Published March 4, 2010
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141,418 Literary Works • 674,396 Reviews
This chapter is short and sweet. I think maybe it can be a prologue rather than a chapter.
Thank you. I will work on the editing. This was a story I wrote for Nano 2009 and am sure there are mistakes I could not find. The only thing armorer is correct because I was talking about a person not the place. Great information on Medieval times. I had Antares made of stone because this originally was going to be a dragon-slayer story. But I scrapped the idea after the first 10,000 words and changed the angle.
The villages are just in poverty. This will be explained more in chapter 6. This novel has two advantures. A small quest that Bard goes on. Then when he makes friends, they go on a longer quest. There is a potential for a sequel, which I am already making an outline for.
Every word of Jenthura's review is genius.
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The Review
Hey, Wannabe!
You’ve got good potential, and this story could take off into a full-fledge novel. However, it’ll take some time and sorting and editing before you can really fly, Y’no? Rome wasn’t built in a day, and well, neither are stories.
Let’s go over your two main problems.
The Main Problems
Your first, and probably the most distracting, was that you tend to info dump. That means that you have a lot to say, and –while most of it may be important to the story or to the setting of the story- most of it is pointless, and crowds out the information that the reader really needs to know.
Your second problem was that you had a hard time staying on topic. You begin with a nameless village, but then move on to Antares, then you roll right back to the village and then introduce your character, Bard. If Antares is the starting point for the MC (Main Character), then you should probably start your introductive narrative there and go onwards to Antares (figuratively speaking) from there.
A Few Minor Problems Throughout the Manuscript
Your information is erroneous in many places. You have a good-sized town, and one that’s constantly growing (So fast that the walls are knocked down, which is also an error, but we’ll get to that later) but why is it growing? If everybody else is dying out, why should it remain? Give some reasons.
Maybe because everybody left the villages for the cities; this would also explain why the villages are dying (if that’s not the reason, then you’ll need a reason for the villages dying). Or maybe it’s a sea port and has access to great trade. Or is it close to mountains, making it a good mining location? There’s gotta be a reason for this, and you have to provide it. Mind you don’t info dump while doing so. Most information must be slowly released by the readers, almost as if you’re burying and letting them think they found it by themselves (it makes them happy, and happy readers are good ones).
Falling through into what? The basement? Medieval houses didn’t have basements. They had root cellars, but that pretty much doesn’t count.
This really is a prosperous town, since the only stone buildings during medieval times (I keep assuming that you’re modeling your world after the Middle Ages) were castles and really strong buildings; most houses were wood and plaster, making the building easier to heat during the long winter months (apparently, stone is rather cold, and as obstinate as molasses).
Most towns would have dirt roads; London had horrible roads in the early 1800’s. It would be best to say that the roads were cobbled, but I’m afraid solid stone roads were simply a thing not done…at least, not in medieval times: you can change that in your story, of course, but I’m just suggesting it.
Several businesses? That’s all? Not a lot for a town that grows so fast its walls need to be knocked down every once in a while. In medieval towns (which I’m guessing you’re modeling Antares after) you would have innkeepers, cobblers, tailors, breweries, farmers, blacksmiths, wagon-makers, coopers…
In short, a lot of businesses. If you want to add another point of conflict to the story, then you could make this Joe Smith guy the big cheese. Have him monopolize most of the businesses, and not just his little armor ding.
Another thing about that, why would passer-bys buy armor and swords? Unless they happened to lose theirs (bad luck, that) they would already have swords and such. Considering the goblins, skeletons and snakes, nobody would travel without swords or armor. So why would they buy from him? Was he famous? Were all the passer-bys completely bereft of swords? Or maybe he really was just a good smithy.
You do add that there was a warrior school (something I’ll get to later) and that the nearest armory was ‘miles away’. Both are good reasons, but I think you’ll need to work a bit more on this Joe guy.
Wow, this one’s a little hard to explain, let me just show you.
This would never happen. The city’s leaders (elders, mayor, government) would manage the growth of the city very well. Useful tradesmen would be welcomed, but if they were strangers, they would be required to live outside the city itself. If ever the city required a larger area, the walls would remain, and become an inner circle of the city. New walls would be built outside the city. Those newcomers that the city accepted would have built houses as close to the city as possible, so they would be included in the new wall, along with any other houses built to accommodate the city’s growth.
Also, walls were hard to build back then, to knock a perfectly good stone wall…well, let’s just say they didn’t do it.
Closing Sequence
That’s all I can do now, I don’t promise to continue, but I’ll sure try. I want to go over this ‘warrior school’ concept you have, and point a few weak points. I’d like to go over Bard’s travel gear, but also his reasoning and logic about his adventure. Finally, I want to point out your improper usage of dashes.
You use the dash (-) without a space. It needs to be like this –and with a much longer dash– so that the spaces separate the ‘dashed’ area from the rest of the sentence. Yours looks like this-and doesn’t seem to stop-which confuses the reader just as much as if you replaced all periods with commas.
Anyway, Keep Writing!
~Jenth
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