Story Time with Uncle Aegis: Episode 2

[Aegis J Hyena]

So, there are writers in this forum and I thought, since I don't see a "subforum" for writing and the like, I'd post my epic pile of crap in fits and spurts (against my better judgement, but I can't get myself hyped up about this story anymore and I need positive feedback to continue it). I've gone through one editing pass but as we all know, "an author is blind to their own errors." So for your amusement, or more likely horror, I'll post one "scene" (or ten pages or so) every couple of days after I do a Civilization update. If you've got grammar pokings, give those to me in PMs so they don't spam the thread. Hopefully you guys will spot errors I may have missed. Earlier I was told the characters weren't believable, so I went back and reworked. Once I finish posting all 200 pages or so, I'll decide whether to continue onward or to start over with a new band that might be more believable or something. I'll call it PG-13 for the name calling that goes on in this scene.

Episode 1: The Beginning and the Escape (10 pages)

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[LAYF]

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Hmm.. so far interesting.. I'll say, it does seems a bit "forced", but then again, we do not know the queen's motive, and that (as I read it) is the reason it is forced... so.. maybe that will change in time.
I must also say that I'm really glad with the direction you have taken Roig, compared to what it looked like you'd have done in the original previews, so good work there...
The read is so far at a pleasant phase

I'll read it as it comes out, and comment when I got more to say, keep it up

[Aegis J Hyena]

Thanks LAYF... hopefully I'll get more feedback than just you once I start posting more pieces.

[madmartin26]

It seems good to me so far. One thing i am curious about is if the queen is for some reason being more evil towards these prisoners than she usually is. Not that she couldn't be that evil normally, but in that case wouldn't her court mage either be used to it by now or have fled the country?

[Aegis J Hyena]

If by court mage you mean Kaydis (who's a cleric), things will become clearer with him later. I figure I'll get more feedback and readers here once I post another piece, probably tomorrow after the Civ update.

[Quarg]

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The Queen is too much a caricature. She comes off as a bad 80's cartoon tin pot dictator...more mel brooks than menace. Especially the racism...way too much poor white folks caricature. The taunting red-neck version of racism has some truth...but is more accurate for those who are at the bottom of society making sure someone else is below them. One would expect a racism of more indifference and perhaps annoyance from the top of the social order.

Oh, and the nobles are just zombies in the background?
If she has them enthralled she really doesn't need them to be hanging around for what is her own personal rape show...
If she doesn't have them enthralled, what the hell are they doing there?
And would our erstwhile Knight not have tried to enlist someone in that groups help?

It might be better to have the scene as planning a staged trial rather than somehow have the noble witnesses just hanging around as set dressings...

deleted comment here...regarded as inflammatory

Critical in my comments, but then I believe you can do much better...

[Aegis J Hyena]

Nah, she's supposed to be that one-dimensional. The background nobles were nothing but set dressing, yeah. Vincent didn't want to risk getting killed (despite "other reasons" for her keeping them alive) or he probably would have.

I hadn't thought of it being a staged trial, especially with what she did to capture Vincent. In my next editing pass after this I'll think about it. (although I'll probably write another 200 pages first; this'll easily hit 1000 before I'm done)

[ThroughTheWell]

Reading that was unpleasant. It is not good. It needs major edits and rewrites.

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It is overly repetative, several times.

It is icky. I highly recommend you don't write about naked people until well after you can write about clothed people much better. Also, I think you should have posted "Warning rape triggers." on a seperate line in the first post.

Your dialog is bad. Bad movie level bad. Roig's self referentual use of his name gets old fast.

Character names... more sylables does not an interesting name make. Worse, some of them were not distinct. Sadly, I will guess now that you will not correct character names, because you will let something other than reader satisfaction drive that decision, such as a retelling a gamer group as a story.

Yes this feels cosmopolitan in an 'everything goes d&d' kind of way, but you establish no consistency with names or costumes.

Also, you throw in big out of place words, assuming both a d&d-ish knowledge and a modern knowledge in your reader, which then takes the reader out of a naturaly developed setting.

You don't control distance with words well, or set the scene sufficently. People suddenly move in an out of range because you never set the range well.

I don't have a pan of the prisoners before each one is introduced individualy. I hope you introduced them somewhere before this, because this was inadequate.

You focus too much on small unimportant details while forgetting other details that are more important. In other words, you don't paint well.

Your guards are oddly dressed for the actions they take, and yet still nebulous. The watching crowd is both vauge, stupic and insufficiently cowed. They don't react right to a powerful evil queen dispensing routine justice. The magic guy... well, isn't his about face convenient for you the writer and unconvinging to the reader.

This was a stereotypical set piece, and you did not pull it off well. It feels poorly and cheaply done, not even enjoying the benefits of recalling a beloved sterotype. And, you added next to nothing to it.

The queen is a moronic schitzo with a lack of understanding of both tactics and psychology. So bad, I don't know where to begin.

I could go on finding errors. Some scream at me, but they are buried by the cascade of others. But I don't have the time. If you produce 10 pages after this, much less a hundred, without reworking and refining some small 10 page chunk, you will continue to produce work at this amaturish level.

Oh, we have a fanfic subforum off of comunity, which would be a better place for this than in games.

[Aegis J Hyena]

Thanks for the input, TTW; I'm sure when I -finally- finish this thing (if I continue it after the 200 pages are put up) I'll go back and do a few major rewrites. First the thing gets written, then it gets cleaned up. Though, I'm surprised you think the character names aren't distinct.

I had not thought of a "pan of the prisoners" to slip in more detailed descriptions --- that'll be something to throw in for the next rewrite for sure.

As for Roig, get used to it. I know it's a bit cliche. It's meant to be, especially for him. I'll clean it up in a rewrite later but for now, the chunks go up as I've got 'em.

[Quarg]

Reading that was unpleasant. It is not good. It needs major edits and rewrites.

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It is overly repetative, several times.

It is icky. I highly recommend you don't write about naked people until well after you can write about clothed people much better. Also, I think you should have posted "Warning rape triggers." on a seperate line in the first post.

Your dialog is bad. Bad movie level bad. Roig's self referentual use of his name gets old fast.

Character names... more sylables does not an interesting name make. Worse, some of them were not distinct. Sadly, I will guess now that you will not correct character names, because you will let something other than reader satisfaction drive that decision, such as a retelling a gamer group as a story.

Yes this feels cosmopolitan in an 'everything goes d&d' kind of way, but you establish no consistency with names or costumes.

Also, you throw in big out of place words, assuming both a d&d-ish knowledge and a modern knowledge in your reader, which then takes the reader out of a naturaly developed setting.

You don't control distance with words well, or set the scene sufficently. People suddenly move in an out of range because you never set the range well.

I don't have a pan of the prisoners before each one is introduced individualy. I hope you introduced them somewhere before this, because this was inadequate.

You focus too much on small unimportant details while forgetting other details that are more important. In other words, you don't paint well.

Your guards are oddly dressed for the actions they take, and yet still nebulous. The watching crowd is both vauge, stupic and insufficiently cowed. They don't react right to a powerful evil queen dispensing routine justice. The magic guy... well, isn't his about face convenient for you the writer and unconvinging to the reader.

This was a stereotypical set piece, and you did not pull it off well. It feels poorly and cheaply done, not even enjoying the benefits of recalling a beloved sterotype. And, you added next to nothing to it.

The queen is a moronic schitzo with a lack of understanding of both tactics and psychology. So bad, I don't know where to begin.

I could go on finding errors. Some scream at me, but they are buried by the cascade of others. But I don't have the time. If you produce 10 pages after this, much less a hundred, without reworking and refining some small 10 page chunk, you will continue to produce work at this amaturish level.

Oh, we have a fanfic subforum off of comunity, which would be a better place for this than in games.

Two things TTW, One some of your scene comments are more cinematic than literary (Observation not complaint).
And two, were you expecting more descriptive world building than provided by the author? Personally I've veered towards the bare minimum description school more recently but that's just because I've found my own, rather descriptive writing style, to be too wordy.

[Aegis J Hyena]

I normally like being more descriptive than this. Sometimes my descriptions can span four or five paragraphs. I was trying something different here.

Anyway, next part sometime today. They escaped, now it's time to find out just where they ended up...

[nikohl]

TTW: There's a difference between "being blunt" and "being rude" in critique - staying on the right side of that line will keep our forum as the friendly and welcoming place for all that we like it to be, hmm?

I'll read it soon, Aegis, but haven't got round to it yet.

[Aegis J Hyena]

And here we go with Episode 2: The Lich's Tower (13 pages)

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Criticism/comments welcome, of course.

[thinkslogically]

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[ThroughTheWell]

TTW: There's a difference between "being blunt" and "being rude" in critique - staying on the right side of that line will keep our forum as the friendly and welcoming place for all that we like it to be, hmm?

Aegis may be a nice person, but when a person explicitly ask for criticism, I give it to them. To do less is a disservice to the requestor. Also, it is my opinion that a certain strength of words is necessary to convey a strength to a criticism, less it be ignored as one of many merely optional mild improvements. If I am read like that, this will continue to be a bad piece of writing requireing additional edits which will inevitably come back around to the original criticisms. Why waste everybody's time?

Quarg, no, my comments are not coming from a theatric or movie point of view. I expect a consistent story that does not whip my head back and forth with inconsistencies that leave me with unnecessary questions. I am quite happy to have either a lushly detailed world or a sparsly worded setting. Both can be done well.

I've been reading some nice books by Lois McMaster Bujold lately, which has exposed me to 'good' writing. One had 2+ rape scenes. The contrast is startling. I've been a reader all of my life, having read published books across the spectrum. This is not ready to submit to an editor yet, because it has too many issues. Instead of adding extra pages to this, it needs less pages (1/3 or 1/2) because there really is too much to comment on in 10 whole pages. That might need a different scene that can fit into that length though.

I think though I will not read any more of this, for a variety of reasons.

[Aegis J Hyena]

Thinks --- yeah, the story opened with them trudging in chains to the throne room; my original thought was to make the reader go "what did they do to get in trouble" so in effect some action was "missed" --- then we find she has other plans... As for the plate mail... Roig'd tear them apart chains or not, otherwise (I'm pretty sure) but I wanted to make things seem "extra serious". The guards mostly background noise anyway, they weren't meant to be focused on or thought about so I thought I could get away with it. Not saying anything about Queen Revvenaxia yet. As for the "crumb" you're looking for, that comes later, when Vincent and company find out what exactly she's up to... (which should be in the next update, if not the one after).

TTW: Of -course- it's nowhere near ready for an editor That's why I posted it here, so it could be torn apart before I could put it back together properly. I know it's shit. *quickly adds an edit* After the 200 pages are posted, maybe I'll start fresh from scratch keeping all the comments I see here in mind. Thinks brings up some good points about the Queen making "empty" threats... or empty sounding ones, at any rate...

[Aegis J Hyena]

Another 13 pages. This chunk has several scene shifts; if it's "jarring", I apologize, it will be fixed in a future edit. Feast (or torture) your eyes on Episode 3: Roig, Razor, and Life Stories

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[thinkslogically]

Thinks --- yeah, the story opened with them trudging in chains to the throne room; my original thought was to make the reader go "what did they do to get in trouble" so in effect some action was "missed" --- then we find she has other plans... As for the plate mail... Roig'd tear them apart chains or not, otherwise (I'm pretty sure) but I wanted to make things seem "extra serious". The guards mostly background noise anyway, they weren't meant to be focused on or thought about so I thought I could get away with it. Not saying anything about Queen Revvenaxia yet. As for the "crumb" you're looking for, that comes later, when Vincent and company find out what exactly she's up to... (which should be in the next update, if not the one after).

So my main point I guess is that you need to balance the mystery (good) against confusion (bad). Maybe you could shift the narrative voice to a prisoner's perspective so we can see the events through their eyes if that would work? It gives you more scope at least to show emotions and if there's confusion it's legitimate because the character doesn't know what's going on yet. Right now, the confusing aspects break my suspension of disbelief and I'm not grabbed enough by the story to want to read more, which is not great. So work on making the plot hook really grabby. Make me want to read the rest of the story

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Some other stuff - your characters at the moment all seem to be speaking with one voice (which I suspect is yours). Give them their own voices (and I'm not talking about accents) - the queen should be regal. She should speak without contractions, swearing, sarcasm or name-calling. She's obviously smart enough to have become queen, so make her act like it. If there's a reason why she WOULDN'T speak like that, or hold herself above all others, then show us why. Maybe she's mad, maybe she's a bleeding heart - whatever the reason, you HAVE to give her more credibility as a single, powerful force to be reckoned with. HER word is law. HER personality should embody regality. But, she is also human (ish) and for all her greatness should also have faults. At the moment, the most likely fault that occurs to me is either paranoia over losing power or dabbling too much in magic, but I've made those up to excuse her behaviour.

If Roig could rip apart the chains as a beastman runt, I'd also guess that non-runts could do that too (and better), so why is he chained at all? Have they honestly never encountered a beastman before? Or has the queen underestimated him? If so, why? What did Roig do to pull that particular bluff? Either way, you need to explain why this fiasco is allowed to occur in the throne room in front of everyone when they should really have known better. Make your enemies smarter with an actual chance of defeating the good guys and your story becomes a TON more exciting. And let random shit fly both ways too - so if the good guys get a lucky break, make sure the bad guys get one too.

Finally, the teleport spell still feels like a deus ex machina. You could get around it by hinting slightly earlier that that guy was up to something. Maybe you could have him pale and sweating, concentrating really hard on performing the complex spell (which needs time to get right) while the rest of the scene unfolds. If the prisoners know each other, and know that this guy is their escape route, it makes more sense that they'd try to distract attention from the spellcaster. But make it tense - have people in the room who would recognise magic and make them suspicious, then have them discover the spell just a little too late to stop it, but early enough to add drama. Maybe someone could get left behind? Again, if you use the perspective of a prisoner to tell your story, you can add tension because THEY know there's a plan afoot, which tells the reader there's a plan afoot. You don't need to say what it is, but having someone focus their attention on keeping bad attention away from the escape-spell guy ties things up a bit better.

EDIT: Given the flaws pointed out so far, I would prefer to read a rewritten 1st chapter than the rest of the story in its current form. I think I've explained most of my feelings about the work so far and I don't feel compelled to read more at the moment if it's going to be more of the same. I know this probabyl sounds totally harsh, and I don't mean it to be, it's just that the time investment required to read the whole thing is too high for me at this point.

[Aegis J Hyena]

Let's try this again, as the forum went briefly dead while I was trying to post...

The teleport -is- a Deus Ex. Otherwise there'd be no story period insert plot of Star Trek Voyager here

Roig's not a runt. But he's not dumb enough to attack the Queen in her sanctum.

I'll probably post one more at 16 pages (which encompasses two combats) and that'll be it then, seems like interest is not terribly there for this thing in its current state. Thanks for the input, Thinks

[thinkslogically]

So if hes not dumb enough to attack, why does he?

[Aegis J Hyena]

Should have rephrased... not dumb enough to attack to kill (and thus have -everyone- on his ass rather than just a small group he can deal with), but sure try to put her in her place after that "can't get it erect" remark before getting kicked to his knees...

[thinkslogically]

Yeah, so ANY attack on a monarch should be treated as attempted regicide. If the attacker is stopped by guards then who's to say what his intentions were originally? The punishment should be the same a if he'd actually killed her. Worse, probably. And anyone who flies off the handle like that regarding a penis comment (which is far too crass to have come out a queens mouth anyway) is going to have seen a lot more trouble by then anyway and must know what's going to happen if he reacts like that... You CANT do something like that and expect to get away with it.

[Aegis J Hyena]

He wouldn't have, normally... but there's a little deus ex side thing --- this group's "chosen by fate" --- the Queen did say she can't kill them outright while talking to Roig, there -has- to be a climactic battle between "a" group of heroes (Vincent's) and the "dragon violating divine law" (Revvenaxia).

[Quarg]

Quarg, no, my comments are not coming from a theatric or movie point of view. I expect a consistent story that does not whip my head back and forth with inconsistencies that leave me with unnecessary questions. I am quite happy to have either a lushly detailed world or a sparsly worded setting. Both can be done well.

My comments were an attempt to solicit some more thoughts on the world building from you...but you seem to be in a defensive mood so forget it.

[Aegis J Hyena]

Alright, last one since people have effectively opined that it's so terrible it can't be looked at Episode 3: Trouble On The Road

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