Critique #19 Molly Newman
Katharine Kerr June 30th, 2006
She slithered through the pool of magma, her fingers long tongues of flames licking, questing, tasting. Traces of rare metals burbled from the fire-springs far below and effervesced through her outstretched hands. Salty nickel, bittersweet chromium, a delicate hint of something radioactive.
With a flip of her tail, she turned and dove. The volcanic heart throbbed, a thousand miles down, and pumped fire through her flesh.
She surfaced and flung back her hair with a shower of sparks. One of her sisters was in the pool with her now. She splashed fire at her, a gossamer tangle of sulfur and iron, and shrieked with laughter at the returning slap.
Something in the margin of her vision brought her up short.
What is that?
Her sister thought crossness at her. Who cares? Come on; let’s play.
No, look. It’s something different. I don’t know what it is.
I don’t see anything. Her sister slipped beneath the magma’s surface, trailing bubbles.
Another sucessful cross-species point of view, this one 3rd person, that builds suspense nicely at the end.
This is a nice example of taking a cliche’d expression (the tongues of fire) and turning it into something original and sharp.
This fragment would be better tucked into the previous sentence, perhaps replacing the phrase “rare metals”, which is kind of dry.
Nice.
Actually, I disagree with Kit about the fragment — I like it where it is. My biggest quibble is with
mainly on the geology. While the ultimate source of heat is a thousand miles down, most magma as I recall is actually crust material melted much closer to the surface, and even then most volcanos are fed from reservoirs from a couple to around a dozen miles down. And this creature would know it. Also, does this creature even have a heart that works like ours? Does it throb? Is that really an image and cliche she’d use?
Minor, but they wobbled enough to throw me out of the story, for a moment.
—L.
Thank you very much for your comments–this is great.
In approximately two paragraphs, it becomes clear that this place is not Earth at all–more of a Plane of Fire… so that would explain the geology or lack thereof. (I wondered about that a bit, too. If it’s going to hang up a reader before s/he gets to the explanation, I’ll change it.) And the creature does have a heart, which actually becomes kind of important at the end of the story…
I appreciate your suggestions immensely!
I started out my (#18) first thirteen lines with:
You (#19) started yours out with:
May we both slither onto the pages of the professional magazines!
One of things that makes the reader assume it’s Earth is the scientific sound of “rare metals” and their names. If you’re going to revise, you might consider adding something like “the seeds of rare metals”, or their “essences” or suchlike to tip readers off that we’re not in an actual mundane volcano.
Thanks, Katharine. What do you think of this revision instead?
Metallic essences from the fire-springs far below effervesced through her outstretched hands; she tasted nickel, chromium, a delicate hint of something radioactive.
(”Burbled,” though no one pointed it out, soooo does not fit with the rest of this story. Ain’t no burbling allowed in the Pits of Fiery Despair.)
And I guess I can take out the “thousand miles down” part, just for the sake of not annoying anyone with geological knowledge… thanks for that suggestion, too.
I like this a lot. “fire-spring” has a nice astral plane feeling to it.
In a short bit of fiction, connotation means almost as much as denotation, simply because of the length.
Awesome… consider it changed.
(I was trying to convey to my photographer husband last night what it meant to me to have Luminaries of Stature reading & dissecting my stuff… he didn’t seem to get it until I said “Imagine having Martin Parr look at your photos and tell you what you could be doing better.” Then he was suitably impressed.)
I have a question about something in my story that readers may either really like or really hate. There are two alternating viewpoint characters: the Salamander, whom we’ve already met, and the Summoner, whom we meet in the next paragraph. Neither of them have names. Is that going to drive anyone crazy? (The Salamander literally doesn’t have a name; the Summoner’s is just never a point of discussion.)
Depends on how coyly it’s handled, I think.
—L.