Thanks for the valuable insight man! I'm sorry you can't read past the prologue, that's bizarre. Can you please explain exactly what's happening? Like, can you click "next chapter" or select the other chapters from the drop-down menu at all?
Regarding your points, I'm sorry to say I disagree with about 90% of them.
I've heard these criticisms before. While I understand some of the reasoning behind them (I really do), they don't apply to my work. I'll go through them one by one, but let me preface this by saying I respect the fantasy genre and I'm very, very well aware what people have come to expect from it. One of the things I am doing with this series--sometimes intentionally, most times not--is subverting its tropes.
What I don't respect are reviewers trying to tell people how to write their work. I'll get to that at the end of the post.
At 2/3/14 09:53 PM, Kylpault wrote:
Well ghostly was used twice in the same sentence, commas occasionally were overused and there's a few run-on sentences. Just pretend I showed you an example.
"Ghostly winds fanned ghostly curtains" or something, right? Intentional. It's called purple prose, and I like it in small doses.
Every word of every chapter I write is intentional. I rarely make writing mistakes anymore--what you see is what I want you to see. We can have a debate about style if you want. I personally see little wrong with your example; it's grammatically correct and has a good flow.
At 2/3/14 09:53 PM, Kylpault wrote:
#1: ESTABLISH CHARACTERS AND SETTING
I have nothing against action, but the problem is that action needs to have an outcome you care about. You can't just have an explosion for no reason in a book and market it as action. While that's not exactly what you are doing, going for a large action scene at the start of the book is a very bad idea. I don't know the setting or characters, so as a reader I just try and gather as much information as possible in the first five or ten pages or so before caring about the plot. Which means this prologue's heavy action is read like a battle in a history book. If I had characters to care about then action would be great. If there was anything I cared about yet, then I would want a certain outcome from an action scene. But going off with heavy action for most of the prologue doesn't work.
It's totally understandable if you didn't like the prologue's flashy action scene. To each his own. Two things though.
First, that scene isn't that heavy (in my opinion), nor did it go on for "most" of the prologue. It was literally like three paragraphs.
Second, it is meant for people who finished the Prelude, which is just UGGGH SO FULL OF ACTION, and new readers in the future who would eventually be wondering what the hell is this 500 chapter story going to be about. I wanted to give both of them a preview, something light and quick to get through, but which still hints at what's to come. That's why the big battle was written in an expository style.
I'll take your points into consideration about it feeling like something from a history book, because that was the intention. "This battle happened, and it happened like this." The fact is, there are scenes like that scattered throughout the entire saga. Whether readers care about them or not won't stop me from writing them, but I do want people to be entertained rather than bored, which is what it sounds like you were.
At 2/3/14 09:53 PM, Kylpault wrote:
#2: EASE IN TO FANTASY
A pet peeve of mine. I can read a completely out there fantasy novel, but in order to gain a foothold in the first few pages I need some way to relate the fantasy world to the real world. I get a point of reference to build the rest of the lore on. Although when constructing a story's plot it's best to keep this in mind I don't expect you to change that. So how about starting out giving a description of father and son fishing, an activity that isn't completely alien as unrealistically massive ships and random people flying? You could explain the characters a bit more in depth too, branch out to their occupations a bit. Kill two birds with one stone.
Here's the truth, man. The fisherman and his son don't matter. The council are a string of faceless characters. The Three Queens and the Red Threat were already given all the time of day in the Prelude. So I just saved my readers about thirty minutes of pointless reading.
Easing into a story is a subjective matter. If you disagree, that's fine.
At 2/3/14 09:53 PM, Kylpault wrote:
#3: THERE NEEDS TO BE SOME LIMITS TO MAGIC
I'm not saying that it shouldn't be possible for people to possess the magical power shown. But maybe it needs immense study, or there are a few certain rules that need to be obeyed, or something. Everyone just seems to have godlike power, which in relativity makes their powers not as impressive as they should be. I can't understand why these people don't just cast "Spontanious Combustious!" or whatever. There is also a vary high amount of people shown that have crazy abilities, so how easy is it to gain this mastery of magic? It appears very, very easy. In sum all this adds up to is a kind of anything goes style of magic that's just there to advance the plot when needed. Physical limitations on the use of magic would solve this as long as the characters don't hold back their power for no apparent reason. It ironically adds believability.
This is something I've glossed over from the Prelude all the way until now. My other readers never expressed a problem with it, but I feel a similar way. Partly because I've been working on this magic system for years, and am still unsure what its limitations are. Perhaps this will be the one grand flaw in the story. Or perhaps the magic itself also won't matter in the end.
At 2/3/14 09:53 PM, Kylpault wrote:
This was pretty bad. I am aware I am being more harsh than I normally would be, but this is a published work. Not some poem or short story on the forum that just will be used as practice for more material to be written. If you seriously want to make money off writing you need to strive for perfection. You don't need to reach it, but you need to get closer than the rest of the novels in the same genre to stand out and around the same level to have some success. I don't want you to pour out a year of your life on this unless your main goal is to learn through practice. I do hope you are able to improve because the amount of time you're putting in obviously shows you have the dedication to do great things in literature. The core, the skill needs to be developed.
Sorry bout being a dick.
No need to apologize, it's always been the harshest criticism that has helped me develop as a writer. Frankly, you were much tamer than my old writing buddies.
Now I want to give you a piece of advice for your future reviewing endeavors. I say this from the heart, and I say this from experience. Avoid telling authors how to write their work. I've done this in the past and only ever got 1 of 2 responses:
Response 1: okay.jpg, and then they get writer's block and never write again
Response 2: Why thank you, Kevin. So tell me, how many copies did your last book sell?
Both responses are valid as fuck.
1: If you don't like someone's work, don't assume the author wasn't striving hard to write it. Having met writers both published and non, critically acclaimed (Sean Munger is my Twitter bro) and completely ignored, I can tell you that they are all striving to be better, without exception. It's insulting to hear "you need to work harder".
2: If you're not a bestselling author, don't tell someone how to publish.
That said, again, I appreciate the review. I hope we can have a healthy debate about this series.
Everyone else reading this thread: chapter 12 came out yesterday and I forgot to announce it. 13-15 will be out this weekend as part of the season 1 finale.
