The Ice Queen Chapter 5

Hi, Dragon! Back again to review chapter five.

I'll start by saying that I was glad to see you addressing Katrina's lack of emotion in this chapter. It's a good flaw to make a point of, as well as being relevant to the real world. I know there's a lot of concern in real life figure skating about mathematics and difficulty being championed over the actual musicality of the performance, so it's nice to see you address that subject from a skater's perspective.

However, you know the drill by now. I'll start with nitpicks and move onto general points after.

Nitpicks

I was curious to see whether he was going to point out my technical mistakes and elements I could have replaced. He would’ve known what he was on about because I explained how the judging system worked.

I don't buy this at all. Knowing the judging system is different to applying it. He has no personal experience with ice skating and he can't have seen more than a handful of performances, so there's no way he'd be able to pick out the tiny mistakes that contribute to a lower score. Katrina would be aware of this, too, and given how feisty and proud she is, you'd think she'd get irritated that a complete novice was trying to give her advice!

“When I watched this performance, I recalled moments from your other one a few days ago,” he explained

“I made a terrible mistake by forsaking my emotions.

Your characters can be a touch too formal for my taste. It would be okay if you'd established that that was how they spoke, but you haven't - there never seems to be that much consistency with your characters' speech styles. I think I may have mentioned this in one of my Que Sera Sera reviews, but it's always good to sit down and think about the way in which your characters speak. Ask yourself if there are any words or turns of phrase that they would never use, any they overuse to the point of being annoying. Ask yourself whether they use too much slang or none at all. Find voices for your characters; don't just speak through them.

Also, I do find it strange that Katrina is so quick to accept Crystall's criticism. It's your call, but it seems like it would be more realistic for her to be resistant to it, even if she knows he's right deep down. Her accepting it straight off the bat just means the issue is resolved too easily.

I felt his body temperature cool, which made me smile. He didn’t want me to leave his embrace, so he took his temperature down.

Kind of strange. He can control his body temperature? Why?

I began spinning upright and slowly, like a ballerina, keeping a serene expression on my face and closing my eyes

Here's the problem with this. This is supposed to show Katrina improving on her previous performance by letting her emotions flow, yes? However, by explaining the expressions she's choosing in such an ordered manner - something you do multiple times in the passage - it loses all sincerity. It's clinical. I don't feel like she's giving into emotion; I feel like she's putting it on.

The figure skating passage as a whole has a very clinical air. It still feels like a third person account. If you were describing her performance from the perspective of another character, you could get away with talking about all of the elements and how the performance looked. From a first person perspective, however, it just feels strange to read something so impersonal. There's nothing in the performance that really puts me into Katrina's shoes - or skates, shall we say. When she stoops down to do her hydroblading, you say nothing about the coolness of the ice streaking her fingers. You don't talk about the air on her face or the ache in her muscles as she heaves herself through jump after jump, or how the world blurs and melts when she spins. There is always more to writing first person than using the pronoun 'I'. You need to sense the world as she does or we'll never feel like she's the one telling the story.

Worry less about being specific and detailing the elements. The reader doesn't need to picture every facet of the routine in their mind. It's far more important that they get a sense of the feeling of it.

“Crystall, it’ll be another two months until the next season starts. Maybe I could try helping you improve your skating so you can participate in the Grand Prix too.”

Woah, woah, woah. Two months? Grand Prix? This goes beyond stretching the suspension of disbelief. The Grand Prix is an elite competition; there is no way at all that Crystall would be good enough to enter after two months of training. Most people take a year or more to learn even the most basic jumps and spins, and professional skaters generally train from a young age to get to the level they're at.

Personally, I frown upon those kind of things; British people call anyone supernatural who can withstand more than three shots of pure vodka.

I love the idea of this line, but I think it needs a bit of altering. I'm pretty sure I could manage three shots of vodka, and I'm a five feet three lightweight with very intermittent drinking habits. It isn't actually that incapacitating, especially not for taller people - you'll find students necking thrice that amount in a night. If you changed it to, say, ten shots of vodka, this line would be great.

General Points

1) I agree with Biscuits that the centaur element of the plot should be taking up more time. The story feels very heavily weighted towards the ice skating, despite the fact that Crystall's appearance is the thing that upset the status quo. It should be the mains source of conflict, but you're shunting it to the sidelines. As a consequence, the plot isn't really advancing.

2) The conflict in the story is too easily prevented or fixed. Crystall is a centaur, but he can easily hide it because of his shapeshifting. When Katrina wants to add a triple axel to her performance, she stumbles once or twice then perfects it. When Katrina finds out she lacks emotion in her skating, she accepts the criticism straight away and fixes it in her next performance. Crystall's family has been killed, but rather than being despondent and desperate to find them, he is stoic and doesn't want to inconvenience anyone. Conflict fuels a story, and by patching it up you're squandering plot and character development. Let things go wrong and get worse before they get better. Let your characters struggle against problems for more than a chapter or two, because that is how a story is formed.

3) Crystall's grief is not apparent enough. If he's been uprooted from his homeland and had his whole tribe slaughtered, you'd expect him to be an emotional wreck. To echo Biscuits again, I'm not sure why learning to ice skate is the first thing on his mind. Doesn't he want to find out who did this to his family? Doesn't he want to find out if there were any survivors in his tribe?

Going forward in the story, I would love to see the attack on Crystall's family coming into the fore, because that is the most interesting part of the novel for me. I very much enjoying reading it, but I want more conflict, more excitement. We know how your characters are in their comfort zone; it's time to take them out of it.

Hope this helped! Sorry I'm so harsh, but I do really love reading your work.

Keep writing!
~Pan

Hey there! MJ dropping by to save your work from the green room

After almost ten minutes straight of me crying and Crystall and Nate struggling to cheer me up, I regained control of myself. I could already feel guilt from noticing so many mistakes I made in the elements I chose. In the changing room, Crystall and I waited for my turn in the gala exhibition after the show. He cuddled me warmly, A period would fit a bit better here, imo I must admit, he was good at comforting me. He looked me in the eyes and said:

“Katrina, I think I know what went wrong.”

“What was it?” I asked. I was curious to see whether he was going to point out my technical mistakes and elements I could have replaced. He would’ve known what he was on about because I explained how the judging system worked. Moving on, my prediction was proved wrong.

“When I watched this performance, I recalled moments from your other one a few days ago,” he explained. “I noticed how little emotion was in today’s performance compared to your last one. You seemed to be more focused on getting all the jumps and spins right, but you didn’t seem to care about how much emotion you put into the performance.”

My mind was absolutely blank. I did not know how to respond to that. I slowly began to feel more and more guilty for being so focused on the technicality. I don't think guilty is the right word here. Maybe more like "ashamed" or something like that will help better convey exactly what she feels.

“You’re right,” I finally blurted out. “I made a terrible mistake by forsaking my emotions. It’s just-” My sentence was cut short when Nate ran in with my sparkly black and white checkered dress.

“Katrina,” he panted. “You’re on in five minutes.”I nodded in thanks and took the dress from him. After I got dressed, I walked up to Crystall and embraced him. I felt his body temperature cool, which made me smile. He didn’t want me to leave his embrace, so he took his temperature down. When I moved back, I smiled.“Thank you, Crystall,” I said. He smiled back as I left to face the crowd again. They applauded me greatly, I guess they had a point; it’s not everyday you have to recover from missing out on such a close chance on winning gold. I could hear Ashley yelling at me:

“You’re no Ice Princess! I am! I won gold, not you!”

She was right; I am no Ice Princess. I’m a motherfucking Queen. ROASTED!!!!! THIS IS MY FAVORITE PART OF THE STORY HANDS-DOWN!!!!

I skated into the centre, awaiting my music.

Soundtrack: Indila - Tourner Dans le Vide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3wpq-i150c

I began spinning upright and slowly, like a ballerina, keeping a serene expression on my face and closing my eyes. As soon as the vocals came in, I snapped out of my trance and went into another one, as I began showing off my skating skills in a step sequence. I started off with my head in a dreamworld, smiling distantly as I slowly performed my steps and turns in a waltz-like pattern. The thing was, I was really trying hard to not smile out of character, because I could see Nate’s abrupt expression at the Kiss and Cry. If you would like to know why he did that; I performed a completely different routine to the one planned. And I didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty; I’m pretty good at improvisation. Firstly, as usual, your description of her routine was spot-on. Secondly, you had too many semi-colons in the last sentence. And finally, again, guilty isn't quite the right word here. I would recommend looking up some synonyms for 'guitly'.

Carrying on, when the bridge came on with the “Tourner dans le vide vide…”, I made an expression as if I’d just woke up from a dream. I turn to gaze at the Kiss and Cry, at Crystall. I carry on the program, spellbound. I soon lose my rhythm; my steps and turns became more choppy and out of rhythm, intentionally of course. As the chorus came in, I leaped up into a Triple Axel, landing it perfectly. I was really questioning how I managed to fail that Axel in my Free Program, although I guessed it must’ve been the pressure. This seems like a contradiction- she's not sure, but then she guesses?I went out of character for a second to celebrate how fabulous that Axel was, before returning to my waltz step sequence. The Expo program didn’t have any requirements, but the performance had to be between 3 and 4 minutes long, at least from what I’ve heard. Either way, I carried on through the chorus as gracefully as I could; every gesture, every expression bursting with serenity, pulchritude and shapeliness.

When the second verse began, I went to a Layback spin. I sometimes really questioned whether doing Laybacks made me a masochist. Either way, I did it and I did it flawlessly as I changed to a Biellmann position, holding up my leg over my head and my hand clutching the blade. My expression remained calm and my eyes were closed. In my head, I ran through mine and Crystall's conversation in my head. As I thought more and more about what he said (I tend to overthink things a lot), I began to see how badly I was prepared for the Grand Prix competition. I began praising God for giving me someone like Crystall. As the vocals turned more intense, I skated out of my spin. Although I felt dizzy as fuck, I decided to do a Triple Lutz, which I actually landed pretty well. I carried on skating about, as if lost in a world unknown to me. When the chorus came in, I decided to do some Hydroblading and bent down towards the ice, placing one of my hands on the ice and stretching the other one out into the air. I began circling my hand as the chorus came in. As soon as the main vocal finished chanting “Tourner dans le vide”, I quickly pulled out of the Hydroblading and moved to continue my step sequence. I carried on acting lost, until the main vocals came back in, where I seemed to have yet another awakening and I pretended to cry, as if finally seeing the bitter reality of things. Soon, I was engaged into a slow upright spin, until the music stopped. When it did, my spin came to a halt. The audience applauded me loudly, I smiled in response, as required of me. I skated off the ice and jumped into Nate’s arms, laughing and smiling.

***

Me and Crystall returned home at around 22:00, I was tired as hell and had a lot to think about. Crystall decided to return to his Centaur form, which I had nothing against; he needed to recharge his human form if he wanted to survive tomorrow. I fell onto the sofa with Crystall laying on the floor next to it. As I turned on the TV, I looked at him and said:

“Crystall, it’ll be another two months until the next season starts. Maybe I could try helping you improve your skating so you can participate in the Grand Prix too.”

Crystall looked up at me, smiling as usual.

“I wouldn’t mind it,” he said. “And I appreciate your help, but I’d like to see you improving your skating first before you intend to help me. I don’t want your skill to suffer so you can improve mine.”

That one really hit me hard. Crystall turned back to look at the TV. The only noise to fill the silence was the news reporter talking about some dude with supernatural powers. Personally, I frown upon those kind of things; British people call anyone supernatural who can withstand more than three shots of pure vodka. Second favorite part.

Anyways, after a while of silence, I decided to say something:

“What happened to your family?”

Crystall looked me again in the eyes, his own turned a lively green.

“They were killed by the humans in Cornwall. I think I'm the only one who survived.”

“You think?”

“I don't really know. Everything happened so quickly, I can't recall seeing anyone else.”

There was silence between us again.

“I’m so sorry Crystall. I promise I'll help you find your family.”

“Katrina,” Crystall seemed almost frustrated. I didn't blame him. “Please, I appreciate the help, but don't waste your time on me. And don't make promises you can't keep.”

Would you look at that, I thought. We have a Mister Happy-Pants over here.

I quickly changed the subject.

“Moving back to what you were saying about my skating,” I began. “I accept your request. I will show how I've improved my skating by creating two new programs for next season.”

Crystall smiled at me for the first time in this whole conversation.

"Moving further back," he replied. "What did you want to say to me before your exhibition?"

This next one had me very gassed:

"You'll see what I mean when I show my new programs to you."
The discussion about Crystall's family seemed a little unprompted. I would think there would be at least something that triggered a thought about Crystall's family that led Katrina to ask, and Crystall would probably be more hesitant to answer. Other than that,
this was a really well-written chapter and I really enjoyed it. Keep writing!

Best wishes,
MJ

Wooooot!

Nit-picks:

“Katrina, I think I know what went wrong.”

“What was it?”

This seems like an unlikely reaction. Would she not be surprised that he all of a sudden thought he knew things about ice skating, enough to critique her performance. I dunno if that's actually what he's going to do, but it sounds like it, so her reaction should reflect that.

He would’ve known what he was on about because I explained how the judging system worked.

Ok so she can tell him, the judges want X, but it still seems unlikely he'd be able to detect the minutiae (sp?) and detail that high level judges would be going on.

but you didn’t seem to care about how much emotion you put into the performance

Crystall uses pretty much the same words he just did, which seems unlikely. He's trying to explain something to her, so I'd expect her to alter his phrasing to get his point through to her.

I made a terrible mistake by forsaking my emotions.

"forsaking" seems quite a sophisticated word for someone to blurt out while emotions were running high.

I carry on the program, spellbound.

tense switch

I sometimes really questioned whether doing Laybacks made me a masochist.

Bit of explanation would be useful here.

Me and Crystall returned home at around 22:00

Oddly specific

“Crystall, it’ll be another two months until the next season starts. Maybe I could try helping you improve your skating so you can participate in the Grand Prix too.”

That seems like kind of a stretch. Isn't this an elite competition? He's literally just started. I also still don't really understand why he's so interested in skating. You could use some backstory for this. Maybe he used to slip around on frozen lakes and was awestruck by the ice-dancers' mastery of it.

Overall:

Character: I like that we're getting a bit more about Crystall's attitude towards his family here. I've been waiting for that. As I explained above, I still don't really understand why he's that interested in skating since there's so many things he could want to do. He could be stalling from going out to try and find his family, and eager to do something Katrina can help him with, but I need some of this explained to me.

Setting: Not that applicable since you've explained these places before. Dropping a detail here or there would still be useful though, just drop in a detail of something someone interacts with and let it be a characterisation moment for one of them.

Plot: So, I get that ice skating's important, and I get that in a sports story you need to focus on it, but I feel like the conversation about the centaurs should be taking up a lot more time. It would probably be on most people in the country's minds. Nobody could talk about anything other than One Direction for weeks after they broke up, and they're just a boyband. The public would 100% be talking about this.

Flow: Sometimes your characters use slightly too formal language, but this was definitely less so an example of this than previous chapters.

I am genuinely really enjoying this story btw,
Biscuits