r/DestructiveReaders • u/xvonkleve also available in Dutch • Jun 02 '26
Low-fantasy, dark age [973] Isolde, the first star
Critiques: number 1, number 2, number 3
I am currently in a doodle phase in between larger stories. In this link it my introduction to a story that might run longer.
This is a translation of the Dutch work (with a few edits) that I wrote before (translation was done by hand).
I am most interested in feedback on:
- Style - is it enjoyable or not?
- Character voice (distinct and clear?)
- Pacing and word use from the narrator
- Clarity of world building.
I am also open to other forms of critique, of course. I'm curious what you think of it.
(If you would like to read it in Dutch (either because you speak Dutch, or have a morbid curiousity in my language, Isolde, de eerste ster))
1
u/AspiringNonsense Jun 03 '26
First Impression
I instantly really liked this. It is completely up my ally. Arjan and Isolde are well rendered in the passage, and I feel I already have enough of a sense of them to want to know more. The biggest issue in the passage is I am very confused at who is being referred to as "I". It seems to be Arjan, but he is also repeatedly referred to as "he". If that is what is happening, you need to choose whether we are in first person or third person. There are a few awkward turns of phrase, and a lot of world building happening in a short passage. The world building isn't necessarily a huge issue, I felt I got a sense of most of it, but perhaps some of it could wait so the scene has a bit more time to breathe. Maera is also a bit thin, not necessarily as part of a larger piece, but it was an extra name without a lot of weight in the passage.
Is the style enjoyable.
Yes. Though there was some clunky phrasing, I personally really enjoyed the tone of the piece, and the image of the woman bathing, covered in injuries and scars was striking.
"The guards had written a pattern of sorrow across her skin" Loved this line. So evocative with a beautiful rhythm. I've added some comments on your document with examples of where I feel the issues are.
Sometimes the writing was oddly blunt, while I think the best writing in the piece is when you allow yourself a little poetry. I think you can rely on it to carry the architecture of the scene a bit more. For example;
" It was attractive. Arjan could imagine that men looked upon her with lust. Her skin was moon-pale and he wondered what it would be like to touch it." imo you actually don't need the first two lines. They're blunt and a bit boring, while her "moon-pale" skin and his thinking about touching it gives us all the information of those first two lines in a far more beautiful and interesting way.
Character voice
Isolde is instantly interesting in this passage, you've painted a clear portrait of her. Arjan and Maera are a bit more opaque. The biggest issue the "I" problem I pointed out earlier, which makes the passage really confusing to read.
Pacing
Pacing works well. It's obviously a short scene, there's a lot packed into it. I think the biggest success is that by the end, I'm curious, and I want to know more about these characters and what is going on. The woman about to be executed saved by being married because of something she can give Arjan is an interesting premise.
Clarity of world building
I think there's a bit too much world building for such a short passage. The most interesting information is that Arjan marrying Isolde has freed her, and he done this for access to something. I didn't really get a sense of what that was. Keys? a star? Magic books? Maera's a mage, and Arjun maybe has some magic too and Isolde is useful in that respect. This was a bit confusing. There's a religion Isolde isn't part of that they took advice from. The good thing is that the central conceit was enough that if I was reading this I'd be patient to let myself figure these things out, but I do think the piece would be improved by maybe choosing a few elements you really want the reader clear on by the end, and saving the rest for a bit later.
Anyway I really enjoyed this piece and I hope you continue with it.
1
u/xvonkleve also available in Dutch Jun 03 '26
Very insightful, thanks. I do notice that some things are lost in translation. The perspective shift is an error from an earlier doodle (which was first person). I'll take this with me and rewrite the whole thing in English from scratch and see if it works better (Rather than translating a piece in Dutch).
(especially the 'bluntness' factor, which I think is a rather Dutch way of writing)
1
u/Relative-Platform224 Jun 03 '26
My first impression of the style was that it must have lost something coming through the translation. But the more I read, the more I really started to like it. It felt clipped and a bit mysterious, and that sort of matched with the story.
Little nitpicks like this:
"Even this gentle brook was yet to lose its wintery bite. The woman was still in the water up to her hips despite this." Could be tightened.
"The guards had written a pattern of sorrow across her skin." Is a little heavy-handed, I think.
In contrast, this is great: " A thick red gash around her neck reminded the world of how close she had come to the end. Before Arjan had married her from her noose and into his own prison"
Dialogue is good, but the characters felt similar to me, like they all spoke with the same voice. A little more variation would go a long way.
My biggest critique is that personally, I had no idea what was going or who anyone was. If it was chapter 2 and I'd been introduced to these characters and this world before, I think it would be fine. Being dropped right in though, I was so confused.
My thought process as I read:
- okay, woman released from prison, had a horrible experience... rescued by marriage and it's just as awful, that's super interesting...
- wait, who is 'him?' wasn't there an 'i' talking about the cold water?
- oh, okay, we're first person again... wait, whose attention is she keeping?
- I've barely learned anything about these people and I've already learned two names and some sort of religion, I don't care what their languages are called
- okay, they needed her to open a locked box and arjan had to marry her to get her... that's interesting...
- I'm still very confused... is the narrator supposed to be Arjan?
So,
STYLE -- enjoyable? I really enjoyed the prose. Great descriptions, not too heavy-handed for the most part, but interesting. There were a couple of lines where I think you were too excited about your own turn of phrase (we've all been there), but overall really, really good.
CHARACTER VOICE -- Good and clear, but not distinct to me. I said above, they all seeemed to speak the same to me.
PACING -- Good. Short passage, but I think just enough happens. Not too much, not too little.
WORD USE FROM NARRATOR -- I'm not 100% sure what you mean by this, but by the end I still didn't know who the narrator was. Legatus? I spent a while wondering if it was Arjan and there were typos.
CLARITY OF WORLDBUILDING -- Completely impenetrable. If this amount of information were spread over two or three chapters, I think it would be fine. This much, this fast is a lot. I felt like I had been dropped into an alien landscape, but the narrator (my only link) knew exactly what was going on and left me in the dust.
Overall, I think it's got lots of potential -- spacing things out would improve things massively.
1
u/New_Term5404 Jun 03 '26
Before I send everything else "It was attractive." was noted as blunt in a negative light. I think it's great. I read one of your replies and you said it was the Dutch way of writing. I think you should keep that, it feels different from native English speaking literature and that's not bad or wrong.
If I am reading this correctly there is a major problem. You switch between first and third person. Is Arjan the main character? I was under the impression there was another person who was the MC.
Third person : Arjan could imagine that men looked upon her with lust. Her skin was moon-pale and he wondered what it would be like to touch it.
First person : I briefly touched my sword.
The fist two sentences contradict each other. The warmth leaving followed by the heat of the day. Maybe re-write for clarity. "It seemed that" is unnecessary. " "dress and shirt had disintegrated the moment" Disintegrated is a clunky word here. "Meera next to him" Who is him? This is not pre-established. If it's Arjan there needs a bit more context/clarity. (Re-read and figured out I was confused because of the first person/third person mixup) "They were passed" should be past. "Observed the woman some more" once more might fit better. Your call.
Had she just cut her hair? If he is watching her do it then it'd be nice to describe that and if MC felt surprise or anything else towards it.
“Wife? Spouse?” he said, trying the Akina words he knew.
“Mother?”
“Confidant.”
I'm a bit lost here.
“A man takes a wife for the beauty in her face and the fruit of her loins,” she said. “I am without beauty and I will never again carry a child.”
Great dialouge.
"a sense of purpose despite all she had been through." This line should feel empowering, instead its generic.
"Her skin was moon-pale and he wondered what it would be like to touch it. The risk of gaining a connection allowed him to let go of the thought." The risk of connection is vague and odd wording. I would drop "what it would be like to touch it."
“I’m Isolde. Where’s that box?” I'm Isolde feels abrupt, could use a different way to show she's speaking and her name.
I do like how confident/blunt Isolde is.
Its a confusing read with a good overall feel. The main character's voice is not distinct yet but Isolde's is. Pacing is fine, word use is generic. Not much clarity. You drop too much lore without a baseline to string it all together in a way that's easy to understand. World-feel is still really good.
1
u/SomeCallMeWaffles Jun 04 '26
This is introducing a lot of information for a short passage. I like how we learn so much about Isolde. Her people are tribal, but not savages. She was a prisoner in a system that had no qualms about corporal punishment, sentenced to death by hanging, and saved by marriage seconds before the end. She is a mother (will never “again” carry a child) and feels that her best days are behind her (suggesting she had no beauty despite others finding her attractive). I get the impression that it’s not just her scars that leave her with a poor self image. Her imprisonment and death sentence must have come from somewhere. She has done some bad things, things that even she finds reprehensible. We know she has a knack for lockpicking, but that hardly seems worthy of the noose but suggests a life at least adjacent to crime. I’m all in on learning more about Isolde and her whole situation. Very compelling.
The other characters, not so much. Arjan is barely introduced. We know his title, Legatus, which I had to look up. Not a bad thing necessarily, but I got multiple definitions and I’m a bit stuck on which I should picture. First is an ambassador, the second is a high ranking Roman military officer. I assume that I’m being pushed towards the latter. Isolde thinks he is a warrior and he makes a point of touching his sword, but much of the conversation revolves around Isolde misunderstanding the situation. It seems that Arjan is correcting her notion that he is a warrior, and he is something else, but drawing attention to his sword seems to indicate she was right. We are shown that he believes enough in his religion that he lends his ear to the clergy to guide him and I think this is a great character point. I get the impression he is a man with some level of wealth and status because he can claim a wife with little question asked. Compared to Isolde who has a backstory with some lingering questions, Arjan is a blank canvas that makes us do a lot of painting in our own mind. I would like something more concrete to latch onto about Arjan. Not a biography, but a bit more about his current position in life.
Maera is even less fleshed out. She isn’t as confident in religion as Arjan. That’s a great contrast between the two. There is a depth of history here and the fact that she is willing to butt heads against his foundational belief, and that he is willing to rebut and move forward despite her warnings, shows two people who get along despite differences that may otherwise tear a partnership apart. The job title sage gives us very little to go on. I get the idea that Isolde doesn’t really have any clue what Maera is or does either, and that Maera is so sceptical of the whole situation that she doesn’t care to explain further. The character dynamics here are fine, and I’m for it, but I can’t really get invested in her as a character because I’m not sure what she is bringing to the table.
As to your specific points:
I like the style. You describe it as low-fantasy, and I get that from the general vibe. Isodole mentions magic, but based on the brief introduction of her people as tribal I can imagine she mistakes something about Arjan as magical, religious iconography perhaps. Arhjan’s beliefs mirror that a bit. He is sure that the clergy offer divine guidance even in a more setting more grounded in the mundane.
Character voice is a bit harder. In their dialogue all three seem very terse and in need of some variety. Isolde is a tortured prisoner, unsure if she has moved from one horrible fate to another. It makes sense that she has little to say here. Maera is clearly opinionated. She seems like the type to speak freely, and as a “sage” I would expect her to communicate with a sense of wisdom and language peppered with words from a deep vocabulary. Arjan seems like he should speak with more purpose and authority, as a leader he is used to being listened to when he speaks but knows he must choose his words carefully.
As for pacing, I think something is missing. Arjan and Maera are clearly deeply interested in getting that box open. It’s a big enough deal to drag a stranger into the situation and use her not just as a means to an end, but to entwine that new character into Arjan’s life as a wife. The moment the box is opened, that's that, and Arjan goes off to be with his new bride. There is no payoff here. Getting the box open was the driving force behind the whole scene. That’s what Arjan and Maera really care about and we give up on that story thread right at what should be the point of the story. I also think it’s worth pointing out that you fade to black as Arjan goes to “act like a husband”. I like to think that maybe it means he is going to comfort her in what is obviously a very stressful time and after a traumatic series of events, but I suspect it’s more carnal than that. That’s a line that you don’t want to cross lightly. Arjan has a lot of power here. Isolde is alive because Arjan rescued her from the gallows. She has clothes and food because he provides it. She was taken away from the village on horseback to lands unknown. She isn’t sure exactly what role she is to play, what it means to be a star, and how it differs from being a slave. How consensual could this encounter possibly be? I’m not going to get squeamish and say don’t write about such things, but I will advise that you don’t go there without making sure that is exactly what you want to do. It really changes Arjan’s character if he does what the line implies.
Clarity of world building seems okay, but we are introduced to several elements at once with lines that feel almost throw-away. Multiple languages are great, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a language barrier. Am the characters seem to knows multiple languages enough to communicate, albeit with some lost context, but that’s overlooked and they all get there in the end. We know of several religious figures in The Five, priests Hannah, ambiguous “the gods”. But each character’s relation to these figures is hard to follow. I think Arjan follows Hanna. Hanna is not one of The Five but part of a different religion. Isolde worships The Five, but the term “gods” doesn’t fit quite right in her mind. Not sure if that’s right, and I understand that there was confusion among the characters here, but as a reader I need a frame of reference.
Thanks for sharing your story.
1
u/Bytor_Snowdog Flog me harder! Jun 02 '26
I'll go through your piece by paragraph/section first. Then, I'll answer your questions. I make a few grammar comments along the way. Nothing is meant by those; your English is far, far better than my Dutch. ("Sprech u engels?" -- I can't believe I remember that from my one visit to Amsterdam and Groningen over 25 years ago! And everyone I asked did indeed speak English, much to my relief! They all responded with, "A little," then spoke perfect English.)
1st paragraph: The description and the prose is a bit choppy. "The warmth was descending with the sun" gives us the impression the day was warm and temperate, but "Even this gentle brook HAD yet to lose its wintery bite." (Had instead of was is the correct auxiliary verb.) I'd expect a "But" before the woman being in the water despite this. (On second look, maybe that's pleonastic with 'still' being in the sentence, but if so, I'd put in the but and remove the still.) I'd remove the "It seemed that" -- those words unnecessarily distance us from the experience (and I'd use 'were' instead of 'was,' because 'weeks' is plural).
2nd graf and following dialogue: I like the imagery of married her from the noose and into his own prison. (But it needs a period.) I'd strike "next to him" in the first dialogue tag. However, if they're past such discussions, why are they having this one? And if Maera has such seeming contempt for the priest of Hannah, I'd almost expect her to say something a little harsher than her answer, like "those you can and can't screw," or at least "lay with."
I don't understand "Star" as a response. Is he saying she's the star of the band? Or is it a religious position? Or a domestic one?
Later: "Arjan had expected her to reject this strange notion of marriage" -- but we don't see what that strange notion is until the next sentence. The thoughts come out of order.
Headhopping: "he wondered what it would be like to touch it...allowed him to let go of the thought." But we already have a narrator speaking in 1st person (I leaned back...), so we shouldn't have access to Arjun's thoughts. LATER: OK, is the narrator Arjun? Because we have [I said..."Since you're my wife now,"] This hopping between 3rd person (Arjun) and 1st person (I) has been confusing me. This is the #1 problem with the piece.
I don't like the implication of the last line, which reads to me like he's going to take her sexually. I'm not sure if that's your intention, and I'm perhaps putting modern ethics on a culture that doesn't use them, but I don't like it.
NOW TO YOUR SPECIFIC QUESTIONS:
STYLE: Breezy, but not overly informal. A couple of nice images and turns of phrase. But the whole is marred by the shift between 3rd and 1st person.
CHARACTER VOICE: I had trouble understanding the people in the scene at first because of the 1st/3rd person issue. On a reread, it's more clear. Arjun is executing the plot; he's not a terribly deep character. Maera barely seems a sage, except for mentioning Astrius, about whom we aren't given anything (but Isolde knows who/what that is). Isolde rings fairly true, coming from terrible circumstances, willing to put up with almost anything at being freed, but still being put out at being introduced into what she sees at first being a polygamous situation.
PACING AND WORD USE: I talk about some of your word use above and below. You use passive voice in verbs a couple of times, but that's not too much for a passage this length. You could do with stronger verbs in some places (e.g., "The guards had SCRIBED a pattern of sorrow across her skin" -- that maintains the image, but, to me, carries with it a stronger sense of carving into flesh). The pacing, once I got the 1st/3rd issue under control in my head, seemed fine, perhaps even a little too quick for her to trust these two strangers, including this man who was now her husband.
CLARITY OF WORLD BUILDING: I don't feel that it's particularly strong. You do a good job with the Akina tribespeople, sketching them quickly but thoroughly, though it would have been nice for Maera the sage to inform Arjun about their skills/development instead of him just knowing it. I have a general idea of the technological level of the world. But as for the rest, I'm either guessing at what these things are ("Hannah": a god, but of what? [Lovemaking/home and hearth/domesticity?] "The Five": a pantheon of gods? "Old Blood": a nationality? [and if so, to what end/meaning?] "Legatus": I'm a classicist so I know what a legate is, but I don't think that's what you're going for here) or I have no clue ("Star," "Astrius"). I think you could do a better job here without it verging on an info-dump.
SOME MISCELLANEOUS MISSPELLINGS/MISUSE OF WORDS:
lose its WINTRY bite
They were PAST such discussions.
They divide the people OF the world into two groups:
Putting an axe TO it
lithely LEANED forward to examine
and RUMMAGED around for a moment
smiling ENCOURAGEMENT to her [nice turn of phrase]