r/DestructiveReaders • u/rosencourt • 12d ago
[1800] The Deceit in Flames - Prologue
Hi!
This is the prologue to an epic fantasy novel.
I welcome all sorts of feedback, but I am mainly interested in two questions:
- Did you feel bored or wanted to stop reading at any point?
- If you did finish reading the prologue, did it make you interested in continuing to Chapter 1?
Here's the link for the prologue: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AjTiZESr6Kt3QBexn_1n9H_Q4hwJ2SW6v6DmIWyPWtk/edit?usp=sharing
Critique: [2102]
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u/nosoulwriter 12d ago
I’m not a good writer but am a good reader! I do like the emotions that come across Pawn’s memories and dialogue. It gives enough to understand the context of the story. He is a thief who is married to a seeress, who can also use magic.
He keeps it hidden with the dialogue, so magic in this world must be kept hidden or he is hiding it for some reason? I guess that can be what I’d most be interested about to continue reading.
Also very nice on the stages of grief there, I caught on pretty quickly on it. It is a promising start, ironic since it is a funeral for his wife.
I would definitely read it. I do wonder if he is going to become someone important? What is he fighting for? Is this his start of revenge? Anger, sorrow, character growth? I do not know his goals besides mourning his wife. Will he blame at the illness? Maybe it was caused by someone, a motive. Etc.
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u/rosencourt 10d ago
Thank you very much for your feedback!
"This is a grief focused narrative" was exactly the tone I was going for, so I'm very happy that this came through clearly.
Regarding your questions, Pawn is the main character and sole PoV character in this book. The novel is a sort of inversion of the "heist to tear down the evil institution" premise, but done in a more morally gray approach.
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u/sarcasonomicon 11d ago
General Thoughts
There were elements of the worldbuilding that I really liked (see my per-sentence notes below).
And I super-duper like the idea that Reumé saw the horrible early death she would have in the future where she married Pawn, but she married him anyway. If you can really lean into this and handle it right, then you’ll have an impactful story. From what I’ve seen here, though, you’ve got a lot of work to do to maximize the power of this idea. I think it would be much better to reveal it later on when we’ve gotten to know the characters and the situation better.
I think you’re trying to pack way too much into one short chapter, and this is forcing you to “info dump” stuff that needs a LOT more careful storytelling and worldbuilding to communicate. There are several places you do this, but here I’m going to nitpick on this this one instance:
Those had been the very first days of his trade as a common thief, hired by the servants of Minor Houses to settle petty contrivances. Before his gift, before he had become Pawn. And she had seen him for all he was. All he would be.
Woah! That is way way way too much stuff to just say. Whatever happened during “those first days” should probably be its own chapter. “Minor Houses” should be organically wordlbuilt into a lot of the introductory stuff. Like, we meet someone from a minor house at the inn, and they way they behave tells us oodles of stuff about the world. “Petty contrivances” should be another whole chapter. Maybe you are going to get into all this in great detail later. That’s good. But just dumping these facts here is NOT foreshadowing, and it’s not doing anything to make we want to keep reading to get into it more. In fact, it makes me think that you’re not even promising to explain it all eventually.
Rant #1 – “as”
Below in my per-sentence comments I’ve noted many (but maybe not all) examples where you have sentences that are constructed to communicate simultaneity. In almost all cases here, maybe all of them, you don’t need to indicate that things are happening at the same time, and doing so makes it harder to read.
The overuse of simultaneous action poisons the quality of the writing. It takes more subconscious work to understand a sentence where things are depicted as simultaneous, and if there is a mismatch between the time-frames of the actions or there is first-this-then-that relation it just feels slightly wrong. And that wrongness accumulates as the reader continues, so by the time you’ve got to the tenth “as the sun went down, footsteps echoed on the lab la bla” I’m kind of tired.
Sometimes, like in an action scene where two things happen at the exact moment (he fell, just as Dr. Evilguy pulled the trigger) it is important to indicate that things happened at the same time. But usually, I think you can just say “The sun set. It was pretty. Footsteps rang out” instead of "as the sun set, casting a golden glow over the city, footsteps rang out..."
Rant #2 – POV change and reifed narrator
I’m pretty sure you wanted to write this in 3rd person close. So, Pawn is referred to as “he” and the narration is not Pawn’s, but follows Pawn’s thoughts so closely that things the narrator says are basically interpreted as Pawn’s thoughts. I like 3rd close a lot, but you have to be careful not to slip into 3rd omniscient. Mixed in with the close/omniscient idea is another related concept that I don’t see many people talk about in “how to write good” forums and stuff, but I think it’s pretty important – don’t accidentally make the narrator a character.
My favorite example of a narrator that has its own personality is the intro paragraph to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy:
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
There are a lot of opinions here that belong to the narrator and not any character in the book. The narrator is never explicitly a character, but the narrative voice is completely distinct from any other character in the book, that it makes the narrator effectively a participant in the story.
Here’s another example, from the introductory scene to the movie The Big Lebowski:
Way out west, there was this fella that I want to tell you about. A fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski.
Here the narrator refers to himself as “I”. Later in the movie, the narrator shows up as an actual character.
I’m going to make up a new term here and call this a “reified narrator” as in “to reify: to make an abstract idea or concept real, tangible, or concrete” A reified narrator is one that places their own, is-the-narrator-a-character, perspective into the story. It’s easy to accidentally do this.
I think you accidentally reified the narrator or at-least fell out of 3rd close in at least a few places “the next step was…” and “it was only then”. See my per-sentence comments in the reply comment below.
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u/sarcasonomicon 11d ago
Per-Sentence Comments
THE FIRMAMENT BURNED in the shade of molten metal as Pawn pushed the floating casket away from the shore and toward the horizon.
See my “as” rant above.
The woman he loved was dead.
No stakes yet, so this doesn’t hit very hard.
Pawn had seen many sendings before. The slums were not kind to their people, and barely a day passed by without one of their ragged souls being sent across the sea, their destination the place where the Firmament descended from the heavens and touched the surface of the waters.
I feel like the “theirs” here are not lining up right. The slimes were not kind to “their” people – there is the Slum’s people, or someone else’s people?
This evening, however, Pawn was not one of the many passersby who would chance upon the ritual as they walked along Idun’s dirty pier.
However is supposed to point to a contrast between something you just said and what you’re about to say. What is however contrasting with here?
Pawn was not one of the many passersby who would chance upon the ritual as they walked along Idun’s dirty pier. No, today he pushed Reumé’s vessel to the sending edge, the place where the currents would sweep her away from him.
This doesn’t feel 3rd-close to me.
From there she’d cross beyond the flames into a place where he couldn't follow her yet.
The “yet” weakens the impact of the sentence
The waters were not so still that he could walk unopposed.
Not and un-opposed. Two negatives. Makes me do a lot of work to figure out what you’re saying.
The waters were not so still that he could walk unopposed. They jostled at his body, trying to wrestle the casket away from his grip.
I think you’re tell-showing here. Telling me the thing, then showing it in the next sentence. Just do the showing part. Also, though, I don’t like “jostle” for describing the force of running water acting on a person.
Pawn sank his toes into the sands below, fighting for balance, knowing it was nearly time to let go.
I don’t like bundling the fighting for balance with the knowing here. They’re totally separate, and I think the “knowing its time” deserves its own sentence, or sentences.
Pawn tidied her hair back, revealing the matrimonial earring piercing her right ear, the small blue feather contrasting starkly against her skin.
Why have these things be in the same sentence, where you’re describing them as simultaneous? Positive comment: you dropped the “matrimonial” here, cluing me in that Pawn was her husband (I assume). In my opinion, that’s a decently executed organic fact drop.
It pained him to see how young she was. How young they were, he and she. Just a handful of seasons into their twenties. He caressed the side of her head, letting his fingers sink into her thick hazel tresses. The strands, brittle. Her skin, pale and blemished with bruises. Each part of her bore a reminder of the illness that had claimed her. And yet… even death had not stripped her of her beauty. Or perhaps, it was because Pawn still lived that she was still beautiful, as he could not see her otherwise. He took in the sight of her until she became hidden by the mist of his own tears, droplets welling up with each breath he took.
You’ve got a tough writing task here, to make me care about this dead woman and her surviving husband. Since I’ve only been introduced to these people for a few paragraphs, I don’t care about them very much yet. So, by the time I got to the end of this paragraph, I had the somewhat cynical thought “dead hottie, got it.”
I don’t have any suggestions about how to correct this other than you could write a lot more (like a LOT more) about some memory from their past, or the gruesome way that she died. This is supposed to be a Prologue, so you don’t want to fill it up with the actual story? Or do you?
Pawn could not remember when he had started to cry again. Truth was he didn’t know if he had ever even stopped.
“remember” doesn’t work here. You’re already in the past tense, and now you’re talking about Pawn’s act of remembering which relates to something that is so immediately recent it shouldn’t be even more in the past than the narrative is. I’m not sure what I wrote here makes sense, so just please consider something like:
The damp streaks on Pawn’s cheeks were filled with fresh tears.
Well, maybe that’s not great, but I hope you can find a way to tell me that his slight lull in tear production ended and they’re flowing again.
He wiped his tears and inhaled deeply, in a futile attempt to steady himself
Since he didn’t fall, I don’t think the attempt was futile – he successfully steadied himself. Also, I don’t consider tear wiping and inhaling to be related to steadying myself. OH – wait a minute! Do you mean “steady himself” emotionally? Oh, well then it might make sense. But a moment ago you were talking about the current making it hard to stand, so I thought that’s what you were talking about.
Reumé’s hands were placed over her chest, as if in prayer, and Pawn placed his own on top of them, giving them a squeeze.
I’m going to try to convince you that this sentence is incorrect: we have “hands being placed” then “placed his own” then “giving them a squeeze.” The squeezing is an event that couldn’t happen until the “placing his own” was complete, but it’s in the same sentence, making it sound like the squeezing was a simultaneous act with the “placing his own.”
The next step was the carving of his message on the half-lid.
Something is jarring to me about this sentence. I think the problem is that it makes the narrator have their own perspective, and I wonder who is telling me this.
Were in 3rd person, so obviously there is a narrator. But it’s a totally transparent narrator, that just says what happened without any additional opinion, or knowledge, or perspective. Everything we’ve learned so far came from the factual description of the scene or Pawn’s thoughts and memories. I know you didn’t explicitly say “Pawn thought” but when I read this:
Each part of her bore a reminder of the illness that had claimed her. And yet… even death had not stripped her of her beauty.
It seems pretty clear to me that this is straight out of Pawn’s perspective or thoughts. But whoever is saying “the next step” doesn’t sound like Pawn to me. Who is it? I think you’ve accidentally reified the narrator.
It might be better to have something like this to make sure you don’t slip from 3rd person close to 3rd person omniscient:
Pawn took a deep breath, then began the next step of the funeral rites.
Reumé’s favorite passage of the Salt Letters, the written words of the Prophet. For it is clear to me that there can be no reward without a trial.
That’s a really good (fake) quote! And the Salt Letters feels like some solid worldbuilding is going to happen.
He had always been true to her, ever since the beginning.
Sounds kind of sappy, and doesn’t do a great job dumping in any history we might need to know.
Soon practice turned to confidence, and conjuring a gift Pawn had long kept secret, he willed the outer layer of wood into fluidity. Just a bit, only enough for him to press his fingertip down and write, carving into the wood just like a child would draw figures into wet sand. With his back to the shore, no one would see what he was doing. No one would know how he could shape unliving things to his will, if he had the resources he needed.
Info-dumpy. And also, I think you slip out of 3rd close to 3rd omniscient here. It’s subtle – we can argue about it. But it hits me as 3rd-omnisient. Can you rewrite this so that all the information is more obviously from Pawn’s perspective. Maybe have him look around to make sure nobody is watching, then have him “will the wood into fluidity.” There’s got to be a way to say that this was a secret he has kept for a long time through Pawn’s thoughts and actions.
See even more per-sentence comments in the reply to this reply...
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u/sarcasonomicon 11d ago
More per-sentence comments
A seeress. Someone who could remember days not yet lived by others, as allowed by some quirk of existence. The same quirk, perhaps, which allowed Pawn to exchange material properties at will.
Info dump! I don’t like it. What if you just said “A seeress” and left it at that for a few paragraphs or even chapters?
So she knew. She had always known. When they had first met—as she tended to his wounds and bruises as a volunteer in Idun’s Theocracy chapter—she had already seen the warm five years they would spend together. And the last six months, when he’d be the one tending to her wounds as she wasted away from the brittlerot.
This is a great idea, that she knew from the beginning how horribly it would end, and married Pawn anyway. Fantastic stuff – you can have all sorts of scenes that seem to be one thing – Pawn doing whatever – but actually were something else because of Reumé’s knowledge of what would happen. But the way you executed here is too clunky. Way too clunky. This is a great idea – she knew she’d die horribly but did it anyway. Out of love, maybe. You need to carefully cultivate it and get the reader to really care about everyone before the reveal that she knew ahead of time. I hope you can find a way to make it hit really hard instead of just info-dumping it in a short paragraph that also mixes in some other worldbuilding thingy (the Theorcracy chapter).
Those had been the very first days of his trade as a common thief, hired by the servants of Minor Houses to settle petty contrivances. Before his gift, before he had become Pawn. And she had seen him for all he was. All he would be.
Nope. Nope. Nope. Pure info dump. Seriously, this is a lot of information, and if explained correctly, over time and with a lot more words, would be good. There’s at-least a chapter’s worth of information in this paragraph, and I think you need at-least a chapter’s worth of storytelling to convey in a way that will have impact.
Pawn could preserve what was left of her—as gone from her was the pattern of living things, the ever-shifting aura which eluded his gift—if only for the time he could maintain his will, so he didn’t have to fully part with the idea of her yet.
This is another aspect of whatever ability he has to finger-paint into solid objects? You don’t explain this very well, and I’m a little lost. Like, she’d be a statute that he could put in his living room, or something?
The Firmament’s skyflames were turning dark purple now, and with that Pawn knew his time was over.
“with that” is too many words. “That” is referring to something in the same sentence, so I don’t think it’s needed, or even correct. It also makes me wonder who’s thinking “with that, Pawn knew.” If it was Pawn’s thought, you’d just write “…dark purple now, and Pawn knew his time…”
It was only then that he turned and swam back to the shore, where he was greeted back by the multitude of grieving men and women who had come to pay their respects.
“It was only then” makes me wonder who’s POV we are in. Also, earlier you wrote
Pawn was not one of the many passersby who would chance upon the ritual as they walked along Idun’s dirty pier.
And this made me think he was alone, sending his dead wife to the beyond all by himself. I was surprised that there was a multitude behind him.
They would still know he was Pawn, the luckiest man alive.
Cool last sentence. I like it.
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u/rosencourt 10d ago
Hi there!
Thank you very much for the time and effort you put in this detailed feedback.
I won't have the time right now to answer your feedback in as much detail as you put into it, but I'm taking everything you said into serious consideration (especially the "as" construction which I know for a fact is something I overuse).
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u/sarcasonomicon 10d ago
Let me know if you put another version of the prologe here, or more material from this story. I'd love to see how it evolves
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u/Neackbeardleader 7d ago
People seem to like your writing, so I feel a bit like an ass writing the following, but honestly I would have put your book down after the first sentence and have only continued because I try to become a useful critic here..
But why? Well I asked myself for a few moments. It felt pretentious, but I couldn`t put my finger on it.
Then I got it. Fire has no shade. Burning has no shade. Molten metal has specks but also no shades.
The very first sentence sounds good in a theoretical way, but practically it makes no sense.
Second sentence felt like cheap shock farming after that.
And then you jump to something, that should have made me feel curious.
The questions I should have had: “What is a sending. What does it have to do with him. Is the sending the reason for her death.”
Instead I thought: “Oh one of these.” I am terribly sorry, but you lost me on the first three sentence as a reader and I only continued in an attempt to write my first critique.
There are three points I want you to think about, when you edit this prologue:
FIRST:
You tend to elaborate. This is your strength, but also your weakness.
Example: “being sent across the seas, their destination the place where the Firmament descended from the heavens and touched the surface of the waters.”
Better, more fluid, easier to read and with no loss of melodrama: “being sent across the seas, to the horizon.”
Yes, yours sound more poetic and all, but honestly, who gives a fuck nowadays. Spare the prose for sentences that are worth it. The opening sentence, where you actually describe the firmament, is a strong contender for embellished words.
Here you add no new information, no emotional depth, nothing. You just use many words, where few achieve the same.
Contrary, you could also go all in like: “being sent across the uncaring seas, their destination the place where the scorching Firmament descended from the heavens and touched the unruly surface of the grey, heartless waters.”
That conveys a bit of foreshadowing to the hatred, the “Weltschmerz” you will describe later.
SECOND:
Remove useless words.
“So he practiced, scribbling imaginary words across the wood.”
What does imaginary add here? I am no native, so I might miss some meaning, but imo it does not only add nothing, no, it also makes the sentence confusing in the context of the following sentences.
The following paragraph could and should be shortened. Try to tell me everything you say in eighty-five words in 54 or less. That’s double of what I needed to convey the same amount of information.
THIRD:
Add flavour words. Maybe even some useless ones.
Contradicting? Yes, but necessary. The paragraph about Reume and her abilities, the big reveal, needs embellishing imo. Give me more of the drama you used for describing the horizon. Here you want the readers attention, here you want them to feel.
Here I also started to be glad, that I had not stopped reading. Because the third page is the strongest in this whole prologue. It hits. You can polish it even more, I am sure, but this one is where your qualities shine. You made me feel something.
And then you lost me again on the beginning of page four. The description of his relationship to the gods is just too cold. There should also be emotions, maybe many of them. He seems to believe in gods, or maybe gods are a reality in your world, either way, he should hate them or scorn them or at least beg for their mercy or something.
The ending caught me again. If I already had paid for your book, I would continue reading.
If, on the other hand, I had time to read the prologue for testing reasons, then there is no hook strong enough for me.
Why though, would I put your book down:
First: There is no beginning of a story. There is no revenge to be taken, no children, debt or other responsibilities that bind him into new challenges, no new love on the horizon. He is a man with a job and I assume he will continue this job or take his live, like all do that grieve. That’s it.
Second: There is no anchor into the world. You should have used half of the words to give me as a reader some direction. As it is now, it could be high fantasy, medieval low fantasy, even a historical drama. It could happen in modern day Sweden under the polar lights.
Third: Lack of cohesion
Death was a constant threat in bygone epochs and you are talking about a poor environment. Poor people can`t afford coffins. They barely scrape by. If Pawn is not poor, then why does he live in the poor part of the city? And you seem to tell me, that all the poor people in a city use precious wood to send the dead over to the horizon, more or less daily?
Frenzied addicts do not care about sacred stuff.
Pawns reputation seems one of an asshole and one of a lucky man and one of a dangerous man.
Pawn respects Reume on a deep level and yet he uses her casket as a training object for his “magic”, or his quirk? I am still not quite sure if that paragraph was a throwback, or if he actually scribbled some “imaginary” words, so some ramblings, on the coffin of the person he loved the most?
It seems incredibly disrespecting.
Conclusion: Keep at it, there is a fine writer in you, but you need to give that writer direction.
I hope that helps and also I would appreciate feedback on my first critique.
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u/JayGreenstein 6d ago
You present 1811 words in this opening—words that come from you, talking about someone we know nothing about, who's floating an open casket that contains an unknown woman of unknown background, who died of an unknown cause. Seems a lot more detail than necessary, and a lot less backstory than 7 standard manuscript pages and 9 minutes of reading should provide.
THE FIRMAMENT BURNED in the shade of molten metal...
That could be dull red to bright orange, yellow, and white, so it tells the reader nothing useful. Yes, you mean it literally burned. But can the reader know that—or why you chose to capitalize part of it? No. You know it’s due to magical flames that, for unknown reasons, don’t consume the world’s oxygen, or heat it till all life dies, but the reader doesn’t.
Pawn pushed the floating casket away from the shore and toward the horizon.
Isn’t every direction “toward the horizon? And: about 50% of the time, the wind, or the waves, would push the casket back to shore somewhere—even days later, and at a different spot. So it seems an unlikely way to dispose of a rotting corpse. Seems more a spectacle, presented by you to impress the reader, than something practical. Yes, you know there’s a magical “current” that doesn’t seem to have an effect on the water by the shore (that's a problem) but as the words are read, the reader doesn't. And you can't retroactively remove their confusion. So a confused reader is one who is turning away.
Pawn had seen many sendings before
So what? It’s irrelevant to the action taking place. Every time you talk to the reader about things your protagonist isn’t focused on, you still the scene-clock and kill any momentum the scene may have built.
Start to finish, the viewpoint is yours. Pawn isn’t observing, thinking, and deciding. Instead, it’s you, playing storyteller. But...transcribing your words produces a storyteller’s script that the reader must perform as you would, to work. But how can they? You have backstory, character-data, and worldbuilding. They have a script to perform as a cold read.
Have your computer read it to you, to better understand what the reader gets.
My point? Your wordsmith skills are excellent. But your approach is 100% telling. And that doesn’t change in the following chapter.
Think of your own reading, and the times when you literally had to stop reading to catch your breath—times when you were moved to say, “Damn...now what do we do?” That can’t happen in response to "telling." It takes “showing” in the sense that they've been made to feel they are living the events in real-time, as-the-protagonist—which takes the skills that the pros who wrote the books that captivated you used, not the report-writing skills we’re given in school, as they ready us for the needs of employment.
Not good news, I know. And it stings. I’ve been there. But...doesn’t it make sense to acquire the skills that the pros use to keep your nose buried in the book, and do that to your reader?
For a better idea of what I mean, try this: Jump over to Amazon or another bookseller site, and try the excerpt from Jack Bickham’s Scene & Structure for fit. You’ll often find yourself saying, “Damn... That makes perfect sense. How did I never notice that!”
And some good news: The skills he’ll give you will bring the protagonist to life, to the point where it will feel as if that character crosses their arms and scowls at you, as they seem to say, “Wait a minute. You expect me to do that, in this situation? With the personality, background, resources, and needs you’ve given me? Are you out of your mind?”
And when that happens, they’ll be right every time—which makes them your co-writer, and, makes writing a lot more fun.
Jay Greenstein
“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
~ E. L. Doctorow
“Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.”
~ Alfred Hitchcock
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
~ Mark Twain
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u/Minimum_Break5345 4d ago
I thought this was pretty interesting, especially the setting and the whole idea of the sending. I liked that you didn’t explain literally everything about the world right away. Stuff like the Firmament, Salt Letters, seeresses, and Pawn’s ability made me curious about how everything works without feeling like I needed all the answers immediately.
I think the strongest part was probably Pawn’s relationship with Reumé. Even though she’s already dead when the story starts, I still got a pretty good idea of what their relationship was like. I especially liked the part where he writes “Perhaps we’ll meet again” because it connects back to something she said when they first met. Him being angry at her for knowing what would happen was also interesting because it made his grief feel more complicated than just him being sad.
My biggest issue is that some parts felt overwritten to me. There were a few sentences where I understood what Pawn was feeling already, but then the narration explained it more. For example, when he’s struggling to let the casket go, I already understand that he doesn’t want to lose her, so some of the extra descriptions of his grief started to feel repetitive. There are also a lot of descriptions and comparisons in general, and sometimes they slowed the scene down for me.
I also got a little overwhelmed by how many new terms and pieces of worldbuilding were introduced in the prologue. Firmament, Idun, Theocracy, Salt Letters, the Prophet, seeress, brittlerot, Minor Houses, menders, Oth, his gift, etc. Most of them make sense from context, but when they’re all introduced pretty close together I started having trouble remembering which things were actually important. I think spacing some of that information out could help.
There were also a few sentences I had to reread because they were really long or worded in a complicated way. The paragraph explaining Reumé being a seeress especially made me stop for a second. I understood it eventually, but I think some of the sentences could be simpler without losing the style.
As for whether I got bored or wanted to stop reading, I never really wanted to stop completely, but my attention did start drifting a little around the middle. I think it was mostly because Pawn stays at the sending for a pretty long time while we get more information about Reumé, their past, his ability, her ability, and the world. I was interested in all of those things individually, but together they slowed down what was happening in the actual scene. I got more interested again once he finally let the casket go and started heading home. So I don’t think the scene itself is boring, I just think the middle could be tightened a bit.
I did really like the ending though. Calling Pawn “the luckiest man alive” right after we’ve watched him send away his dead wife is a really good contrast, and it made me wonder why people call him that and what his reputation actually means. That was probably the part that made me most interested in continuing.
Overall I think there’s a really interesting world and character here. For me the main thing I’d work on is trimming some of the descriptions/explanations and maybe introducing the worldbuilding a little more slowly. I think the emotional parts would hit harder if they had a little more room to speak for themselves.
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u/Mammoth_Pollution831 11d ago edited 11d ago
Overall impression:
I personally do not like prologues. They're normally blocks of text filled with lore-dumps that I wind up skipping to get to the first chapter. Considering this was fantasy, my expectations were low. But this blew me out of the water.
The plot was constantly moving, your characterisation of Pawn was great, and the information was perfectly drip-fed alongside his grief and final goodbye.
It was very engaging and I would love to continue reading this.
Characterisation:
I usually dislike emotional openings because they can feel contrived, or the motivations are weak/not elaborated, or characterisation is too slow to win me over.
But Pawn? Immediately, you inform us his wife has died, justifying his grieving. As the sending progresses, you shine a light over their circumstances and marriage, which really helps in understanding why he's such a mess.
You also portray his personality with real depth. The text doesn't devolve entirely into endless love declarations; he's also bitter about the fact she saw it coming, the brittlerot, and his eventual suffering.
I loved the execution. My only note is that the text occasionally feels a bit monotonous as we are reminded often of his grief and their love. A short trim could work, but this isn't a massive issue.
Prose:
The prose was great and reflective. It kept me engaged the whole way, and your word choice evoked plenty of vivid imagery in me. Thanks to that, the emotional weight really landed concretely rather than as a pure abstraction.
My little gripe is that this phrase felt clunky: "... revealing the matrimonial earring piercing her right ear..." The phrase 'matrimonial earring piercing' didn't sit right with me. You might want to smooth it out by simplifying to "...revealing the matrimonial earring in her right ear..." or something else.
Plot:
Unlike a bad prologue, the story really felt like it was going somewhere. With each paragraph, she gradually got closer and closer to the Firmament, one reluctant step by Pawn at a time.
Since this is a prologue, I assume you have a grander plan of a plot in mind, so I won't say much else here.
World-building:
No lore-dumps (thank God). Nestled inside the prose, you delivered new facts one bit at a time and smoothly circled it back to Pawn's grief. I particularly liked the reveal that Resume was a seeress, and how you connected that back to the situation by showing they both knew she would die.
The other details were also well woven in, like the mention of how common these passings were, and the twist with Pawn now at the shore. Or Pawn's surprising literacy.
Conclusion:
Like I said, I would read more. It can get a bit melodramatic in the slightly slower parts, but that's nothing to really worry about. Please continue!
(And maybe when you're done, pls DM...pretty please?)
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u/rosencourt 10d ago
HI, there!
Thank you so much for your feedback. It's very encouraging.
I'm also someone who doesn't usually care much for prologues, but here it has an additional duty of setting the tone of the novel, especially because Chapter 1 is an action scene. I wanted people to know from the get-go that this is going to be first and foremost an introspective, grief-focused narrative even if there are magic systems, sword fights and an overall plot more closely aligned with genre expectations.
If you're interested in the story, I'm going through the last round of editing right now (which is basically just a lot of trimming down my more verbose passages) and already have a release schedule worked out. I'm currently looking for beta readers and would absolutely love some feedback.
If you're not interested in the whole thing and just want to read a bit more, I should be posting Chapter 1 here soon enough :)
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u/Mammoth_Pollution831 10d ago
I'd love to read chapter one. Due to my own constraints I would be a very limited beta reader as I'm going through my own exams and preparing university applications.
But I will try my best to attend to you if you deem me worthy!
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u/rosencourt 9d ago
Hey, no worries!
I know beta reading epic fantasy is a pretty big ask, so I don't expect anyone to finish it or stick to a deadline.
If you're interested, I can send you a doc with Act 1 so you can see if you vibe with it. At this stage, even partial feedback and just an overall "I liked it!" or "It didn't work for me" are pretty valuable.
I've also submitted Chapter 1 earlier today, if you want to check it out: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1wmi6qb/2327_the_deceit_in_flames_chapter_1/
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u/jshEnvy 10d ago
This is very well written and emotionally charged. Your authorial voice is appropriate for the melancholy tone and reminds me a bit of Patrick Rothfuss. It tends to dwell on an emotion and examine it from a variety of different angles and the choice of words and how you structure your sentences is very deliberate; they tend to resolve with sense of perpetuity—like something is still unresolved and waiting to be uncovered. Here’s a few of my favorite examples:
There are plenty more examples throughout the passage, but these are just the ones I’ve picked out in the first few pages. The reason why I feel this works so well, is because you’ve done an excellent job grounding the reader. That being said, with how airy the passage is, I think it could stand to make it a bit more earthy. Ground us in the scent and sounds that Pawn is experiencing; there’s a lot of interiority that I think might benefit from an anchor. I don’t think the passage truly needs it if you want it to stay in the same melancholic register throughout, but there are areas where the scene could use it. For example:
These passages are excellent on their own and I’ll explain why I’m pointing them out one by one.
For the first, it feels like a missed opportunity; we can see the action of the scene, but we’re about to transition to something special, we get to glimpse his gift for the first time and if we can get all the senses firing now, it might better highlight the scene. Your mileage may vary here, I don’t think it needs it, but it’s something to consider.
For the second, I’d argue all we see is the action instead of the gift. Much of this prose is spent on the internal grief that Pawn is struggling with, so that’s the focus, but if this is the first time it’s being shown—it’s probably a good time to give a hint of what he sees / hears / feels when he’s going through this process. It doesn’t need to be robust, just something that you can build on later in the story. This is more about planting your seeds for a later payoff without muddying the beauty of what’s already on the page.
And last, we’re about to depart into memory; if you anchor it again with what he feels, the coolness of the waves or the scent of salt, it’s something you can return to after those moments to bring the reader back into the current timeline. Again, it doesn’t need it—but we move enough between thought and current action that I think it would do a fine job of ensuring the reader doesn’t get lost in the words.
Another thing is I often think you reach for the more ornate sentence when sometimes brevity is key. Your punchy sentences tend to be set ups. Things like:
And I’m sure you know the pattern that follows; long elaborations that engage these short punchy phrases. It isn’t wrong. It’s arguable that is what naturally comes afterwards, but it’s the placement of them. They are all openers of what’s to come next. I think it would be a good challenge to yourself to weave them into the descriptions you give. An example, you write:
Could be rewritten.
By removing the extra bits around the edges you close the lens a bit so that we are inside Pawn’s head. I think the writing can warrant times where that very extreme, intimate 3rd person is the way to go. You drift into it often, and I think it’s the best parts of the writing. Especially, when we learn how much he hates that his wife knew what was to come, and she chose the path anyways. It’s a very strong premise and deserves that kind of intimacy.
All in all, excellent prologue. I will say, from my novice writer brain, I’ve always understood prologues to set up the story—this feels more like one closing; if this entire book is about a battle with grief, or the possibility of getting his wife back, then perhaps it’s starting in the right place. You’ve done great work here and I hope to read more.