A Sense of Doubt blog post #4090 - Writing Problems to Watch For - Writing Wednesday for 2604.29
Greetings Readers.
Good stuff here.
I started Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, and so far I am underwhelmed about some of the writing and yet interested in the characters, the world, the fast-pace action and immediate introduction of multiple conflicts, and the way Yarros dishes out world-building information very slowly and carefully in small chunks (very small!). This author, this series, and this book are IMMENSELY popular, so it behooves us writers in the genre to know why.
Anyway, that's all.
Thanks for tuning in.
FIVE WRITING PROBLEMS VIA BRIANA SAROVSKI
New YT video live now! Your manuscript keeps getting rejected, but it's not because of grammar or adverbs... it's because of deeper craft problems that literary agents immediately recognize as beginner writing.
I broke down five major categories of writing issues that publishing professionals spot instantly: plot and structure problems (lack of causation, unclear scene purpose), dialogue mechanics failures (exposition dumps, unnatural speech), missing emotional depth (underwritten internal life, flat feelings), technical craft errors (POV mistakes, confused narrative logic), and weak stakes and tension (comfortable characters, vague goals).
The great news though is that every single problem is fixable once you know what to look for! Most beginners focus on surface-level issues while these deeper structural problems go unnoticed, but understanding these patterns is one of the keys to turning your manuscript from amateur to professional.
Which category do you struggle with most? For me, it's always making sure my plot events connect through causation instead of just happening randomly because I need them to.
If you're interested, the full breakdown with examples and fixes is in my latest YouTube video (link in bio).
#writingtips #novelwriting #fictionwriting
Lessons From the Excessive Writing of Anathema
https://mythcreants.com/blog/lessons-from-the-overdone-writing-of-anathema/
Welcome to the Eating Woods series by Keri Lake.* Are the woods eating people? Are people eating the woods? Or does everyone just have picnics there? Unclear, but perhaps the first book, Anathema, will tell us. Lake’s bio tells us she writes gothic romantasy, so let’s see what she has to offer.
Content Notice: This opening depicts violence against an infant.
Don’t Rely on the Front Matter
Help me out, folks. What is happening here?
It looks like an ancestral chart, right? I would assume one set of people are descended from the Mortasians and another from the Aethyrians. But then why are there lines connecting their descendants to each other? Did all of the Corvikae and Lyverians marry each other? The label of “Ancestral Lines” seems to suggest otherwise.
Also, one version of the book has an Aethyrian (but not Mortasian?) race list, and it says:
Corvikae [cor-vih-kai] – An ancient mortal tribe who went extinct due to genocide; worshipped the goddess of death; it is said that they have Corvugon blood; originated in the northern part of Nyxteros
Traits: Dark hair, light bronze skin, mortal
That’s dark. But there is no mention of the Lyverians they are apparently connected to in some way. Did the Lyverians kill them?
The book also has a large glossary, which is not a great sign. While a glossary may be helpful as a last resort, we should aim to make our stories understandable without one.
Wait, I changed my mind.
This glossary is amazing. It’s like Jabberwocky meets Harry Potter meets every dirty romantasy trope. Allow me to show you some entries.
FYI – the glossary has many small errors. For instance, you might notice that capitalization after the dash isn’t consistent. Either Lake didn’t pay for copy editing or that copy editing wasn’t very good.
Ascendency [ah-send-ent-see] – a phase, similar to puberty, when mancers begin to come into their bloodline magic
I like this one because it explains how to pronounce an existing English word. FYI, comparing awakening magic to puberty is a sign of what’s to come.
Carnifican [car-niff-i-can]– A mancer who has consumed too much vivicantem and becomes violent
Do you get it? When mages become violent, they’re like carnivores! It’s memorable, I’ll give it that. As for “vivicantem,” that appears later in the glossary. It’s a nutrient mages need to maintain their powers.
Celaestrioz [seh-less-tree-ohz] – Aggressive firefly-looking creatures with human faces
So are these firefly-sized bugs with itty-bitty human faces, or are they giant glowing bug people? Inquiring minds want to know.
Dindleweed – A powerful aphrodisiac
Okay, so you want a horny drug in your story. I respect that. But why does it sound like it’s from a nursery rhyme?
Firebleeding – Sprinkling flammapul on the tongue then making small cuts in the flesh and licking the wound to introduce the substance; causes extreme paralysis
Umm… does everyone in this setting poison their enemies by licking their wounds? Is there some reason you can’t just pour the flammapul directly onto the wound???
Lunamiska [luna-mee-skah] – My little moon witch
No, there is no further context for this one, just a sudden use of first person. Maybe it’s supposed to be a common endearment, but if so, it’s oddly specific.
Pendulynx [pen-du-linx] – a long snouted mammal, smaller than an elephant
Saying an animal is smaller than an elephant isn’t really narrowing it down. I feel like there’s a story behind this one, and it goes like this:
Lake: Look at this pendulynx, a bizarre creature with a loooong snout!
Beta readers: Lake, we can tell it’s an elephant. Also, elephants can’t sneak up on people.
Lake: No, it’s not an elephant! It’s smaller than an elephant!
Rapax [ray-pax] – A child predator/pedophile
If you feel compelled to invent your own setting-specific label for “pedophile,” you may want to revisit some of your earlier decisions.
There are two more words in the glossary that start with “rap-.” I think I’ll stop here.
Then, after the glossary, there’s a little “dear reader” note where Lake tells her readers that this is her first foray into gothic fantasy and what they can expect.
My plots tend to be intricate and layered and while romance is one of the many elements I weave into the story, it is not the sole focus in this case. If you’re anxious for the spice, it’ll come eventually, but know that this is a slow burn. You will be tormented with pages of unbearable tension before we arrive at the climax, so to speak.
Just like a glossary, it’s fine to have a notice like this up front, but it makes me wonder why it became necessary. Perhaps Lake has a romance readership who may be disappointed that the romance is less central in this book.
Lake ends this letter with a link to where readers can see a full list of trigger warnings, which is nice of her.
Opening Paragraphs Need to Be Simple
Of course, we have a prologue. Gothic stories can’t just begin; first they need several thousand words on majestic mountains or a treatise on how the heroine’s upbringing made her virtuous. What? It’s not that kind of gothic story? Nonsense.
The prologue starts with the label “Two hundred eleven years ago …“
That’s a long time ago. Sounds like we have some world backstory, or maybe the love interest was alive back then and this is his backstory. I wish novels would skip that stuff and just start, but maybe it’ll be relevant.
Now for the official first sentence.
Lady Rydainn held her infant son close as she approached the glowing vein that, only days ago, had been a snarling fissure of black fire that cleaved the ground.
Oof, too complicated. Just “the glowing vein that, only days ago, had been a snarling fissure of black fire that cleaved the ground” requires a lot of effort from the reader. It requires us to move backward in time from the glowing vein to its predecessor, and then the black fire is both snarling and cleaving. Readers will already assume the fissure cleaves the ground, so I would cut that last part.
I get it though; we have so much to tell readers in the beginning. And since we know it all, it’s hard to identify when it’s confusing. I would say, “Let the writer who has never done this be the first to criticize it,” but that would prevent me from writing this critique.
Let’s see if the rest of the paragraph is better.
With the two moons nearly as one, the chasm of violet lava had hardened to stone, leaving only the flickering remnants of that sinister flame. It was almost time to harvest the igneous rock, but they weren’t there for the bounty it held.
Lake adds two moons converging and also a chasm of violet lava. Is that the same thing as the snarling fissure of black fire? Consistent labeling is extra important in the beginning.
“Igneous rock” feels anachronistic to me. Technically the word “igneous” was used as early as 1664, but not as a geology term for cooled lava. It simply meant “fiery.” But I can understand Lake wanting to use the word; it’s tough when you have a fantasy volcano setting and no characters understand volcano science.
On the plus side, I like phrases such as “two moons nearly as one” and “the bounty it held.” This is solid fantasy prose, but it needs to be in a clearer context.
Let’s do a quick rewrite on this first paragraph.
Simplified Intro
Lady Rydainn held her infant son close as she approached the flickering stone. Only days ago, it had been a chasm of violet lava sheathed in dark flames. Soon the cool rock would be harvested, but she hadn’t come for the bounty it held.
Even when the passage is pared down, going back in time and then forward again is pretty awkward. I would probably try to describe the stone as cooling lava instead and then just be done with it. That is, assuming readers actually need to know about the lava right away.
Okay, we have a lady and her infant son 200 years ago who are not here to harvest igneous rock. Next paragraph.
They were there for the fire itself.
Wait – there’s still fire? I thought by “flickering remnants” Lake meant the lava was pulsing a bit, like coals. But I guess there are still open black flames.
Also, this line about the fire is being treated like a mini twist. It’s getting its own paragraph and everything. But readers haven’t been given any reason to care whether Lady Rydainn is here for the rock, lava, or fire. So the emphasis feels overdone.
Lake should have just focused on the flames more.
Simplified Intro With Flames
Lady Rydainn held her infant son close as she approached the cooling lava. Days ago, it had glowed violet, sheathed in roaring black flames. Now those flames were a mere flicker, but they would be enough.
So what are these magic flames for?
The men who typically guarded the vein from thieves lay in diminishing piles of ash, their bodies and armor charred to useless lumps of soot that scattered in the wind. Burned alive by a flame so hot, she could feel its radiance a half-furlong away. Sablefyre. An ancient element of the gods, forged eons ago in Aethyria’s fiery heart. A single touch could turn a body to ash, and blood to stone.
I have questions.
- Is “sablefyre” the black flame? And no, I don’t want to look it up in the glossary; I shouldn’t have to!*
- If it is the black flame, is Lady Rydainn really a whole 330 feet (a half furlong) away from it? Saying she “approached” it in the first paragraph created a very different image.
- Can she even see the piles of ash that used to be guards from over 300 feet away? Or were the guards standing really far away from what they were guarding?
Turning the body to ash but the blood to stone is interesting. It made me imagine a new sculpture in the shape of veins and arteries, but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be what happened to these guards.
Altogether, I think Lake is still trying to do too much in this paragraph, but it’s a little more understandable than before.
Okay, we have magical insta-death flames. Now what?
And she had arrived to offer up Zevander, her second-born son, to it.
Holy infanticide, Batman! It feels a little over the top, but at least this time giving a sentence its own paragraph was the right choice. If you’re going to announce an infanticide, it should probably have some emphasis on the page.
Also, I’m guessing this baby won’t actually die, because he has a name and that name is “Zevander.” That is a danger-boy name if I’ve ever seen one; they all seem to start with X or Z. Next, authors will probably start adding lots of apostrophes and harsh consonant sounds to them.
The love interest backstory theory for this prologue is looking pretty good.
Not by choice, of course. Lady Rydainn would’ve sacrificed herself right there and then, if it would spare Zevander from such a horrific fate. Unfortunately, the mage who’d demanded the exchange wasn’t interested in her pittance of an offer. He wanted her youngest son, and nothing more.
Hey, look, a whole paragraph that’s easy to understand! This could be partly because we’re not in the opening paragraphs anymore, but it’s more than that. Notice that Lake is focusing on making sure one thing is adequately explained.
She forced herself to set her eyes upon the dark and corrupt soul, where he stood alongside her eldest son and husband, watching her every step from the edge of the vein. The man she’d come to know as the most dangerous mage in all of Aethyria. One of few who’d mastered the ability to control the otherwise chaotic sablefyre and discovered a means to harness its deadly and divine power. He’d once been the king’s highest Magelord, a member of the exalted Magestroli, disgracefully dismissed on accusations of demutomancy – a dark form of magic decreed illegal by the king.
Wait, there’s been a bunch of people here this entire time? That’s jarring. When you’re setting the scene, you need to establish important features before readers get their bearings. People are always an important feature readers need to know about, just like this cooling lava. If the character is initially focused on something small, you don’t have to mention these features immediately. But as soon as the narrative camera zooms out, you should introduce them. In this case, if Lake simply mentioned that people are waiting for Lady Rydainn, it would be enough.
Also, this lady’s every step is being watched from a whole 330 feet away. Doesn’t that seem like a bit much? Did everyone just say, “Hey, we’re all going to head over to the evil flickering vein early, join us to kill your baby when you’re ready”?
Maybe earlier, when Lake wrote “she could feel its radiance a half-furlong away,” what Lake actually meant was “she had felt its radiance a half-furlong away.” So the lady is currently within that half furlong. But that’s not what the text says.
Perhaps more importantly, Lake is asking for pronoun confusion. That’s because Lake keeps using “he” for this mage instead of naming him. Notice that in the first sentence, the husband and eldest son are both mentioned. Later in the paragraph, a king is mentioned. They all go by the same pronoun.
Riddle me this: Who is watching the lady’s every step from so far away? Is it her husband, her son, the mage, or all three? Grammatically, it’s the husband because he is the last one mentioned, but I think Lake means the mage. That interpretation is important because it’s needed to understand who the next sentence fragment refers to. Otherwise, the husband could be the most dangerous mage in all of Aethyria.
If there were just a consistent label for this villain, Lake could ensure the paragraph was much easier to parse. Instead, she withholds the mage’s name so she can dramatically reveal it in another short paragraph.
Cadavros. The mere thought of his name cast a shiver down her spine.
Haha, his name is Cadavros. I like that Lake is making her names memorable, but they’re too on the nose. Lake is trying so hard to create a dark and serious atmosphere, but some of her names sound silly.
Even if that weren’t an issue, readers are just meeting this villain for the first time, so his name won’t give them shivers. Treating the name like a reveal isn’t going to do anything until that name has some significance. The lady may dread the name, but emotions don’t transfer straight from the viewpoint character to readers.
Keep Motivation Consistent
I’m going to skip over the next short paragraph, which is redundant except for naming a couple factions we don’t need to know about.
In their moment of desperation, the reclusive mage had approached the Rydainns with an offer they couldn’t refuse. A powerful protection spell against those who sought their heads, in exchange for their firstborn’s blood magic—a sampling Cadavros had claimed would be used in his studies.
So if he wants their firstborn’s magic, why are they killing their second son?
This whole situation is clearly too complicated. We’re getting so much exposition for a backstory from 200 years ago, and it’s still confusing. Maybe if Lake gave us just the right information, that would clean things up. But it sounds like the story might need to be streamlined.
If only Lady Rydainn possessed the power to reverse time. She would’ve chided her stupidity. Warned herself not to trust his lies. For, what he’d taken from her eldest boy was far more than a sampling of his magic.
Black, beady eyes, those deep soulless sockets, stared back at her, as if daring her to run from his ghastly form. There was a time he was said to have been handsome, but the dark and forbidden magic had taken a toll on him. Sank its claws into his flesh and twisted him into a wicked beast. From the top of his head breached long branching antlers, with horns that curled back. Deep grooves etched into his hardened skin reminded Lady Rydainn of tree bark, the black pulsing veins beneath said to house small serpents trapped inside his flesh.
So did Lady Rydainn have a choice in making this deal, or didn’t she? First Lake says this is a deal Lady Rydainn couldn’t refuse, then the lady regrets trusting the mage. That suggests she actually trusted him instead of being forced into a deal with him. Also, if she regrets making the deal over her elder son, why is she willing to kill her youngest son?
And what does Lake have against names? The second paragraph above could be describing the villain or the elder son. Once I read far enough, I concluded it was the villain, but that’s not a good experience for readers.
This is so much text about the villain. Maybe he appears in the present timeline as well. However, he does look pretty cool. I like the antlers and the bark skin.
His appearance was the result of having performed the Emberforge ritual on himself, the same ritual he intended for her son. A rite that only young children were believed to tolerate without any permanent disfigurement, seeing as they hadn’t yet gone through their Ascendency.
Lake, that does not sound like offering this baby to the insta-kill flames. Some stories covering sensitive issues will need to bring infanticide up, but pretending like the characters are committing infanticide when that’s not true feels like it’s in poor taste.
So Zevander is going to get dark magic, but don’t worry; he’ll be very pretty.
Lake, can he at least have a pair of antlers? Please?
Beside the mage stood her husband and their eldest son, Branimir,
whose similarly protruding black veins and coarse skin marked the horrific deformities of her first sacrifice only weeks before. A sacrifice that’d proven insufficient for the greedy mage, (…)Her demands to break the devil’s bargain with Cadavros had proven hopeless, when he’d vowed to slaughter both boys should she fail to comply. Not an idle threat, given the many inquisitions she’d witnessed where he’d exerted his power with merciless cruelty.
Wait a second, so the parents made a deal with Cadaver in which he would get a sample of Bran Muffin’s magic and the family would get protection from their enemies. Then Cadaver takes more than a sample, making the lady regret the deal. But Cadaver is still not satisfied, so he demands that he should also get to do something terrible to their second son even though that’s not part of the deal. Then the parents have to comply because Cadaver is threatening to kill both sons.
So why didn’t Cadaver just walk up to this family and say, “Give me your sons’ magic or I’ll kill all of you”? At this point, it’s not a contract agreement anymore; the family is doing this under the threat of death. And that makes the lady’s regrets extra silly because Cadaver could have killed them all if she said no to the first deal. Or he could have simply kidnapped the sons.
It feels like Lake is just making up everyone’s motivations as she goes along. But multiple motivations get confusing fast; you need to choose one and stick to it.
Next, Lady Rydainn… keeps approaching. She thinks about her beautiful baby boy and how she prayed to the gods in vain.
Had she the choice, she’d have sooner taken young Zevander and fled to Mortasia, beyond the Umbravale that separated the mortal lands from Aethyria. A place believed to be nothing but a barren wasteland, brimming with famine and death.
There was nowhere to hide. Nowhere to flee.
So the lady is willing to flee to a barren wasteland, but there’s nowhere to flee? If the implication is that Cadaver can easily chase her down, that needs to be stated. But since the lady has a 330-foot head start, maybe she should give it a go.
Alright, Lake, how about if we get on with the ritual now? We’ve had so much text while a woman walks. You’ve had abundant opportunities to give us all the exposition. Please make something happen.
Spoilers: Lake does not.
Make Less Mean More
Normally I have to summarize paragraphs I skip over, but not so much in this one. For this book, you folks will never know the difference. But just to ensure minor mentions in later excerpts aren’t confusing, here you should know that the lady is very angry with her husband. He made those enemies they need protection from.
The notion of watching her jubilant baby, an echo of the sweet, loving boy Branimir had once been, suffer the same fate was an agony she couldn’t bear.
Lady Rydainn’s power trembled like a plucked thread, as rays of moonlight hit the sigil on the nape of her neck, penetrating the thick fabric of her cloak and eliciting a charge that hummed in her veins. It innervated every cell in her body, rousing a cold rush to her fingertips, where it begged to be turned loose. The moon affected all Lunasier that way, and Zevander shifted in her arms, as if sensing the vibration beneath his mother’s skin.
It would’ve been years before his power would come to fruition, and she’d longed for those heartwarming moments of discovery that would soon be tainted by the poison of the flame.
Don’t mind Lady Rydainn; she’s just having a moon orgasm while taking her baby to his doom. Totally normal.
More seriously, this magic description would be fine if her moon powers were critical to the scene. But of course Lady Rydainn is not going to use her magic in any meaningful way because Zevander is predestined to be a dark and broody love interest. So spending a whole paragraph describing how she charges her moon batteries feels overdone.
The paragraphs of Lady Rydainn feeling upset are similar. Obviously, she should feel something in this situation. But just because her feelings are strong doesn’t mean they need to take up a whole page. Perhaps Lake believes dragging this out will make readers care about the situation, but it won’t, not in itself.
For that, readers have to get attached to Zevander and get a better understanding of how terrible his fate is. Lake has suggested his moon powers will be taken away and replaced by dark magic. But right now, making people look scary is the only negative effect of the dark magic we know about, and Lake has specified that young children like Zevander don’t change that way.
With so much emphasis on how upset Lady Rydainn is, this is beginning to feel melodramatic even though strong feelings are perfectly justified. Lake is making this worse by doing too much telling of emotions: for instance, “an agony she couldn’t bear.”
Fighting Cadavros was futile, though. With the power of sablefyre at his command, she’d be reduced to ash, like the guards who’d tried to fight him off when they’d first arrived at the vein.
A tear streaked down her cheek. “Pilazyo. Orosj tye clemuhd,” she
whispered. Please. I’m begging your mercy.Cadavros wordlessly slipped his fingers beneath the baby, and her tears turned hysterical when he gave a tug.
She yanked her child back to her, jerking the young boy to her chest. “Nith! Nith hazjo’li! Je fili meuz!” I will not do this! He is my son!
Lake has a conlang! I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, given all the new words in the glossary.* But it’s been a while since I’ve seen a conlang in a critique. They are a fun worldbuilding exercise, one I have engaged in myself. Theoretically, if they are used well, they’ll make the world more immersive and keep fans busy talking in secret codes.
There’s just one problem. See, the purpose of writing is to put down symbols that represent ideas so that other people can observe the symbols to receive your ideas. If you insert symbols that no one can translate into ideas, well… it rather defeats the point of writing in the first place.
Does writing dialogue in a conlang and then also in English add to the reader’s experience? Unlikely. My eyes just skip right to the translated text. The conlang is instantly forgotten, and the only difference is that Lake has called attention to the inherent awkwardness of conlangs.
I have an article on incorporating a conlang into your story. But my recommendation is to use them in a very limited manner, and that’s a bummer for people who love conlangs. I get it, I do.
Zevander’s outcry, as Cadavros pried the boy from his mother’s arms, stirred her instincts. On a whim of madness, Lady Rydainn lurched for the beastly man who carried her son toward the smoldering vein, but a force struck her throat, knocking the breath out of her. Black smoke crawled from her mouth, choking out the words she’d longed to say. Stop! I surrender myself! Her unseen attacker held her there in its invisible grasp, while Cadavros didn’t even spare her a glance.
Lord Rydainn strode toward his suffering wife, but as he neared, his leg snapped beneath him with the gut-twisting sound of splintering bone. His outcry echoed through the surrounding forest, and he fell to the ground, his limb bent wrong at the knee.
If written differently, what’s happening here might be exciting. Lady Rydainn tries to stop Cadaver, but then something Force chokes her. When her husband tries to help her, the unseen force breaks his leg.
Unfortunately, this isn’t a real conflict, just calamity. For a conflict to work, the protagonist must have the ability to affect the outcome. It’s clear that Lady and Lord Rydainn are helpless and their actions don’t matter. In turn, we have no reason to follow events closely. Instead of an exciting struggle, this is just more emotional expression or maybe a little misery porn.
Also, since Lady Rydainn is so desperate, why isn’t she trying to use all of that moon magic Lake went on about earlier? She’s angry and experiencing a “whim of madness,” but the most she can muster is a lurch?
Are there invisible spirits hanging around Cadaver? That could provide some novelty, but the possibility gets very few words. Maybe Cadaver is doing this magic himself and Lake is trying to show us that it takes him little effort.
Altogether, it’s a big lost opportunity.
Lady Rydainn whimpered and quailed, her knees weak with defeat, and before she could shutter her eyes from the horror, Cadavros shoved his palm against her baby’s mouth, smothering him with the black flame.
[…]The trauma that both of her precious sons were made to suffer tore at her heart with jagged teeth. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she watched the black flames emerge through her son’s skin, licking the night air like the dark tongues of serpents.
Zevander’s struggle ceased, his body limp. The flames died, settling across the baby’s flesh in wicked black swirls.
The darkness had accepted and branded him.
An eternal curse.
Finally, we’ve arrived at the actual transformation. Unfortunately, it’s hard to feel the impact because Lady Rydainn’s emotional reactions are constantly intruding. She’s shuttering her eyes from the horror and having her heart figuratively torn out with jagged teeth. In comparison, the flames emerging from Zevander and the black swirls on his skin are relatively understated. But it’s the ritual that matters to this story, not Lady Rydainn’s melodramatic feelings.
Maybe my issue is that I’m not interested in graphic depictions of infanticide. Cadaver is not actually killing the baby, but Lake wants it to look like he is.
Then Lake gives a bunch of bold declarations about darkness and an eternal curse, but those are abstract concepts. They feel like marketing buzz, not substance. What does this transformation actually do? I’m interested in the magic; tell me more about it.
Cadavros lifted the baby and drew his noseless face over her son’s naked chest. His mouth opened impossibly wide, and he shoved Zevander’s head inside.
“No! Oh, gods! No!” A scream rattled in futile misery inside her chest, as Lady Rydainn watched in horror while the ghoulish mage attempted to consume her child.
Lololol! OMG, baby eating, it’s just too much!
This is why the make less mean more mantra is important, folks. Because before we learn how to create emotional impact, our tendency is to make everything extreme to get a reaction. But if you do that, you just end up with something that feels comically exaggerated. This is clearly not what Lake wants.
To make a story darker, start by making existing hardships more emotionally impactful. Make readers care about the people who are suffering, and show the harm done to them in detail. Give problems negative ripple effects, and use some realism to make it hit home. If the realism is too low, you may end up with something that is less dark in tone and more Halloween-y in aesthetic – like violet lava and black fire. Halloween aesthetics are great; it’s just not the same thing.
Adding some miscommunication to the comedy in this excerpt, that first pronoun there is referencing the wrong individual. The baby has he/him pronouns, so “his noseless face” technically refers to the baby’s face. The initial impression I had was Wait, the ritual removed the baby’s nose? That’s not what I expected for a love interest.
Finally, where did Lady Rydainn’s conlang go? She’s just speaking in English now. If we’re being generous, we might say she is bilingual. But since she was speaking in desperation before, that makes it unlikely she’s reflexively changed to her native tongue here.
Be Concrete, Not Vague
So is Zevander actually going to get eaten? If he is, points to Lake for surprising me at least.
The mage let out a boisterous roar and yanked the child from his mouth. He tipped his head, inspecting the black markings left on her baby’s skin. A deep, guttural sound rolled in his chest, and he snarled, snapping his attention back to the flame. “Quez sa’il!” What is this?
Again, he looked back to the boy, running his finger over one of the markings on his chest. Growling, he struck the infant’s face and tossed him into the flaming fissure.
Lake, after the villain tried to bite the baby’s head off, nothing you do to this baby will shock readers anymore. And if the villain was not allowed to eat him, there’s no way that fissure is going to finish him off.
So the baby gets cool-looking black swirls and is invulnerable now. What exactly is the downside here?
“No!” The scream that echoed through the forest could’ve roused the old gods from their slumber, as Lady Rydainn shook and cursed their names, demanding they set her free.
Lord Rydainn howled in agony, crawling toward the vein with his horribly mangled leg dragging behind him. “You bastard! You fucking bastard!”
Cadaver, please put these parents out of their misery.
Okay, okay. Let’s say this is a serious sequence and it’s only realistic for the parents to have a big reaction. What should Lake do?
First, showing more and telling less would reduce the melodrama. Lake could get rid of words such as “in agony” and “horribly.” Using more creative phrases like “could’ve roused the old gods from their slumber” is also another way of telling.
Second, even though this is an extreme situation, their reactions are still either too overblown or nonsensical. Think what actors would do. Would the actor playing Lord Rydainn both howl and also say, “You bastard!” Probably just the latter. And would Lady Rydainn be focused on the old gods right now instead of the villain and possibly dead baby in front of her? Instead, she might reach for Zevander even though touching the flames could kill her.
Finally, even if these emotional reactions felt realistic, readers would get bored of them after a while. In fact, I think one of the reasons they feel over the top is that Lake is switching things up to avoid repetition. But that’s a self-imposed problem. Instead, Lake can summarize and gloss over the parents more, even if they’re having a fit.
I would go for something briefer.
Lady Rydainn wailed and reached for Zevander. Just before she touched the deadly flames, Lord Rydainn grabbed her wrist to pull her back, twisting his broken leg. His tears fell on her palm before she swatted him away.
Notice that twisting his broken leg sounds bad enough without declaring it’s “horribly mangled.”
Next, Cadaver grabs the limp baby from the fissure.
Lingering wisps of smoke drifted over the mage’s face, and she caught the glisten of raw flesh across his bark-like skin.
It was then that Lady Rydainn realized: in his attempt to harm her son, he’d somehow suffered pain himself.
While Zevander already has enough powers, I imagine Lake might need a reason why Cadaver (the big bad?) doesn’t keep trying to kill him. If Cadaver’s attempts only end up harming himself, that’s a pretty solid reason. While it might risk making Cadaver look less threatening, currently he’s all but unstoppable, so it’s probably fine.
I just wish this got more development in comparison to all the words spent on Lady Rydainn. How did Cadaver inadvertently create this effect?
The pressure at her throat subsided, and sapped of all will, she crumpled to the ground. When those cloven feet stood before her again, she lifted her gaze to see Cadavros handing back her listless child, carelessly holding him by his arm as if he were nothing but a sack of meat and bones. Feeble arms outstretched, she reached back for him and cradled him against her. A searing heat burned her skin, but she refused to let him go.
(…)
Thank the gods! He still breathed. On a tearful exhale, she held him tighter and kissed the top of his head. Her sweet child had survived being cast into sablefyre–a fate that would’ve left any other a pile of ashes like the poor soldiers.
Oh look, Zevander is alive. I am shocked, I tell you, shocked.
Also, Lady Rydainn has been thinking in English. The lesson here is that if you must have a character speak in a conlang, don’t make it your viewpoint character. Then you at least won’t have thoughts to deal with. Plus, if your viewpoint character doesn’t know the conlang, they have the option of not understanding some words.
The babe awoke, and the once innocent blue of his eyes showed as a gradient of wine red with swirls of orange and gold that converged at the center in a black eclipse. The silvery wisps of hair that’d begun to grow in had burned away. Gone was the soul of a harmless, loving child. In his place lay the vestiges of an aberration that the gods would surely forsake.
Squirming in her arms, the child cooed and babbled, a peculiar sight, given what he’d suffered moments before. The gash at his face had blackened into a deep groove that mirrored the vein from which he’d been pulled. At the edges of the wound, smaller black veins branched out like rivulets on a map.
So we’ve confirmed this baby looks super cool and badass now. But what nonsuperficial differences are there? Maybe Lady Rydainn knows little about it (you’d think she would have asked), but this dark magic is supposed to be notorious and forbidden. Surely there are some rumors?
Will Zevander start hungering for people’s souls? Will he blight crops he comes near? Will he drain someone’s life force every time he casts a spell? Maybe Lake can ask Alex Aster, the author of Lightlark, for some curse ideas.
As is, this focus on appearance plus vaguery about darkness makes me think it’s nothing special. Maybe Zevander can control the insta-kill flames. That would make him formidable, like most love interests, but it would be a terribly uninteresting effect. Even creating a fun fight scene would be challenging if his opponents immediately die.
Cadaver hasn’t been mentioned since he gave the baby back. I guess he must be standing around in the background somewhere. After Lake spent so many words on this big bad and how scary he is, that’s a pretty lackluster way for him to exit the scene.
Alright, we’re ready to close the prologue. In the ending passage, Bran Muffin has a good stare at his baby brother.
He reached for Zevander, running his finger over the marking on his chest, a curious black swirl that’d seemed to anger Cadavros. On closer examination, there seemed to be words written in ancient Primyrian embedded in the swirl in a way that reminded Lady Rydainn of a wax seal across his heart. Branimir’s lips twisted to a snarl as he whispered the words that stabbed her conscience. “Il captris nith reviris.”
What is taken will never return.
In an alternate universe, this could be a resonant ending. But as far as we know, the only thing that’s has been taken is Zevander’s inherited magic and his blue eyes, which have been replaced by dark magic and swirly eyes. So this is not hitting home the way it could.
Maybe something else has been taken, but if so, Lake needs to tell us about it. Vagueness doesn’t have emotional power. Curiosity can be compelling, but it requires a strange set of circumstances to make readers wonder. Here, it’s not even clear if there is something to wonder about.
The Opening Overall
Let’s start with the big picture. Is this prologue a good idea? It could be worse. While I recommend opening with the main character, a love interest in a romance is the next best thing.
But for a sequence focused on the love interest, I don’t think this is doing what it could have. Because Zevander’s only a baby, it still doesn’t feel like we know him. It’s also hard to say how much he’s suffering. I think Lake could have gotten more sympathy for Zevander if the prologue featured him as a boy being taken away from his mother. That way, it could focus on his suffering instead of hers.
As currently written, the best use for this prologue would be if we need to know all of these characters. If the beginning is already crowded with information, it could be hard to remember them otherwise. Adding a prologue just to convey information is a tactic of last resort, but sometimes that’s what we have to do. And considering the glossary, that’s the kind of trouble Lake might be in.
Regardless, the prologue is almost certainly longer than it needs to be. So many paragraphs are wasted trying to get readers to feel emotion via tactics that don’t work very well.
Then, Lake is missing the mark on the tone and atmosphere she’s aiming for. She did say this was her first gothic fantasy. Less critical readers may still enjoy the black flames, antler horns, and edgy provocation, but only if Halloween and grimdark sauce is what they want from their stories. I’m not the only one who will laugh at baby eating in this context.
However, if Lake could just conquer a few bad habits, I actually think her wordcraft could be a selling point. Unlike many romantasies, it feels graceful rather than modern. She chooses strong verbs, and her prose often has a nice rhythm to it.
But foremost, she has to stop telling so much. She’s hyping her content rather than letting it stand for itself, creating melodrama. After that, she should work on clarity. She has too much ambiguity with pronouns and modifiers. Her frequent use of sentence fragments is making this worse.
The other issues with her narration are mostly a matter of what she’s choosing to communicate with each sentence, not how she’s doing it. It takes extensive knowledge to become more intentional about what we’re writing and why. Hopefully, with time, she’ll get there.
Altogether, I’d say this book might get fans because of the type of story Lake is telling. Romantasy is so big; surely some readers are looking for a darker version. But judging only by the prologue, I don’t think Lake will win over anyone who is critical or skeptical. It’s just too excessive.
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- Days ago: MOM = 3954 days ago & DAD = 608 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
