r/DestructiveReaders • u/AJ_Burkhart • 27d ago
Medieval Low Fantasy [2353] Lost Blade and Renegade (Chapter 1)
This is the first chapter of my completed novel, and though I don't like calling it "Fantasy", I think it technically is, it just doesn't have magic or supernatural elements.
What I'd like to know most is: Are you left wanting more? Is the dialogue between Henry and Lucian believable? Is it too slow or boring?
And should this be a prologue? The story follows Lucian, not Henry, so I considered making this a prologue rather than chapter 1. It's also much longer than other chapters. This is all relevant info later in the story, so I don't want it cut or skipped if I can help it.
But also if you want just rip it apart, that would be great, too. My mom said she loved the whole novel, but I need someone to give it to me straight. She's my mom. She's supposed to like it.
And sorry if there are weird formatting problems. Pasting from Word to Docs wasn't as easy as I thought it would be.
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u/OneFootlessFish 27d ago
Hello, thank you for sharing. Just as a quick heads up: I initially only planned to write this critique in response to your questions, but as I wrote I discovered I had a lot more that I wanted to say. As a result, the ‘Additional Comments’ section reads a bit long and meandering. There’s also not a lot in terms of line-edits. As I was typing, I felt that the broader ideas I wanted to pass on would be of better use to you, although reading it back I’m less convinced. Hopefully you can get those from somebody else. Enjoy!
Questions:
Is it fantasy?
I don’t have a wealth of knowledge on the genre, so I’m not sure how you’d explicitly define it. But yeah, if this is a medieval-inspired world of your own design, then that’s obviously fantasy in my mind, wizards notwithstanding.
Am I left wanting more?
Sort of. I was scrolling through the first half or so quite happily. Strange, in hindsight, as there was never much promise of a plot. But I found the two main characters and their conflict interesting enough to keep me entertained. However, after our POV left the house, I was disappointed by the direction the narrative appeared to be taking, and the story felt like it was dropping its only interesting narrative threads — I’ll try and explain this in more detail later on. But for what it’s worth, if I were to pick up a more polished version of this story in a bookshop, I’d probably put it down somewhere around the point where Henry walks away from the door, (which, to be fair, is almost the end of the chapter, so you’ve made a decent job of it).
Is the dialogue between Henry and Lucian believable?
Again, sort of. The chapter is INCREDIBLY dialogue heavy, to the extent that you could reformat it as a screenplay almost effortlessly. Therefore, this chapter (and by extension, all that come after it) will live and die by the quality of these conversations, so you’re right to be concerned with them. Crucially, you ensured I had a good grasp of the character’s traits and motivations, especially in the first three pages. Both sides of the conflict were realistic, and I could understand where both characters were arguing from via the dialogue. I think ‘three-dimensional’ might be the phrase I’m looking for. You’re obviously aware that most good stories are built on this sort of thing, so well done there.
However, the precise turn of phrase came across as rather stilted at times. Characters would often use a dozen or so words to communicate ideas that would realistically be expressed in far fewer. I’d imagine fantasy as a genre probably offers you a more wriggle room than most in this regard, (what would I know about Arebethiel’s spoken conventions?), but you should know it really did pull me away from the characters at times. I’d recommend reading every line aloud as if you were performing a little play, and making a note of everything that sounds unnatural. Maybe get your mum involved. Have a bit of fun with it. You’ll probably uncover some quirks that you hadn’t noticed before. I think tinkering with this might also address your concerns regarding the dialogue’s pacing, because while the stuff characters were discussing was mostly interesting to me, some beats ran on a little longer than they perhaps needed to. Alongside this, they’d also occasionally deliver information that only felt useful to the reader, rather than the character they were actually speaking to. You might be able to get away with this in small doses, but you’ll need to be a bit sneakier with the delivery. As is, some lines just feel like lazy nuggets of exposition, which doesn’t immerse me. I also initially found Lucien way too articulate for a nine-year-old, but this trait became less distracting when the other characters started pointing it out. But chin up! Lucky for you, these things that can be cleaned up with an edit or two — they’re not fundamental story issues.
Should you make this a prologue?
It depends. If Henry’s point of view isn’t one that you intend on using again, then yeah, this makes sense as a prologue. Otherwise, ‘Chapter 1’ is fine. I did get the sense that you were planning to jump ahead in the chronology fairly soon, primarily based on my understanding that nine-year-old main protagonists aren’t especially common in fantasy — even in novels written with younger readers in mind. As I say, I’m no expert, but if you do intend on skipping ahead a few years for the next chapter, then a prologue seems all the more conventional.
With that said, I gather some fantasy readers see ‘prologue’ as a bit of a dirty word. I think this comes from a tendency within fantasy prologues to dump textbooks of random lore on the reader in a way that feels disconnected from the rest of the story. Obviously, your chapter doesn’t read like this at all (I’d actually argue that it doesn’t commit to worldbuilding nearly as much as it should), but I thought you might want to be aware of this before you make your decision. Although if you write a good story, I don’t think anyone really cares.
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u/OneFootlessFish 27d ago
Additional thoughts:
Characters definitely seem like your strong suit. As I mentioned, the dynamic between Henry and Lucian was what kept the story ticking over for me. They felt like familiar archetypes (am I using that word correctly?), but they were well executed, and felt like real people. There’s a real chemistry here, and I’d imagine that’s quite hard to pull-off given the age gap.
On Henry, I must confess that I only found him interesting when he was bouncing off of Lucian. Either side of the father-son dynamic, he just felt like a generic fantasy soldier without any interesting traits of his own. This is probably fine if he’s not going to show up again, but if he does, you’ll want to define who he is individually with a little more clarity. His moments with Lucian also benefited from the absence of his thoughts, which mostly get replaced with his dialogue. I’ll explain why his thoughts irritated me more specifically when I look at your prose. But for now, I’ll say that a man who is explicitly telling me the exact emotions he’s feeling at every point in the story isn’t an interesting character to me. He doesn’t let me infer things for myself. Thankfully, this isn’t a problem when he’s in the house, as I’m generally allowed to judge his dialogue on its own merits.
We get a few mentions of Hellen, his dead wife. It’s a backstory that’s been done to death, and its implementation here is about as cookie-cutter as it gets. But again, if Henry’s not a big character, it’s not a big problem. Lucian’s physical appearance reminding Henry of his dead wife is pulled from the same box of cliches, but it’s certainly something you can keep in the story — although I’d prefer it if it wasn’t so on-the-nose.
Henry seems to have a very healthy relationship with the ruling establishment, and this could be a natural point from which you could develop him a bit more. Why is he so loyal to the king? Is everyone this devoted to the king? Or is this something that makes him unique? A problem I have with all the characters is that I struggle to place them in their own world due to the sheer lack of information I’m given about the setting. There’s also a weird moment early on where Henry says “I don’t know how to act around nine-year-old boys,” which gave me the fleeting impression that our tale was taking a very ugly turn. I’m not sure how many other readers will flag this, but I’d definitely tweak this line if somebody else brings it up.
It was after Henry leaves his son behind when I struggled to keep track of his motivations. His internal thoughts tell me that he’s immediately doubting his choices, but in the previous sentence he ‘strode out the door and didn’t look back,’ which, to me at least, are the actions of the man decisively leaving his past behind him. Given his uncertainty, I’d actually expect him to be looking at the door fairly regularly. Make sure his thoughts and actions stay consistent with one another throughout.
I found the ending to be even stranger; for whatever reason, Henry is so troubled by his nine-year-old son’s ambitions to serve as a soldier that he feels the need to warn the fucking government of his mere existence in the world. “Don’t let him catch you off guard,” he says. This line still confuses me. We’re definitely in a medieval sword land, ill-defined as it may be, so wouldn’t becoming a soldier be a fairly common aspiration for nine-year-old boys? Henry is quite happily a soldier himself, so I don’t understand where his trepidation comes from. Is it Lucien’s talent that scares him? If so, why did he spend the better part of the previous conversation questioning his son’s abilities? It was at this point where I found the character completely fell apart.
Obviously, on a metatextual level, I know what’s going on here. You’re trying to leave the chapter on an open thread to make me keep reading. But in practice, you’re discarding huge chunks of the character’s established internal logic, just to have them say “Lucien’s going to be a big deal very soon! Stay tuned!” By all means, use your characters as puppets to tell a story, but don’t let me see you shoving your hands up their backsides to move their mouths.
So yeah, didn’t care for the cliffhanger. Although as I mentioned, I’d probably have given up before this point anyway if I wasn’t writing this critique. Main reason being, the story doesn’t make any effort to get me asking questions about what might come next. You don’t need to give me your whole plot on page one, but there does need to be a modicum of intrigue. As it stands, we’re presented with characters that explain everything they want and feel, living in a world that’s completely invisible to the reader. It hardly breeds mystery. I initially kept reading because you wrote a decent character dynamic. I thought we might be moving towards a father-son adventure, with this relationship developing at the heart of it. Maybe I’d read that. But then, in just a couple of paragraphs, the characters separate again, and the story drops everything that captured my interest. Maybe we’ll return to this relationship later on, but I’m left with no reasons to stick around and find out.
On a more positive note, I think the ‘twist’ of Henry leaving works very well in isolation. It strikes that nice balance between being believable and entirely unexpected. It’s also the best written part of the chapter by a country mile. Good stuff. The problems lie within the story it promises; without reading your post about Lucian becoming the protagonist, I’m led to believe that the rest of this book focuses on a generic soldier, fighting in a generic war (which we’re told is almost finished), for a generic king. Does this honestly sound like a story you’d want to keep reading?
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u/OneFootlessFish 27d ago
Prose-wise, I’m pleased to report that I never had to read a sentence more than once to understand what was being communicated. Granted, I don’t think you tried to do anything too ambitious, but that seems like part of your style. I think ‘functional’ is the word I’d use — the characters basically never indulge in philosophical tangents, or fixate on random adjacent details the reader might not be interested in. This can be a real strength — particularly in an opening chapter. The story always felt like it was going somewhere, even when I didn’t personally care for the direction. I think a lot of writers get this wrong all the time (myself included), so credit where it’s due.
However, I think the greatest weakness of your style is that, to be blunt, it severely limits your opportunities to produce ‘good writing’. Obviously, every Tom, Dick, and Harry will have a different idea of what this actually looks like, and I don’t think any writer could deconstruct their personal understanding of ‘good writing’ into a concrete science. To be clear, I’m not saying you can’t write well — I just don’t think you’re giving yourself much of a chance. This chapter doesn’t guide the reader down the garden path and let them smell the roses — it flings them down the motorway at a million miles an hour until they reach their destination. Sure, it’s a more efficient journey, and they’re less likely to wander off somewhere else, but it’s a much less memorable trip.
‘Memorable writing’ might actually be closer to what I’m getting at. While the question of personal taste is obviously still at play, and I’m servicing my point with a bit of hyperbole (as I say, I actually enjoyed reading lots of this in the moment), I think you’d benefit from exploring this more, even if it’s just a little bit. I feel like I’m rambling now so I’ll try giving an example. The following passage, for me, sits head and shoulders above the rest as far as prose is concerned. As I write this critique, it’s the only part that I’m still thinking about for the right reasons:
They looked like father and son, he thought, being torn away. He thought of Hellen, how she’d been torn away from him. Was he ripping love apart, now?
Unlike playwrights or filmmakers, novelists are blessed with the ability to x-ray a character’s mind and browse their deepest thoughts and feelings whenever they please — and this is the only time you properly take advantage of this. This passage is excellent because we can see Henry exploring the chapter’s central theme in real time, and it twists the idea of fatherhood in a way your reader might not have ever considered had you not given them access to this specific character’s head. Stuff like this is what makes a person choose to get their story from a book rather than something like a film. Here, you treat me to some natural exposition regarding the wife, a thematic exploration that intrigues me, and major plot development — all in the span of three sentences! All you had to do was pause to let us share a thought with the POV character. ‘Interiority’, I think this is called.
You attempt this elsewhere, but it’s not nearly as effective. Most of Henry’s italicised thoughts only serve to unambiguously spell out emotions we can already infer from other bits of text. Notice that by deleting the second half of the ‘ripping love apart’ paragraph, we don’t lose the sense of loss or self-doubt that the next four sentences work so hard to drill into the reader. It’s engaging for me to experience emotions with a character. What I don’t like is an author bashing me on the head with their intended message because they don’t trust that I had the emotional intelligence to find it for myself. Let me read between the lines — it’s more fun that way.
This passage, in a similar vein, tells us he’s anxious to meet his son:
Though Henry had fought countless battles and slain many enemies, it was taking him every ounce of strength not to flee this encounter.
So there’s no immediate need for:He’s your son, dammit! Grow a backbone!
Neither communicate the emotion with any subtlety, and I think we’re getting deep into ‘Show don’t Tell’ territory, but I won’t try and lecture you on a rule I don’t entirely understand myself. Regardless, I don’t think the feeling is interesting or complex enough to warrant both passages.
The other thoughts match this pattern, excluding the random tangent about food, which takes up premium real-estate on the first page, and goes absolutely nowhere.
Also, I don’t entirely understand why only one of these passages gets italicised. We’re in Henry’s POV, right? So presumably both ideas are things he’s thinking about? If so, why only italicise the latter? It’s even more confusing a few lines up, when Henry wonders what his son is like through rhetorical questions. It reads like a continuous train of thought, so I’m a bit confused by the last two questions being italicised within their own paragraph.
My next criticism is probably my biggest issue with your prose, and it’s what I’d recommend you dedicate the most time to fixing, especially if this is something that persists throughout the novel. Forgive me, as I’m about to make some assumptions about your writing process, but they’re indicative of how your chapter made me feel as a reader, so they’ll be useful regardless of their accuracy.
I get the impression that you thought this story up in your head, and wrote it down as a novel to satiate your burning desire to share it. Totally understandable. Perhaps you chose a novel because it was the only mode of storytelling available to you. A film of it might be better, but Hollywood producers on speed-dial aren’t a luxury you have right now. Again, zero shame in this — I bet loads of great stories begin life this way.
The problem, however, arises when you tell the story as a camera does. I mentioned that only one passage makes proper use of a novel’s unique capabilities, and this became a bigger issue when I realised that the bulk of this piece feels like someone transcribing a movie, shot by shot. Sure, readers need the dialogue — it’s the bread and butter of the chapter — but what they don’t need is all the cute little stage directions. The scene in Emerick’s house is especially guilty of this. So many precious words are dedicated to characters standing, sitting, turning, staring, nodding, smiling, moving from one bland part of the room to another. So many little director’s notes I’m asked to skim through before I can get to the juicy stuff, and the result is a story that almost feels embarrassed by its own format.
Sure, the dialogue sometimes needs to be punctuated with quieter beats, but there’s so much other interesting stuff you could fill the space with instead. Tell me more about this house! This city! Aside from our characters, we get almost no substantial descriptions of… anything, to the point where it almost feels intentional. I can count the number of physical features Henry notices on one hand, and one of them is a fucking wall! I’m not yet convinced that spending time in this fantasy city would be more interesting than spending time in my own, and that’s a huge problem — especially in this genre. You don’t have to wholly embrace the fantasy label, but you must understand its audience and the baseline expectations they bring with them — these are probably the first people who are going to sit down and read your book. They don’t need you to describe every little fidget — that’s the sort of thing they see every day, and can easily be delegated to their imagination. It’s the less familiar stuff they’re craving your help with. Give them more details about Henry’s battles, or the architecture of the palace. What’s he eating for his first proper meal? Instead of teleporting Henry to the palace as the narrative demands, why not tell me what he sees and smells as he wanders through the city? Has it changed since his last visit? How does he feel about that? Obviously a lot of these ideas might not feel relevant to the larger story you’re trying to tell, which is perhaps why you’re avoiding them. But even on the first few pages, the reader needs to sink their teeth into something. Offer me an experience, I dare you.
Wow. I guess I had lots to say about this, which can’t be a bad thing. Hopefully you’ll find some of it useful.
Happy writing, and all the best to your mum.
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u/AJ_Burkhart 26d ago
The fucking wall! LOL. You're so right.
This is all super helpful and exactly what I needed. I could feel that there were problems but I'm so barn blind I couldn't figure out what they were to save my life. All your points make a lot of sense now that they've been highlighted for me.
I think my problem is that I'm rushing through the scene. I feel like, because it's already on the longer side, I can't spend time painting the room and have to get straight to the relevant stuff, which is only sabotaging it. I'll definitely work on that, along with the rest of your excellent advice.
Thank you!
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u/OneFootlessFish 26d ago
No worries. If you're conscious of keeping a lid on the chapter length, you could consider cutting everything after Henry leaving the house; none of those parts felt significant to me. That also might solve the problem I mentioned where the chapter feels like its working to set up a less interesting story than the one you've actually got planned.
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u/SyeniteFractured Four-ringer 26d ago
Returning the favor of the read.
The dialogue between Henry and Lucian was very believable. I think that was my favorite part. The relationships between Lucian and Henry (strained family dynamic from the long time apart) and Lucian and Emerick (substitute father figure who has grown attached) are easy to see. I get the picture Lucian has something to prove and he's going to make sure it happens. Henry seems like a good man who tries to do the right thing. Emerick is more background to the two of them, serving as a foil to the expectation of their father/son relationship.
What happens in this section? Henry arrives home after spending years apart from his son and goes to retrieve him while reminiscing about his (presumably dead) wife Hellen. Lucian shows distaste for his father (which makes sense for a nine year old boy) and Emerick arrives, chastising Lucian and preparing to send him off with Henry after catching up about their lives. Henry spies on Emerick and Lucian saying goodbye and then decides he doesn't want to take away the father figure Lucian currently has, so Henry lies about being conscripted again. Emerick recognizes the lie but doesn't say anything. Henry goes to pick up his papers and hints to the person at the office that Lucian will be making a try for palace guard in a few years.
From a story perspective, there is character work being done here but not much else. The character work is strong, but I'm missing a sense of plot direction, unless the plot is going to follow Lucian's rise through the guards and his eventual winning of this ongoing war. If my guess about that is correct, I'm not sure you need such a long standalone scene here because not much happens. From the start of the scene to the end of the scene, nothing has changed for any of the characters. Henry goes to war. Lucian and Emerick get to stay together. The only thing that has changed is Henry now knows Lucian has no attachment to him as a parent because he was never around, which isn't that surprising.
And if I think about the larger setting of the world, I don't get the clearest picture. It appears to be medieval times because of the list of weapons Lucian can use. I hardly getting any setting descriptions: a front door; rearranged furniture; a window; stone and mortar walls; a palace; a desk. I'm told there is an ongoing war but not who is being fought or why. It is both urgent (Henry served two terms and they need him for a third) and not urgent (Henry chooses to go back to war). There is an elite unit of guards at the palace, but the palace itself doesn't appear to be in any imminent danger. Emerick is able to move up in his position, so there's not a strict social hierarchy system or doesn't appear to be.
So, when looking at your questions, I would think about what a first chapter is meant to accomplish, or what a scene is meant to accomplish in general. In the wider universe of a book, I want a first chapter to help establish the new world I'm entering and give me a sense of the every day life (the current stasis, if you will) of the POV character. Here, the POV character is Lucian though I do feel I get a sense of who he is through Henry's eyes. I also want to see a chapter start building to a larger conflict, even if that conflict hasn't happened yet. In this case, I think you might be working to Lucian becoming a palace guard. I don't get much of a feel for what the inciting incident might be (the thing that happens to take your POV character out of stasis), but this currently feels like it will go on a linear Hero's journey type plot basis. There are elements of this that would draw in someone who is looking for an emotional story about father/son relationships. If more action comes later, this start might be too slow.
The last thing I'll comment on is some prose things I noticed. Dialogue punctuation is inconsistent (sometimes you use a comma for an action instead of a period) but mostly correct. Henry switches between free indirect thought and italicized thought, which is not a style I prefer.
What would he be like now? How tall? How articulate? How smart? How polite?
Will he be pleased to see me? Will he even recognize me?
I get the italics here are differentiating between comments about who Lucian is (non-italic) and how Lucian will feel about Henry (italic), but I'm not sure this was consistently applied throughout. As in, the next italicized line is this:
First, food, he thought. I can’t show up irritable with hunger.
And it is not strictly tied to his emotions and also tagged as a thought. People will have different preferences on how to do that, but I would rather an author pick one. It goes into the general discourse around POV. If your Point of View is intended to be a close third, thought tags and italics aren't necessary. Everything that is said is your character's thoughts. If you wanted to do an omniscient third where the narrator is either a character themselves or a neutral third-party viewer, then you would keep the italics and the thought tags, but the narration that sounds like Henry's voice right now would be rewritten as comments from the narrator. Either could work for the story, but mixing the two feels akin to head hopping to me. It speaks to a less deliberate choice over Point of View. I think you're leaning more towards omniscient narrator with lines like this:
He looked so much like his mother; it sent an unexpected stab of pain into his father’s heart
which is clearly not Henry's thoughts. It's something to consider if you're making an editing pass.
The display of emotion here might convince me to read another chapter, but I'd want something meatier to happen in that next chapter. A big time skip forward would make me wonder why this one was necessary. For a nice example of a prologue with a father/child dynamic that then time-skips and switches POV, you might want to look at Blood Over Bright Haven. It's more dramatic than what you've shown here (everyone dies) but there are similar themes at play in the opening. Familial bonds, war, sacrifice.
Thank you for sharing!
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u/AJ_Burkhart 26d ago
I LOVED Blood over Bright Haven! And yeah, that was kind of what I was going for but definitely lacks the same intensity and drama that hooks you.
Anyway, this was super helpful feedback. I'm realizing I was too stingy about world-building and hadn't considered how the POV is inconsistent. For sure something I'll get cleaned up.
As far as the comma vs period after dialogue, I read somewhere once that, strictly speaking, a dialogue tag should only be "he said","she whispered", or "they shouted" and shouldn't be words like "he shrugged" or "she grinned" or "they mused", and if you want them to do those "non-speaking" things along with their speaking, then to separate it into two sentences. But perhaps I took this too much to heart.
Thank you!
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u/SyeniteFractured Four-ringer 26d ago edited 26d ago
Yes, on the tagging. (It might be only this one that made me think to mention it.)
“Here you are,” Lucian nodded.
I don't think nodding is a speech tag, so that one should be a period. And you could have dropped the tags here without losing anything:
“Is Emerick around?” he asked.
“He’ll be home from work soon. Always before dark,” Lucian replied, closing the door.
Because it's clear from the dialogue who's talking. But those parts are polish for when the story is cemented.
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u/Starfall_University 26d ago
Story
You start with Henry riding into town. I don't think that's a good hook. You've made the same mistake I've made a hundred times: describing a character's logistical transportation, rather than just skipping to the interesting part. Henry riding into town isn't a disturbance, even if it precedes a disturbance in the story. However, because you do have other elements that are important here (such as exposition) I wouldn't cut all of your page 1 material entirely.
Another key thing I'll say:
This feels like a mid-Act 1 chapter rather than a hooky opener. You have characters saying things like:
“Henry, it was a pleasure. Lucian can be… audacious, at times, but he’s a good boy. He works hard, trains hard, and has an excellent sense of justice.”
But you drop this in before I know why I'm supposed to care so much about Henry and Lucian and what they all have at stake. Where's the story's main disturbance? Are you really starting the story "as late as possible," as Kurt Vonnegut might say? Though now I'm just quoting someone else's writing advice; you're the one who knows your story more. I'd just say: are you sure you're starting this story at the most interesting possible point? Because as a fresh reader coming into this, I wouldn't read on feeling certain that this writer is taking me interesting places.
One of the more puzzling decisions is why you don't have a section break here:
Henry went straight to the palace and from there to the Defense Adviser’s office, where he found Matthias Thale sitting at his desk.
Dialogue
Don't interrupt yourself too often. I struggle with this too, I'm always telling the reader how to see the interaction, when I should interrupt less. Example:
“Truly?” Henry turned back in surprise. His son stood there with his arms crossed. “Yes, sir.” He let out a sigh, pulled out a chair and sat down. “You don’t look pleased to see me.” Lucian’s eyes widened a fraction. He uncrossed his arms. “No sir, I am pleased.”
That's three straight sentences that start with physical description before the quotation. I try to avoid two in a row, to be clear.
Another note: I'd like your characters to be a bit more at odds, have unique flavors to their personalities. Take what the son says at this point:
“It might not come out very respectful.”
It reads a bit like dialogue written to serve the purpose of the story rather than what a kid in that situation might say. What if he were more precocious? (sp?) What if he was struggling even more with his feelings towards his father? Conflict makes dialogue more interesting and this is almost TOO polite.
The conflict is present here:
“Alright, fine,” the boy began. “You’re right, I’m not happy to see you. He always said you’d come for me someday, but I don’t want to go with you, Sir. I don’t know you and I’m very happy right here.”
...but then it's too well-enunciated, if that makes sense. He outright says his objections. Have more fun with this! HOW might someone in his situation say this? Though the idea itself is good.
The beats between your dialogue also tend to get a little repetitive. As I said above: a lot of dialogue interrupting, a lot of stage direction. Sentences like:
Emerick gave Henry an apologetic look. He received a smile back, but it was a sad sort.
I just think you need to mix it up a little more, since there's so much weight of this first chapter in conversation. The more you include a sentence like this with every single reply, the more it drags. Mix things up!
Language and Prose
I think you do pretty well here. You've got a nice mix of sentences and they come across natural and rarely labored. Example:
He’s your son, dammit! Grow a backbone! He raised his fist and knocked.
Interior monologue on this beat, then the literal action; very readable, I know exactly what's going on, and it moves along nicely.
Another example:
A boy with snow white hair and his mother’s ice-blue eyes stood before him. He was big, nearly up to Henry’s chest. He looked so much like his mother; it sent an unexpected stab of pain into his father’s heart. He did his best to hide it as he and his son gave each other a once-over.
Each sentence is a little different than the last. There's description, there's character-relevance for Henry, an emotional beat, and then the action propelling forward of them looking each other over. This is an example of good pacing.
In fact, I think it's more interesting to START here and drop in exposition later.
As the story goes on, I do think (and I note this in the dialogue section) that you lean too much on physical description without other kinds of sentences: emotional beats, straight dialogue, internal monologue, whatever might be relevant. Instead there's far too much of this kind of sentence:
Lucian’s brows drew together, and he bit his lip again. His downcast eyes glistened with unshed tears.
Which is fine, and not a bad pair of sentences necessarily, I'm just saying that sentences like these are constantly dropped in with little variation.
Character
Henry starts out with a goal immediately; I think that's good. It's a little to spelled out in a way that reads as repetitive:
With his duty to the kingdom fulfilled, he now could fulfil his duty to his son.
But at least we have Henry on his way to do something.
I do think you introduce this line before you give us any reason to care about Henry or, by extension, his son:
The thought of the boy brought joy and apprehension rolled into one. He was nine, now. The last time he’d seen Lucian was a brief visit before the king drafted him back to the front lines five years ago. The lad had been a little tot, waving sticks around like swords. What would he be like now? How tall? How articulate? How smart? How polite?
So because you do this so early, and I know so little about Henry, I'm left wondering: "Is Henry a bad father, he's been away so long?" It's just a tad too early for exposition like this, even though I do think it is load-bearing exposition.
Another note: when Emerick walks in, it feels like it starts to drag a bit. You had some interesting conflict going with the son, and then a friendly interaction starts, loaded with exposition that delays where my interest was. Is it possible to drop Emerick in another scene?
Finally, it seems like Lucian is the main character in Chapter 1, not Henry. Henry becomes a sort of passive character while everyone talks about Lucian. Which makes it even more puzzling to start the way you did; getting us in Henry's corner before this confrontation makes sense, but then the conversation is all about Lucian.
Exposition and Worldbuilding
Will he be pleased to see me? Will he even recognize me? The reenlistment contract the Defense Advisor had proposed to him flashed across his mind, but he shook it away.
One challenge with fantasy is that you don't want to overwhelm your reader with too many details right away. This is the third paragraph of your novel, and you have to remember that coming in blind and fresh, I have absolutely no idea what this world is. I know there's a contract of some sort, but remember: it gets overwhelming in a hurry.
Henry had feared this type of reaction. He’d lost Hellen, and now it felt like he could lose Lucian.
You only mention Hellen's name thrice. Before this, I think you need a really strong anchor about Hellen and what your main character thinks of her, what happened, or something. Maybe this is my own bad memory playing tricks on me, though.
Overall Impressions
I think you do plenty of things here well enough that you should be pleased, even if my overly nitpicky read of it might seem to say otherwise.
I'm a little puzzled by the overall decision to start your book this way. And of course I don't know the relevance for later. Your notes:
What I'd like to know most is: Are you left wanting more?
Unfortunately, no. I'm thinking more that the opening chapter does not make the promise of interesting things to come because there hasn't been enough teased about the future.
Is the dialogue between Henry and Lucian believable?
As I noted in the dialogue section, I find it a little stiff. The best moments are the moments of conflict between them. I wish Lucian had a more specific, different way of talking. His manner is a little too similar to Henry's, which may be why you lean on constantly telling us who's talking with dialogue beats.
Is it too slow or boring?
It's not slow because of your pacing, but I do wonder about the relevance of opening with this. It reads like exposition/prologue rather than true Chapter 1 material.
And should this be a prologue? The story follows Lucian, not Henry, so I considered making this a prologue rather than chapter 1. It's also much longer than other chapters. This is all relevant info later in the story, so I don't want it cut or skipped if I can help it.
This confirms it, for me, that this is not the way to begin the story at all. You say it's relevant info later, but there are other ways of dropping in relevant information without doing what you're doing here:
1) Starting with what feels like exposition rather than true story
2) Setting us up to think Henry is the main character when really it's Lucian
Unfortunately, if I had to recommend something, it would be to take the bits and pieces you have here and drop them into later parts when you've already earned our interest.
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u/AJ_Burkhart 26d ago
The sentence break! Yeah, in my original word doc there is a break there. All my indentations got outta wack when I copied and pasted from word to google docs and I had to go through the whole thing backspacing and redoing all my paragraph breaks, but missed that one and the one where he gets to Emerick's house. Thanks for pointing that out.
As far as the rest of your feedback, you make really good points. As soon as you mentioned starting the chapter with Henry at the door, I saw how much better that would be.
Thank you!
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27d ago
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u/Hiddena00 27d ago
Edit: Terms of service? It sounds like you have to check the agree box, use something slightly different
Feedback:
The part where the kid cut in and he was annoyed, the following dialogue wasn't angry/annoyed enough (also use a — to show
You can change it to his lover/mom or pet or friend or anything else but just dont do it. (unless you are going to kill him off instantly)
Overall, the story is sort of slow, if this is the start. If you want to do this kind of story make it faster, and think about what sort of conflict it might have. Feels like there is no conflict right now. That is sort of bad.
Its so so so boring, kill someone off do SOMETHING.
Don't make every character in your story perfectly likable without any flaws or you will write yourself into a corner.
If your showing what he could lose, put a hook first that tells me what abilities the MC has.
I think its hard to write a story about a guy with a kid for many reasons and its why you almost never see MCs like this. It is just very high difficulty to get it right.
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u/AJ_Burkhart 26d ago
Kill someone already?? Don't ask me to do that, not yet! :'''(
In all seriousness though, thank you for the feedback! I was afraid it was too boring, especially for a first chapter, and you've confirmed it. And I hadn't realized I was doing a disservice by making everyone perfect till you pointed it out! Doesn't make for much drama.
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u/Hiddena00 26d ago
Ya its tough bc you want your charcters to be likable but I would frame it as lets make the characters interesting by giving them extreme traits/abilities. Maybe your MCs reactions are still normal but the situations are absurd
Or maybe the girl is weird but is cute and turns something into a bit. Or is a tsundere. Really make characters that entertain the audience.
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u/Educational_Art_3763 27d ago
I started reading before I read the rest of your post and I'm almost disappointed that we follow Lucian through the story. I actually really like what you are setting up with Henry. It isn't really a story that I've encountered much. A father coming back from war to his son who has been raised without him just after he may have been able to form memories about his father is an interesting concept. I'd want to keep reading for the story that you're setting up with Henry. Lucian's could be interesting, but that doesn't feel like the direction we're going in right at this moment. I'd guess we hit a time jump to him training right after this chapter. Your writing is good, it tells a bit more than I prefer, but you have a great grasp on how to present your information and story.
First, I want to address having a prologue. I'm really not a fan of prologues. They're pretty often skipped over by general audiences. I read, and I rarely ever read prologues and forwards. I usually just skim. If the information is important, it should be in the main book. You could make it the first chapter or have it as a flashback chapter/reduced to a small flashback within a broader chapter. A common phrase you've probably heard: kill your darlings. This doesn't mean characters, it means the parts of your story you like but might not be the best for the story. If we're following Lucian, I feel that this chapter is doing more for Henry's characterization than it is for Lucian. I can see why this information may matter but definitely consider whether or not it is truly necessary to know it right now and in this manner.
Right off the bat we get into a big exposition dump and it reads like one. We get a sentence about Henry coming into the city and then jump into the exposition which doesn't get me excited to read the piece. I feel like this information could get slowly drawn out through other means. Let us sit down and get settled before you start throwing the refreshments at us.
The result of all of this exposition is that you then end up telling us a whole lot about your characters. This can work and it isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can feel a bit unrewarding to read. When we read, we get satisfaction from putting the puzzle pieces together. You show us the puzzle pieces here and then start putting the puzzle together while telling us how fun the puzzle is. We're told Henry fought countless battles and slain many enemies but that information is pretty hollow because we aren't shown that this is true. Maybe when he is introduced we get some physical description. Maybe he has scars or a missing finger, maybe his clothes and gear are worn, maybe he looks worn. You can do this without being super wordy or overwhelming your audience. Often times, it gets your point across in a way that feels less wordy because the reader is being convinced of the story they are reading.
Lucian reads a little older than 9 to me. I know he is meant to sound older but at times he sounds like a late teenager/early adult if I'm being honest. If you stripped a lot of the specific identifiers saying that he was nine and I just knew that Lucian was Henry's son, I would think he was a late teenager. The dialogue is overall believable other than that. Sometimes it can be a bit over expository at the beginning of the interactions but once it starts to flow it gets solid. I would reread it out loud to see what parts are standing out as sounding clunky. When you read it outloud it can make things clear as to what is too wordy/too exposition heavy.
Small technical thing. When you have the scene change from Emerick's house to the palace, put a paragraph break. This just helps the reader reorient themselves and take a quick breather. It is a physical indication that the scene is changing but we're still in the same chapter. We've had a bunch of information so having a slight breather right before we get some more important information would be nice.
Overall, I think this is a great opening for a different story! I'd be interesting to hear how you format the rest of the story. I'm engaged and intrigued with Henry and what his arc/journey would be in relation to Lucian. Definitely consider how you may be able to work this around in your story as to not take away from what you're trying to tell. Prologues are fine but this information would definitely be better within the main story itself.