. The murder scene itself is another dead end, so now I'm really bummed because I've had two dead ends in a row, until Rush makes the connection with drug ODs on NorthSide. Chapter ends on yet another dead body and I'm a bit unsure as to whether I should feel like the stakes are being raised or whether this is going to turn out to be another dead end. Chapter 8: Just when the opening scene is getting interesting, Rush is about to pass out into sleep. The rest of the chapter is a nice series of character moments which is nice. But I am feeling very, very frustrated that I've read 3 whole chapters with no progress on the killer's identity. Chapter 9: The whole time I am reading this chapter, I am yelling at the characters in my head to ask them why didn't they go to Asa FIRST when they were still investigating the first murder because then maybe she wouldn't have been the latest murder victim? Chapter 10: Some more nice character moments and finally some momentum on the case. My favorite chapter of the lot by far. Chapter 11: Also pretty happy with this chapter because things feel like they're moving. The random call with Lucia's mom feels very out of place though. The things I enjoyed the most were the reveals about nocturnum culture, the backstory of the world, the upcoming reconciliation, the separationist movement, etc. These all are great details that make your story richer. I wish there was a stronger tie in to the plot or the characters that we're seeing besides the predominant speciest (?) overtones, since that is feeling pretty similar to racism. Some questions you might want to consider: - do some of these scenes/information really need to be dramatized vs summarized via narration? - what is the emotion you want the reader to be feeling in these sequences? - how does that emotion change over the course of the chapters? - are there long stretches of the same emotion without any heightening tension or release? Keep going! The fact that you've cranked out and posted 11 chapters at almost 45k words is no small achievement. I had a friend who said he would do NaNo with me last year and was all fired up about it, but then just fizzled 3k words in and just gave up. He had no real excuses for it either, except for the fact that he didn't have the grit to persevere for more than a few days. The fact that you wrote so many words AND the fact that you have the courage to go back through and start revisions is really admirable and you should feel proud of it! Ccs posted:I was chided by an editor recently for putting thoughts in italics. Apparently that's going out of style, and "Deep POV" is supposed to eliminate the need for italicizing thoughts. I've seen it in a lot of books and some beta readers of my own work have wanted thoughts in italics though so it seems to be a matter of taste. Thanks for sharing! I have now spent an hour googling "Deep POV" and I'm pretty  about it. Neither Sanderson in his BYU lectures nor Ursula Le Guin in Steering the Craft discussed it as distinct from a "close limited third POV" so this is super interesting.
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Jan 14, 2021 12:53
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newts posted:Thanks so much for the feedback! Really appreciate it. Wanted to bold this because this is super important. Write the story you want to write! Feedback is just feedback; it's to help you understand whether you're achieving what you want. You don't need to accept and act on all feedback, just the feedback that's going to help you write a better version of the story you're trying to tell. Keep in mind that not all who provide feedback will be your target audience–for example, I am very much NOT your target audience, however A Small Car posted:I'm thoroughly enjoying reading your work so far. I'll be a bit of a contrarian by saying that I enjoy the slow burn you've got going on, but that's always been my favorite type of detective story. Here's someone who clearly is–so weigh our feedback accordingly! (i.e. listen to what's working/not working for A Small Car, and only listen to my comments to the extent that they are helpful) A Small Car posted:As Leng knows, I'm not great at feedback/editing Think your post history demonstrates otherwise. 
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Jan 19, 2021 12:37
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My plan right now is to just finish these first edits and get the whole thing cleaned up. Then go back through to try to fix the momentum issues that are making the story drag. I’m not sure how to make my boring scenes more exciting—it’s not a thriller. So, most of the tension will have to come from the character’s frustration/revelations, and the stakes being raised by their potential failure. I think I suck at that part, though, so I guess it will be a challenge. I don’t want to write a novel with super high stakes, though. More personal stakes, I guess.
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I like these chapters a LOT more than the previous ones. Can't wait to see how the story ends.
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Jan 28, 2021 14:22
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newts posted:Then I’ll just sit and read it. Maybe I’ll still like it. First of all, congratulations! You're probably your own harshest critic. Here's a list of things that I liked to help counter that voice in your head:
A Small Car posted:I loved it and look forward to reading the next one! It'll be interesting to go back and read the whole thing in one sitting, I've intentionally avoided re-reading previous chapters while the writing was ongoing. Well done!  newts posted:fixed a dumb author problem by turning it into a dumb character problem. This is my main learning from your thread!
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Feb 8, 2021 22:12
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Nice job! I look forward to reading the whole thing in full. Will leave you any line level suggestions/comments in doc (which, as always, feel free to take or leave). Congrats again! If you want to turn this into an actual ebook, there's a download to epub option from Google Docs directly but I don't know how well that plays with eReaders, since my experience with the Google Docs epub formatting wasn't great. I did a write up here on making an epub with Calibre and its plugins if you're interested/want to tinker with the epub that Google Docs spits out - since you have it all in one doc you could just use Calibre's built in ebook editor without needing to install plugins.
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Feb 14, 2021 12:35
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newts posted:Thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to do that. I was planning to let this sit for a week and do more tinkering, so these will come in handy. This week is a bit crazy for me, so I've only done comments up to Chapter 4. Some are on an anonymous account because I was working from a different laptop. newts posted:I’ve got some work up here: https://bluefootedb.tumblr.com/  this is top notch amazing stuff. I'm working on a very different type of creative project and would love to get your thoughts on that. I can see you don't have PMs but you can reach me on the gmail account I'm using to comment on your Google doc.
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Feb 18, 2021 02:07
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A Small Car posted:For what it's worth, I prefer the second cover, largely because it pulls something that was actually in the story itself with the bee. I'm throwing out whatever random crap knocks around in my head at this point, but what about doing a cover where you see the split city, and the nocturnum side all lit up, and the bee has been turned into a constellation? Or is that just dumb? and also that is an awesome idea.newts posted:I just suck at graphic design in general, so I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm not going to pay anyone to make me a cover, so it will have to be something I throw together. Ugh. I'd suggest playing to your strengths. The artwork you linked is amazing–what if your cover had more illustrated elements? I think as long as you get the right tone promises across in the cover you'll be ok. newts posted:Leng, I can't seem to send you an email from Google docs All good! The email is "<my SA username>sa<my SA userid>" AT gmail DOT com - let me know if that works, as I can't find an email/contact for you on your tumblr and Google won't let me email you from Docs either.
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Mar 18, 2021 02:00
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Yay, a sequel! I'm so happy that you've kept writing. And I love the switch in POVs as well. Good choice!newts posted:One thing that’s become obvious is that the new book will have to have a lot of telepathy (duh!) which is going to be italicized. But also texts, which I’ve also italicized. I will go back through the first book and make sure I don’t have italics for random thoughts, unless they’re ‘out loud’ thoughts, which I remember there was some debate about in this thread before. Ugh. I just have to keep it consistent. Don't be so harsh on yourself; this chapter picked up the sequel at a good point for me. The conclusion on the first one was quite short so it's nice to see how things are settling in. On the italics thing, I used italics both for deliberate internal thoughts as well as telepathy in my NaNoWriMo project, which seemed to work fine. For texts, I've seen other strategies like using a different font. Sanderson uses italicized small caps in cases of special mental communications. You could also play around with indents, etc: https://cmosshoptalk.com/2020/03/10/formatting-text-messages-in-fiction/ and https://www.artfuleditor.com/blog/2019/6/12/how-to-use-modern-tech-in-your-novel
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Mar 27, 2021 14:18
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newts posted:Re: italics. I did look through your Nano project and noticed you used them for both regular and magic thoughts. I didn’t have a problem with it. Maybe I should just trust my readers? Because they are smart and know how to read poo poo? Once you set up the convention early on and your readers know what to expect, I think most people will be able to infer which it is from context. I made a point of using different dialogue tags for telepathy (e.g. "sent" instead of "said" or making a note that a character would relax a mental shield first before the mental communication happened, or that a different character's voice was sounding in someone's head, etc) vs internal thoughts (which usually got something like "decided" or just "thought" or it was in a paragraph that consisted solely of introspection and nothing else). newts posted:Hmm, good thought on a different font for texts. I’m wondering, though, how that will work with ebooks? I’m trying to keep the formatting as simple as possible because I have no technical ability at all to troubleshoot formatting issues. I always thought readers could change the font of ebooks? Never tried it myself—only changed the font size because my eyes suck. I will have to read about it. The way I understand ebook files is they're basically packaged up HTML and CSS files. Any e-reader software is basically a kind of web browser that interprets the fonts. The way CSS styling works, more specific rules trump more general rules. Some e-readers (Kobo, Nook) will allow a reader to substitute the e-reader's stylesheet instead of the one that comes with the book for fonts, etc. See: https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/questions/864/can-custom-fonts-be-embedded-in-mobi-or-epub-books-targeting-eink-readers If you really want to make sure the readers can't do anything, see this: https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2019/03/fun-with-fonts-getting-ebook-typefaces-right/ But it's generally more trouble than it's worth. What you CAN do, is specify the font-type of texts to be a different one to the font-type of all your other text (e.g. maybe everything is in sans serif except texts which are serif or monospaced fonts). This won't help if the reader is very particular about how they like to read their ebooks, but they'll be a minority.
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Mar 28, 2021 02:16
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newts posted:
Yay! A sequel! Sorry for the delay, have only just gotten around to looking at the first chapter. I like it a lot! You've worked hard on making Sam's POV feel distinct to Lucia's, particularly with how his psy abilities allow him to perceive more. I look forward to working my way through the rest. Also I finally logged into my SA throwaway email so now I have your email! The project I was gonna get you to look at is wrapped up, so I think I'll take up your offer for the next one later this year.
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May 5, 2021 15:16
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I’m ready to start posting the sequel! The Night People
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All caught up to Chapter 5! Your writing is improving a lot–chapters 3, 4 and 5 were all solid for me and I'm hooked. Poor Sam.  (you might want to check your sharing permissions though...the docs are defaulting to "Editing" instead of "Commenting")
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May 21, 2021 12:54
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At a guess, it could just be settling into writing from the POV of a different character or having to set up the dominos for a sequel, which is simultaneously easier and harder than writing the original. You've got established characters and a world, so that's the easy part, but the hard part is building out the world and not contradicting yourself on previous canon and not repeating yourself either. But when done well, the payoff is really good! So it's no wonder that you feel the opposite, it's a lot harder to construct a sequel that stands on its own as well. Cassandra Clare might not be the most highly regarded, but I thought her Shadowhunters world was a prime example where the first series was the richest and best plotted, and then the other spin-off series felt progressively less and less original, particularly when she started doing collaborations with other authors and not writing them herself. The latest spin-off, The Eldest Curses, not only has prose that isn't even up to par, but also heavily recycles plot elements that were huge emotional points in the original series, to the point where I was giving the book massive eye rolls on my read through.
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May 25, 2021 17:46
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newts posted:The key is finding a way to fit that detail in without infodumping. Lucia is not going to be thinking about poo poo that is absolutely normal to her, so introducing it is difficult. newts posted:I admit I haven’t read these books (despite doing illustration work for the author).
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May 26, 2021 16:22
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Ouch. Have you tried dictation/speech to text? It didn't work for me, but it might beat sitting there for ages typing!
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Jun 6, 2021 07:16
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newts posted:
Oh, I LIKE that last one. It's got a gritty feel to it that the first one doesn't (but I like the colors and composition of the first one).
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Aug 21, 2021 02:24
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 10:52 |
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DropTheAnvil posted:I would love to hear everyone else's reaction on Chapter 13, and newt, how you thought the revelation of Rush's character trait would go. It's been a long time since I initially read Chapter 13 and I've been through the book so many times at this point that it's hard to remember what my initial reactions were. All I can say is that for me, I thought the reveal was both in line with Sam's character and consistent with the discrepancies Lucia had spotted in his behavior, plus the little clues on his past when she pulled up his file in the system. DropTheAnvil posted:
I'm guessing you're worried that without further exploration of everything in context that some readers will take the wrong message from the book? I can see how someone might make that mistake, because Lucia's introspection around those points are quite subtle, but the nuances are there: in that scene where she does take advantage of Rush purposefully, she fully acknowledges that it's wrong and she knows that it's wrong, but she doesn't care I think the last part of that is what you have a problem with, in that it is there in the text at all, but I would disagree with its inherent presence being problematic at all, especially when you have flawed characters. It is a very real, human thing to know that something is wrong—and then to go on and ignore your conscience to do the wrong thing anyway because your emotions are overruling your executive brain functions for self-control. The only thing newts could have done to really hammer home the issues inherent in Sam's ability and how it affects his ability to give consent would be to expand on the sections of Lucia's introspection about how she knew it was wrong, etc. But I also kind of hate that both as a writer and as a reader, because it's quite patronizing to be bludgeoned in the face with long sections of character introspection like that, to the point where it's actually jarring/immersion breaking because it feels as if the author has inserted a giant PSA "  ALERT ALERT I AM THE AUTHOR AND THIS CHARACTER IS NOW MY MOUTHPIECE TO EXPRESS WHAT I REALLY THINK ABOUT THIS SUBJECT " just so the reader is left with no doubt as to the author's personal views on the subject. Like the text should be able to stand on its own and a nuanced analysis of it show that the characters are just being characters. I don't think exploration of these issues should be constrained to the realm of literary fiction. Characters are characters no matter what kind of fiction they exist in and these kinds of more complex issues give depth to characters. On the subject of having the issues explored at a different point of the novel instead, that wouldn't feel consistent with either plot or character. Structurally, the Lucia/Sam relationship is not the A plot, and this book is not a standalone novel, so you kind of can't really unearth this level of trauma without the characters going on a significant part of the journey together so there is that level of rapport between them, and if you did, it would feel horribly unnatural or derail the story entirely away from the murder plot and turn into something else. And the nature of the trauma is such that you can't really wave a magical wand around and "heal" it away, and if it was all dealt with entirely in one book, I absolutely wouldn't buy the resolution and it would quite possibly be an even worse message to give, especially when the characters are flawed in the first place. This is a first in series so what book 1 does for me is to set the expectations that there will be further exploration of the consent issues in subsequent books that will get dealt with over the series as a whole. The opening could have done a lot more to set the right tone promises so that when those issues cropped up, there wasn't as much of a surprise. But the stuff about the abuse of nocturnum children in orphanages, etc is all there in Chapter 2, albeit it is there in an understated way so you do need to do some work as a reader to get there. TL;DR, I dunno if there's a good way to handle these kinds of themes/issues. I feel like these days there is a trend towards a baseline assumption that just because a character espouses certain views, then it must mean the author does as well, particularly in books with only one or very few POV characters. This is particularly problematic when the story is plotted as a series, since the character's views doesn't generally shift as much within one volume. With structures like that, you don't really get to showcase your ability to write convincingly from a contrasting POV (even if you do have characters who hold the complete opposite worldview).
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Dec 6, 2021 01:01
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