This is a good idea. There's some banter, there's some action. Those are good things. The main take away is just tighten up the confusion and make the tense scenes more tense. This story has great potential.
The first paragraph is repeated in the fourth paragraph exactly. Maybe a rewrite that didn't get deleted?
Faski is sometimes "Faksi". Nothing a
simple find and replace won't fix.
Not sure if much can be done about it since Gipp is literally running through fire to save the kids, but there's a lot of the word "fire" in that section of the story. It could probably stand to be tightened up to reduce the references to fire and increase the pace and tension of that section to boot.
Who is Marcus and what does he want with the crafters? That's not clear at all. Having Marcus in the story is almost too confusing. It's not clear who the character is. It's not clear why he would want some elf kids. It's not clear why elf kids are valuable period. Are Gipp and Faski some sort of bounty hunters or do-gooders and Marcus is a bad guy that they're trying to hunt down and stop? Was Marcus trying to burn down the house with the elves in it so that the elves wouldn't be found? All of these questions should be answered or at least hinted at so it can be easy to infer the answers.
There seems to be some confusion as to how to format dialogue. The only reason we mention it even though we're not the technical editors is because it's a little jarring and distracting. Our technical editor will probably have to explain it better (or correct us where we might be wrong) but, it should generally look more like this:
"I swear I put it in here." He pushed his hand around the bottom of the saddlebag. "Or maybe..." He dropped the bag and reached behind him to a sack tied down by his armor. "...in here."
The other man rolled his eyes. "Is a piece of fruit really worth this effort?"
Cossey=cozy? In fantasy (and sci-fi) where people make up all kinds of weird strange new words for things, it's critical to make sure that words are spelled right or are clearly an in-universe word.
Are they trying to be stealthy ninja types? If so, leaving their horses empty in the road seems like a bad idea.
Not sure about the medical logistics of standing in smoke and coughing to clear one's lungs before ducking down out of the smoke itself.
There's a fire, people are about to die, and Gipp is pausing to get a good description of the kids. That deflates the tension.
If there's a tense situation, the writing should reflect that:
Quick! Things are happening. Right now. There's fire. Kids! Gotta get them out. Reach for sword to pry. Dammit! It's outside. Look around. Find something.
Crash!
Protect the kids. They're screaming so loud. What was that? The house is falling down around us. It's so hot. The flames are reaching for us, closing in.
Or something like that.
Unless a character is a mind reader/psychic/telepath, they do not know what anyone else is thinking about them. They can hope that someone is thinking a certain thing about them, but there is no way they can be sure.
Show vs. Tell
The poker was warm from the cook fire, it heated his hand.
vs
Gipp gritted his teeth, his hand complaining about being almost seared by the poker.
Not sure if much can be done about it since Gipp is literally running through fire to save the kids, but there's a lot of the word "fire" in that section of the story. It could probably stand to be tightened up to reduce the references to fire and increase the pace and tension of that section to boot.
Who is Marcus and what does he want with the crafters? That's not clear at all. Having Marcus in the story is almost too confusing. It's not clear who the character is. It's not clear why he would want some elf kids. It's not clear why elf kids are valuable period. Are Gipp and Faski some sort of bounty hunters or do-gooders and Marcus is a bad guy that they're trying to hunt down and stop? Was Marcus trying to burn down the house with the elves in it so that the elves wouldn't be found? All of these questions should be answered or at least hinted at so it can be easy to infer the answers.
There seems to be some confusion as to how to format dialogue. The only reason we mention it even though we're not the technical editors is because it's a little jarring and distracting. Our technical editor will probably have to explain it better (or correct us where we might be wrong) but, it should generally look more like this:
"I swear I put it in here." He pushed his hand around the bottom of the saddlebag. "Or maybe..." He dropped the bag and reached behind him to a sack tied down by his armor. "...in here."
The other man rolled his eyes. "Is a piece of fruit really worth this effort?"
Cossey=cozy? In fantasy (and sci-fi) where people make up all kinds of weird strange new words for things, it's critical to make sure that words are spelled right or are clearly an in-universe word.
Are they trying to be stealthy ninja types? If so, leaving their horses empty in the road seems like a bad idea.
Not sure about the medical logistics of standing in smoke and coughing to clear one's lungs before ducking down out of the smoke itself.
There's a fire, people are about to die, and Gipp is pausing to get a good description of the kids. That deflates the tension.
If there's a tense situation, the writing should reflect that:
Quick! Things are happening. Right now. There's fire. Kids! Gotta get them out. Reach for sword to pry. Dammit! It's outside. Look around. Find something.
Crash!
Protect the kids. They're screaming so loud. What was that? The house is falling down around us. It's so hot. The flames are reaching for us, closing in.
Or something like that.
Unless a character is a mind reader/psychic/telepath, they do not know what anyone else is thinking about them. They can hope that someone is thinking a certain thing about them, but there is no way they can be sure.
Show vs. Tell
The poker was warm from the cook fire, it heated his hand.
vs
Gipp gritted his teeth, his hand complaining about being almost seared by the poker.
Transition from Gipp maybe dying to
Faski is a little confusing. Maybe just have a page break or
some **** between them.
Faski is probably not going to spare a thought for Gipp in the heat of battle. He's going to be focused on not dying.
Faski is probably not going to spare a thought for Gipp in the heat of battle. He's going to be focused on not dying.
It's not clear at the end whether or not
Gipp dies. If it's intentionally vague, it's not clear that it's
intentionally vague. We know we should be having some feels, but
we're not sure which feels to feel.
I have a small issue with your comments on dialog formatting. From what I understand, the way you suggest is used to imply a pause in the character's speech, that he halted for a moment before continuing. That is not what I was intending. Instead I was describing action mid speech, and the way I've written it is the way I've always had editors in the past recommend it.
ReplyDeleteIf you could be more specific about why you think this way is better it would be helpful.
I just realized there was a comment here. I apologize! I think I addressed this in my email back to you, but I'll go into more (better? lol) detail here for everyone else.
ReplyDeleteI believe this is the section in question:
“I swear I put it in here,” he pushed his hand around the bottom of the saddlebag, “Or maybe,” he dropped the bag and reached behind him to a sack tied down by his armor,“in here.” His young face was twisted as he searched, one eye partially squinted, his tongue jutting out of his lips.
In dialogue, there's a mix of using punctuation to make the reader read it how you want them to "hear" it and just basic formatting stuff. When you have, "Blah blah blah," said Joe, you're showing that Joe said something and the "said Joe" part is a part of the sentence. They came to the party together.
With: “I swear I put it in here,” he pushed his hand around the bottom of the saddlebag, "Or..." etc you have a couple of different party attendees who don't belong in the same group. "I swear I put it in here" is its own sentence, its own person. "He pushed his hand around the bottom of the saddlebag" is also its own person. The "Or maybe" is the guy saying to you, "Hey, I have someone I want you to meet!" and then fading away a little to drag that someone over to you and then you meet that person in the sack behind his armor.
One thing to remember with editors (us included) is that they are not the end all be all. Sort of like with doctors. You can have four doctors say you have X disease when you really have X disease, but because they all went to the same school, they're all wrong. Or, at least, not entirely right. The only thing you absolutely have to do is make it look good to the reader. I have never read a book or narrative of any kind where the dialogue was represented like it was in that paragraph. Ever. And, if I did, I'd be pretty vocal in how bad the editor was. In reading it out loud, there are pauses. Not comma pauses, but period pauses. You don't have to use ellipses, but you can't have all those commas either. If you want to say that he's saying this while he's doing an action then say that's what's going on.
“I swear I put it in here,” he said as he pushed his hand around the bottom of the saddlebag, one eye squinted in his young face. Coming up empty, he dropped the bag and reached behind him to a sack tied down by his armor. "Or maybe in here." He fished around in the sack, his face twisted and his tongue jutting through his lips.
I hope that makes things more clear. :o) If not, let me know!