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Post by Bannanachair on May 17, 2019 20:02:55 GMT -4
I wrote this for a contest on another website, and the theme was "festivals, family and fate" or something like that, and it was recommended that I put an emphasis on my worldbuilding.
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Post by Tikobe on May 17, 2019 23:58:41 GMT -4
An emphasis... On your world building.
Yeah, no. Not even gonna lie, there was so much world building here in a mere ~3000 words that it was hard to remain gripped onto the story, or that there was even a main story at all up until the second half of it.
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Post by Bannanachair on May 18, 2019 6:40:23 GMT -4
An emphasis... On your world building. Yeah, no. Not even gonna lie, there was so much world building here in a mere ~3000 words that it was hard to remain gripped onto the story, or that there was even a main story at all up until the second half of it. Sorry about that. I got slightly carried away. Is the worldbuilding good, at least? |
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Post by Tikobe on May 18, 2019 13:14:47 GMT -4
An emphasis... On your world building. Yeah, no. Not even gonna lie, there was so much world building here in a mere ~3000 words that it was hard to remain gripped onto the story, or that there was even a main story at all up until the second half of it. Sorry about that. I got slightly carried away. Is the worldbuilding good, at least? Yeah, there was plenty that was nice, it's just that there was so much of it, and ironically not nearly enough about Piha'o. That guy only had a few sentences on him throughout the entire thing and he's the main plot twist of the story. |
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Post by Bannanachair on May 18, 2019 13:21:03 GMT -4
Sorry about that. I got slightly carried away. Is the worldbuilding good, at least? Yeah, there was plenty that was nice, it's just that there was so much of it, and ironically not nearly enough about Piha'o. That guy only had a few sentences on him throughout the entire thing and he's the main plot twist of the story. Yeah, I had wanted to write more but was constrained by a 3,000-word word limit that I ended up exceeding anyway. Thanks for the input - I'll keep it in mind if I decide to revise the story at all, even though it's already submitted for the contest that it was for. And I'll keep in mind that I should do more foreshadowing next time I write any story that attempts a similar twist. |
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Post by Duck14 on May 19, 2019 3:00:10 GMT -4
Alright, these are just some opening thoughts before I muse on it any further. I won’t go into grammar stuff as that’s generally unhelpful at this stage and no one wants grammar as criticism when everything else is more important and change around it. Besides your generally quite clean on that front, with the obvious omissions of Oxford commas being the main thing I picked out on my first read through.
Anyway, I generally agree with Tikobe here. It’s obvious you struggled battling with the constraint of word limit while also building this unique world. It really does pick up in the second half but your concepts in the first half are all really interesting. I like how they determine their seasons based on last rain, and the tattoos are all really unique. That’s a really cool concept you have there.
But you never really show us these tattoos. If Soraino can’t read some of them it implies they aren’t written word but symbols. You tell us continually what the tattoos on those around us mean but we never see these symbols and never get a chance to assume on our own. Remember we’re in the POV of Soranino, we see what he sees. Reading relies a lot on the sense, we need to see the world to read it properly. Tell us what things look like, tell us what things feel like, taste like, that sort of thing. And trust me that can be difficult, especially with your restraints. And will add a lot of words to the first half, which is a little weaker than the second. However, I don’t think the twist at the end is necessary at all. I like it but it’s not foreshadowed and since this is a short story won’t really lead anywhere. I will get back to that in a moment.
Then there’s the dialogue. Now admittedly this is a different society to my own and very unique but everyone here says exactly what they mean to say and nothing more. There’s no subtext, no point to some of it, so it kind of feels a little superfluous. This is once again something that really improves in the second half, once the wedding starts. Chépauto does especially well here. He’s feels like more of a character because we see his wisdom through Soranino, we see him struggle to learn the meaning of the plates. And his dialogue feels real.
Sometimes you will have a character say something that wastes words and that’s something that would be good to avoid. Not saying they’re the wrong words or anything but it would be helpful in this sort of thing to know that. When Ngoichi has Chépauto explain everything, she doesn’t need to say that. Just have Chépauto explain everything and you have those words back to use elsewhere. In the first scene why is Kzaide the one most excited about the wedding? It all flows really seamlessly because there’s not an immediate conflict and so everyone speaks the same way. Once again, that’s only early on.
But I think building a conflict that’s immediate could work in your favour. Here the conflict isn’t until way after the story ends. And that’s the story we want to read because it’s interesting. We want to see this great foretold conqueror. That’s what I want to read at the very least. Because you’ve told us that the conflict is there and told us that the story there is more important and more interesting.
I think you could even turn this current dialogue into something interesting. This society works on a basis of everything being determined. Everyone is content that their future is foretold and they know everything about everyone because of their tattoos. No one is evil. No one is angry. Everything works as it should. Maybe giving us more insight into the way Soraino sees the world. Show us how he feels. How he wants to break out of this cycle, even a little. Maybe he doesn’t want to know the future. Maybe he doesn’t want everyone to know his history. I don’t know, that could be interesting.
Maybe working with less characters may even help with your word count. There are so many and short stories really don’t need that much. It’s too much over so little time.
And trust me I wouldn’t have written this much if I didn’t see potential in this, so don’t be discouraged. I like to ramble, and I don’t do it enough. But you’ve got some really cool concepts here that help build this world.
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Post by Bannanachair on May 19, 2019 19:48:30 GMT -4
I'm going to be expanding upon the story a lot now that the contest it was written for is done.
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