posted
Well, I don't know if this will eventually turn into a novel or not, but it's at least a story fragment. "Age of Iron" is a working name, I'll come up with something better eventually. So here's about thirteen lines of it :
The night was alive with fires. At Gathen's back lay the loyalist army, five thousand strong; from the hilltop where he stood, he could see the rebels' campsite, a hundred beacons against the night.
- Worried about tomorrow?
Prince Hedling, Heir to the Realm, did not sound worried; he sounded excited.
- My first battle. Yours too.
- Hardly a battle. The rebels have no cavalry; we'll sweep them aside.
- They've broken two armies already.
- But those armies were not led by King Varhen himself!
- True, true... Your father is a great warrior.
Indeed, the thought of Varhen cheered Gathen considerably; surely no merchant rabble could stand against an army led by that huge, scarred fighter, the victor of two wars, six battles and a hundred skirmishes. Even as he was completing the thought, the deep voice of the King boomed out behind them :
- Ho, Hedling, where are you? The captains are meeting!
First, One thing I ALWAYS strive NOT to do, is have the first sentence of any story or scene have a passive verb. Give it an active verb. It might require some serious rearranging of that first sentence, but will go miles to drawing the reader in more fully.
Second, POV appears consistent thus far.
Third, I'm not sure a Prince would refer to his own father as 'King Varhen himself!' Does he not know his own father? I know the conventions of medieval times sometimes made such the case, but as a reader it's not something I like. Nor is it something I believe unless I'm adequately prepared to do so.
Fourth, I'm very much drawn in. Perhaps it's just my interest in this sort of story. I have certain expectations and hopes for the progression of the story, which is what will keep me wanting to read.
My thoughts revolve around the dialog. It's rather different, no quotes, no speech identifiers, not many beats. The reader has to rely on context to know who is saying what, and since the story just started that is asking rather much of the reader.
quote:First, One thing I ALWAYS strive NOT to do, is have the first sentence of any story or scene have a passive verb. Give it an active verb. It might require some serious rearranging of that first sentence, but will go miles to drawing the reader in more fully.
Hmm. "The night blazed with fires', perhaps? But that gives the impression of a solid line of light from horizon to horizon, which I don't want. I'll have to think about this. Also, I'm not totally convinced I agree with your premise. Generally speaking, active is stronger than passive. But the particular sentence is a short, declarative one that - for me at least - instantly conjures up an image.
quote:Second, POV appears consistent thus far.
Well, there's a limit to how much I can mess it up in thirteen lines of mainly dialogue.
quote:Third, I'm not sure a Prince would refer to his own father as 'King Varhen himself!' Does he not know his own father? I know the conventions of medieval times sometimes made such the case, but as a reader it's not something I like. Nor is it something I believe unless I'm adequately prepared to do so.
Good point. I was envisioning Hedling as being a little grandiloquent here, consciously so, but I agree it's not clear from the actual text. I could add some information about how he's saying this : "Hedling struck a dramatic pose : Ah, but this army is led by King Varhen himself!" Or I could just switch things around, so Helding refers to "my father" and Gathen replies with "King Varhen." Again, I'll have to think about that.
quote:Fourth, I'm very much drawn in.
Thank you!
quote:My thoughts revolve around the dialog. It's rather different, no quotes, no speech identifiers, not many beats. The reader has to rely on context to know who is saying what, and since the story just started that is asking rather much of the reader.
I'm not sure what you mean by "beats", could you elaborate? Quotes versus dashes; is there a good argument for the former? To me it seems mainly a matter of taste, and the dash character is easier to find.
You're right about the context. So that's an advantage to adding information about Hedling's manner in referring to his father, it also identifies the speaker.
posted
The dashes make it a little harder to read - most readers are used to quotation marks and dialog attributions (used judiciously).
The use is particularly jarring in a short excerpt - after a page or two I'd be completely used to it and it wouldn't bother me. But would it be enough to keep me from getting through the first few pages? Maybe.
The argument is - don't make your readers work hard unless there's a good reason.
Why do you want to use dashes instead of conventional punctuation? It might well be just right for this piece, I don't know. But if you don't have a good reason to break the rules, then go conventional. IMO.
posted
Yeah, I wasn't so fond of the way the dialogue was presented either, but the actual lines seemed fine.
The night being alive with fires...Gathen has his back to the royal army, so he must only be seeing the "hundred beacons" of the enemy. Not very many, to my way of thinking. I mean, if that only means a hundred campfires, that's still a bit thin for an army several thousand strong. If it includes all light sources in the enemy camp, then it's a real low number for an army camped in sight of the enemy. If they're exercising light discipline I'd be worried, otherwise I'd be suspicious.
An army of "merchant rabble"...call them mercenary rabble and I'll understand what you mean, but an army of poor merchants sounds so weird that I'd be scared to fight them just because it's uncanny.
Anyway, the title and the general direction make it clear that Gathen's side is about to get their trash kicked pretty badly, so I guess these things all are in proper order. Still, you might want to make them more subtle or flesh out the rest a bit more, or something.
quote:The night being alive with fires...Gathen has his back to the royal army, so he must only be seeing the "hundred beacons" of the enemy. Not very many, to my way of thinking. I mean, if that only means a hundred campfires, that's still a bit thin for an army several thousand strong. If it includes all light sources in the enemy camp, then it's a real low number for an army camped in sight of the enemy. If they're exercising light discipline I'd be worried, otherwise I'd be suspicious.
Gathen can't count that high! "A hundred" is not to be taken literally, it just indicates "a large number." Good point about the merchant rabble, but they're not mercenaries either, they're city militia. So then, how about "lowborn rabble"?
There isn't very much of this yet, but thanks for offering, J. I'll send it to you when I finish the battle scene, if you still want it then.
posted
On that first line--go a bit farther to not only make your verb active but to help set the scene a little more thoroughly.
As I'm looking, I'm not even sure you need that first line at all, or you could combine it with the 'hundred (or thousand should you take the above advice) against the night' bit.
"...he could see the rebel campsite, alive with thousands of beacons against the night."
posted
One intresting bit of trivia, both western and eastern cultures use a word literally meaning "ten thousand" to mean "a really large number". Our English word is "myriad", oriental languages generally use some varient of 萬. I dismissed the possibility of "hundred" being used synonymously with "myriad" partly because your passage also uses the number "five thousand" as a fairly definite quantity. The plural, "hundreds", could be nicely indefinite while still giving a good sense of scale.
The term "lowborn rabble" would seem either redundant or pointless, depending on how you defined "rabble". I think that "traitorous rabble" would make more sense, given Gathan's perspective. Just calling them "rabble" would be fine as well.
The rebel camp blazed with fires, hundreds of flickering beacons against the night. At Gathen's back lay the loyalist army, five thousand strong; but his attention was all on the rebels.
posted
Might just be me, but the dialog seems forced. I get flashes of the soap my wife likes to watch. Dialog needs to flow. If it doesn't sound real, then it will lack the believability you need.
You should also throw in a few tags to remind the reader of who is talking. I know that in a two person conversation, they can be dropped when it is clear who is speaking. Since the story is just beggining, I don't have any real association with the characters. Until the characters are more familiar to the reader, tags help keep them strait.
posted
Well enough, but I don't know what stage of writing you're at right now. I only pointed out "hundred beacons" and "merchant rabble" because the concepts they implied seemed out of place.
If you want to work on language issues, probably the place to start is by framing the dialogue as part of the action rather than using lines following dashes without indicating speakers and so forth.
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