2024/07/05 - Strange24 - My Farseer - (V,G)

[strange24 she/her]

Hello everybody! 

My Farseer (WIP name) is a Romance, Sci-Fi and Adventure/Drama story. I wanna start by saying that I'm not a very experienced writer and this is one of my first serious attempts at creative writing. My greatest hope for this story is just to become a better writer. Another important thing about this story is that I can't claim that the setting is mine. It's a fuzzy line as most of the details come from me but the bigger concepts are from warhammer. As part of the practice, I write for a reader completely unfamiliar with the IP. The characters and plot are my own.

 

I apologise for all the grammar and thanks for reading!

[Silk she/her]

Congratulations on your first submission!

8 hours ago, strange24 said:

Another important thing about this story is that I can't claim that the setting is mine. It's a fuzzy line as most of the details come from me but the bigger concepts are from warhammer.

We're mostly about craft here, so we're not bothered by looking at IP stuff as long as you're in it to improve  Keep in mind that you wouldn't be able to submit it for publication anywhere (no idea if that's something you're interested in) but as an exercise there's absolutely nothing wrong with doing that. 

I will say that of those who comment here, many of us publish or are seeking to publish are works so we tend to be a little more professionally oriented and our feedback reflects that. if there's a specific kind of feedback you're looking for, let us know and we can try to adjust our feedback to something that works for you.

Comments

P1 I enjoyed the description of the armour etc. in the opening paragraph. I missed this kind of description in other places in the story – I couldn’t quite tell what sort of world the character was in, what it looked like, whether she was in space or on land etc.

One of my biggest questions as I move through the early pages is what the conflict is. The POV character references a battle, but likens it to an errand she has to run. Is the battle important to her? Is she here because she wants to be, or some other reason? What are the stakes? These are the questions I have reading the first scene.

P3: In the second scene, my attention is piqued because people are feeling afraid. I’m interested in the sense of emotion we’re getting! But when the end of the scene rolls around I still don’t really know why people are feeling what they’re feeling.

P6 “The presence of his mother’s soul…” this is interesting, since his mother doesn’t seem to be actually here, I assume this is something to do with the stones that were mentioned earlier?

I also like the description of the body as alien, but it has me wondering what the POV characters look like. Especially from the description of the armour, I had assumed they were themselves humanoid, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here.

“You said you would change your path…” Ah, now this is interesting. Gives me a sense of what’s at stake for the characters. Until now all I know is that there’s been or is going to be a battle somewhere and that a kid wants his mother.

So… D has been replaced by a banshee? Or is “banshee” the name of her troop?

 Overall: I enjoyed some of the description and worldbuilding here (note, I'm not a person who is terribly familiar with Warhammer). It took a while, until the end of the chapter, to get to what felt like the inciting incident, the thing that changes everything for the story going forward, and I wasn’t sure how the first two scenes connected with the last one or how necessary they were to the chapter. But my main thought is – I think we need to know more about what’s going on and what the scenario is. Some of the description and emotion you have can help ground the story for readers a bit more. The biggest things I was looking for reading this were clarity about what was happening and what was at stake. 

Keep writing!

[Mandamon he/him]

Welcome to Reading Excuses and congrats on putting something out there!

I have similar comments to @Silk on this one. I think your writing is generally engaging and conveys a lot of movement, but I got a little lost with the people and places, not being familiar with Warhammer. Devoting some more time to the setup and descriptions would be helpful, as well as placing those characters firmly within the scene.

If there's anything in particular you want feedback on, let us know!

Notes while reading:

pg 1:  "Looking through the protective crystal"
--what crystal is this?

pg 2: There are some good descriptions here, but I'm waiting for a conflict, or plot element. So far it's skipping from thought to thought, describing the character.

pg 3: Watch your dialogue. It should be in the form:
"X," said Y or
"X." Y did a thing.
Make sure the punctuation is inside the quotes and (for US English) always use " instead of '

pg 4: The characters keep referencing things, but I haven't had much explanation of what's going on yet, so I'm a little lost.

pg 6: I'm getting a bit lost in all the names and places. I'm not very familiar with Warhammer, though.

pg 10: I think I lost the thread of the story somewhere in the last few pages. More description of the event they're at, or what the circumstances are, might help clear things up.

[strange24 she/her]

18 hours ago, Silk said:

Congratulations on your first submission!

 

Thanks for having me and thanks for the feedback!

 

Now in hindsight the random name-dropping of worldbuilding is something I did absent-mindedly without realising how much attention they stole from the characters. As I rewrite I'll remove or reword them to give the reader fewer question marks in the heads. This chapter's ideal purpose was to make the reader care about Calrion and his journey + give mysteries and themes the wanna read more about. But I can see the worldbuilding taking up too much space. 

The only specific thing I can say I want critique on is the characters. But any criticism of the story is good for me!

Edited July 9 by strange24

[strange24 she/her]

15 hours ago, Mandamon said:

 

pg 4: The characters keep referencing things, but I haven't had much explanation of what's going on yet, so I'm a little lost.

pg 6: I'm getting a bit lost in all the names and places. I'm not very familiar with Warhammer, though.

pg 10: I think I lost the thread of the story somewhere in the last few pages. More description of the event they're at, or what the circumstances are, might help clear things up.

It is the names like Wraithbone and Craftworld that make it confusing? My desire to just throw the reader in the middle of the actions and let the world slowly uncover was a bit to extreme it seems. 

[Mr. Misting he/him]

Props on putting this out there!

I have similar comments to Silk and Mandamon. It's hard to follow the plot, as I don't understand much of the worldbuilding.

On 7/9/2024 at 10:54 AM, strange24 said:

Now in hindsight the random name-dropping of worldbuilding is something I did absent-mindedly without realising how much attention they stole from the characters. As I rewrite I'll remove or reword them to give the reader fewer question marks in the heads. This chapter's ideal purpose was to make the reader care about Calrion and his journey + give mysteries and themes the wanna read more about. But I can see the worldbuilding taking up too much space. 

When it comes to characters, I didn't feel a strong attachment to either of them. I was too busy trying to understand what was happening to care about what it meant to the characters. 

I think the dropping of some names could be cool, as long as the reader understands enough for the current scene to make sense. 

Your prose is really cool and descriptive. You had some really novel descriptions, such as "brushed straight out of him..." Sometimes though it can be a little confusing, especially when it is describing some fantasy thing I don't understand. 

Pg 5: I thought for a second that the eldar was another character.

[Mandamon he/him]

On 7/9/2024 at 1:38 PM, strange24 said:

It is the names like Wraithbone and Craftworld that make it confusing? My desire to just throw the reader in the middle of the actions and let the world slowly uncover was a bit to extreme it seems. 

It's not the name themselves. As @Mr. Misting says, it's that we don't have a strong connection to the characters yet. 

[Silk she/her]

26 minutes ago, Mandamon said:

It's not the name themselves. As @Mr. Misting says, it's that we don't have a strong connection to the characters yet. 

I also agree.

[Ace of Hearts]

Welcome (even though I’m late to the party)! It’s always nice to see new faces (not that I’m a grizzled veteran at this or anything), and it’s nice to have someone to critique since I’ve been the only one regularly submitting for the past few months. I really hope you find the feedback useful and continue getting critiques from us!

Overall: This prologue has a solid emotional foundation of a mother leaving her child to go to war, and what I didn’t get as good of a feel for was the larger situation. The humans are invading this fantasy race, but I don’t feel like I have a good idea of what that looks like or why D feels that she specifically has to go. I’m also not sure what makes the people here different from humans in terms of physiology or culture.

The tricky part is that I also feel like there’s a lot of exposition here and I don’t recommend adding any more, so the challenge is to clarify the larger situation through refining what’s here instead of adding a lot more explanation or dialogue about it.

As I go:

Pg 1. A piece of advice I received in a creative writing class is to (as a general rule) make sure the opening paragraph has an interaction between characters rather than focusing only on one and has something striking/out of place that draws readers in. If I pick this up in the bookstore I’m not sure why I should buy this book specifically over all the other high fantasy out there.

Pg 3.  I see that the characters are emotional so it seems like this is important. I think I need a bit more characterization/background for this emotion to hit home—with the difficult balance that I also think that there’s a lot of exposition that can be cut back here.

Pg 5-6. Now in C’s PoV I’m starting to piece a few more things together—I think the conflict of mother leaving her son is a good foundation, but I’m still having trouble getting a feel for the bigger picture here.

Pg 7. The implication that D killed the human is an interesting one. Again I like the pieces here and I need a bit of help putting them together to get a feel for the situation.

Pg 8. So D is leaving to go off to war? I’m guessing that was what the conversation early on was about but I didn’t quite understand at the time.

Pg 9-10. How old is C?