# Last of the King's Men- a novel I'm writing. Looking for feedback!



## UltimaGabe (Feb 12, 2012)

Hello, Enworld!

I've begun writing a fantasy novel, and I'm going to be posting it chapter by chapter on my personal blog as I get it written. If anyone is interested in reading it, I am looking for feedback- good or bad. So if you feel like giving it a read, here you go!

Last of the King's Men

If anyone would like to give feedback, I'm looking for as much as I can get. (Again- good or bad.) All I ask is that you be as specific as possible. I'd rather receive ten specific negative comments than one "It was pretty good". Be brutally honest if necessary.

Thanks in advance, and enjoy!


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## UltimaGabe (Feb 18, 2012)

Whoa! Don't everyone reply at once, now! 

Chapter 2 is up. Is there a better forum for this to go?


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## jonesy (Feb 18, 2012)

Well, are you planning on getting it published? Or is this an exercise to get you up to speed before you start writing something original? It might be a good idea to rid the story of all D&D related imagery and use your own (and if your idea is to write for WotC they do not accept uncommissioned works, as far as I know).

The first impression of the story is that it is a wall of text. You need to break it down a bit more. At the very least use proper spaces between paragraphs. I know it's really hard to avoid the infodump when you're trying to introduce everything, especially in a fantasy or scifi story, but a better pacing would really benefit the telling of the story. 


The story seems to have this odd refusal to commit to one idea running through it, where I have a hard time seeing what it is that the narrator really wants to say:

1. You describe the orcs as not being intelligent enough to even beg mercy, but they have a king.

2. "When the news arrived, brought by a single weary servant who only survived because he had been far enough away from his home to hide from the invasion like a coward"

Why coward? Because he's a servant and far away? Huh?

3. Is the reader supposed to feel bad for the orcs because of the genocide, or side with the king because they are "nothing but vermin"? I notice you use the term offspring instead of children. If that is simply how you want to represent the kings thoughts on the matter, maybe you should consider having the king say these things, instead of the narrator. Unless the king is supposed to be the narrator?

4. Are the orcs there to be the main threat or a red herring? If the former, you might as well have them be zombies the way you describe them. If the latter, it's what I as a reader immediately thought of, again because of the way you describe them.

5. He won't send his army, but he will send the "kingdom’s finest"? And they include merchants and minstrels? What's going on there?

6. Little oddities like: "The small halfling’s black eyes were tired, but vigilant."

7. There's a chain of evidence, but the whole thing might only be a hunch? How does that work?

8. "Being several years Artemis’ senior, there was little Artemis could do to keep Orin from making his life a living hell- until one day, several years back, when the Lograd Army began recruiting members to help guard the nation’s southern border."

How is Orin getting recruited something that Artemis can do to keep him from making his life hell? Is there something missing from the middle of that sentence?


Edit:

I do realize that when critiquing something I tend to not talk about the good parts, and instead focus on the problems I see. So, don't think it's all bad.


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## UltimaGabe (Feb 20, 2012)

First off- thank you so much! Your critiques are the exact type of thing I'm looking for. The story and the style I'm using makes perfect sense in my head, and probably makes sense to my friends & family that I've told it to a million times, so it's extremely helpful to hear how it sounds (especially at the point the story is at, since it's still getting established with each chapter) to someone who has no connection to it. So thank you for reading it!

That being said, I'll answer some of the questions you asked- but let me make it clear that I know that if these things aren't very clear upon reading, it should probably be revised in the actual writing, since I can't exactly sit down each and every person who reads it and explain what's going on. 

I don't plan on getting my story published- at least not for a long, long time. It does include lots of WotC-owned material, which will be a problem if I ever choose to try and so something with it, but everyone that I've consulted about writing has told me the first step is to write. I can worry about the legality and publishing issues much further down the line, if and when it becomes an issue. If I need to change names & remove references, I will later, but I've spent so much time worrying about the legality of publishing my story that it's taken me years to actually, you know, write it!

I'm curious as to what you mean by "proper spaces between paragraphs"- I know that putting spaces between each paragraph, as I do here, is often done to remove the whole wall-of-text look, but at the same time, proper writing doesn't have spaces between paragraphs. I suppose it couldn't hurt to add them, as it's being read on a computer screen rather than on pages of a book, though, so I'll take that into consideration.

As for what the book is committing to, the narration may seem strange so far, but my hope was to have each chapter be writting from a third-person limited perspective, with one (or a few) of the characters being sort of the focus of the perspective. So in the second chapter, for example, the orcs are being described as vermin and mindless creatures because the king/sir Aelfrey perceive them as such. The fact that they have a king is mentioned as a way to sort of clue in the reader that the narrator may not be as reliable as is assumed, but the fact that you've had issue with that definitely tells me that it might simply come off as inconsistent. I'll have to play around with that and see if there's a way to stick with the same style but make it seem more consistent.

As for sending the kingdom's finest rather than the army, it's like this: A group of twenty people won't stop the nation from being invaded if another army attacks. If there's an unknown threat far off that may be large or it may be small, sending a crack team of elite scouts and strikers to investigate (and deal with the threat if possible) is better than sending your entire army. As for the merchants & minstrels bit, yeah, that was sort of a holdover from something that I could have left out. So I'll definitely be revising that.

The rest of your questions (like the Artemis & Orin thing) I think were just bad wording on my part. Sometimes I try to put a bit too much weight behind each and every word I write and I need to just take a step back and see if it makes sense in context.

So, again, thank you! I honestly don't need much good criticism, because I've told myself that this story is awesome enough times that I'm going to write it whether anyone thinks it's good or bad. It's specific negative criticism, like yours, that tells me what needs to be worked on. So thanks!


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## jonesy (Feb 20, 2012)

UltimaGabe said:


> I'm curious as to what you mean by "proper spaces between paragraphs"- I know that putting spaces between each paragraph, as I do here, is often done to remove the whole wall-of-text look, but at the same time, proper writing doesn't have spaces between paragraphs. I suppose it couldn't hurt to add them, as it's being read on a computer screen rather than on pages of a book, though, so I'll take that into consideration.



Might be a computer thing. It was just the initial reaction I got to the story.



UltimaGabe said:


> ...but everyone that I've consulted about writing has told me the first step is to write.



Yeah. That's true. 

I've been a fan of Neil Gaiman for a long time and anytime someone asks him the notorious question (How Do I Become A Writer?), he tells them to write. Good or bad, just get it all out there first.


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## UltimaGabe (Feb 22, 2012)

Chapter 3 is up. I also made some (minor) changes in the first two chapters- tried out the spaces between paragraphs, and fixed the wording of a couple spots that annoyed me. Nothing major changed yet, though.


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## jonesy (Feb 22, 2012)

I like the new look. Easier to read the story. But that's just me. For all I know I could just be the vocal minority. What you need is more chapters and more readers. Yeah, well. 

Things that caught my eye in chapter 3:

1. The chapter seems to have a better flow than the other two. Might be because of the lower density of new information. (It's a tricky balance getting a story to flow properly while still providing the necessary details to the reader.)

2. The opening paragraph is very strong. And not because it's depicting strong weather. It's one of those 'I wouldn't remove a single word' descriptions.

3. In paragraph two I'd remove the 'the' from 'the lightning'.

4. "He couldn’t tell if it was something he couldn’t understand". That's an odd sentence.

5. "He sat, huddled in the corner of the hut, body, clothing, sleeves & all soaked to the bone from the rain." Soaked to the bone already says what the articles of clothing imply. I'd just remove the clothing from the sentence: "He sat, huddled in the corner of the hut, soaked to the bone from the rain."

6. There's a lot of "as if" going on when the creature breaks in. Try swapping one them for an alternate way of saying it.

7. I like the way you have him wake up and just dismiss the dream with the creature for the dream that it was, instead of obsessing on it the way a fictional character might. 

8. "Eat boot." And then he puts his foot on the mans chest. Akward boast is akward.

9. "Artemis watched him raise the mace one more time, everything went black." Either make that two sentences, or add "and then" in the middle.



> I wish I could be writing a different part of the story, as I had originally wanted to do, but I know that writing this part (which I've effectively written already in some form or another) will at least give me something to write, and will let me feel like I'm getting something done.



If there's something you really want to be writing, do it. You don't have to post it anywhere. Just put it on paper and leave it there. When inspiration strikes, follow it. Good or bad at least you have it written down. You can then later go back to it and review it yourself.


Edit: there's a lot of 'good or bad' going on in this thread.


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## UltimaGabe (Feb 24, 2012)

jonesy said:


> If there's something you really want to be writing, do it. You don't have to post it anywhere. Just put it on paper and leave it there. When inspiration strikes, follow it. Good or bad at least you have it written down. You can then later go back to it and review it yourself.




I know what you're saying, and I don't question its validity, but I've spent the last two years unable to write at all because I wasn't able to get myself to start writing the part of the story I "want" to write. It wasn't until I decided to actually start at the beginning of the story that I was ble to get over my writer's block.

Anyway, chapter 4 is up! I also made some small alterations/fixes to chapter 3 as per your comments, Jonesy. (The ones I agree with, anyway. )


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## jonesy (Feb 24, 2012)

Nice. That's a good chapter. Can't really find anything to nitpick about.

Well, one thing. Time seems to move rather erratically. The kingdom gets taken over surprisingly quickly, and then the heroes arrive to their final goal quickly too. I know the descriptions of time talk about weeks and such, but reading it it still seemed a bit jumpy. But that's not really such a huge problem, just a pacing issue. I'm not sure how to fix that, or even if it should be fixed. Adding more stuff between the jumps might bog the chapter down, and there isn't really anything I'd cut from it to make it run smoother.


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## UltimaGabe (Mar 11, 2012)

(I could have sworn I posted this a few hours ago, but I guess the internet says nomnomz.)

Hey, everyone! Sorry for the hiatus between chapters- I've been extremely busy over the last couple weeks with some personal stuff (which is thankfully over) and now I'm super excited to get back to writing.

I've put up the fifth chapter, so enjoy!


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## jonesy (Mar 12, 2012)

340 views and I'm the only one responding? Oh boy.

On chapter five:

1. "The soft melody being played across the campfire began picking up speed, painting images in the ear of happier times and easier days."

So, happier times have an ear? Because that's what that sounds like. 

2. "Before he could even reacted,"

Could react, could even react, or could even have reacted?

3. "I was very impressed with how you handled himself."

Probably meant to be yourself.

4. "If you are willing, I would be pleased to have you."

Hmm. That sounds like something completely different. 

5. The story flows well, but the jump into the story within it and then back to the fire is a bit abrupt both times.


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## UltimaGabe (Mar 15, 2012)

jonesy said:


> 340 views and I'm the only one responding? Oh boy..




Tell me about it. Even of the 20+ of my closest friends (several of which were even in the D&D campaign that inspired this novel, and others of which I've been telling about it since I first came up with the concept and they've loved hearing about it), only one has actually kept up with it. But then again, I know that some of my friends have had their own projects (writing or otherwise) that I haven't kept up with either, not for any particular reason, but just because I don't think of it. So I guess I can't really blame anyone.



> 2. "Before he could even reacted,"
> 
> Could react, could even react, or could even have reacted?
> 
> ...




Yeah, it's crazy how many seemingly obvious typos manage to make it through even after I've proofread 2-3 times (both out loud and in my head). And you're not even reading the first version (there were some pretty horrid grammatical errors when I first posted it, which were brought to my attention AFTER my aforementioned multiple proofreadings).



> 4. "If you are willing, I would be pleased to have you."
> 
> Hmm. That sounds like something completely different.




Trust me, you wouldn't believe how many times I've written a sentence and then thought, "Wow, this is sounding really homoerotic."



> 5. The story flows well, but the jump into the story within it and then back to the fire is a bit abrupt both times.




Yeah, I see what you mean. A lot of what I think up in my head would work great if it were a movie, where I could cut back and forth between the past part of the story (in this case, Harrow's childhood and initiation into knighthood) and the present (Sir Harrow reminiscing about said childhood), but in text it's more difficult to make that work (especially when it's all being described in the past tense). But at the same time, I didn't want it to all be in the past, so I felt like I needed to go back and forth at least a couple times (so that the audience doesn't forget that he's reminiscing).

Thanks for keeping up with the story, Jonesy! I sincerely hope that you're enjoying it and not just doing this because you feel sorry for me or something. (Though I'll take whatever I can get! )


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## jonesy (Mar 15, 2012)

UltimaGabe said:


> Thanks for keeping up with the story, Jonesy! I sincerely hope that you're enjoying it and not just doing this because you feel sorry for me or something. (Though I'll take whatever I can get! )



I want to see where you're going with it. Trust me, my powers of ignoring things I find uninteresting are vast and endless.


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## Radiating Gnome (Mar 15, 2012)

I just discovered your thread and I've started looking at what you have so far.  

Reactions as I go -- I'm starting with Chapter 1, so I'm a little behind.  

There's a whole lot of exposition in this chapter, a lot of it I don't think you need.  Something I encourage my students to do is try to take a sample like this and cut it in half (based on word count) without losing anything important. You can go a long way tightening up the language, but at a certain point you start looking at what's on the page and thinking about what you might really need.  

So, you've got this kid, Artemis. That's originally a girl's name (greek goddess), and that throws a whole gender-bending thing into the story I'm not sure you intend.  

Then there's stuff like: "he set down the buckets- perhaps a bit too forcefully- and fell to his knees, weeping into the dirt." -- weeping like this is either childish or girlish, traditionally -- and it might just be an odd note, but when you have that on top of the name thing, it starts to feel like a pattern. 

Back to the "too much exposition" thing.  Make a list of the things that actually happen in this chapter:
1- boy walks to get water
2- boy has a flashback to Orin's departure
3- boy weeps because life isn't fair
4- boy breaks a stick
5- boy returns to the house to find the place destroyed and his master & wife dead
6- boy finds special shirt in the burned ruins of the house
7- boy hits the road. 

Okay, so that's what happens. Anything else that's in the chapter can probably be cut out.  
- How bad does his master have to be? If they're just going to be dead on the next page? How much do we need to invest there? 
- Do we really need two expressions of how unhappy the kid is?  weeping AND beating a stump with a stick? 
- If there's something else you feel like the chapter needs to have, can you do something other than just tell the reader about it?  

Something else to keep in mind:  Your reader will engage better if you leave them a little work to do.  

Take, for example, one of the more concrete sections of the first chapter -- the description of the destroyed farm house:


> The building was not simply on fire- it was destroyed. The door had been torn clean from its hinges, the windows shattered inward. A section of wall on the side of the homestead was torn apart as if a mighty battering ram had tried to knock the entire building down.




The first sentence is _telling_. It says "this is what you need to think about what you're seeing" to the reader. 

The sentences after that describe real, visible, tangible details.  I think the details could be stronger, but they're still concrete details.  (When I say they could be stronger: you've got a broken wall, but what kind of wall is it? That matters, because you could say a lot with the broken bits of wall remaining -- if it's an adobe house, then maybe cracked mud is scattered everywhere and ground in deep, heavy footprints, while the lathe beneath sticks up like broken ribs, and so on -- if it's a sod house, or a log cabin, or a cut board house, or plaster, or stone -- each of those will look different if it's "destroyed")

This example in particular stands out to me because what you show with the sentences that follow the first doesn't really live up to what you've told us in the first sentence.  If there's enough wall left to see windows have been blown in, it's hard to see it as completely destroyed (my initial response to "completely destroyed" is to imagine a wreck with no standing walls, just a pile of burning rubble, etc.) 

moving on in the same paragraph -- there's a passage about thousands of bootprints around the destroyed home, and then this:



> Artemis stood, no longer aware of the aching pain in his arms from carrying buckets of water all day long. Without even realizing it, he let the buckets fall, and they hit the ground, spilled their contents, and rolled away down the hill, never to be seen or even thought of again.




That's a lot to make someone read just to finish off saying that you're never going to need to think about it again, or remember it. 

And then



> He slumped to his knees, staring at the diminished hulk of a structure that was all he had ever known.




Which feels, again, like a feminine reaction to me, but I'm fixated now thanks to the name thing...... 

And first he stands, then drops to his knees right away?  It's like his response to the destruction of the only home he has ever known is to do squat thrusts?  

What if those two sections were rewritten like this:



> Artemis stood, no longer aware of the ache in his arms. He let the buckets fall, staring at the wreckage of the only home he had ever known.




So, I'm conveying the same basic feel and content for that moment, with far fewer words (about 1/3 the word count, I think). It's tighter, it covers what matters. 

That's why the word count game -- and it really is a game -- can work so well to improve your writing.  It also cuts against everything you've been taught in school, where your writing assignments were always first judged on word count and length, and you were therefore rewarded for writing frothy, whipped-up text rather than tight, precise, lean prose. If you set an arbitrary goal like cutting the word count in half -- and then go back to your text and look long and hard at what you can remove without losing what "matters" you can't help but make the writing better. 

-rg


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## Radiating Gnome (Mar 15, 2012)

I didn't quite finish my thought about "leave your reader a little work to do" -- Let your reader make value judgements like "the building was destroyed" by limiting what you put in your text to the details.  A very Joe Friday "just the facts" thing. 

So, if you want the reader to understand that the house was destroyed, don't tell them the house was destroyed, tell them the walls were broken, support beams broken off at the ground in twisted, jagged splinters, the thatch of the roof burned away to a grey snow-like ash scattered across the scene, etc -- and let the reader decide "so, pretty much destroyed". 

-rg


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## Radiating Gnome (Mar 15, 2012)

Notes on reading Chapter 2: 

I had a lot of the same reaction to chapter 2 that I had to chapter 2 -- you could improve a lot with a revision that studiously reduced the word count by half, focusing on eliminating exposition and "telling" where possible.  

This is also the first place where we have dialog, so I'm going to focus a little more attention on that.  

My Soapbox about Dialog:  One of my biggest pet peeves about any sort of fiction is the idea that every character always says exactly what's on their mind. Good dialog is often more like an iceberg -- there should be subtext and misdirection and all kinds of stuff going on under the surface -- one again, a lot of that is there for the reader to figure out rather than just being told.  Really great dialog is more like tow icebergs colliding -- you see the bits on the surface and maybe some parts above the surface collide, but the real action is all going on in subtext, beneath the surface. 

So, you've got this dialog between the King and Aelfie.  It's actually a flashback, but some weird formatting makes it show up as part of the previous paragraph, so it doesn't stand out very well.  

Here's the section I'm referring to: 

[sblock]Several years ago, King Adorn had come to Aelfrey one day as he was exiting the chapel on a day of worship. He requested Aelfrey take a walk with him, out in the countryside, later that day. When they met, the king barely spoke until they were far outside the city’s walls, far away from his personal guard.

“Aelfrey, I want you to know that I truly value your loyalty and service,” the king had said to him. “There are times when I feel like there are few I can trust, even among my closest advisors.”

Aelfrey was slightly taken aback by this. He had always seen King Adorn as a beloved sovereign- certainly like a father figure to him, and he assumed many of the court felt the same way. But he felt no small amount of pride in hearing that he held his lord’s favor.

“But, your highness,” said Aelfrey, “Truly you know that each of us Horselords would lay down our lives for you in a heartbeat, were you only to require it.”

King Adorn nodded. “Yes, I know. And I truly value that as well. But I fear that there are some- even among my court- that may be swayed, either by hopes of personal gain, or by the machinations of outside forces.”

Aelfrey simply walked along with the king, unsure of what to say.

“My point, Aelfrey, is that I require something of you.”

“Anything, my liege. My life and service are yours.”

King Adorn stopped, placing a hand on Aelfrey’s shoulder.

“I need you to be… a spy, of sorts. I need you to be my eyes and ears among my court, and I need you to uncover any treachery or disunion among them. The instant you have any sort of proof, I need you to show me. Do you understand?”

Aelfrey had agreed all too eagerly, without fully realizing the weight of the burden of proof. Over the years, he had hunches, but without proof nothing could be done. Yet one constant hunch that he had tried to quantify at every opportunity remained: Galmod. Aelfrey suspected him of several plots against the throne, starting with King Adorn’s son’s mysterious illness. But without any proof, and because Galmod’s position as general placed him so close to the king, Aelfrey couldn’t afford to make any accusations without proof. When the news of orcs first arrived, his first thought immediately drifted to the duke.[/sblock]

Okay.  So, just about any scene you're going to put in front of the reader probably can be improved if you have some clear intentions and goals for the parties involved, for starters.  

So, in this case, you've got the King, and you've got Aelfrey.  
-Alefrey wants to serve the king -- he's loyal and dutiful and all that. 
-The King is troubled, and wants to ask Aelfrey to be a spy of sorts for him.  

So, already I'm a little worried about the scene because Aelfrey doesn't seem to want anything -- at least anything specific. It's possible that he really is that loyal and dutiful, and it may be that he's otherwise fairly satisfied with life at the time the conversation takes place, so he doesn't have strong desires, but even that comfort with the status quo can be a good thing to keep in mind during the conversation.  

Okay, so the king wants Aelfie to be his spy -- it's still not a very interesting conversation if he can just walk up to Aelfie and say "Hey, dood, like, I think there are some creeps around the court, so, like, tell me if you hear anything". Which is, outside my asinine attempt at humor, pretty much what the king does in this scene.  

In the end, the scene as written is not much more than that. The king asks Aelfrey to do what is essentially his duty, anyway. After all, if Aelfrey were to come across the sort of perfidy that the King fears, wouldn't he bring it to the king anyway, even if the king had not asked him to do so specifically? 

So lets go back to what the king wants out of the scene.  And where he starts.  The king fears that members of his court are not as loyal and trustworthy as he might wish.  He has suspicions, nothing more.  

His response is to turn to Aelfrey. Why Aelfrey?  Because Alefrey is loyal.  Not because he's especially smart, or insightful, or wise, or suited to this sort of work in other ways; but because Aelfrey is the one member of his court he feels he can trust the most.  

If you run down that line of reasoning a bit, there's a whole ugly thicket it could imply. Can the king really trust no one else?  If he can trust anyone else, is he?  Is he asking others to do the same sort of spying on each other? If that's the case, is he the sort of conniving puppetmaster who might sow this sort of suspicion in his court for the sake of his own enjoyment? 

OR is he just trying to get as many dogs in this hunt as possible? 

And so on.  

So, anyway........  I know from this thread that this is inspired by your game, and that's cool, but a lot of the expedients that we get away with in a game don't work as well in fiction.  In a game, the king calls on the PCs for help -- not really because they're the best guys for the job, but because that's who the PCs have decided to play. We ignore the problems inherent there, and get on to rolling initiative, but for fiction, it needs to be tighter than that.  

An interesting alternative to the scene could involve Aelfrey and the King dancing around each other a bit, not trying to reveal their suspicions to each other, while trying to figure out what the other one sees going on in the court.  Aelfrey doesn't have proof, but he has suspicions.  The King has his own theories, but doesn't want to prejudice Aelfrey.  

Anyway -- I'm running out of time -- the key point I wanted to make here is that dialog can be much more interesting and engaging when there's much more going on than is being expressed in the words, and when both parties in the scene want something very specific out of the scene.  And if you can't do that, you might be better off skipping that scene and covering the information with a quick "The king had tasked Aelfrey to keep an eye on the loyalty of his court.") and leave it at that.  

-rg


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## UltimaGabe (Mar 18, 2012)

Radiant Gnome- first of all, thank you so much for reading some of my novel and taking the time to comment! I very much appreciate any and all feedback I can get. You've definitely given me a lot to think about- everything I've written so far is very much a "first draft", and I've known from the beginning that at some point I'll need to go back and likely overhaul/heavily edit the majority of what I've written. Also, I know that dialogue is certainly one of my weak points- so I'm going to try to keep what you've said in mind in the future.

If I can make one request for anyone reading this, try not to let the fact that this was inspired by a D&D campaign color your opinion of the work (for better or worse)- the campaign in question was really inspiration only, and I'm trying to approach this as a completely separate work (that shares some of the same plot points). I know that tabletop gaming and fiction hardly belong in the same space, and so I'm trying my best not to stick to any sort of game ruleset or even follow the same kind of structure as a tabletop game. (Also, just in case anyone was wondering, it'll still be a while before the story involves anything that occured during the game anyway.)

Anyway, once again, thank you for your input! It's definitely given me lots to think about that I'll see what I can do.


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## Radiating Gnome (Mar 19, 2012)

UltimaGabe -

Some notes on chapter 3....

Mostly, in this chapter, I had little notes. In many cases there were word choice things -- for example, in the opening of the chapter, Artemis is hiding in a "tiny shed" -- and yet it's a tiny shed made out of "timbers" -- and that doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It seems like a little thing, but as you make the transition from first draft to final, you're going to have to spend some time looking for stuff link that.  A tiny shed is probably made out of thin boards, probably clapboards.  

I found the action difficult to follow in many places because of pronoun use, etc.  And while some of your usage may not be wrong, it can still be confusing for the reader.  

For example, this passage:

[sblock]
The old man in the black robes spat on the ground, and Artemis could see that some blood went with it. He clenched his teeth and glared at the gauntleted man.

“That ‘king’ is no king of mine. I serve the one true king of Lograd, and no false-king can pass judgment on me. If you’re going to kill us, then kill us; the Raven Queen shall have your life someday, be it today, or after a long life of betrayal and following a coward who calls himself king!”
[/sblock]

When I read this the first time, I became confused, thinking that Artemis was inserted into the action, and he was the one delivering the speech (which was very much out of character for him, showing all kinds of backbone, etc). I'm not going to think hard enough about the grammar to decide whether your usage there was technically correct.  The old man was the subject of the previous sentence, but Artemis was the name that was most recently used that the pronoun could stand in for ..... anyway, it's a bit of unnecessary confusion. 

There are a couple of ways to fix this -- first of all, you could be specific and attribute the line of dialog to the old man.  Or you could remove the words "and Artemis could see" (they're not necessary, as Artemis is the viewpoint character for this chapter, we can assume that we're seeing what's visible to him).  

This sort of line by line editing is crucial, and I know this is an early draft, so I'm not going to harp on it too much -- there are lots of places where this sort of revision could take a pretty cool idea and make it really _work_.  

That kind of editing is very difficult, though, especially if you wrote it yourself -- and it's harder the more recently you've done the writing. The closer you are to the writing of the passage, the less likely you are to see what's on the page, and not what you meant to put on the page. 

Couple of other things: the knights had their swords "trained" on the old man? That seems a little silly to me -- it's not like their blades shoot.  If they were "pointing" with the swords, that might not be so bad -- it's the direct threat, blah blah blah.  But "trained on" implies shooting, at least in my mind.  It's part of aiming, etc.  

The end of the chapter was a little weird -- I had a hard time justifying the knight's gambit -- turning his back on Artemis -- if that really was a gambit. Artemis attacks, the knight parries, then scowls at him with contempt, turns his back and walks away?  Doesn't really work for me. The other guy may be a bigger threat, but a trained fighting man should probably have found a way to not expose his back to either enemy, etc. 

More confusion -- between Artemis' imaginary world and the real scene going on, I found a lot of stuff confusion.  There's so much moving around from one imaginary space to another -- he's dreaming, then he's back in the world -- then he imagines he's the wizard, then he's fighting imaginary enemies, being petrified by an imaginary wizard, then suddenly he's back in the real world again. 

The transitions there were confusion -- you might want to find a way to make the distinctions more clear. When he's having his nightmare, maybe that passage is in italics.  When he's fighting the imaginary warriors, maybe you use some sort of text cues that make it more obvious that the foes are imaginary, that he's essentially playing at swords and sorcery when the real world suddenly intrudes with the real thing.  

Last thought: the dream at the opening -- think about removing that entire passage.  I don't think you need it, but it might pay off later on, and that would be something I have no way of knowing yet.  Dream sequences can be tricky, but more than that, in the short span of this chapter you have two passages that take place entirely within Artemis -- his nightmare during the story and his imaginary fight.  Both can work, but they tell the reader two very different things about Artemis, tell us two very different things, and they seem to cut against each other.  The dream tells us about a young man who's scare and scarred by the devastation he's found himself in -- everything around him has been destroyed.  He's frightened, hiding, and imagining his own death, etc. 

The second is a playful moment of imagining himself as a hero, armed with battered shield and broken sword. The Artemis we see there is immature but no frightened, he's playful and imagining great things for himself.  

An alternative (one that might be stronger than removing it) that might make sense would be to save the nightmare until after he gets slapped down by the knight in the battle.  So he starts the chapter enjoying his new freedom, swinging his broken sword at trees and the wreckage of farm houses as he walks through them, and he doesn't experience real terror until he foolishly gets involved in a real fight and gets his bell rung but the knight's mace.  He suddenly goes from a child who imagines he'll live forever to a young adult who knows that he won't. Then the nightmare makes a lot more sense. 

Anyway, I think you're off to a good start with this chapter -- the action here is good, I like most of what you're trying to do, it's really just a matter of cutting and tightening.  


-rg


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## UltimaGabe (Mar 29, 2012)

Whew! This last chapter was definitely difficult for me, because, as I am learning, dialogue is not one of my strong points. But I did my best (at this point, at least) and I'm eager to get to chapters beyond.

So, chapter 6 is up! And again, thanks for your critiques, everyone!


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## UltimaGabe (Apr 4, 2012)

Chapter 7 is up as well.


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## UltimaGabe (Apr 10, 2012)

And now chapter 8. Enjoy!


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## jonesy (Apr 10, 2012)

Just posting to say I haven't forgotten this. Will be reading further when I have the time.


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## UltimaGabe (Apr 25, 2012)

No problem, Jonesy! I've got plenty of things I've been meaning to get around to as well that I just can't seem to find the time for. Hopefully whenever you do get to it there's plenty of more for you to read and enjoy. 

Speaking of which, chapter 9 is up!


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## UltimaGabe (May 4, 2012)

Just put up Chapter 10!


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## UltimaGabe (Jun 21, 2012)

I'm sorry for the horrendous delay, everyone. But, I've just finished the next chapter! I hope you all enjoy it!


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## UltimaGabe (Jun 22, 2012)

So, to make up for lost time, I got on a roll last night and didn't stop until I had finished chapter 12. Whoo-hoo!


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## jonesy (Jun 22, 2012)

UltimaGabe said:


> So, to make up for lost time, I got on a roll last night and didn't stop until I had finished chapter 12. Whoo-hoo!



Nice. I'll go through the whole bunch during next week.


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## UltimaGabe (Jul 30, 2012)

Well, it's been a while, but I've gotten chapter 13 up. Enjoy!


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## UltimaGabe (Aug 17, 2012)

Bam! Chapter 14.


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## UltimaGabe (Sep 23, 2012)

Not sure if anyone is paying attention to this, but chapter 15 is up and running!


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## jonesy (Oct 10, 2012)

My life got taken over by, well, life. But I haven't forgotten. Just a bit swamped still. Sorry.


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## UltimaGabe (Oct 12, 2012)

No worries! I just hope that whenever you are able to read it, there'll be enough of a cohesive story that you don't feel like it's wasted time. Thanks for keeping in touch, though!


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## UltimaGabe (Oct 13, 2012)

Just finished chapter 16. :-D


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## UltimaGabe (Feb 13, 2013)

Wow. It's been quite a while (there was a two or three month gap in there, and I forgot to post after chapter 17), but I've just posted chapter 18. It's been a whole year since I started- a year! Crazy.

Anyway, I hope you all have a great day!


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## UltimaGabe (Feb 15, 2013)

And WHAM! Chapter 19 up, only two days after 18! And if I'm lucky, I'll be able to get chapter 20 up tomorrow. That'll be a record of some sort.

http://theredsleeves.blogspot.com


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## UltimaGabe (Feb 17, 2013)

Sweet. Chapter 20 is up. Enjoy!


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## UltimaGabe (May 15, 2013)

After what seems like forever, Chapter 21 is up! Check it out at http://theredsleeves.blogspot.com .


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## UltimaGabe (Jun 18, 2013)

Chapter 22 is up!


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