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Hi all! Been a while since I've been on here. Because Life. Just wondering if anyone would like to take a look at the first chapter of my novel. Well, the brief prologue and first chapter. Will gladly look at someone else's in return. Thanks!
Posts: 456 | Registered: May 2009
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Thanks! The book's nearly done. Just wanted another pair of eyes to look at the opening. It's fairly gritty in the beginning. The story sort of demands it. It's the inciting incident to what comes afterward. Plus, it's in the voice of the main character, first person POV. So you're getting his perspective, which I hope is interesting if a bit rough around the edges.
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Fantasy isn't my favorite genre, and some of the things that I assume fantasy readers love fell flat for me.
But I liked this. The first chapter. I guess it's more interesting than 90% of the books I pick up. Interesting character, interesting interaction (I think that's what most engaged me), interesting premise (another reason to keep reading). If it stays that good, it deserves to be published. IMO.
I didn't see how the prologue added anything to the story.
Someone else should offer an opinion?
Posts: 407 | Registered: Apr 2018
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Wow! Thanks. I'm considering cutting the prologue. I think you're right there. I appreciate the look.
Posts: 456 | Registered: May 2009
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Given that this is the fragments and feedback section, why not make use of it while you're here?
Posts: 263 | Registered: Dec 2016
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Ok. These are the opening words to my novel, Masks of Azharnath. It's meant to be a song originally for children, but with new lyrics sung by a heretical priestess in front of her accusers. It contains a big plot point to the story, but only revealed later. Any thoughts?
When bitter winds of winter blow This dark thing their song doth tell Those evil times of overthrow That wondrous day when Annim fell When Annim from his high throne came And stood upon the earthen hill Then deepest hell raised hands in praise To laud their king and do his will That wondrous day, that winter's day That darkest day when Annim fell - The Song of the Heretic, Sister Secaris the Mad.
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Hi Anderson. I like your Sister's name and appellation. A hint of humour there. Difficult to say more without a little more material though.
I'd be happy to read prologue + Chapter 1, but I can't promise high-speed turnaround time -- might need a few weeks to get to it.
Posts: 115 | Registered: May 2018
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Scansion of the poem reveals an overall iambic tetrameter, the metric foot of ballads, comparable to a music score's 4/4 time signature. Several of the lines are seven syllables, one short for regular meter, which is catalexis, and informs how to read the poem, a brief pause at the ends of those lines. The regular ballad stanza is four lines, first and third unrhymed tetrameter, second and fourth rhymed trimeter (catalexis lines, several or more stanzas, line breaks between stanzas).
One loose ballad form is a cadence song for military unit marches, 4/4 time signature iambic dimeter, and enjambment the third line's end, here:
Beans on bre-ad, Beans on gravy, Sure am glad I Joined the Navy.
Ten lines total for the subject poem. The rhyme scheme is: A B A B C D E D F and F doublet F and B doublet
Doublet lines usually entail a caesura, a "cut," that implies a minor pause and occasions a substantive pathos alteration for the parallel structure, synchrisis figure.
A minor dramatic turn transpires for the tenth and last line and contains a congruent opposite contradiction, usually given at a two-thirds to three-fourths waypoint of a poem, and a rhyme scheme change attends.
Traditional early poems used few punctuation marks, though the late middle ages saw punctuation used more, and all of present-day punctuation used from the Renaissance forward. Contemporary, present-day poetry's punctuation marks range from rigid to loose conventions.
Punctuated for regular convention, plus "hell" proper noun capitalized:
//When bitter winds of winter blow[,] This dark thing their song doth tell[:] Those evil times of overthrow[,] That wondrous day when Annim fell[,] When Annim from his high throne came And stood upon the earthen hill[.] Then deepest [H]ell raised hands in praise To laud their king and do his will[.] That wondrous day, that winter's day[,] That darkest day when Annim fell[.]//
Children's songs are sing-song language, manners, and morals teaching and learning rhymes, "rounds." Re-innovated for adult purposes, children's songs express satire and sarcasm, that is, social commentary, mockery, ridicule, scorn, and contempt about vice and folly, and are of doubled or more congruent opposite meaning subtexts that entail obfuscated social criticisms, otherwise known as court irony: praise through faint condemnation, condemnation through faint praise, and both.
However, a heretical priestess, any cleric, probably doesn't know the arcana of the bardic and poet traditions. I'd anticipate an accidental serendipity of her sung poem to be a melded bardic copycat polish, children's round, and clumsy poetry skills, yet appeal from all and of especial social criticism. Plus, poetry's brevity wants more expressed with less, that is, from poetic equipment (rhetoric figures).
The first line, for example, occasions riddle-like doubled meaning skews of repetitious "bitter winds" and "winter blow." Metaphors maybe, other figures and figure melds, too.
A de copia illustration (of abundance), experimental trial and error -- a few; could be dozens or hundreds or thousands attempted:
//bitter breath of icy blow// //relentless of winter blow// //sharpest breeze of season flow//
An epigraph's function is to suggest an overall narrative's or chapter's theme. The poem declares a subject though not an implied theme given. A theme is a human moral condition which a narrative is truly about. Between the poem's surface expression and an as-is unrealized theme is a poem's strength and appeal, a subtext of what is unsaid though truly meant.
"Secaris" is a brand-name, off-the-shelf nasal medication that might want adjustment, the "is" suffix from neutral inflection to a feminine marker: "as," or other, "a," "ia," "ias." Masculine: "es," "os," "o," and "us." Other possible spelling changes include Pysecoras, Sekarias, Sechoras, Sicora (feminine name of a divine wind, Aegean Sea; Sikora, a small Balkans bird), Seequoras, etc., little, if any, pronunciation change, yet feminine inflections.
The poem epigraph does little to entice me to read further as an engaged reader, though few epigraphs do, and I usually only give them passing notice, except if one is especially apt yet doesn't give away or telegraph the action to come. The poem telegraphs the action to come or is mere prologue backstory summary.
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My right hand's up, wavin' at you! Ready to read the first 6,000 words of your manuscript if you will read my 6,000 word short story, Liberation Kid (1st 13 lines in Fragments And Feedback for Short Stories)
Posts: 98 | Registered: Feb 2019
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WarrenB and princesisto, will do. I'll send it right out. Thanks! And thank you, extrinsic. The amount of thought you put into every post astonishes me. I'm not a poet and I know it. But it isn't meant to be great poetry. I just didn't want to completely embarrass myself. lol. Secaris is nasal medication? Maybe I can work that in somehow. (grin) Again, thanks!
Posts: 456 | Registered: May 2009
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This is the first thing a reader sees, so I have to ask what the purpose is, given that the reader lacks context for the name, the society, or even what's going on.
It won't make the reader curious, given that curiosity is why they're on page one. It does, though, delay the arrival of the actual story. So I have to ask: is this a darling, loved for itself by the author, but cryptic for the reader?
Obviously, I can't speak for anyone but me, but when I hit something like this, I skim past, with just the reaction, "ahh...this is one of "those" stories.
Your mileage may differ.
Posts: 263 | Registered: Dec 2016
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Thanks Jay. I wouldn't call it a darling. My book is split into parts - first a prologue, then Part #, followed by an interlude where it takes up another character's viewpoint. Every Interlude begins with an epigraph, usually a quotation from an ancient text. They aren't long, but serve to give a brief snippet of relevant information. I might cut them, but I'll wait until the book's completed and I get a few readers to let me know if it works or not as a complete work. Thanks for the help.
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