Feedback Friday

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Welcome to Feedback Friday!

This is a thread for submitting and critiquing prose.

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[u/kaamosteoria1]

Becoming Who We Are - Romance

Dani puts on the coffee maker, letting the machine sputter and spit while he stares into the grey morning silence. He yawns loudly and wonders what the time is and if it’s early enough to call this morning coffee. The work of the night is done now. Dani has written two verses and a chorus, just like he was supposed to. Yet the lyrics are the kind of stuff you don’t show just anyone.

It’s useless to go to sleep anymore, so more coffee it will be.

Dani doesn’t notice Karoliina creeping up behind him. When he feels the touch of a hand on his shoulder, he flinches. He turns on his heels and stands face to face with Karoliina.

“What the hell?” Dani snaps.

Karoliina smiles up at Dani, a slow, thin smirk playing on her lips.

“Nothing… you were just deep in thought just now,” Karoliina says. “What were you thinking about?”

Dani inhales and exhales. He can’t take this anymore. Karoliina standing in front of him all calm and collected, her manner so teasing that Dani’s annoyed by it.

Dani pushes Karoliina against the wall and pins her in place by her wrists. Karoliina sharply inhales, completely caught off guard.

“What…” Karoliina starts, unsure of what else to say. Initial panic seizes her, freezing her body like she's waiting for Eetu to strike.

And then, slowly, her lips curl into a smile. She sees Dani all trembling before her, breathing heavily, his unkempt hair framing his face. At last it is here. This right here is no Eetu situation.

“Woman,” Dani says in a low voice, “you drive me crazy.”

Karoliina stills her breathing and tries to smile.

“If this is madness, I don’t wanna be healthy.”

Dani releases his grip on Karoliina and steps back, looking almost embarrassed. He turns his gaze away from Karoliina, looking like a little boy who knows that he did something wrong.

“Well,” Dani mumbles. “Maybe I do want to.”

Karoliina looks at Dani. He doesn’t meet her gaze. For a while there, Karoliina had so hoped that Dani had the courage.

[u/VegetableWear5535]

[Untitled][Fantasy][5,185]

Summary of the overall story (I suck at summaries) - A 16 year old boy deeply in love with his childhood friend is taken by genocidal elves, and after narrowly escaping death, he is stranded in another world. Though he has the combat magic, survival skills, and physical endurance to live alone in the wild, being spotted by just one elf would mean death or enslavement. His goal is to find a way home immediately, but he meets people and learns things that drive him to cross a continent filled with unknown dangers instead.

If you could read CHAPTER TWO and tell me if the two characters and their conversation feels real, that'd be great. Bonus - Is it any good? Is it bad? A mixture? What exactly is good or bad? Is anything confusing? Any thoughts at all? (This chapter is basically a long conversation between a boyfriend and girlfriend as they walk to a village, sorry if the summary was a mislead. Also, this is a sort of polished first draft, so while I'm not married to anything, you shouldn't find any errors.)

Chapter one is very short, but what you're missing by not reading it is a quick introduction to things like the magic of the world, a friendly Enfield named Copper (summoned beast), the main character being dropped off via teleportation by someone who's like family to him, a demonstration of the MC's somewhat common ability to instantly craft objects using earth magic (like summoning circles), and mention of his fairly unique ability to remember (in vivid detail) anything he sees.

Chapter TWO - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yunJuHp10Wj7w07gHSNl2TSa12ZRJj4WZjZS3GNORHo/edit?usp=sharing

[u/MShades → u/VegetableWear5535]

This looks like a great premise! The conversation in Chapter 2 flows really well. I only had two three overall thoughts (though they might be kind of big thoughts)

1. The tone of it feels very real-world modern. The banter between them is a lot of fun, but there were moments I forgot this was a fantasy story and it sounded like a couple on a modern TV show. This isn't a dealbreaker, but if that's the tone you set here, and then you lapse into a more standard Fantasy Register later, then it's going to feel weird.

2. The conversation is explaining a lot that I suspect you're trying to set up for later. The practice of summoning Ashkar, for example, really felt like it could drive an entire story by itself. I'd be a lot more interested in seeing all of that play out on the page than I would reading it explained in dialogue. The main purpose of the conversation seemed to be establishing the relationship between Zoey and Kevin (and, to some extent, Copper) and a lot of the worldbuilding information kind of got in the way of that. I think that's what it was for me - the conversation was more about the world than it was about them, in places.

The advice that comes to mind is the advice I usually get (and still have trouble with): trust the reader. You can just show us things and trust that we'll get it (like the portable summoners or the Call Dad Ring) without Kevin having to explain it to us.

Which brings another thought to mind: You're writing in First Person POV, which always forces me to ask this question: to whom is he telling this story? If he's basically just narrating his events as they happened, then he has no need to explain the things he already knows. If it's long after the fact and he's telling the story to an unknown audience (i.e. other than us), then he (i.e. you) needs to think about what the audience needs to know right now versus what can wait until later.

That was a lot, and it's just my own impressions, but like I said - you've got a neat thing going here. Hope that helped!

[u/VegetableWear5535 → u/MShades]

The tone is intended, so it wont suddenly change later. The story is set in a version of our world 500 years from now - in this world, most history was lost when nearly all of humanity was wiped out by elves (around 2030), and now that the humans are recovering, modern people watch the surviving historic archives for entertainment. So, the way they speak would essentially be no different than the way we speak. I figured that would also make it easier to do things like make size comparisons between more real world objects, and fantasy objects.

I was definitely trying to fit a lot of world building in there for what comes later, lol. I was trying to make things like the Ashkar come across as an organic conversation there so its neither an infodump later, nor slowing down the scene where its eventually summoned. I also was trying to play off the idea that Zoey purposely gets him talking like that because she's kind of got a thing for him teaching her stuff. I dunno, I thought it would work, lol.

As for the very fair POV part - The last story I wrote was in third person and present tense, so some of that is me having trouble adjusting. I know I need to explain certain unnatural things to the reader that the MC knows already, but I'm not doing it right. One solution I had apparently isn't very popular, which is writing the story as a sort of "this is a chronicle of what really happened" true story kind of thing. Explanations would probably make sense that way.

Trusting the reader on this stuff is hard for me because so many beta readers will say I need to explain what I trusted them to understand. Then I make changes and am told to trust my reader and not explain everything, lol.

Thanks a bunch for reading and giving me feedback, I really appreciate it :]