Thanks so much! My brother and I worked hard on it, and agonised over every paragraph, every choice and spent almost two months on it. Ch 2 & 3 are under way, but still needing to be hammered out completely.
Will post them as soon as I finish them.
We took much inspiration from Mark Twain & Edgar Allen Poe, with the prose and some of the stylistic choices.
Such treacherous Jarl, this Ealdwald and his sons are no better than him. I adore a great vengeance story and this one promises a lot and many a layer of drama! Great work establishing the worldbuilding and your charactercraft is indeed excellent. The pacing was layered, perfectly slowed at exactly the precise spots, then hastened when the end came near. A number of good setups that promise satisfying payoffs when you complete the book will make any reader hunger for more. I noticed only a couple of word repetitions, nothing that stole from my enjoyment. Great work!
We’ll have to work on those word repetitions then, thanks for tipping us off about it!
Also glad you enjoyed how treacherous Ealdwald and his sons’ are, and the world-building and character-craft in this story. We’re really trying to make it a very character-focused tale. Again, really glad you liked it! -Dan
If I was writing a “Wolf and Cub” themed story set in the Starshatter Universe, it would be a Spacer Battle Mother archetype and her daughter avenging her sons or husband. “Heaven hath no avenger like a Terran woman wronged.
The Terran Spacer culture is rich and there are many families who trek across the stars of Fringe Space. Most are young women in search of a husband, who scour Fringe space for Terran derelicts leftover from the 1969 invasion of Earth. These flew after the pirate clans, chasing them with deathly conviction, for the Clanner vessels were laden with kidnapped Humans. If the young ladies are lucky, they could find a stasis chamber or two huddled deep inside a derelict, their systems still working, and hopefully with a male occupant inside…
Care to elaborate? I could do to improve it if it can be improved. As to the beginning yeah I had hoped to start of dramatically in as Mark Twain a style as possible.
Ok, secondly, it seems to me as if you are trying to do to many things here:
>>The birds' wings were as dark, as the blackest of eclipses beat against the autumn air. The cawing bellow torn from the beaks of the ravens cut through the evening frost. The wind howled mournfully across the fields, two score onyx eyes gazed down upon swaying aspen trees. What might their cause in the shrieks of the wind have revealed? None may quite know, for neither man nor beast present thereupon the reddened fields had the remotest comprehension of their speech.
From asp to asp the cries rang, clear as bells, and hungry as the panting of a hunting wolf. Their gluttonous gossip did little to betray what was hidden in the foliage, a short distance yonder from them. Hardly daring to risk a glance at the murder that roosted upon the aspen trees of the forest of Munthin, so distracted were the sons of Eadwald by the murder most foul. Or to be more apt, dear reader, murders most foul.
You combine:
1) Ominous setting
2) Revealing the story (not as foreshadow, which you could do with the setting) and
3) Breaking the fourth wall.
I think (2) is problematic, but I find the combination partiucarlly off putting. So either
1) Paragraph with Ravens foreshadowing story. Like the beginning of Men in Black or
2) Paragraph breaking the fourth wall...
"So, Dear Readers, I am forced to bring you to an awful scene. Two bodies lay in a clearing, while chattering ravens circle overhead. In the bushes nearby a young boy cowers, hoping against hope to survive the next few minutes.
And, standing looking down at the bodies, and staring searchingly off into the bushes to try to spot the young boy, stand three brothers. As ugly in their appearance as in their hearts."
"What did youi do that for, George?" the oldest, and ugliest, asked the youngest, who stood holding his bloody sword.
IE I think it would be more powerful if these paragraphs were either setting (the ravens circled overhead etc etc) OR fourth wall (dear readers) ... not both. OR at the very least fourth wall deliberately telling us setting. Not fourth wall surprising us in the middle.
Dan: All right, Looking over your criticism, it seems that we do need to put things in order.
Combining such things are a very common way to start a story.
1) Ominous setting: Why is this a problem? It is important to set the mood.
2) Who says that it was revealing the story? Besides, if you take a look at other stories, such as Howard's "Queen of the Black Coast", combining 1 and 2 is what happened. Conan committed a murder, then he was being chased by guards, and on his horse, he jumped onto the ship leaving the harbour. Why? He protected a pair of lovers from being murdered and unjustly tried. Also, just about every Batman story, and many movies start with this combination. We also have not shown the story. We just jumped into the action that causes the story to begin.
3) We did not break the fourth wall. This is an old writing technique that is commonly used by classical authors, and even a lot of new ones. Tolkien and Howard both used it. Lloyd Alexander used it. Sir Doyle used it. And a classical style is what we were writing with.
As for POV, we are using a Twain and Howard style narrator. If you are to go and read "Queen of the Black Coast", you would see the style we are looking up. Robert E. Howard is a great inspiration to us.
Your version of the story would actually do the opposite, and wouldn't really leave that much of an impact. And the name "George" does imply you are trying to insult us, as the name George is a more modern name, as we are using more older Saxon and Germanic names, as we look to keep to the feel of an older story, and capture an idea that these are more Saxon and Germanic tales, as it is based in the Saxon invasion of England.
The packing of 50 men into one house, is a reference to a multitude of Macbethad's killing by fire, of 50 fire in one house, and this is something that his grandfather also did at one point. There are multitude of events that had many men were shoved into a barn or house, in British history.
Ok, starting with the 'insult'... no, I wasn't trying to insult you. First of all, I don't do that.
Secondly, I am horrible at names, especially now I'm older. I forge the names of my own characters half the time. I don't even try to remember when I am critiquing... I just throw in a name as a place holder.
Mark Twain, breaking the fourth wall to smithereens... but NOT adding setting to it:
You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.
I, THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE, was born in Neufchateau, on the 6th of January, 1410; that is to say, exactly two years before Joan of Arc was born in Domremy. My family had fled to those distant regions from the neighborhood of Paris in the first years of the century. In politics they were Armagnacs—patriots; they were for our own French King, crazy and impotent as he was. The Burgundian party, who were for the English, had stripped them, and done it well. They took everything but my father’s small nobility, and when he reached Neufchateau he reached it in poverty and with a broken spirit. But the political atmosphere there was the sort he liked, and that was something. He came to a region of comparative quiet; he left behind him a region peopled with furies, madmen, devils, where slaughter was a daily pastime and no man’s life safe for a moment. In Paris, mobs roared through the streets nightly, sacking, burning, killing, unmolested, uninterrupted. The sun rose upon wrecked and smoking buildings, and upon mutilated corpses lying here, there, and yonder about the streets, just as they fell, and stripped naked by thieves, the unholy gleaners after the mob. None had the courage to gather these dead for burial; they were left there to rot and create plagues.
>>HOOFS drummed down the street that sloped to the wharfs. The folk that yelled and scattered had only a fleeting glimpse of a mailed figure on a black stallion, a wide scarlet cloak flowing out on the wind. Far up the street came the shout and clatter of pursuit, but the horseman did not look back. He swept out onto the wharfs and jerked the plunging stallion back on its haunches at the very lip of the pier. Seamen gaped up at him, as they stood to the sweep and striped sail of a high- prowed, broadwaisted galley. The master, sturdy and black- bearded, stood in the bows, easing her away from the piles with a boat-hook. He yelled angrily as the horseman sprang from the saddle and with a long leap landed squarely on the mid-deck.
100% setting. No idea if this is a good book, I've never read it, but I like this beginning. It doesn't break in the middle with 'dear reader'.
Which, mind you, I also like. Wodehouse uses it effectively.
I am just saying that I find it awkward when you put both in the same paragraph.
We relied on a style that's a mixture of Howard and Twain for this story, and you can see it in this story.
Twain breaks the fourth wall quite often. With "Dear reader" this is something used by Tolkien. Our goal here is to take influence from a more British and classical American style than a modern one.
I do highly recommend you continue reading Howard's work, and go and see some more of Twain's works, such as Joan of Arc. The opening chapters are similar in tone and structure to the opening chapters to "Bear and Cub".
As for breaking the fourth wall... that is not an insult or even a bad thing. It is a recognized technique.
Most of my crit was based on the paragraphs and themes. Breaking the fourth wall is a technique. It gives one flavor, it is about one thing.
Scene setting is not a bad thing, but it is a different thing. It is a different POV.
As an old boomer I find it hard when an author combines two different things in the same paragraph.And try as I might I can't find an example of an old, classic, author doing so. I just re-read the beginning of The Hobbit to refresh my memory (and turned it into a post :).
Tolkien plays with POV and frame narrative, in The Hobbit, the Children of Hurin, and LOTRs. Jane Austin, Joseph Conrad, C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander all use these storytelling mechanisms.
Great opening!
Thanks so much! My brother and I worked hard on it, and agonised over every paragraph, every choice and spent almost two months on it. Ch 2 & 3 are under way, but still needing to be hammered out completely.
Will post them as soon as I finish them.
We took much inspiration from Mark Twain & Edgar Allen Poe, with the prose and some of the stylistic choices.
Such treacherous Jarl, this Ealdwald and his sons are no better than him. I adore a great vengeance story and this one promises a lot and many a layer of drama! Great work establishing the worldbuilding and your charactercraft is indeed excellent. The pacing was layered, perfectly slowed at exactly the precise spots, then hastened when the end came near. A number of good setups that promise satisfying payoffs when you complete the book will make any reader hunger for more. I noticed only a couple of word repetitions, nothing that stole from my enjoyment. Great work!
We’ll have to work on those word repetitions then, thanks for tipping us off about it!
Also glad you enjoyed how treacherous Ealdwald and his sons’ are, and the world-building and character-craft in this story. We’re really trying to make it a very character-focused tale. Again, really glad you liked it! -Dan
If I was writing a “Wolf and Cub” themed story set in the Starshatter Universe, it would be a Spacer Battle Mother archetype and her daughter avenging her sons or husband. “Heaven hath no avenger like a Terran woman wronged.
Interesting
The Terran Spacer culture is rich and there are many families who trek across the stars of Fringe Space. Most are young women in search of a husband, who scour Fringe space for Terran derelicts leftover from the 1969 invasion of Earth. These flew after the pirate clans, chasing them with deathly conviction, for the Clanner vessels were laden with kidnapped Humans. If the young ladies are lucky, they could find a stasis chamber or two huddled deep inside a derelict, their systems still working, and hopefully with a male occupant inside…
Cool, must make for great thriller stories.
You can read one such story, I posted it earlier this year on my Substack. I will DM you the link.
A rather dramatic beginning, eh? There are a few details that I found off-putting, as well as the POV. But an interesting beginning.
Care to elaborate? I could do to improve it if it can be improved. As to the beginning yeah I had hoped to start of dramatically in as Mark Twain a style as possible.
Ok, secondly, it seems to me as if you are trying to do to many things here:
>>The birds' wings were as dark, as the blackest of eclipses beat against the autumn air. The cawing bellow torn from the beaks of the ravens cut through the evening frost. The wind howled mournfully across the fields, two score onyx eyes gazed down upon swaying aspen trees. What might their cause in the shrieks of the wind have revealed? None may quite know, for neither man nor beast present thereupon the reddened fields had the remotest comprehension of their speech.
From asp to asp the cries rang, clear as bells, and hungry as the panting of a hunting wolf. Their gluttonous gossip did little to betray what was hidden in the foliage, a short distance yonder from them. Hardly daring to risk a glance at the murder that roosted upon the aspen trees of the forest of Munthin, so distracted were the sons of Eadwald by the murder most foul. Or to be more apt, dear reader, murders most foul.
You combine:
1) Ominous setting
2) Revealing the story (not as foreshadow, which you could do with the setting) and
3) Breaking the fourth wall.
I think (2) is problematic, but I find the combination partiucarlly off putting. So either
1) Paragraph with Ravens foreshadowing story. Like the beginning of Men in Black or
2) Paragraph breaking the fourth wall...
"So, Dear Readers, I am forced to bring you to an awful scene. Two bodies lay in a clearing, while chattering ravens circle overhead. In the bushes nearby a young boy cowers, hoping against hope to survive the next few minutes.
And, standing looking down at the bodies, and staring searchingly off into the bushes to try to spot the young boy, stand three brothers. As ugly in their appearance as in their hearts."
"What did youi do that for, George?" the oldest, and ugliest, asked the youngest, who stood holding his bloody sword.
IE I think it would be more powerful if these paragraphs were either setting (the ravens circled overhead etc etc) OR fourth wall (dear readers) ... not both. OR at the very least fourth wall deliberately telling us setting. Not fourth wall surprising us in the middle.
Dan: All right, Looking over your criticism, it seems that we do need to put things in order.
Combining such things are a very common way to start a story.
1) Ominous setting: Why is this a problem? It is important to set the mood.
2) Who says that it was revealing the story? Besides, if you take a look at other stories, such as Howard's "Queen of the Black Coast", combining 1 and 2 is what happened. Conan committed a murder, then he was being chased by guards, and on his horse, he jumped onto the ship leaving the harbour. Why? He protected a pair of lovers from being murdered and unjustly tried. Also, just about every Batman story, and many movies start with this combination. We also have not shown the story. We just jumped into the action that causes the story to begin.
3) We did not break the fourth wall. This is an old writing technique that is commonly used by classical authors, and even a lot of new ones. Tolkien and Howard both used it. Lloyd Alexander used it. Sir Doyle used it. And a classical style is what we were writing with.
As for POV, we are using a Twain and Howard style narrator. If you are to go and read "Queen of the Black Coast", you would see the style we are looking up. Robert E. Howard is a great inspiration to us.
Your version of the story would actually do the opposite, and wouldn't really leave that much of an impact. And the name "George" does imply you are trying to insult us, as the name George is a more modern name, as we are using more older Saxon and Germanic names, as we look to keep to the feel of an older story, and capture an idea that these are more Saxon and Germanic tales, as it is based in the Saxon invasion of England.
The packing of 50 men into one house, is a reference to a multitude of Macbethad's killing by fire, of 50 fire in one house, and this is something that his grandfather also did at one point. There are multitude of events that had many men were shoved into a barn or house, in British history.
Dan
Ok, starting with the 'insult'... no, I wasn't trying to insult you. First of all, I don't do that.
Secondly, I am horrible at names, especially now I'm older. I forge the names of my own characters half the time. I don't even try to remember when I am critiquing... I just throw in a name as a place holder.
Alright sorry for the trouble regarding names, understood.
Dan
Mark Twain, breaking the fourth wall to smithereens... but NOT adding setting to it:
You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.
We've read Mark Twain and Tom Sawyer. But we are primarily using styles used in his book "Joan of Arc".
I, THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE, was born in Neufchateau, on the 6th of January, 1410; that is to say, exactly two years before Joan of Arc was born in Domremy. My family had fled to those distant regions from the neighborhood of Paris in the first years of the century. In politics they were Armagnacs—patriots; they were for our own French King, crazy and impotent as he was. The Burgundian party, who were for the English, had stripped them, and done it well. They took everything but my father’s small nobility, and when he reached Neufchateau he reached it in poverty and with a broken spirit. But the political atmosphere there was the sort he liked, and that was something. He came to a region of comparative quiet; he left behind him a region peopled with furies, madmen, devils, where slaughter was a daily pastime and no man’s life safe for a moment. In Paris, mobs roared through the streets nightly, sacking, burning, killing, unmolested, uninterrupted. The sun rose upon wrecked and smoking buildings, and upon mutilated corpses lying here, there, and yonder about the streets, just as they fell, and stripped naked by thieves, the unholy gleaners after the mob. None had the courage to gather these dead for burial; they were left there to rot and create plagues.
And to clarify, you can feel perfectly free to reject any crit I give. I am a big boy :) I crit to be helpful. If it isn't helpful, I don't crit.
I get it. I'm the same way.
Dan :)
>>Ominous setting: Why is this a problem?
It isn't. I like it. It is the combination I find problematic.
Queen of the black coast beginning:
>>HOOFS drummed down the street that sloped to the wharfs. The folk that yelled and scattered had only a fleeting glimpse of a mailed figure on a black stallion, a wide scarlet cloak flowing out on the wind. Far up the street came the shout and clatter of pursuit, but the horseman did not look back. He swept out onto the wharfs and jerked the plunging stallion back on its haunches at the very lip of the pier. Seamen gaped up at him, as they stood to the sweep and striped sail of a high- prowed, broadwaisted galley. The master, sturdy and black- bearded, stood in the bows, easing her away from the piles with a boat-hook. He yelled angrily as the horseman sprang from the saddle and with a long leap landed squarely on the mid-deck.
100% setting. No idea if this is a good book, I've never read it, but I like this beginning. It doesn't break in the middle with 'dear reader'.
Which, mind you, I also like. Wodehouse uses it effectively.
I am just saying that I find it awkward when you put both in the same paragraph.
We relied on a style that's a mixture of Howard and Twain for this story, and you can see it in this story.
Twain breaks the fourth wall quite often. With "Dear reader" this is something used by Tolkien. Our goal here is to take influence from a more British and classical American style than a modern one.
I do highly recommend you continue reading Howard's work, and go and see some more of Twain's works, such as Joan of Arc. The opening chapters are similar in tone and structure to the opening chapters to "Bear and Cub".
Dan
I’m not talking about chapters, I’m talking paragraph.
As for breaking the fourth wall... that is not an insult or even a bad thing. It is a recognized technique.
Most of my crit was based on the paragraphs and themes. Breaking the fourth wall is a technique. It gives one flavor, it is about one thing.
Scene setting is not a bad thing, but it is a different thing. It is a different POV.
As an old boomer I find it hard when an author combines two different things in the same paragraph.And try as I might I can't find an example of an old, classic, author doing so. I just re-read the beginning of The Hobbit to refresh my memory (and turned it into a post :).
Tolkien plays with POV and frame narrative, in The Hobbit, the Children of Hurin, and LOTRs. Jane Austin, Joseph Conrad, C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander all use these storytelling mechanisms.
Well, my first question would be... what POV are you shooting for?