Hi guys! This is a project of mine that I've been developing as if my life depended on it. I've had this first chapter draft sitting in my documents for a long time, and I haven't showed it to anybody yet. I figured y'all should be the first. Something about it still doesn't feel right to me and I hope y'all could help me find out the issue. Hope you enjoy!
~~
'It took me a long time before I realized that I didn't want to die. But I'm still trying to find something to live for.'
Sometimes she found that reading made her lonelier. Usually she would see the strong leather bound pages comforting, could count on her world of fantasy to be there when she needed to escape her own, but sometimes – more so lately – she found the usual magic her books gave extinguished. And it was from that she knew she'd reached bottom, again. Innya starred down at the lines on the page with blurred vision. Her hands shook as she gripped the two covers tight, but couldn't do much to stop the fat wet drops from dotting the dialogue presented to her, even though the thought of water damage on an otherwise perfect novel was terrifying.
Baird watched her from the back of the carriage, paintbrush darting across the canvas, rushing to capture every perfect line of her body – the slouch of her shoulders, the bow of her neck, her slim straining arms. He felt almost compelled to immortalize the scene, and when she finally emerged from her desolate state he knew she would ask for the print. She always did, in the end. His eyes softened as a small, muffled sob carried on the wind and to his ears. He loved her more than most things, and it hurt his soul to see her so low so soon since her last drop. Innusha's face, Baird noticed, was a work of complex art capable of both great happy and sadness. He thought he would never tire of sketching the arch of her brow, the delicate curve of her lips. To see her like this, so unsound, caused one of the greatest aches he would ever feel, and he felt a deep shame in his chest that he wished the scene to never change.
“She's thinking about death again,” he mumbled as he heard Misha stir in his sleeping bag.
“Again?”
Silence fell on the carriage as Innya slowly, pleadingly, turned a page in her book. The morning sky was just starting to light, transformed from darkness with brilliant pinks and deep purples that Baird could never quite mimic with paints. The first faint rays of sunlight threw long shadows across the clearing they'd stopped in, just outside the edge of a forest Misha was too wary to let them enter. Baird's brush stalled mid-stroke as Innya's head dipped lower and her arms dropped, defeated, in her lap.
“Misha,” Baird begged.
Misha starred at Baird for a long moment before pushing himself up out of bed and into the soft dewy grass, out towards Innya. She fell into his arms like a doll as he scooped her up, wrapped her arms desperately around his neck and hooked her legs around his hips. His soft coos of reassurance floated in the air like music and her muffled cries kept the melody alive. Sometimes, it was easy to forget that she was just a child, only fifteen. She was more developed, so much more complex than any adult either of the men had ever met. Her intelligence far transcended her years, and that was the only cause of her downfall. She was too smart for her own good. She thought too much, had too much time alone with her brain. She wasn't swayed towards mundane, trivial means of entertainment; which perhaps aged her in their eyes. Even when she was in one of her better, more eccentric moods – all jumping smiles and twirling skirts – they still couldn't see her as child. But at these times, when they caught glimpses of her worst, it was easy to see her shell break and catch sight of that little girl cowering inside.
The last moments of sunrise saw the trio gathered around a popping fire. The days were growing colder, and it wouldn't be long before they all had to find new clothes, ones that weren't worn thin and littered with holes. All except Innya, maybe. She had a way of sneaking back to the carriage with a backpack full of new clothes each time they stopped in a town. Neither said much about it, since she also had a way of procuring new outfits for them too. She'd stopped crying since earlier, and was staring blankly at the flames, breath clouding with every slow exhale. Her hand was entangled in Baird's, squeezing hard enough to stop blood flow to his fingers, but he didn't much mind. She was still shaking.
“Estervelt's only about a half day away now,” Misha said while starring down east. “If we leave soon then we should be able to make it before nightfall.”
“We've been traveling for three days straight,” Innya said as she rested her head on Baird's shoulder – who was now looking wearily at the fire between them. “Misha, I'm tired.”
It would be best for them to leave soon – now actually – and find a place to board up in the city for the night. He had saved up enough money for them to have a comfortable tavern stay, but the look on Innya's face was making it hard for him to enforce authority. He frowned at her and narrowed his eyes. A tense silence descended on the trio and after a few stressful seconds – Baird was feeling intensely uncomfortable – Misha started to put out the fire, mind made. Innya straightened up quickly and reached across the dying fire to grab Misha's hands, her face contorted into despair.
“Misha, please! I just want to sleep.”
“No.”
“Mish-”
“Innusha!”
Baird looked frantically between the two before rising and pulling Innya to her feet.
“Come on, Innie, sweetheart let's go. I'll fix it up so you can sleep in the carriage.”
Innusha yanked her arm from Baird's grip and, after brushing stray grass from her skirt, walked calmly towards the carriage. Once inside, she slammed the hatches shut.
“You know she needs recovery time,” Baird mumbled as Misha headed to start preparing the horses. “We've been on the road for so long now. It would do us all well if we had a break. The town will still be there tomorrow.”
Misha turned, eyes blazing, on Baird.
“Do you want to be stranded in the middle of goddamn nowhere when they catch up to us?”
Baird's eyes widened from surprise at Misha's sudden retaliation, but were soon fearful for a different reason. He turned quickly to stare down west, hands shaking. His heart sped up to a dangerous tempo as he remembered their last run in with the knights.
“I thought we lost them in that last town!”
“I did not want to say in front of Innya, but we didn't get off that easy back in Coldmount. We're tiptoeing around tigers here and it would be nice if both of you would just do as I say until I can figure out a plan.”
Baird suppressed a cry as he looked at the ground, but still his eyes watered. His hand traveled slowly to the rope burns on his wrist - still relitivelly fresh - and he screwed his eyes shut against the memories as they threatened to invade.
“I apologize...”
With a sigh, Misha ruffled Baird's long hair and handed him a set of reins.
“No problem, just help me get the horses ready to leave. We've stayed here long enough.”
End of chapter
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140,566 Literary Works • 673,441 Reviews
This was really good and I look forward to the second of this story. How did come up with the names for your characters? Everytime I read the name Innusha I thought of Inuyasha, which was the best anime I've seen by far in my opinion. Keep writing your storied there great. <3<
Thank you so much, dear! Innusha is Russian for Innoncent. Misha means 'like God', I believe. Baird is simply a play off of "bard".
Oh well, your welcome and I want to learn Russian maybe you could teach me
<3<
Oh no not at all xD I love Inuyasha too by the way. I decided on the name partly because of that.
Heehees,
great minds think alike <3<
Hi Rei!
Since you mentioned a Chapter 2, I thought I'd get a foothold here and start my spree of reviews on Chapter 1. This is my first review, so bask in the warmth of my still-existent energies.
I'm not sure what all has been criticised - I think I saw that "starred" had been noted, and your first paragraph - so I'll just go over what strikes me most. The repetition should make you more aware of the importance of it I guess? Here goes.
I think your strong point in this is the relationships between characters. This is one of the things I don't have too much practise in / have avoided, and I always enjoy it when I come across a good example of it. You have a very good dynamic, with Innya so vulnerable, Baird her protector but both of them subjected in authority to Misha. I would maybe advise you to specify Baird's age though, because, and this really has nothing to do with linguistics or anything but I couldn't help imagining him in a romantic relationship with her, but around twenty or something. /Imagination
Aside from some awkward wording that I'll get to in a moment, I saw two main problems.
(1) You switch perspective from Innya to Baird without structuring around it - and even with structure, that would be a tricky thing to do. You could do a split and indicate the POV character by putting their name in italics or something, but I feel that that would disrupt the flow of the chapter too much. Instead, maybe you could go for omniscient observer, detailing neither inner worlds but describing their reactions. To have the thoughts of more than one character in the scene goes against the whole purpose of POV - to let the reader see an alternate world. Have you ever swooped into someone else's head? If you have, that's really cool, please tell me more about it.
Although some authors do come to mind who have mastered this form - Jane Austen is a ready name there - I'd say keep it simple and clean, and stick to either one narrator or go for omniscience. You can always have the next chapter from someone else's perspective.
(2) was your paragraph structure. You don't really distinguish a point where you end the paragraph, instead just cutting in where perspective changes, or something. I'd say, generally: new paragraph where
I read somewhere on the internet that to structure you chapter, it's quite essential to structure your paragraphs in an alternating Action/Reaction pattern. For example, you'd have Innya stooped over her book, hair falling and looking generally dejected. In the next paragraph then, she find that "that reading ma[kes] her lonelier". That way you mimic the way we perceive real life. Of course I'd take any guru-tips off the internet with a pinch of salt, but this one's served me well so far.
Okay well aside from that, all that remains are small slips. I'm really not sure whether you're even going to re-write this chapter, so I don't know how much point there is on resting on specificity, but there were some things.
First off, this sentence doesn't make sense to me. Shouldn't it be that she "would see the strong leather bound pages as comforting"? This entire sentence in itself is extremely run-on and would do well by being rephrased into maybe two or three separate sentences, each dealing with a different idea.
Okay there are some things, but tell me by PM or reply to this if you want me to nitpick them out, because I see this is a bit old and if it was me I'd probably also be way to lazy to reedit something that I've bypassed as regards writing standard and stuff.
Damn I'm so slow with these damn reviews! Go team blue! At least, that's what I think that weird Spanish name means.
Muchas calachas. That sounds Spanish doesn't it? I'm good at this.
Yeah this is a slow-moving project of mine. I've since edited this part but I'm not going to repost it. I'm just going to move on to Chapter Two whenever I get around to posting it. But, Bae, always review my work xD I'd like it if you would still PM me just so I could compare your corrections to my other draft and see if I missed anything.
Hey, ReisePiecey. I'm back for a review, as promised. I'm sorry I didn't return to do one earlier, but the last two days have been busy as hell for me. Anyway, let's get on with it.
In short? I really liked this. I loved the way you built in the characters; you gave me just enough of a sense of them to intrigue me. Innya is odd and smart and somewhat unstable, Baird is caring and removed and doesn't like being caught up in conflict, and Misha is protective and leading to the point that he's almost frightening (unlike Sureal, I was very interested by the contrast of his character). None of them seem normal or generic, and I love that. I definitely want to see more of this, and of them.
You had some really beautiful lines:
I adore this because it gives me such a sense of Baird's character. The fact that he 'loves her more than most things' suggests to me that he struggles to form attachments, that she is one of the few people who has managed to gain his affection. It's a superb use of show v.s tell, and such a beautiful way to get your point across.
I love how this line is a perfect circle. You follow up the simile by referring to it again later in the sentence, and it's great.
However, moving on from my gushing over your awesomeness, there are a couple of bits that could do with refinement. Overall, the piece reads well, but I've got a few nitpicks.
Nitpick One - Your first paragraph
I like the way this paragraph is written, but I think you spend too long on the same subject. It feels like I'm having extra food shoved onto my plate even though I'm already full, to describe it metaphorically. I think you might be able to solve this problem, however, if you took the section in bold and inserted it after the second paragraph as a paragraph of its own. It is up to you how you arrange it, but I think that the line 'and it was from that she knew she'd reached bottom, again' is powerful enough to give the reader a sense of her despair before you go on to discuss how Baird feels about it. You hear me?
Nitpick Two - Starred or Stared?
You seem to be in the habit of spelling 'stared' as 'starred'. If you stare at something, you look at it fixedly and don't avert your eyes, so I think that this is the spelling you're looking for.
Nitpick Three - This lil' line just here:
Hmm...the arrangement of the commas in the bold part is bothering me. It doesn't look right to me. In my head, I took the rhythm of the words to be like this:
come on Innie (.) sweetheart (.) let's go
But the way you've arranged the commas suggests it would be like this:
come on Innie (.) sweetheart let's go
(If you aren't familiar with transcript writing, the full stops within brackets represent a short pause in the speech).
Basically, the cadence doesn't seem right. I'd like to see it written like this:
A change as small as that is enough to alter the whole sentence. Punctuation is amazing.
Annnyway (or should I say Innieway?), I'm going to conclude this review here. I loved this piece. My criticisms are small. Keep writing, and please notify me when you post more (which you better do!).
Merry Christmas. This was a joy.
~Pan
Thanks for the review!
I have the "Starred or Stared" problem all the time. I don't know why my brain can't distinguish between the two when they're standing alone. I blame public schooling. And I never even thought about splitting the first paragraph, but I agree that it would look better behind the second.
I'm really glad you liked the story! I've been developing these characters for a while, but this is only my first time writing them, and I'm sure you know there's a difference in that. Writing their voices is hard, and I'm so happy because the feedback that I'm getting shows that I'm headed in the right direction.
-RP
I cant lie the name had captured my interest. I love the plot set up. It seems like it is set a very long time ago? Which makes it interesting. It gives off mystery. I am curious to learn more about what is going on because you were not very descriptive with what is going on in the story. I didn't get what the knights were after them for but I am sure that if I keep reading on I will find out. I like how you used big vocabulary in your sentences.
I'm actually still messing around with the world and the time setting. It won't be completely historically accurate with any one era.
Also, I'm planning a sort of slow reveal with why the knights are chasing them. I'm sure you've gathered that they're homeless thieves and whatnot, but there's a bit more. This is, after all, only the first chapter.
-RP
I like this. It's a nice set-up for an interesting plot, with a interesting wee set of characters. I'm glad I read it.
Some quick thoughts:
-> The first paragraph is written from Innusha’s point of view, but the rest of the chapter appears to be written from Baird’s. Whilst it is technically fine (albeit rather rare) to have multiple POVs in a single chapter, the fact that only the first paragraph is in Innusha’s makes it feel as though it is an accidental POV break.
Either write the entire chapter from Baird’s POV, or switch POV at least one more time to reassure the reader that it was not a mistake.
-> Innusha, Innya, Innie.
My advice is pick one, and stick to it throughout the chapter. The reader is still learning the characters, and having three different names for the same character is needlessly confusing.
Also bear in mind: in all instances of Innusha’s name being used, it is Baird thinking/talking about her. Typically, it’s best to have each character only have a single name for any other character, and then you can have different characters have different names for them.
Baird is clearly close to Innusha, so I think it would be best for him to either use either Innya or Innie in almost all instances. Pick one for him, and stick to it. (You can have him break this if you have a reason for him to — eg. if he’s annoyed at her, he may call her Innusha instead.)
-> Misha is lacking a personality in this first chapter. Whilst I have an idea of what Innusha and (to a lesser extent) Baird are like, Misha confuses me.
He is initially comforting to Innusha, and then suddenly turns cold and aggressive. As a reader, I can’t see why his personality suddenly changes. Related to this, his sudden declaration that they have to carry on with their journey comes out of seemingly nowhere as well — there doesn’t appear to be anything in particular to prompt him to say that just then, as opposed to saying it earlier.
Think about how you want to portray Misha to the reader, and keep that in mind whilst you’re writing him, and try to keep him consistent.
When he’s talking to Baird after Innusha has left the scene, that is your chance for him to explain why he chose that particular moment to say they should leave. (Perhaps it was something he’d be silently wrestling with all night, but didn’t know how to bring it up; or perhaps he saw or heard something that made him worry about how exposed they were; or maybe it was something else entirely.)
-> There are a few instances where you haven’t quite used the right word, or have a small typo. For the most part, it looks like your spelling and grammar is good, so I think these are probably just silly little mistakes you missed whilst proofreading.
If you have access to a printer, print the chapter off and go over it slowly, paying close attention to every word, and mark the mistakes with a red pen. If you don’t have access to a printer, go over it slowly on your screen, and pay close attention to every word, fixing them as you go.
-> This is a good opening. It is immediately gripping, introduces your characters, and introduces several conflicts. Your writing is decent, and I think you potentially have the start of an interesting novel here.
Make sure you keep at it!
For the time being, don’t worry too much about my feedback in terms of this chapter. Don’t spend forever editing and revising it. Write write write more more more. Once the first draft is finished, then you can worry about editing this chapter, and then you can come back and look at my feedback and consider what you want to take on board.
Thank you so much for the review! Sometimes it's hard to catch things like this when you're the author. My brain sort of auto-corrects things for me, so thank you for drawing my attention. And I didn't realize how many names Innusha is called until you pointed it out, hahaha! I'll try to pull it in a little.
I have the exact same problem! Not just with writing stories, but everything. You have no idea how many times I'll proofread a Facebook status (and they're like a sentence long), before posting it, and often a typo will still get through.
I'm going to come back and review this later, I promise, it's just that I'm at school at the moment and don't yet have time. I loved it though!