Critique #56 — Richard Jensen
Kevin Andrew Murphy August 16th, 2006
On a stone altar she lay bound; her eyes wide in fearful anticipation. An imposing dark form crossed the room with an almost preternatural grace. She gasped as she saw a flash of light glinting from an ornately etched dagger, held high in supplication by the dark visage.
“Into your hands, Dark Lord, I commend this sacrifice,” intoned the darkly clad man, as he brought the blade down to slice open the bodice from the pre-pubescent girl. He brought the blade to his lips and kissed the hilt, before beginning his fluid, deft incisions, slicing from her throat to the, as yet, un-awakened center of her sexuality. He made a few more deep incisions and removed her ovaries and uterus. The blood flowed along the lips of her vagina, pooling by her buttocks before draining into the cauldron at the foot of the altar. The small white fire burning beneath the cauldron caused more than two-thirds of the precious liquid to vaporize immediately on contact with the surface of the cauldron.
Richard,
Punctuation first:
1, You need a comma after “altar.”
2. You need a comma, not a semicolon, after “bound.”
3. You don’t need the comma after “dagger,” but could leave it in if you really want it.
4. Lose the comma after “darkly clad man.”
5. Lose the comma after “hilt.”
6. Lose the commas after “the” and “yet” setting off “as yet” from the rest.
7. The word “unawakened” is unhyphenated.
That’s the painless stuff.
Less painless: You have a “dark form” with a “dark visage” who is also “darkly clad” worshipping a “Dark Lord.” Accessorizing in your god’s favorite color scheme is fine, but does not excuse an author using the same word over and over, especially when it’s not a specific color.
A “visage” is also a “face.” The only way a visage is holding a dagger aloft is if it’s holding it in its teeth. Given the following invocation, human sacrifice, and hilt-kissing, that makes the feat even more impressive. It’s like dark priest meets Cirque du Soleil. Don’t do this.
If all the sacrifice can see is a “dark form,” how can she see that the dagger is “ornately etched”? Special spotlights positioned over the altar?
Also, if she gasped when she sees the dagger, why doesn’t she scream or at least gurgle when she gets stabbed?
Also, if she’s pre-pubescent, why does she have a “bodice”? Such tops are usually for women who have breasts, which she won’t have yet. Moreover, why have a bodice if you’re going to have to cut through it? It’s not that the Dark Lord is going to be upset by naked girlie chests, even if censors might.
Beyond that, you obviously haven’t been doing any actual virgin sacrifices. Where’s the blood? The spurting blood? There should be a huge fountain of it. Actually, fountains if he’s not only slitting her throat but performing a hysterectomy.
There’s also a silly bit of bathos going on with the genteel luridness of the “unawakened center of her sexuality” followed by high school biology textbook “ovaries,” “uterus,” “vagina” and “buttocks.”
You also failed to mention that the altar was tilted or that it had convenient rivulets like a carving board to catch the spilled blood ready to pour down into the cauldron.
Also, what is he doing with her ovaries and uterus? Holding them in his hand? You didn’t mention a tray or anything, and speaking as someone who’s deboned a turkey, it would be a real trick to get those out with only a dagger and no assistance, even if he’s not doing it with the dagger in his teeth. Besides which, unless the girl has Heinz ketchup for blood–and even then, I’d doubt it–there’s no way the “dark form” is going to be able to remove the ovaries and perform a complete hysterectomy before the first drop of blood hits the overheated cauldron.
This doesn’t even get into the viewpoint problems where you start out in the girl’s viewpoint then go to an omniscient narrator. However, the big problem is that, while sword and sorcery sacrifices of virgins to dark gods can be done, it has to be done in such a way as to dazzle the reader and get him ready to cheer the hero, get ready for the appearance of the awful dark god, and all the rest of the assorted fun. This isn’t doing it, for all of the above reasons. And come to think of it, I was just looking up one of the best throat-slitting and cauldron scenes ever for personal reference before I even had a chance to read this. Here, see how it was done a couple thousand years ago. And this is just Bullfinch’s summary:
That’s how you slit a throat with style and panache.
Kevin covered most of the puncutation stuff.
Otherwise, I have to agree–there have been an awful lot of dark lord sacrifices of hapless virgins/children/whatever as openings, especially in prologues to RPG fantasies. This is actually a tough way to hook a wide audience–we don’t know the characters and have no stake in the story, so opening with the POV of someone who’s going to die a disgusting death a page later is a tough way to hook many readers in.