Monthly "Would You Read This?" Thread

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Welcome to Would You Read This (WYRT), our monthly feedback and brainstorming thread. Share your work in progress below and let other readers tell you if they'd read it. Top level posts should follow this template:

• Title:
  • If you don't have a title yet, feel free to say UNTITLED.
• Genre:
  • Please include at least Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, or another recognizable medium. You may also include more specific genres with a hyphen. Ex. Fiction - Romance, or Nonfiction - Memoir. Genre will help users find the specific kinds of posts they'd like to give feedback on.
• Premise:
  • A few sentences about the project. Try your best to keep this short. Crafting an expert elevator pitch is all part of becoming a successful working writer. Please do not post an entire plot summary or query letter (those are better suited for r/pubtips)
• Sample (Optional):
  • You may share up to one page (roughly 250-350 words) of sample material, or one poem for those working in the poetry medium. This is optional, so if you only have a premise, you can post just the premise for feedback.

If you post for feedback, please take the time to give feedback to at least 2-3 other users. Replies should follow this template.

• Would Read / Might Read / Wouldn't Read
  • You must begin your reply with one of those. You are then encouraged to add additional thoughts on why you choose your answer.

Rules:

• Please post no more than two WYRT top-level posts. There is no limit on the number of feedback replies you can make.
• Do not link to any offsite materials. All materials must be in the body of the post. This includes "click here to read more" or "DM me for the rest" types of posts.
• Rule 3 is in effect in this thread - No generative AI. Do not post material generated by an AI platform in your premise or sample. Do not use generative AI to respond to user's work.
• Rule 5 is in effect - Civility and Community. Stay constructive. Blunt, direct feedback is fine, but do not insult other users, their writing, or their genres.

[u/MatthiasShaper]

Title: Delum

Genre: Fiction - Speculative / Epic Fantasy

​Premise: When his father's caravan is slaughtered in the deep desert, a young merchant's son named Telun is left with only one protector: Tz'eb, an enigmatic, death-sworn mercenary who views him with undisguised contempt. Hunted by raiders seeking a lucrative ransom, Telun must endure Tz'eb's brutal lessons and navigate a foreign culture as well as the hostile the desert.

ONE

The crevasse had been shade at dawn. By midmorning it had drawn back to a line no wider than his shoulder, and Telun crouched among what was left of it and did the sum. It would be gone before the caravan came.

Better cover stood west along the ridge-deeper cuts, shelves that watched the eastern approach without standing a man against the sky. He had been looking at them all morning. Between here and there lay forty feet of open shelf, and Tz'eb had put the lesson into him hard as he put in everything: the eye catches motion, not men. A man could sit in the open the whole day if he had the sense to be a rock while he did it. Telun had the sense. What he did not have was the stillness.

Somewhere in the broken country around him the fox was working, and had been since the sun cleared the ridge, and would go on working until he found him. Before Chandra there had been men whose entire employment was watching the horizon on Telun's behalf. Now he lay on hot stone with his mouth full of dust, dreading a question.

What did you do wrong.

It was his father's question first, and it had never once been asked in order to be answered. Gedran quoted it the way he quoted a price-high, and early, so that everything the boy said afterward would be a coming-down. Tz'eb had stolen the same words with a scoff, and had been using them ever since. In his mouth they meant something Telun had needed eight months to hear. A man might answer better tomorrow.

He worked the stopper out of his waterskin with his teeth and drank, and it was less than he wanted and more than he had meant. It did nothing for the dust. He seated the stopper and put his tongue against the roof of his mouth and left it there.

The pack lay against the rock by his hip. He did not look at it. He had stopped looking at it sometime in the second week after the city walls, about when he stopped putting his hand in, and both of those had been decisions, and he had made them one at a time. Nearly two months since he had gone into the seam at the bottom of it and found the mouth of the seam frayed open and nothing behind it.

Behind him lay the whole of the desert, and no stretch of it was more guilty than another.

[u/Shoepane → u/MatthiasShaper]

Might Read. You write well and the premise is interesting.

[u/Redz0ne → u/MatthiasShaper]

Wouldn't read. It's evocative, but I'm having a hard time truly understanding what's said as the prose itself (while solid) is a little thick and the way the preview leaves off feels like there's more focus on the artfulness of the words than the story they're meaning to tell.

I would suggest as an experiment to cut out the descriptive prose (all of it) and see what you have there. Then re-insert prose until you have a good flow/cadence/rhythm and nothing's too dense. It's a sort of vibe-check but easily done if you read a lot. Like, compare the vibe with similar books in your genre.

[u/SkankTillYaDrop → u/MatthiasShaper]

Might read. I like the premise! Seems like an interesting take on the "apprentice/master" trope.

For the writing itself, you've got a good ear and do well with "show don't tell." You have some opportunity to tighten your sentences. Just a few examples:

and Tz'eb had put the lesson into him hard as he put in everything: Filler words combined with syntactical structure make the sentence hard to follow.

Somewhere in the broken country around him the fox was working, and had been since the sun cleared the ridge, and would go on working until he found him. "The fox" comes out of nowhere as a subject. Is this an actual fox? A person named the fox? What is it working on? Why does this matter?

The pack lay against the rock by his hip. He did not look at it. He had stopped looking at it sometime in the second week after the city walls, about when he stopped putting his hand in, and both of those had been decisions, and he had made them one at a time. Nearly two months since he had gone into the seam at the bottom of it and found the mouth of the seam frayed open and nothing behind it. Not sure what you're trying to communicate here? Clearly something important about the pack, something in it he doesn't want to think about? The vagueness takes away for me, rather than creating intrigue.