NOTE: This is a continuation of Chapter 1, I guess how I'm going to upload is by parts of a chapter. Once I complete a chapter I'll upload the thing in it's entirety, this will include all of the edits from previous #.# (1, 1.1 , 1.2 ...) chapters. And critique away, any/all advice is welcome. First time with dialog so that'll most likely need a lot of editing.
NOTE: This will NOT make sense without reading Chapter 1. So, go do that if you haven't.
The cool air that brushed against the man’s face and a warm sensation, as if laying under the warm rays of the sun, are all the man noticed.
This isn’t such a bad place to go if he had just drowned, he thought. It’s peaceful, comfortable, and best of all lacking a vast amount of water.
He could sense some water touching him which made him uneasy, but he was on a solid surface; safe. Out of the darkness a sudden weight on his chest startled him and immediately his limited senses went into overdrive.
Why can’t I see anything? What is that weight on my chest? What are these increasingly loud noises around me? His thoughts ran rampant trying to figure out what exactly is going on, and why his peaceful death had suddenly become chaos.
“Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four…” a disembodied voice called out in time with, what was now realized to be, a pulsating pressure upon his chest. Each press joined by the calling out of the next consecutive number.
The heaviness ceased but with it a new sensation now filled his lungs. A softness was felt and fresh air had somehow forced its way down passed his mouth and into the water logged lungs which caused him to cough. He felt water in his lungs and a twinge of panic took over his body until he noticed the water was no longer filling his lungs as he gasped for survival but was being expelled with each cough. When the cough subsided he opened his eyes to the face of a young man, whose expression was taken over by a mixture of concern and relief.
“I don’t know how long you were in the water but I think you were unconscious. Are you okay?” the young man asked nervously.
“I believe so…” was said in reply.
The young man relaxed, smiled, and sat down on a small bench behind him which allowed the now conscious man to sit up in the young man’s direction. They sat in silence, both allowing the other to calm and take in the situation.
“I am Reslin.” he said after enough time passed. He introduced himself and stuck out his hand in greeting.
“I…” he swallowed. “I don’t know who I am.”
The gentle smile on Reslin’s face eased any tension the man was feeling but he knew this topic would arise soon enough, which made him scared but thankful another was there to help. Reslin seemed to have picked up on the uneasiness and changed the topic.
“You’re lucky I came out to pick the fruit early today. I don’t know how much longer you would’ve lasted in the water.”
A strained thank you was given and the injured man looked to his right taking in what he saw. The tops of trees could be seen from over the side of the small two person boat Reslin had pulled him into. The turquoise fruit hanging from the branches also filled a few baskets behind Reslin, and the small amount of water at the base of the boat seeped into the soft wood of the containers. Peering over the edge a much more relaxed face was now reflected in the deep waters. Yet the face was still one of a stranger.
“What is this place? Where did all of this water come from?”
“The svicran?” Reslin asked before continuing on. “It’s a very unique place, there are only a few in the world. But essentially it’s just a forest with sand in place of dirt. Many foreigners are unaware of the waters though; It can be dangerous.”
He looked over the water, eyes travelling along the surface following the path of unseen currents flowing throughout.
“Many don’t survive the sudden rise, they panic in shock. Even those that know can be dragged down by the currents.” His expression wore heavy with pain. The drenched man, less covered in blood, noticed this but allowed the moment to pass as to not bring up a painful memory. He waited. Soon after Reslin continued in a more cheerful manner.
“The tide lays dormant for most of the year but early to mid spring is when it rises, in time with the harvest and better yet the festivals.” This brought a smile to Reslin’s face.
A turquoise streak momentarily marked the air as a fruit flew from Reslin’s hand and was instinctively caught and bitten. The sweet smell of the fruit awakened the empty stomach it entered, being satisfying but unable to fill the space it began to occupy. Another fruit was handed to the man as his hunger had not gone unnoticed by Reslin.
“It’s a month before the full moons that the waters rise, which is how Pickers like me know when to be ready by.” Reslin continued, “The water stays down just out of reach of the trees roots, but once it rises it is soaked up by the roots and stored all year long until the next tide. These boats are used by many farmers to have easy access and by that time us fruit pickers are ready for the new crop. No need for ladders and climbing. Just row out and pick them straight off the branches.” Reslin sat down after exampling the act of fruit picking, or possibly he’s just winded from that story the dripping mess of a man thought.
“There are others?” he asked curiously.
“Of course, Aerdin isn’t too far off.” pointing over his shoulder. “It’s a small farming village of people mostly like me, but not everyone is a fruit picker, someone needs to build the boats.” He laughed, pulled the oar up and gently began rowing.
“To Aerdin?”
“To Aerdin.” Reslin stated, eyes focused on the water. Both sat calmly, occasionally shifting as to not be hit with low tree branches. They floated smoothly in silence, only the splash of paddling could be heard. The amnesiac watched the younger man who seemed deep in thought. When Reslin shifted his curious gaze.
“So, do you know anything about how you got here?”
NOTE: This will eventually get into the fantasy aspect of my universe, but that may not be until chapter 2 :/ Thanks for reading! :D
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125,007 Literary Works • 672,815 Reviews
OKAY. I AM HERE NOW.
I'm sorry about coming so late, and when I said I would be here like three days ago and everything. >< I'm here now, so I suppose better late than never. xD But I'll try and be more punctual next time, as long as I'm not swamped with reviews and feeling lazy that time, too. heehee
So, your dialogue. You asked for careful attention to that side of the story, so I'll see if I find anything while I read through for my second time. But the first read-through? I thought you had done a lovely job on the dialogue, and the first glance tells me you punctuated it properly. I also love that you use the ellipsis in your dialogue, but that's the only place you use it. In dialogue, it helps the flow and everything goes smoothly with it in there, being an automatic character pause. In the narration of the story, I've always seen it as a roadblock or speed-bump the reader has to stumble over. So nicely done there. For a beginner as you say, you certainly have a handle on just about everything. xD Every time I read your work, I'm impressed. Because this is amazing, and this is your second piece you've ever written? o.o Excuse me if I make comments like this throughout. c:
So allow me to ramble on something we all writers suffer. Redundancy. It's one of those traps we fall into, begin repeating words without meaning to and without a purpose, and our work has been infiltrated by zie enemy. In the case above, you repeat water several times throughout that paragraph, and continuing onwards. Some words you cannot find a replacement for. Water is a good example of that. It's difficult to say "his aqua-logged lungs. Water fits the picture all too well to not use it. So what do you do? Spread it out. You have a limited amount of times you can use it without it being bumps for your reader, and a limited amount of times close together. So you space them, using different words if possible and avoiding having to use it as often. Some forms of redundancy are the repetition of actions. An example I noticed in your chapter is he coughed. He coughs in the line I pulled out above, and then again he coughs a line down or so.
A good way of eliminating redundancy is 1) writing. You do eventually write yourself out of it. Never completely, of course. You'll always have some, but as you write more and more, you'll be able to spot it as you write and fix it as you go. And there will be fewer instances as your mind will be trained to avoid it. 2) read your work out-loud. It's something I do for any time I edit. You can spend hours and hours reading it in your head, scribbling over the page, and then when you say it out-loud, there are so many new things you wouldn't have guessed. Read out-loud, mend redundancies (also great for fluency and correct grammar/punctuation), and everyone will be happyyy. c:
This line confused me so much. My guess is that you spelled one of the words wrong (perhaps and?), and that was what tipped the entire sentence. Another thing that threw me is you speak of 'cool' air and 'warm' sensations, which clash a bit as I read.
Comma after subsided
Comma after ceased
Comma after feeling.
So you probably have guessed what I'll speak about for a moment now. It isn't a big issue with you (like I can see you will be able to easily remedy it), but you have many commas missing - a few in wrong places, but I'm not seeing that as much. There is an article that helps writers with punctuation. It's always helped me tremendously in the past when I had questions, so perhaps this article can help you find the correct places. As it is, your punctuation is wonderful - especially considered that these are your first writing attempts. All you need now is a bit of tweaking and continual research and practice.
In this part, I think you could have built up the image a bit better, especially during the conversation of the MC and Reslin. Like I had no idea a bench even existed before he sat on it, so you may need to spend more time on developing the image for your readers. Slipping little bits of description as the reader goes along is always the best thing to do, as the picture continually builds for us as we come along.
There isn't much more to say on this piece. >< I wish I had more to critique, because I know you're looking for that mostly, but this piece was very good and I'm still coming to grips with that this was your second attempt at writing. Continue writing and you'll be heading up the bestsellers. xD Keep going! This pulled me in, intrigued me, kept me interested, flowed wonderfully. I love it, and approve.
~Darth Timmyjake
Usually I am overzealous with commas... guess that is starting to fade. lol
I kind of rushed this part so I didn't do crazy amounts of editing, so I'll blame that horrible part of "water...water..water" on that. Redundancy is something I usually catch after I read through stuff a few times, I guess I didn't do so well this time. :/
Ellipsis just don't feel right in narration, but I still am trying to figure out a good way to get a pause while doing narration, almost like a scene shift or a slight passage of time. But i guess that'll come with writing and practice.
Thank you so much for your wonderful reviews, they definitely help. (as all reviews do)
Generally:
Reslinn being incurious is an interesting trait, but it’s surprising that he doesn’t at least ask for clarification. The reply to the query about his identity was vague: it could have been existential, or literal, and it would be logical for someone to ask for clarification, even if they intended to give them some space.
I notice you don’t use the hyphen for compound adjectives. I won’t point out where these are, but it might be worth looking into.
Name this guy. Soon. Otherwise you’ll keep trapping yourself in confusing phrasing to avoid the overuse of pronouns.
Specifics:
“Out of the darkness a sudden weight on his chest”
A sudden weight what? What is this weight doing? Pressing? Hitting? Crushing?
“out what exactly is going on”
Tense issues, probably related to the shifting between first and third person narration. Maybe using italics would straighten this out?
“a disembodied voice called out”
To be fair, if he can’t see anything, the voice isn’t particularly disembodied. Given the already mentioned lack of sight, “disembodied” seems almost redundant.
“what was now realized to be”
By who? I guess your protagonist. I understand the tendency to limit pronouns, because the lack of a name makes it repetitive. The alternative, seen here, is confusing and grammatically incorrect.
“Each press joined by”
*was* joined
“but with it a new sensation now filled his lungs”
What’s the “it” here? It seems to be “the ceasing of the heaviness” but could also be “the heaviness”. Clarification is needed.
“A softness was felt”
By who?
“What is this place? Where did all of this water come from?”
“The svicran?”
Given the narrative character has already revealed to the reader he knows that the place is the svicran, is there a better way to ask this?
“they panic in shock”
Panicking and going into shock are actually different things, and experienced differently.
“The drenched man, less covered in blood,”
Less covered in blood than what? The person he’s talking to, than he was previously, than he ought to be? You’re trying to sneak an idea in here, but sneaking it in requires cutting out the joining words like “than he had been” that provide clarity of meaning. Feel free to use more sentences that are shorter and clearer, than long ones with uncertain meanings.
“This brought a smile to Reslin’s face.”
“This last bit brought”.. or some equivalent is necessary, since one assumes the change in tidal pattern isn’t bringing the smile, whereas the festivals are.
“The sweet smell of the fruit awakened the empty stomach it entered”
This odd use of object/subject (the fruit awakening the stomach, rather than the stomach being awakened by the fruit) reads strangely. While interesting wordplay, it gets in the way of the narrative experience.
“as his hunger had not gone unnoticed by Reslin”
This shows that the narration isn’t limited to what the narrative character knows or guesses, but speaks directly to Reslin’s motivations. I’m not sure this is the direction you want to go, since it undermines the usefulness of an amnesiac protagonist (discussed in the previous review).
“which is how Pickers like me”
It’s popular in fantasy to capitalise nouns that are setting-related. But if this job was carpentry or lawyering, it wouldn’t be capitalised, and so it shouldn’t be.
“or possibly he’s just winded”
Mix up of tense here. “he was”
Once again, feel free to find me via pm, or on my wall.
Cheers.
Once again, your thoroughness is amazing. This wasn't my most heavily edited piece so I knew there would be a good amount of mistakes.
I'm going to go through and edit, and take all you said to heart work things and fix them.
With my big edit I do plan on addressing the whole name and amnesia thing, so hopefully that will kick start things and have a better flow.
I hope you continue to read as I upload, you are a great reviewer and would love your advice and thoughts as I continue.