D&D Snippets

[Lady Moreta]

I am horribly sad that my 'net wifey has nothing for my Glory snippet, the sequel to Steel Song T_T

Give me that critique of my Lyra snippet you promised and I'll see

Heh, sorry about that, Lady Moreta, I tend to write vignettes in the middle, and, as such, tend not to account for people not knowing the fluff in question. As such, I do apologise.

Perhaps my wording wasn't quite right... It's not completely clear what's going on, regardless of how much/little is known by the reader about the setting. You're right, I don't know a huge amount about Eberron, but these are a person's thoughts. They should be clearer and more coherent than they are (and yes I realise that sometimes clear and coherent thought won't be in character, but here it's clear that your character is very erudite). It's a little hard to follow in places because the writing isn't making the thought patterns clear, not because I don't know much about the Eberron setting.

The run on sentence may very well need editing, but pretty much the whole thing is him thinking, and the bits in brackets are sort of asides, calculations he's just throwing off, because that's what a Warforged does instinctively.

It does, trust me. The first sentence I quote needs editing quite badly, because as I already said, it makes no sense. As far as I can tell, it isn't even a complete sentence. Knowing about the setting won't help anyone read it because it just doesn't make sense. And just because an entire snippet is someone thinking, that doesn't mean it needs to be full of run-on sentences. Most people think in complete or near-complete sentences. I imagine a warforged like this would be even more precise in how he thinks. I'll say the same thing I said to Teej a while ago - you use too many commas. Commas are good for brief punctuation, but they can easily be overused. If you want to depict long, rambling thoughts, break out the full arsenal of punctuations pauses. Use commas, semi-colons, dashes/hyphens (I can never remember which is which). You could even depict long rambling thoughts by using lots of short sentences. One sentence for each thought, then have the character berate themselves for letting their mind wander.

I realise the whole thing is him thinking and the brackets are just asides, I said that. My point was that it would be easier to read and flow better if they were in italics, rather than brackets. Brackets are designed for providing extra information that isn't vital but can still be helpful. This guy is simply thinking, the asides aren't vital or necessarily 'helpful' - in the sense that they don't add any sort of explanatory feature to the rest of his thoughts - they are, as we've both said, asides, little extra thoughts that have popped up in the course of his musings, but aren't in fact related to the main issue at hand.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed this. You did a great job of getting into the warforged's head and showing his motivations and thoughts - and overall I did understand what it was he was thinking about and deciding. It just required a little bit of guess work on my part, that, considering how good and well-expounded the rest of the snippet was, I assumed the reader shouldn't have needed guess work at all - regardless of how well they knew the setting.

EDIT: Adding in another review!

Lord_Gareth:

Spoiler

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Fine net-hubby… here’s a review be aware, you’re only getting it because I’m at work, have nothing to do and I’m bored. And I don’t know why I’m bothering – besides “this is really fantastic” I don’t know what else to say!

So I’ll nitpick instead

One of them, a sorcerer or arcanist or whatever mortals call them, chanted and unleashed a wave of crashing thunder that deafened the Tanar'ri ranks, driving them back from the sheer sonic force of it, and their priest invoked the name of some wretched god of light and turned the front ranks of the demons into ash.

This is a loooooong sentence. Not really a run-on sentence, since it makes perfect sense and does flow pretty well, but it’s rather long and I find myself running out of breath at the end of it. And yes, I know I’m reading it in my head, so how could I possibly run out of breath? I read as if I were reading aloud and I can tell I’d run out of breath by the end of this sentence. I would either break it into two, have the sorcerer’s actions in one and the priest in another. Or at the very least, I’d change that last comma (the one before you go into what the priest is doing) into a semi-colon. It gives the reader a bit of a pause, time to digest what they’ve just read, before going on.

I do have one question though – why did you give each speaker a different format? Italics, underline etc… it isn’t necessary and quite frankly, I find it really distracting. You shouldn’t need different formats to differentiate between speakers, if the story doesn’t make that clear itself, then it needs to be rewritten. Having said that, your story does make it clear who is speaking, which means I really don’t understand why you’ve done it.

"Gods damn it Francis, you aren't invincible like you think you are!"

Don’t ask me why, because I’m not sure, but something bugs me about this sentence. I think it’s the word ‘like’ – but I can’t fathom why I find it so jarring. It’s a perfectly well-constructed sentence, even without the description of the woman speaking I can hear the desperation in it and the fear. And I don’t have any suggestion on how it could be re-worded it just – bugs me. I think it’s down to the usual meaning of the word – to enjoy, love, be happy with etc… it doesn’t seem to fit the desperation. I don’t know, now I’m just talking crap.

As for the rest – I adore Brintari - he’s out of his depth and happy to acknowledge it, but still stubbornly determined to stay and watch. I love his opinionated way of thinking/talking – the comments about demon stupidity, how fast Francis moved. You do a great job of showing us that this guy is a – well, a devil I’m guessing, but not-of-this-world in essence. His confusion about the ‘half-breed’, the way he keeps insisting that Francis couldn’t possibly have moved that fast.

Your descriptions, especially of the fighting ‘hurricane’, ‘like a god’, with the ‘white, white smile’ are excellent as always. You have a real gift for writing fight scenes, I’m quite jealous. And the way you characterise people in such a short space of time and words – it’s just brilliant. I love

"If there can be no victory," he whispered, clutching a dozen bleeding wounds, "then I will fight forever!"

Just wonderful. I think this is my new favourite of yours.

There. Are you happy now? :-P