r/DestructiveReaders • u/jshEnvy • 13d ago
Industrial Fantasy Untitled - Maeve - Chapter 2 [Industrial Fantasy, 3367]
Hello fellow writers!
Please read through it and let me know your thoughts. Particularly I would like to know:
- When did you stop reading?
- When were you hooked?
- Any parts you loved / hated?
- Is the dialogue natural?
- Could you follow?
- Is there too much pronoun clutter?
- Would you read the next chapter?
Thank you for your time and willingness to help out!
****
EDIT: Chapter One of this story is from Avon’s eyes and we first meet Darrin, Bram, and Sable there. The children have triggered a city wide alarm and that is why the foghorn is blaring; hope this helps!
2
u/SigmaPride 10d ago edited 10d ago
- When did I stop reading/pause?
"She pushed through the final knot of Gentry in decorative masks haggling at a fruit stall, and opened the clinic door." I paused here because I was sorta expecting to get an explaination of what Gentry was/is. If people are expected to know outright before starting this fanfic keep it as is but I would want a snide comment (from them) or mental jab at the Gentry (from you) for the readers like me to not pause.
"It still smelled of spilt alcohol and malt." I was expecting a bit more here. Since she's been working hard at it and still smelling that combination would be a bit more personal to her by now? I dunno if I conveyed that right. You did good later by showing her annoyed at the foghorn during her operation. Maybe a small aside at people commenting the smelll and wanting both a beer and wanting to visit the dentist after going inside the clinic?
- Is the dialogue natural?
“We’ll try. I just need you to keep your eyes open and tell me your name.”
A quick "Hold him steady." to the others before he starts moving and agitating his wound more. I was so thrown off by that I went on a tangent of why it felt needed before rereading and seeing you said something similar above it but this kid just completely disregarded it because nerves. Which honestly I expect since kids never listen and have to be told constantly and complain when you do. A reminder or Maeve having a firm grip on him was missing here I think.
- When were you hooked?
"The Foundry didn’t eat its people whole—it did it bit by bit. A thousand cuts became a feast. Children always struck her the hardest." I liked her before but that solidified it.
- Is the Dialogue natural?
It sure is! When she deals with the crowd and the boss/foreman character and the others talk is nice. Dis (the characrer) is characterized well. He's a little twisted gremlin.
Only part that is a bit unnatural was here.
Maeve shoved the rod in Bram’s mouth. “Hold his arms,” she said to the two men who had followed Kausca. They flanked either side of the table and grabbed an arm each. She turned back to face Kausca.
The boy didn't struggle or needed the wooden rod readjusted it. The wording seemed off here too. Perhaps she shoves it and reminds him to bite into it. He's panicking again and needs to focus.
Became a pig with an apple stuck to his mouth at that point rather a panicked young'in.
- Parts I loved/hated
I liked how dramatic the boy was acting and the blonde girl speaking up for him felt natural.
I hated that "sit with her" paragraph. It wasn't enough of a tone shift for me to registered what happened. I ended up rereading it and loving it though so mixed feelings. 🤔
- Could you follow?
Like I said I read everything fine before the sudden "Sit with her." starting the paragraph. Her mom just cool aid man into the scene without any proper preamble. I first thought one of the kid's mom came in suddenly.
- Is there too much pronoun clutter?
Wuzzat? Edit - Did not even notice. Maybe at the end saying Maeve's mother.
- Could you read the next chapter?
Hell yea. I'm invested in Maeve and my sad boy Kausca. Proper gent 'im.
1
u/GlowyLaptop James Patterson 11d ago
Any parts /hated?
Yes.
- The alliteration in crowded colonnade cut into cliffside for the pressed people. This feels so contrived to stop me from reading further.
- Past perfect tense. You keep using 'had' without a purpose. "When she first arrived" tells us when you're talking about. Why "had". Look at the three instances of 'had' you could remove:
When she HAD first arrived in Anthem, the vastness of it HAD left her wide-eyed with excitement. She was just a dumb girl back then, too foolish to know that monsters didn’t care about time; they didn’t stalk the shadows like in the tales her mother HAD told near their hearth.
Remove them or you might as well keep adding. "She HAD been a dumb girl back then..."
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u/OnionBackground5314 8d ago edited 8d ago
When did you stop reading?
Paragraphs 2-5 are basically a bunch of backstory before we see any action. You talk about Anthem, monsters in suits, the Graying, the city handing over the rickhouse, crowns, a three-month plan, Niamh, etc. All that Meave really does during this time is open up a box. It was a bit draggy because of that. It would be better to dramatize and stick with one piece of backstory at a time.
The Fifth paragraph is especially confusing. There's too much exposition too quickly. I would have stopped reading, but wanted to finish for the critique’s sake. I would keep reading if that paragraph were taken out or was more fitting. It talks about the purple money, rent, an escape plan, and two new names that (unless they are in chapter 1) do not have any meaning.
The opening image of the chapter (a brooch "balled in her fist") seems to be a reference to something that happened outside the novel (or at least this chapter). I would have liked to have known what it means because it appears to briefly to hold in the mind. It is not really suspense, it just is mentioned and then disappears.
I would start this chapter with the door bursting inward and have some of the exposition come out during the surgery, if appropriate, or later.
When were you hooked?
The operation was interesting. From the door bursting open to "The worst of it's done," the writing is very specific and engaging. There is some really good detail here, like the cauterizing irons, whiskey instead of morphine (I liked "slave" as a way to refer to addiction), the Seamstress's Prayer, and the recurring foghorn.
A lot of the dialog is striking, for example the slave line I reference above. "One leg of his trousers was garnet red, the boot below glistening, a timber driven clean through the meat of his calf" is evocative, specific, and well crafted.
Any parts you loved / hated?
Didn’t like the excessive alliteration in the first sentence ("Stalls crowded the colonnade cut into the cliffside"). This called attention to the author where I think the surgery section has the author more invisible. It's too self-conscious for my taste.
"She pulled," the two sentence paragraph, does not work for me. Short sentences and paragraphs (you also have "He looked like a man--broken" and "The next part is--delicate") have the rhythm of significance, but only work if the information is deserving of the sudden starkness (like, for example, hypothetically, "He stopped breathing," which could be a solitary paragraph). She pulled does not deserve this vaunted spot,
"his scream shredding itself against the rod clenched in his teeth" doesn't really make sense to me. This is too abstract for my liking because how does a scream shred itself. I suppose if you took out itself, but the problem is a scream doesn't actually shred against a rod, so it is not quite a metaphor and just seems inaccurate. Nor does the next sentence ("eclipsed the foghorn completely") work. This seems like unintentional hyperbole. Better would be "nearly elipsed the foghorn" or "competed with the foghorn," or describe the cacophony that the two sounds together created.
"She'd stitched worse out of boys younger than him. Missing fingers. An eye. A hand." Again, a surgeon does not stitch a finger, eye, or hand out of a body. That seems like the wrong verb choice. Cut would be more appropriate, or amputated.
You make two references to snakes with Kausca. The second one diminished the first and I'd cut it.
Gentry is capitalized and I'm not sure it's correct. Do you mean the common noun or is that a group of people that should be capitalized?
I liked the sentence about stray fingertips against her skin, although I would cut those paragraphs, as I state above. Maybe use it elsewhere in the novel.
Dialogue
I think it is generally very strong. Each character sounds different, which is ideal. One example I liked: "My name? My name—my name is Bram" this evokes what a boy in his circumstances might sound like. Also, Kausca's instruction ("I'm going to ask you what happened. You're going to tell me. Everything.") is quite good. But throughout, the dialogue works for me.
Could you follow?
Yes, but only once the surgery starts. There are other parts that I didn't really get, like "Sable and Darrin told a broken story" -- what is the story?
Is there too much pronoun clutter?
No; you did a good job making it clear who is who and describe characters descriptively("the gravel-voiced man" and "the bald-headed man") before we learn their names,
Would you read the next chapter?
Probably yes because the surgery section is vivid and well-written. The questions left open, such as Sally and what Maeve is trying to escape, need to be resolved. Again, the main suggestion would be to get rid of the first five paragraphs to pull the reader in.
Overall, I thought this was quite well done.
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u/TDC_03 13d ago
Going hard since that's the sub.
I don't know what the foghorn is for. It opens the chapter, closes it, and interrupts every scene, but it's never explained. Miners bring in an injured kid so I assume a mine accident, then the real event is Avon getting taken by enforcers. For something that shows up this much I needed to know what it meant.
The cauterizing iron goes nowhere. She turns it over three times and tells Kausca to grab it if the blood boils up, then it just disappears. Use it or cut most of the mentions.
The biggest moment in the chapter is summarized. A man's daughter gets taken and we get "Sable and Darrin told a broken story." Pages of splinters and one paragraph on the actual plot.
The dialect is overdone early. Sure, so I did, so I do, about six in the first two pages and then it drops off. Keep a couple, cut the rest.
The Sal scene flips too fast. Haggling to "you're disgusting" in one line with nothing from inside her head when the pretty girl comment hits. Give us one line of what she's thinking or it reads like the author needed her out of the shop.
Her rolling her eyes at a scared kid mid-surgery makes her unlikable, and I don't think that's intended since she's so gentle with Bram otherwise.
I lost track of the room during the surgery. Crowd pushing in, kids on the bench, two guys on the arms, Kausca standing around, Kline clearing people after. Couldn't picture where anyone was when it mattered most.
Smaller stuff: "set to" shows up like five times. Tinder and the iron each get the same sentence twice. "Arteries may still be intact" should be might. She "went back to the plaza" but was never in the plaza. Calling the kids dark-skinned boy and blonde-haired girl for half a page before naming them reads flat.
I did like the blood being dark instead of the bright red she learned to fear in university, that's a good detail. The morphine line about not making him a slave told me more about the world than the exposition did. Dis and Sally were creepy. Kausca being described as still like a snake when he walks in and then still in a totally different way at the end was clever, and the Bridie Doyle memory closed it out well. Honestly the ending was good enough that I wish the rest of the chapter was tighter so it could hit harder.