Critique #31 — Cory Rodabaugh
Kevin Andrew Murphy July 10th, 2006
Mathias sat in the middle of a cornfield. He was waiting for his prey, his best friend Jarvis. Mathias was fifteen and had long blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. He was exceptionally tall and skinny. Also, he had deep blue eyes. His father was an elf and his mother was a human, so that made him a half breed. The only way you could tell he was a half an elf was his pointed ears and that he had one of the best archery skills in town, besides his father.
Mathias saw a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye. He turned to his left and saw corn. He looked straight ahead and saw his prey. While slowly crawling forward, Mathias grabbed his oak bow off his back and nocked one of his specially made arrows. These arrows were special because the arrows didn’t have a point at the end, therefore, they couldn’t kill anyone. Jarvis was now right in the middle of a clearing in the cornfield. Mathias slowly crept forward.
CRACK! Mathias cursed that he stepped on a twig. He ducked just as Jarvis turned around. Jarvis looked right at the spot Mathias was just at a few seconds ago. Jarvis turned around and ran. Mathias stood up and pulled the bowstring back. He let go and the arrow flew off his string.
Wow, okay, I think I want to take a chance and tackle this a little bit.
First of all, Cory, I think something that you could do well with is a little pronoun and verb variations. Stray away from common, and ESPECIALLY dead verbs (am, is, are, WAS, were, shall be, will be, have been, has been, had been…etc.) and it will make it seem a whole lot better. At first it is difficult, but you’ll become accustomed to it.
Instead of describing Mathias straight out, you could perhaps flouris it a little. For example, say, “The lankly fifteen year old tugged on his ponytail, placing a few stray strands back into the mass as he did so,” but not quite like that…that’s not as good and basically a run on sentance…but just so you get the jist. Understand?
If his mother is a human and his father is an elf, we already can assume he is a half breed, the audience does not need to be told. “so that made him a halfbreed” sounds a little…childish? You can combine the description of his blue eyes with his heritage, like I mentioned before.
Example: “His deep blue eyes came from the elvish side of his family - his father. His human mother, however, had sparkling green eyes accenting her face…” or something like that.
The second line pulls people in, Why would he be wanting to prey on is best friend? Is the question that comes to mind, and draws people on further.
When you are describing him going after the prey, if you can, you may want to make it more suspenseful. Dont just say, “he turned to his left and saw corn” Use more action then turn, perhaps spin (spun), did he scan the field first before turning to look straight ahead? Did the corn fill his vision or did he just see it? See what I mean about adding more verbs?
The specially made arrows? The “These arrows were special because the arrows didn’t have a point at the end, therefore, they couldn’t kill anyone.”
but I get your point. you said arrows twice in the same sentance, a little repetative, dont you think? you could replace the second “arrows” with “they” Instead of saying therefore, you could say, “Making them a non-lethal weapon” not that there’s a problem with therefore, it just doesnt seem to fit in that sentance.
First of all, anything can kill anyone
The last paragraph. Good. A nice ending to draw the reader into the story. What happens to Jarvis! However, you dont want to go OVERBOARD by saying Jarvis. “JARVIS looked right…JARVIS turned and ran.” Jarvis is his friend, right? If you can keep the pronouns clear as to who you are talking about you could say “his friend turned and ran”
Well that’s about all I have to say, great plot and I wish I could know what the ending was like!
I hope it works out for the better, I didnt mean to sound harsh if you think that!
–Aria
Cory,
First, a couple small spelling and punctuation nits: a blonde is a person with blond hair, so drop the “e” at the end; half-breed should be hyphenated, if used at all (and you should generally avoid the term unless there’s good reason, as it’s considered an insult, even if applied to fantastic races).
Beyond that, you start this out with some conflict and action, even if blunted because we know this is play-fighting. However, the reader knows that either things may go wrong or else this is foreshadowing for later when the fighting is not play, so either works for me to want to turn the page, at least so far as the set-up and story goes.
The main problem here is in the details: What is shown, what isn’t shown, what’s told and so forth. Starting with the first sentence, you have “sat.” You can’t sit on the ground if you’ve got a bow slung over your back, and even if you have it in your hands, it’s not a good position to shoot from. So it has to be at best “crouched” in the first sentence instead of “sat.”
The word “crouched” would also help us with the next sentence, since it’s a hunter’s stance, and implies the “prey” that you tell us.
One of the old author’s proverbs is “Show, don’t tell.” What’s not told as often (but should be), is “Imply, don’t show.” If you put Mathias in a crouch, you show us that he has training (or at least good instincts) as a hunter and you imply that he is crouched waiting for someone. Contrast this:
with this:
There will be more menace, and thus more tension, if we don’t know immediately that they’re friends. More than that, you can imply that he’s tall and skinny by mentioning how he had trouble finding pants long enough to cover his limbs, or that his pants have habit of sliding down over his hips. Or, better yet, mention that his bow was a bit too short for his height, and that he’d outgrown the last, which will tell us that he’s both very tall and likewise young. Likewise the elven background would be more intriguing if you simply mention the slight point to his ears, and say that he had inherited them from his father.
With the padded-head arrows, you can simply call them that rather than spending two sentences telling us about how they are “specially made.” Moreover, while oak is a possible wood for a bow, when he’s hunting his friend, he isn’t thinking about what his bow is made of. People focus on details when they’re important to them. You pay attention to the wood of someone’s bow if you’re first meeting them or if it’s in a shop, but once you’ve had it for ages, you don’t think about it, and certainly not mid-combat.
In the third paragraph, you have your character step on a broken twig. This is one of James Fenimore Cooper’s old bits of business which Mark Twain flamed famously in an essay over a hundred years ago: http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/cooper/cooper.html
I’ll quote the relevant passage:
Twain has already done the flaming at Cooper, so the only thing I’ll add is a question: What on earth is a twig doing in the middle of a cornfield? A cornfield will have plenty of broken cornstalks in it to step on and make a noise without importing the proverbial “broken twig.” Twigs come from trees and occasionally bushes. Other plants have stalks, canes, sprigs and so forth, but not twigs.
The last line in the sample should be “from his string” rather than “off his string,” unless you mean to say he fumbled the shot, which is something that actually does happen with archery.
You should also work on polishing up your nouns and verbs so they do more work. For example, using “heart” instead of “middle” to describe the center of the cornfield. Maybe rather than mentioning Mathias’s blond hair as being blond, saying that the stalks of sun-bleached dry corn, or the silk of green corn, were perfect camouflage for his hair.
Giving us a detail about the state of the corn would let us know whether it’s summer or autumn as well. (In winter, it would be a stubblefield regardless of the crop that was formerly there, and in spring, it will just be seedlings, and so not really getting the full name of “cornfield” either.)
Anyway, best on revisions.
Kevin
Aria and Kevin Andrew Murphy,
Thank you for the comments and critique on the sample.This wasn’t the story I was happy with and I had a better version on the computer before it crashed. I will use your comments to revise the sample and repost it in a couple of days. The sample sounds childish because I wrote it when I was fourteen and it was intended for teens. Thanks again.
Cory
Cory,
I am a teen. Does that help any?
(I write myself as well, and I enjoy it very much. I would put my thirteen lines on here, but personally, I am very very very wary of the internet and plagerism!, a little paranoid I am!!!)
As a teen, I would like to note, that this would be more of a 10 and up thing probably, teens (or at least myself) like to read something more…complex? (or at least I do)
I hate the crashing computer…I have had that before and have had it shut down in the middle of typing countless times (think it overheated *rolls eyes*) and I email it to myself periodically (tip for authors there!)
I cant wait to see your revised edition! I hope that you can make it so that it was better than the first one and you are more satisfied with it then you ever were!
Best of luck!
–Aria
Cory, your lines are a good example of the Necessary Rough Draft. I don’t have much to add in the way of revision notes, but I will say that the best way to learn about characters and plots is to start writing them. You as author need to know what Mathias looks like, that Jarvis is his best friend, and all those other details. The question is: when, how, and if do you tell the reader these things?
Once you know all you need to know about a particular story, then you can decide in the revision process which details belong in the finished piece. The answer is never “all of them.”
Aria, I think your fears of plagarism are um well misplaced, let us say.
For one thing, no “ideas” are worth stealing, because lots of writers have already used them anyway. There really is a fairly limited pool of basic “ideas” that all fiction, not just genre fiction, deals with. Even some specific ideas get chewed over — consider the Holy Grail, that ancient medieval “idea” for fiction, that’ was just reborn as a very modern bestseller and movie. Dan Brown’s idea of the Grail as “sang real”, royal blood instead of san greal, holy receptacle, was bruited about it other books long before he wrote it all over again.
Plagarism applies only to the copying of actual words that an author uses, and the passage in question has to be significant — that is, no one can use a phrase like “it’s all over”, then scream plagarism if they see it in another writer’s story. I doubt very much if writer-trolls course the Internet looking for nifty paragraphs to rip off.
Another thought: any story-lines put up here are in a sense “published”, which means that if anyone does rip them off, that person has violated the author’s basic copyrights. By putting work on the Internet, you are stating you wrote it in front of witnesses.
Of couse, if I ever find someone posting lines here that they’ve plagarized, Doom will strike them from the Heavens. Public ridicule will be the least of their troubles . . .
Haha, yes, well I’m still wary. Besides, my first thirteen lines are my introduction, which isnt as good as my story. Next thirteen lines past that (the entire intro) is the prologue. Frankly, the beginning of the story has the best thirteen lines. ANother reason why I dont want to post :-/
Here is the revisions. Sorry for being late with it.
Mathias crouched in the heart of a cornfield. The corn towered over him as he waited for Jarvis to come down a path of trampled corn. The fifteen-year-old pulled back a few loose strands into his messy blond ponytail. His pointed ears held his hair back poorly and his green eyes represented his mother’s heritage. His father, the local archery shop owner and corn farmer, was busy in the barn tending to the storm goblins. These goblins controlled the rain in Newcastle. The storm goblins decided to be mischievous and thought a drought was good for Newcastle.
Mathias saw a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye. He spun to his left and saw nothing but his hair. He readjusted his ponytail and he looked to his left again and saw his prey. While slowly crawling forward, Mathias grabbed his bow off his back and nocked one of his arrows. These arrows were special because they were padded. Jarvis was right in the middle of a clearing in the cornfield. Mathias slowly crept forward.
CRACK! Mathias cursed when he stepped on a cornstalk. He ducked just as his prey, Jarvis, turned around. Jarvis, a short and muscular dwarf, looked right at the spot Mathias was just at a few seconds ago. Jarvis dove into a patch of cornstalks and scurried over to a new clearing. Mathias stood up and pulled the bowstring back. He let go and the arrow flew from his string.
Cory,
No problem. Since this is a substantial revision, I’m going to post these revisions as a separate thread and close comments on this one.
Anyone who wishes to comment, please do so at the new thread here, #37:
http://www.deepgenre.com/wordpress/damon-knight/critique-37/