(Part 2) Best products from r/DestructiveReaders

Hello! Thought I'd try my first stab at DestructiveReaders on your story. Lucky you. Disclaimer: I'm a professional editor... of marketing materials--not fiction.

Here's what you requested be dug into:

1) Narrative Style

I think people are telling you it feels detached because it needs another heavy edit. I'd recommend reading On Writing Well by William Zinsser. I think his advice could help you clean your prose up a bit. I see what you're trying to do to add tension, but your sentences don't flow together as nicely as they could. Another suggestion would be to read your work out loud and assess where it doesn't sound right.

2) Worldbuilding

I can see that you're trying to give the story an ominous tone with your prose, but try to favor showing to set the tone. The dramatic language should be a second layer to back up what's happening in the story.

For example, your story begins with three paragraphs of what I'd called "preamble". More effective would be to open the story by starting with the Kalina looking out her window at the mourners. I feel like you're repeating the fact that the Czar's daughter is dying too many times. Readers will understand after you mention it once.

I'd also recommend not saying "the Czar's daughter" repeatedly in the beginning. Start with "Kalina, the Czar's daughter..." and the refer to her as Kalina beyond that. Even better would be making one of the mourners wail something like, "Kalina, our Czar's daughter! We mourn you!" to be more artful about the exposition.

Everything being "red" might be a little too on-the-nose of a metaphor for a book about communism, but maybe that's just my taste.

Overall, too much showing and not telling. Just one example of many: "...dying people should not speak, it is improper." I want to see an example of somebody chastising her for speaking (or something), not just be told that it's improper. Readers want to care for Kalina, and building tension by showing that she can't even speak, even though she's dying, would be more emotional.

The image of a mourning crowd outside the dying princess' room is and makes me want to know more. Why is she dying? Why do they love her so much? Good stuff.

3) Dialogue

Use your dialogue to drive the story and the amount that you're (again) showing. For example, in the scene where Kalina interacts with her mammoth, start with "I'll come back, Lyuba." And then describe what she does with the mammoth from there. There's a whole paragraph of telling above it that could be worked into the action after she first speaks to her pet.

I'm actually at work now, but hopefully I can do some line edits tonight.

Overall, I think it's an interesting concept that could be helped with some screw tightening.

I'm only a recently active poster, but I hope to remain so. I just moved and I'm between jobs so I started writing a novel (stave off madness from the job boards) and was looking for some strong critiques. I really like the premise of a semi-enforced give to get critical community, because it helps build the skills of everybody involved.

I was an English major, but also always an avid reader, so my favorite books have a bit of a range (representative not comprehensive):

• Gatsby, Ulysses, The Sound and the Fury
  
• Song of Ice and Fire, His Dark Materials
  
• Harry Potter
  
• Moby Dick
  
• Paradise Lost, The Odyssey
  
• Citizens, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Last Lion Churchill series, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
  
  I'm predisposed to find things I like in almost any piece, but because I can find really great gems I try to be rough on the rough spots. I'm most drawn to anything that is true to life, even in the most fantastical situations.

Purdue has a free online lab with lots of writing resources. It's geared toward the academic, but can be applied to fiction. [This link](
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/600/01/) goes to a page on sentence clarity. A sidebar on the left links to more subjects within the Mechanics section.

This links to the main resource page, which contains links to all sections, including Mechanics, Grammar, Punctuation and more, all with their own sub-sections.

**

^^EDIT

A recent edition of The Elements of Style* is available for free here. For purists, the original 1918 edition is online here. This book is not the be-all-end-all Writing Bible, but it's useful, concise, and touted by more than one famous author.

(For people like u/ldonthaveaname, this style guide may have greater appeal.)

I was joking there, with my reply :) I do, however, think using that language inaccurately equates image production in text-based literature to that in cinematography. This becomes especially mis-applied when discussing literature with a non-standard POV (say, a fake literary critique).

I also firmly believe that it's fine to describe how characters think and reason about their situations. While I agree that relying on this can be dull, there are many examples of literature that takes place entirely in the main character's mind. See or "The Depressed Person" by David Foster Wallace or "Axolotl" by Julio Cortázar or (one of my personal favorites) "The Secret Miracle" by Jorge Luis Borges for some canonically accepted examples of what I mean.

As for what inspired my writing, it was, alas, not r/writingPrompts. I was reading a (weird) book called How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Novel, which is about a single father that raises his son who is a 1971 Volkswagen Beetle. I felt that one of the most underdeveloped "quirks" of the novel is that its version of smoking is that people smoke their fingers. And it's just kind of referred to as that, without much more development. And I felt bad leaving it that underdeveloped.

Also, I mustn't forget to say this: A sincere thanks for reminding me that the word "bandage" exists. I'll probably leave the Band-Aid section in, but I'm definitely using that word most of the time.

Best wishes and happy writing in whatever medium that may be, u/motherf-----!

GENERAL FEEDBACK

The piece wasn't a complete train wreck, but it didn't blow me away either for reasons that I'll get to in the mechanics section. My main issues with the piece are a consistent one or two clause sentence structure. (I ate coco puffs and the sky was falling. The coco puffs were good. The sky falling sky wasn't.) You need to wring more out of your descriptions and make each sentence work a little bit harder. It can take some practice doing, but it is better to have to much that you can cut down -- rather than having to construct whole descriptions of objects in my opinion. This, however, is not an excuse to spew giant info dumps upon the reader. Make sure to add details as the main character interacts with them, which will in turn help with showing rather than telling.

MECHANICS


> The path we traveled grew more worn as the environment around us slowly shifted from the lush forest I was familiar with into that of a swamp. The rich green of the forest floor began to give way to the wet browns and greys of the wetlands. Arlets feet fell with a moist plop in the muddy soil and the smell of mildew filled the humid air. Our path was raised to avoid being completely taken by the swamp and its water. One could not say that these people were completely at their home’s mercy

I'll spend some time deconstructing your opening paragraph to give examples what I'm talking about. The first sentence is abysmal and it's a good example of one that looks like it's doing something, but requires another sentence to say what you did before (e.g. how is the forest shifting to wetland? I don't get a picture of it). The second could simply be the opening line, and the reader can begin to infer that the forest was shifting to wetlands, and you could describe some of the foliage. Since this is an academic written in first person, it would establish his character if he could precisely name some of the plants and it makes sense to describe some interesting examples of foliage that you could come up with. As it stands his absorption into this new world feels shallow because there isn't much description of it. Try reading the opening section of Perdido Street Station by China Mieville if you want the most evocative description that I've read of a setting, and a fantastic novel centered around an academic. "Ardets feet fell with a moist plop in the muddy soil and the smell of mildew filled the air" This is a good example of showing rather than telling, and giving descriptions of the scenery through the actions of the people involved. The last sentence is poor because it is telling rather than showing, and it has a surprise "not" which makes the whole thing a non-description of stuff that isn't happening.



> “So, we keepin’ tied up now? Don’t love the silence meself.”

The mixture of potential slang with a heavy accent makes this sentence unintelligible. Whilst the accent is consistent, I think it is too hamfisted usage throughout the piece. Try dropping the apostrophes to see if the accent can still be discerned, rather than throwing them on every word. The reader will probably read "Don't love the silence myself" in the same tone as "Don't love the reader meself," because the key word is starting the sentence with "don't."

>So many unfamiliar sights and flora came into view as we traveled that I had become lost in simple observation.

This doesn't fit with a plain description, and it is implied.

>He responded. He maintained an amused grin about him as he spoke.

He responded is implied, and the second sentence can be implied from the tone of the sentence. Cut the whole thing and watch out for excessive description on speech.

> As the goblin spoke, I strained as my fingers flipped through the various books in my bag. My notebook had to be amongst these somewhere. Were fairies more reliant on their wings for flight I would have had an even rougher time of this. Arlet looked towards me shortly after starting off again and paused upon seeing my predicament.

The first sentence is clunky, and I had to read it a few times to get a vague idea of what was going on. The second sentence can be completely cut. The third needs a ", then" before "I" to make it less tricky -- however the description doesn't do anything in itself. Are the fairies flying with the bags? The first clause in the last sentence is unnecessary, because it is implied that he started again if he had to pause.

>The belittlement was less than appreciated. My strain now coupled with the heat of irritation and grew significantly worse as a result.

This is a prime example of showing rather than telling, and I'll give a rough example on how to get more out of your sentences.

>I struggled with the massive bag of books that teetered back and forth as the Goblin sniggered, "you got it master?"
I gnashed my teeth together as sweat poured down my face and aggravated my eyes.

My rework isn't super great, but it gives a rough idea of what the concept is. If the characters are pouring down sweat, then it can be assumed that it is blazing hot outside. I growled is a basic description of an anger emote (I highly recommend using The Emotions Thesaurus when struggling to find an emotive action that shows an emotion).

PART II

BUT there are problems with your prose too

There are times where you really do TELL us stuff that you should not.

>We had no idea of the horrors that lay ahead, only that the world we left was not alone. Someone had made a life here, someone not of our land, so it stood to reason that there were more of them out there and a new land that perhaps we could call home.


This is a bad TELL. Don’t let us know there is more horrors. Let us discover them as the narrator does.

Don’t tell us that people made a life here. SHOW us that they did.

> the scene was a thousand times more unsettling than before

This almost made me puke. This is terrible. DO NOT SAY SOMETHING WAS 1000X MORE UNSETTLING. Show us this. It is that simple. SHOW us why it was unsettling. Describe the scene, and let us revel in the quiet horror that you paint.

> I understood then that he was never a coward, but that he simply could not bear the sight of more death. Ironically, his exile brought him in contact with more death than we ever saw at home.


A thousand times NO. You CANNOT tell someone the point of the story. You MUST trust your reader to figure it out. If you do, then your ending will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

At other times, you use ineffective language:

> and cities buzzed like beehives,

This really tells us nothing. It really doesn’t. HOW do they buzz? What are the people doing (or what does the narrator imagine they are doing) that they are buzzing?

OK, on the whole there is middling-to-bad prose, with moments of just absolute mind-boggling brilliance. If you can practice your prose and get it all up the point of the first 4 paragraphs, you will dazzle all those who read your stuff.

You are a LONG-ASS way from this. But the fact is that you can do it. You have done it. You just need to train your writing so that you do it all the time.

So, get to it.

WORLD BUILDING/CONSISTENCY

There are a LOT of problems here. You don’t really lay out a accurate view of the black death. You have the characters describe artifacts that they have never encountered – using words that are commonly used by people familiar with these artifacts. You have them know things about the world they cannot (e.g. like which houses are better built, when they have never seen houses like it).

This is a major problem – but it is an EASY problem to solve

First, decide when you think this occurred. THEN, read a 2-6 books each on the periods of time – both in the Americas and Europe. This will give you a sense of what is reasonable to expect in the Europe setting and what the native Americans would be used to seeing (and not seeing).

If you want to go for the middle ages, I suggest the following (for Europe): The Time Traveller’s Guide to Medieval England. I have no good suggestions for the Americas.

Again, as written the world you have is not good enough to be credible, but this is readily solved via some research.

So, get to it.

CONCLUSIONS

I don’t say this often (ever?). You have the beginnings of an amazing story. Your strongest asset is your moments of amazing prose, and the fact that you have already established compelling characters with so little. If you expand this, while maintaining what is good and correcting what is bad, you will have quite a story. But there is much work to be done. You need a more fleshed out plot. You need more -- and more active -- characters, and you need a more believable story. NONE of these are problems that cannot be solved.

So…Get to it. :)

What?

You're writing in a biblical style, so your characters are allowed to say bland shit and bore the reader to tears? Are you kidding me?

You know what one of the most printed, most UNREAD books around is? The fucking bible. Don't emulate that. That thing has the voice of God behind it, and people still can't stand to read it. What makes you think you're going to have any better luck?

If you want to write about biblical kind of characters in an interesting, enriching manner - I highly recommend you check out Orson Scott Card's Stone Tables for some inspiration.

Just a harmless little plug...

The Violinist is now available on Kindle Unlimited. If you have an account it's free to read. Check it out if you like crime/noir stories centered around a mystery wrapped in 1950s era espionage.

Paperback should be available by Tuesday.

The highest paid athletes traditionally are soccer players, boxers, basketball players and don't forget Formula 1 drivers. At his peak Michael Schumacher was earning 55 million a year and competing with Michael Jordan in yearly earnings. Car wreck? ;)

Yes, you've got the pace down in the dialogue, that comes across well, and a distinction between that and the dream sequence will give the whole more depth, I think. That's what brought The Order to mind, watch it, the movie does that.

I don't think you need more action. This is a story about personal interaction, the story is in the people not the action. The audience that wants to read this story does not want guns and explosions. That's why the secondary characters need a bit more description worked in, too. Again this is done well in the movie, they got some hollywood blockbuster into the subplots but the main plot is very personal and character interaction centric.

https://www.amazon.com/Order-Heath-Ledger/dp/B004G3GQPA/

Netflix apparently only has it on disk, but Amazon has it streaming.

I'm going to slide this in before the thread closes—

I have a story appearing in a horror anthology that drops today if anyone is interested. The collection includes twenty-five spooky tales for Halloween by some pretty great authors...and then there's mine, too. Shout-out to u/flashypurplepatches and u/mags2017 for helping me destroy it.

Midnight in the Graveyard

Sorry if I'm being a cheesy shill.

A couple of good books in the Robert McKee Universe are:

Dialogue which gets more into the micro level of storytelling, and Story Grid which is more macro. Shawn Coyne, the author of Storygrid and editor of Dialogue also has a podcast.

I LOVE this style. Love it. On a personal level it was very inspirational for me to see someone telling off this subreddit for it's obsession with plots and action.

Your writing is great. The concepts, however, I found really unoriginal. Comedians and writers have been pointing out all this ironic shit about cemeteries for ages.

You know what it felt like? Mansplaining. It was like the narrator thought she or he was the first person to ever have these thoughts and they were going to educate me, the reader, who had presumably never thought about the consumerist, capitalist crap surrounding death or cemeteries before, like ever.

You didn't offer me any new insight or ideas.

Have you read Karl Ove Knausgaard's "A Death in the Family?" Now THAT was some writing about death and the way society treats dead bodies that opened my eyes and really made me think.

notes in doc.

Good atmosphere. I would read on.

I feel there isn't enough foreshadowing of things to come, though. (Except the ash storm, which I feel was glaring exposition and should be hidden better.) This can be done subtly to match the tone.

As rachel said, I (still) don't know how old elizebeth is. That must be attended to at once.

If Liz is the main character I need more of her character shown, especially in contrast to her father.

You have an odd turn of phrase or two.

On Hunting:

• Full Metal Jacket - designed to penetrate armor, expands very little.
  
• Hard Point bullet expands more.
  
• Soft Point - Expands more and is the most common bullet for hunting.
  
• Hollow Point expands the most and are considered the poorest at penetrating armor. They are also the least reliable bullet, jamming the most due to the physical characteristics that make them expand.
  
  This last point may be the reason your guy, an obviously experienced killer, might use a more reliable bullet knowing his perfect shot would still kill the animal.
  
  
  People don't usually aim for the head, as a miss is more likely, when an off shot at the heart still has a chance because there is a lot of area (that will still bring down the deer) to hit if you miss the heart. Considering your piece, a head shot might be fine for your guy.
  
  A head shot would demonstrate high skill and possibly some sociapathic tendencies. The goal is to stop the heart from pumping immediately, as panic in the deer causes the meat to taste 'gamey'. Plus, you have to run it down if you don't kill it which most people won't even do.
  
  The sight of the brains tasted bitter in Liz's mouth. Let's attend to this bit. First, you said she always came with her father, then fail to demonstrate this well.
  So... "The sight of splattered brains tasted bitter in her mouth."
  Should become "The sight of splattered brains always tasted bitter in her mouth.'
  You get it right in the next sentence, but imo it's too late and is also awkward because I doubt she would vomit every time, but if it always tastes bitter and this time she throws up--it demonstrates a growing dissatisfaction with her life in direct contrast to the love she has for her father.
  
  When Liz is handed the rifle it is the perfect time to SHOW us her experience...your simple statement of her putting it on her shoulder (telling us nothing whatsoever)wastes the opportunity.
  
  Overall i'd be interested to continue but would also have trepidations. I like that you understand the killer is a particular kind of person, but you sometimes miss opportunities to show this and other times don't capture him correctly. I think more research is needed here. Try the FBI profiling book, some others about special forces and some about killers of all sorts.
  

Not sure how to do some of the fancy formatting I see here. Sorry. I'm going to have to break it into 2. Sorry for that also.

“On the outer circle please, arm’s length from each other.

Big problem with starting any scene with speech is it’s basically noise into empty space; unless it’s clear who the speaker is, you’re wrecking suspension of disbelief because there’s no environment. Might as well be God speaking at the creation of the universe.

Typically it may only take a few words to generate a scene, but you always need to set one first.

The children stopped chattering and obeyed the wiseman’s instructions.

Wiseman seems like a clunky name to me. Generally language evolves to be shorter, not necessarily more precise. And that evolution typically gravitates toward words of common usage. I'd suggest coming up with something simpler.

Additionally, of course, it comes with its own negative and disruptive connotation, as it's far too similar to "wise guy". Which takes a reader right out of your story.

Also, I can't imagine that children would stop chattering and then obey. Children chatter as they do anything. Plus, obeying the wiseman's instructions doesn't create any image whatsoever. Focus more on what they're doing as they obey.

Create a scene! Don't tell us about the scene.

With some elbowing about who got to sit where, the five kids took their places on the dark blue circle painted onto the hardwood floor.

Far too wordy. Unless you're doing it specifically for effect--and that should be rare--actions never should seem to take longer to read than they do to occur. Problem is you're overwriting and not trusting your creation of a scene. Additionally, unless it matters how many children are present, don't be so specific; for one thing, five kids sitting on a circle wouldn't create that much chaos; for another, specifying five disrupts a reader's creation of the image. Again, unless it matters, don't number things.

Further, kids is colloquial to the point of meaninglessness. Either call them by name or role in the story or something. While I suggest not being specific with numbers, here you should be more specific.

Knowing when to provide detail and which type and knowing when to omit lies at the heart of writing.

Wiseman Tybalt hauled his tired body to the blackboard

No he didn't. Not unless he had a wheelbarrow or similar device. Be precise! Say what you really mean! He forced himself to get off his chair/rise from his rock/put down his lesson planner, or whatever. He could have pushed himself to the blackboard, I suppose. And depending on your verb choice, you don't need to say he's tired. The verb should communicate that.

A great rule of thumb is to substitute verbs for adjectives whenever possible. That's a fundamental way to punch up prose, and any copy editor worth her salary knows this. Beginning writers tend not to.

took a piece of chalk, and wrote in big capital letters.

You don't need to say he wrote in chalk. We know that's what he used. When you over-describe you make it harder for your reader to make the leaps you need him to make, to join with you in the story.

He pushed himself to the blackboard and wrote in big letters DON’T THINK OF ELEPHANTS.

You see? You've shown that he was tired, shown that he used chalk, and shown that he wrote in capitals. And you've done it in far fewer words.

He shuffled back to the group with his thin wooden cane, and took his usual place in the middle.

Again, you're over-writing and saying a lot of things we already know. And did he really shuffle--i.e., does it matter that he did? Or did he simply step over the children? And do you even need to say that he did this?

He pushed himself to the blackboard, wrote in big letters DON’T THINK OF ELEPHANTS, then returned to the middle of the circle, propped his cane against his knee, and sat.

I'm not saying you have to write the way I write. But brevity matters. Every word matters. This may be the hardest thing for beginning writers to understand. Every word matters. And they don't matter in the sense that they're yours, you've written them, so they matter. They matter in the way that whether it's your name at the end of I love you matters. Details matter. Because you want to provide them sparingly. So your reader can create the world in her head.

See, as a writer you don't create the world on the page. You suggest the world. If you've done it right, your reader creates it. Two great examples of writers who understood this: Raymond Carver and James Ellroy. Neither Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? or L.A. Confidential has a wasted word in it.