Comments on: Critique #93 — Denni Rael

By: Sherwood Smith

Sherwood Smith — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 02:33:19 +0000

The second paragraph is a splendid setup to a story–its wise-ass tone is funny, and it actually gets a story started. The first graf labors too hard on the metaphor and made me want to skim.
The last graf also does the same thing–repeats everything, thus dragging the promising pacing down.

My suggestion is, trim off the first and third grafs, and show us what happened.

By: tchernabyelo

tchernabyelo — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:53:18 +0000

Yeah, what they said. The tone is so strong on its own you don’t need the shit shittety-shit shittoo of the first paragraph. And though the tone is good, the moment you said “sword, staff and two daggers” made me think I was actually landing in stock D&D-world. Either give us detail on the weaponry, or don’t mention ti at all, but using that phrase just made me think about a character sheet.

There’s intriguing, promising stuff here. But you need to clear out - if you’ll pardon me saying it - the shit.

By: zoe

zoe — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 19:38:04 +0000

Get rid of the first paragraph, but I thought it was funny!

By: Daniel Woods

Daniel Woods — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 00:24:48 +0000

Hi Denni.

I’m afraid I pretty much agree with Kevin. Though I thought the first paragraph was fabulous and laughed out loud, I rather think it was for the wrong reasons. You have to be very careful when mixing swearing and fantasy (well, anything for that matter) together, and this, I’m sad to say, is all expletives and no substance.

So, clearly it’s not ready for submission. However, the premise seems to be interesting (woman is unwittingly yanked from our world into a realm of magic and sword-slinging, and is none too pleased about it). Please correct me if I misunderstood the plot, but as I see it, it has a lot of entertainment potential.

Everyone [or at least I] likes a good old takes-no-rubbish-from-anyone protagonist, but this needs much more work; having a character who swears a lot won’t carry a book through an editor’s scrutiny.

Hope this helped :).

By: Kevin Andrew Murphy

Kevin Andrew Murphy — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 23:17:58 +0000

Denni,

While I’ve seen Jenny Craig meets Sword and Sorcery done before, successfully, when you add Potty Mouth, it just doesn’t work.

It’s not that you can’t start your story out with the image of steaming shit, it’s just that this isn’t the image that leads you to either fat people in a gym or barbarian’s clanging swords.

As such, it’s not working. As an editor, I wouldn’t bother to turn the page or even reach for anything other than the basic form letter.