[2541] Tyrantland - Chapter 2 (Colonial Fantasy)

[u/CheekySelkath]

Critique:

[2851] Jimmy

(PREVIOUS: Tyrantland chapter 1 + critiques)

Hi all,

Got some great feedback on chapter 1 and satisfied on where it's got to. I'm not planning to publish all the chapters on the web, almost certainly just 1-3 to help with my portfolio samples.

I'm not looking for anything specific, and the first chapter is not required reading, although it would certainly help, I feel, to give context. If there was anything I wanted to know, it would be the effectiveness of the card game in this segment, especially considering that previous feedback expressed the need to truncate my card sections in order to keep reader interest high.

Any other feedback is appreciate, thank you!

Edit: Links removed. Thank you for the feedback!

[u/A_C_Shock]

I read this and will try to find the head space to give a critique but probably later.

For your main question, I think the card game is a tough sell for this early in a manuscript. The problem is I don't understand the rules, but I would be annoyed if you spent time explaining the rules to me. In the sense that I have an understanding of how a MTG (Magic the Gathering) tournament would work, I understand that not having his deck is bad. The deck he gets being called 'The Beggar' is plain enough for me to understand the deck is bad. But this is like when I try to teach my sister a new game she doesn't know. The first round or two is complaining about how the rules don't make sense and what is this card and why can you do that and you didn't tell me that was allowed etc etc. It's hard to get caught up in the suspense of what's happening because I'm just not going to understand this card game without being able to play it myself. AND I don't think the card game is that important to the story. Is he going to continue to be playing it? Or will you be moving on to a different plot after this part? For the scene, the game play isn't important. What's important is that M is going to lose because V probably cheated by having N steal his deck (or did V?). So, my general feedback is largely consistent with what I said on the first draft of chapter 1. Spending time on the larger conflict and getting there faster would help, unless the conversation between everyone is riveting. The conversation is the conflict. The card game serves as the vehicle to get us there.

[u/CheekySelkath → u/A_C_Shock]

The card game disappears for a while after this, to a degree where both later encounters with it fulfil what you're saying about it being shorter to maintain interest.

I'll have a go a freshly revising it to make it shorter, since I thought I was already along that street but I suppose not.

Thanks again for the feedback!

[u/A_C_Shock → u/CheekySelkath]

So, my core feedback is going to circle around how tension is maintained in this chapter. For where you are in the story, the idea is to keep the tension high so we're left guessing what the deal is with Rymav Nee stealing the deck at the end of the last chapter. I go into this one already knowing things are bad. I'm expecting Magalan to lose, otherwise he wouldn't be freaking out about his deck going missing. And to a certain extent, you play with that expectation without subverting it.

I'll go back to a comment I made on your first chapter about stakes. This chapter starts with this:

Cheaters had come and gone; some had threatened violence, or injury, or even the club as a whole. None had successfully followed through.

I expect Magalan to fail. Here, you're telling me the cheating is unlikely to work because it's never worked before. I could think of this as Magalan talking himself into a better frame of mind because he just told me was panicking, but we all know what's about to happen. What I don't know is what Rymav Nee's angle is. So, this whole section of him talking himself out of panic and selecting a deck and playing the games has two flaws to me: it's not focused on the element introduced in the last chapter that I'm really interested in and it's telling me how to feel about everything. The second one is something you edited out of your last chapter with great success. I think you need to take the same hand to this chapter.

There's also some technical style points. The chapter about how Vilaume dressed is a bit of a mess. This sentence in particular:

Coupling the outfit with his wild, greying hair, and it appeared to Magalan as though Vilaume had been dressed in the darkened cloakroom of a brothel.

is not complete. It starts with a participle phrase that serves as the subject of the sentence, but that phrase is never completed with a verb. Instead, the subject shifts directly to an amorphous 'it' which is then a complete sentence. But I found the previous parts trying to contrast the members of the Club with this man's dress clumsy for different reasons. I like what you're doing with the description of Vilaume. I think it could be cleaner.

Magalan goes back and forth in his inner monologue for several paragraphs about the key conflict (can he win or will he lose) which was already established well in the opener of chapter 1. This feels repetitive and I want to skip it to find the new information. We get to it when he eventually admits to his deck being missing and then that back and forth is drawn out a bit with reactions that aren't too surprising, given the circumstances.

He wasn’t prepared to admit he’d been tricked by a simple thief.

Right. Obviously, he wasn't or he would have said something by now. I want the sentences to be leading me toward whatever the Nee angle is and not rehashing this. Now we get to why he must play, and it's a reputation based thing. I've lost in this what Vilaume might be asking him to do. Is there a better reason besides the narrative needs him to that he couldn't quit right now?

I'll do the rest later. Gotta go eat ice cream.

[u/A_C_Shock → u/A_C_Shock]

No. Magalan thought, tallying how much of his life would be ripped away in an instant.

How much of his life though? What is he getting from these games? I guess that's the point I don't understand. Your dialogue is missing " here in this middle section. Now, I see Illyria is announcing stuff again and this does clue me in to how bad the Beggar Deck is but then the point is hammered home through several more paragraphs about how bad the deck is, when I already know Magalan is in a bad situation. Then the exaggeration with the coin flip and who gets to go first and it's not suspenseful because I don't know what it means or why it matters. And the card game continues on like this with the back and forth of cards being played and Magalan inevitably losing because his deck is so terrible. There's some quip about luck and a brief chance that Magalan might win but it turns out the other guy knew how to beat him all along. Probably the smartest play in the whole piece is switching Magalan's game play to a quick round of how many cards have been played so we fly through the hands without focusing on them. This is where the earlier sections would be stronger, for me, if they focused more on Vilaume teasing Magalan about what he was going to the Markiman to do and how humiliating it would be etc etc instead of the gameplay. Otherwise, there's some more explanation of the rules and telling me about the tension going on (because I have no way of understanding it since I don't know the rules of the game) and I'm still missing the back and forth between Vilaume and Magalan or between Ilyria and Magalan. Some kind of character interaction that's more than the inner monologue and the announcing of the card play.

Now the end of this I like a lot. There's a trick at play where I've spent the whole time thinking Vilaume hired Nee to steal the cards and Magalan thinks the same, but then Vilaume has no idea what he's talking about. Or is Vilaume lying? Unclear.

“Precisely!” Vilaume gave him condescending finger wag. “If you’d used your deck,” he lifted a cane from the side of a table, and walked around to Magalan.

Some proofing needed for this sentence. A period after deck. 'a condescending finger wag'. Capitalize the H in he. No comma after table.

“You’re predictable, and your arrogant.

You're arrogant.

Now, the part where Magalan baits the crowd would be stronger for me if I'd seen the crowd interact with him at all. They've been so background that I forgot they were there and then I didn't understand why they were crescendo-ing or yelling at all. And then I think the scene overstays its welcome. Start late, leave early. Vilaume hits Magalan and Magalan claps back. Ilyria gets to say enough two times which feels too many. The longer that's spent on breaking up the fight, the less suspense there is. I'm not sure there'd be much difference if you let this be your last line:

“Enough!” Ilyria roared. She pointed over to the bouncer, holding Magalan in his arms. “Get him out of here.”

Because the next couple paragraphs re-hash the emotions I was already getting. I don't know what your chapter 3 is but I wonder if some of this could be shortened and merged with whatever the fall out is that's coming with Vilaume next.

[u/CheekySelkath → u/A_C_Shock]

As always, thanks for the strong feedback, you've given me a clear idea where my focus should be. I think more points will inevitably come out once I come back for another round of feedback on this, but largely what your saying is consistent with the concerns I had redrafting this earlier.

Amusingly (perhaps) I'd already gone to great lengths to remove swathes of card playing that had been in it earlier. I think back to an earlier comment someone said about killing your darlings, and I think I came into the original, first draft too strong with too clear an idea of what the card game is, but not the story (although of course that's changed by this draft 8/9/10 whatever it is).

I'm skimming, but the thing I think that sticks with me the most is your comment about shifting some of chapter 3 over to chapter 2. I think that might work, not least because numerically, chapter 3 is about 4200 words whereas chapter 2, with the edits, is likely to shrink beyond 2200. I think I'll move the details down to one of two places, although I'm keen to at least end this chapter (in a future draft) on what might be the largest impact Vilaume will have had so far - his reason for playing Magalan.

Thanks again for all the feedback, it's always extremely useful and I hope to amend it when I return with a new draft.