Heya, this is the second part and last on the forums (because wall of text) of my origin story, hope you guys like it and thanks if you read it (because wall of text x2). The rest of the story i will post here: A Tale of Gods CHAPTER 2: The Woman with the Silver Hair. Back at The Qlub, the news of the attack on the support station arrive, it appears to have been an act of the opposing amazons, no survivors were found. The news are delivered by a speedster named Isimud, a slim man of average height who seems to be around fifteen, he is a regular at the bar and was tasked with the delivery of supplies to the station when he stumbled into the destroyed place, after reporting to the commanding officers he headed straight to The Qlub to inform Tair. Upon hearing the news, Tair falls onto a chair in disbelief, his gaze seems lost in the distance as he tries to assimilate the news, after some seconds, he breaks the silence. -“Are you sure…? Could they have really killed her?” -“It seems to have been an ambush, whatever it is that happened, it appears they didn’t had any time to react, as I couldn’t find signs of combat, I’m afraid it is possible that they have killed her…” -“Did you find the body?” -“They burned them all” A blonde girl approaches the men; she is another waitress at the Qlub who goes by the name Glipny and, being that the place is devoid of clients at the time, has managed to hear the entire conversation. -“So they finally killed Lofny huh?” Tair can’t help but to feel a degree of indignation for the tone in which the question has been asked. -“What do you mean with finally!?” -“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m sorry she is dead, but the only surprising thing is that she took so long to die, she was always a troublemaker, stirring up conflicts all over the world, the only reason she lasted so long was because Phenrir and Vithar were always getting her out of trouble, but if it had not been for them, she would have died since the Battle of Kadesh!.” -“Regardless, she was one of us”- the messenger intercedes, then addresses Tair-“I would still like to ask Elli to send someone to investigate the matter, it strikes me as suspicious that a handful of rogue amazons would have successfully surprised and killed Lofny, despite her troublesome history, she wasn’t precisely the type of being to go down easily.” -“I agree, you may go speak to her now.”- Tair replies and Isimud walks behind the bar and past a red curtain into the back of the pub. Gliph addresses Tair with a relieved tone. -“You may think I’m selfish, but after the troubles she’s put us through, I’m kind of glad she is gone.” -“Well, come to think of it, I kind of agree with Isimud, the last time she was surprised with an ambush it turned out to be a messy affair.” -“She was ambushed before?” -“Oh yeah”-Tair can help but to laugh upon the memories that come to mind-“Much like this war, she was providing support for civilians on a station in the shores of Japan when the Mongols attacked…if you know your history, then you know it didn’t turn out well for the Mongols, in fact, it was here where she got me that golden axe I keep in the vault” -“Oh yeah, I’ve seen it! A fine piece indeed, I think we can’t deny she was always a friendly spirit, she also gave me countless souvenirs from her campaigns…You know…I think she will be missed after all”. The conversation is interrupted when a tall woman with long silver hair emerges from the curtain behind the bar, she is followed by Isimud, the woman goes by the name Elli, and upon seeing her, both Tair and Glipny stood up straight as if compelled to show respect. -“Good evening Glip, Tair.”- she said with a soft but commanding voice, she resembles a woman well in his forties and despite a tall and thin frame, she projects a vibe of danger, upon pouring herself a drink she addresses the blonde girl. -“Glip, would you be nice enough to accompany Isimud? I have heard the news and can’t help but agree with him, something here does not fit.” -“Y-yes maam”-The girl answered with a mix of respect and fear. During this conversation, the man of red shades had entered The Qlub and approached the bar with the same familiarity he did most nights, he nodded to those present as a form of greeting. -“I can tell something serious is going on if you have come out of your office El.” He said while addressing the silver haired woman. -“Nothing serious Phenrir…I assure you”-she replied-“I just need Glip and Isimud to run some errands for me.” -“I see…” Phenrir glanced at Isimud, for a long time now, they had been close friends, and with a slight shaking of his head Isismud conveyed the message, something had happened. The woman with the silver hair spoke to Gliph. -“Come with me to the vault, I’ll provide you some equipment for the journey.” The two women vanish behind the red curtain. Once they were out of hearing range, Phenrir addressed the two other men remaining in the room. -“So…what happened…is Lofny all right?” -“She is missing, her station was ambushed and officials have declared her killed in action, but we have our doubts. Gliph and I will head there to investigate.” Phenrir took his hand to a small pocket in his belt and took out five gems of different colors; he then took a red one with his other hand and looked at it closely, then sighed with relief. -“Well, she isn’t dead.”-He declared while showing the gem to the men. -“ See?”- he said, while looking at Isimud, who then took a blue gem out of his pocket and returned a puzzled gaze. -“I gave a gem to my five closest friends a long time ago, they were enchanted and were supposed to let me know if they were in danger, the spell weakened a lot after his creator died, but nevertheless, if they were to come to severe harm the gems would present small cracks or shatter completely if they happen to die”-He then extended his arm to give the men a closer look. -“It does not have any cracks”- Isimud observed. -“Which means she is okay, however it does not mean she isn’t in all sorts of trouble, we should go look for her at once” he said, while springing up from his seat. -“We?”- Tair interrupted- “WE, are not going anywhere Phenrir… Gliph and Isimud will. It is just a scouting mission, so we can do without leaving a trail of bodies. Isimud agreed with Tair. -“We will do this Phen, besides, if Elli finds out we told you she will absolutely have our heads, when I first informed her, she was quite insistent to the fact that you shouldn’t hear this news, but you can trust me on this, if she needs help Gliph and I can help her well enough.” -“Listen Phen”-Tair continued-“As much as I like Lofny, she has always had a craving for trouble, and she always seem to enjoy dragging you to them, we really don’t want to have another global war on our hands.” After thinking about it he finally agreed with the men. -“Okay then, Isimud, please find her and bring her back” -“I will.” Tair left them for a couple of seconds while he approached a couple of customers that had just entered the place, Isimud took advantage of this to approach Phenrir, and while simulating a handshake he whispered. -“Just do me a favor, keep an eye on our gems…I have an odd feeling about this.” Gliph sticks out her head from behind the red curtain and signals Isimud that it is time to leave; they both disappear behind the curtain.
You've got a really interesting story building here, good work. But I must admit there are a few tense errors and grammar errors that occasionally make for difficult reading. Your first chapter was a bit of a difficult read for that reason alone. This chapter was much better just a few errors at the beginning. Mostly its the tense errors, as I have demonstrated below. I know it's difficult to spot these things in your own writing. For the highlighted parts I would change: are = was seems = seemed I'm going to sound like a word document now but I would also put a full stop somewhere in that sentence to break it up a bit more. As a general rule, shorter sentences are better. Sorry to be so critical. I'm no writing whizz. But you've got a good story here and so I i'd like to point you in the right direction where I can in terms of grammar and stuff. It makes it a better read for us and hopefully makes you a better writer.
Nice job sir. Not to sound like a parrot or anything, but I am inclined to agree with Mysty above. I say that having been subject to others pointing out my grammatical errors in my stuff. That being said, your characters have some good personalities about them that allow for those grammatical items to not take away too much to the point where one might lose interest. I am interested to know Elli's intentions for keeping Phen in the dark about Lofny. Despite the confined location of the scene you wrote there seemed to be a lot going on at times [new characters introduced and such]. If I can, I will go back to my original suggestion and would try to explain some of those past elements like where you reference Lofny getting into trouble a lot and causing problems of a massive proportion, take some time and explain what some of those were so the reader and get a sense of what that looks like and why others would be alarmed or concerned about her in the way they are. Another suggestion [and this could be for future reads] would be to explain why Phen chose the 5 people he did to receive those gems and remain in some ways connected to Phen. Also, again, I am saying this with the mindset that you may have this planned out in other reads, why is Phen not shaky or intimidated by Elli? Again, I like the characters and the idea behind the story. Keep it up, looking forward to more.
The location and its function is explored a bit more on chapter 3 and more in depth on chapter 4 (which i have not posted yet because i'm still fixing ) As for the rest of the points, in a sense, those points could be considered the first half of the plot or the cause for everything else that comes later, but yeah, after your feedback I realized i did place some important points too far into the story so i've been doing some small fixes for future chapters! About the grammar, it's a funny thing, I double and triple check but for some reason things like that sound good to me until after I post them (which also happens to me on here a lot lol) x.x I will definitely try to improve that in the future. And thanks a lot for taking the time to read it!!
That would depend on if it was in the past or present (specially for the apparent age of the news deliverer: if he is still 15 then it would be 'seems', 'seemed' would only be if he stopped be 15)
To the narrator, it would always be 'seemed' if the word 'was' precedes it. And it wouldn't really matter what age this character is or was. If I was the narrator my eyes tell the story, if someone looks 15, then that is how I will narrate the story, it doesn't matter if the character themselves is older or younger than my guess. The only important thing is the narrator's perspective. Complex story telling compounds on this by having multiple character perspectives and making certain characters 'unreliable narrators'. For all we know this character could be 32 and the narrator is really bad at guessing someones age. But you are right it all depends on if it's past or present tense. But I decided to go with it being past tense as making it present tense would mean much more changes throughout that paragraph.
Yeah, basically my main problem with this narrative has been that at some points i write in past from the narrators POV but at others i seem to narrate in present. If you guys could see the amount of times i have to go back and rewrite some paragraphs, it's almost hilarious xP...and i still manage to miss some time wibbly wobblies here and there D:
If it helps, try to characterise your narrator. -Are they present, knowing only what the character's know at the time? - Think of the narrator as yourself, speaking of things in the present as they are happening He smiles and say's 'The Question is a good writer' -Are they telling a story from memory? Remembering something from their past. - Think of the narrator as yourself, speaking of things in the past He smiled and said 'The Question is a good writer' -Are they omnipotent? Do they know all that has happened past, present and future? - Think of the narrator as God, speaking as someone who knows what happened from each and every perspective He smiled, thinking back on the story he had just read and said 'The Question is a good writer' Note that the speech of the POV doesn't change, it is determined by their own perspective and is not influenced by the narrator, only the tense and the information that surrounds it should change according to the narrators perspective.
Need to pick a narrative voice (Omnipotent Narrator or switching POV between different characters and if it is past or present {'present' being the time of narrating}) and stick to it (regarding the past or present, that can change but when you do, it needs to be clearly stated) These are not meant to be attacks, just (hopefully) helpful advice from a wannabe-editor slash proofreader
Pick one thing and stick with it? Have you any idea of the amount of times i've renamed my char because of my inability to do that!? D: jk, 'tis good advice! And not taking them as attacks, on the contrary, it helps me improve! thank you for taking the time to read it and giving me the feedback!
I don't know if this is even necessary to say and bring this from a place of trying to be helpful and constructive. One thing that helped me a lot when I write about Bern, Ann, Syd, Williams, Adrian or any other of the characters I have written about is I ask myself "Who is this person?" and I mean at the core of their being "who are they?" or "what is it is I want them to accomplish?" At the core Bern is a guy trying to find a place in a world that has been turned upside down on him and working hard to fill multiple roles in that world [Protector, Father, Friend". Ann, at her core is a kid who is struggling with changes she has gone through and trying to be as normal of a girl as she can be and balancing normal social/emotional development with just how powerful she is and what she is capable of. Asking yourself those questions is really helpful in developing, growing and fleshing out your characters. I say this as no expert but as someone who is actively working on it himself. Being able to have a start point where you can can "ok, this is who this guy/girl is and what they're about" and then saying "this is what I want them to accomplish" or "this is what I want to showcase about them" offers you a decent lane to play around with all those other interesting elements you bring your stories with the play on the historical periods and events that have occurred. It isn't so much pigeon holing your character but rather diving them a defined 3 or four lane highway to move in and out of as they progress. I hope that helps. I want to say though, I really am interested in your work and what you are doing with those historical periods and the events in them with your characters is a really cool idea and hopefully you keep at it and put out more stuff.
^Hera! o.o this is a pretty awesome way to put it! Makes it quite clear! Kind of a thing I wanted to achieve with the characters but couldn't put it into words so I was unsure what it was! Thanks a lot!! I have a couple of chapters already posted on the blog (on my sig) i'll eventually post them here since feedback has been quite cool and definitely useful, just as soon as i finish some fixes on the following chapters to make sure there are no holes left! (or at least not many)
It's kind of like a character such as Batman, though Batman has a WIDE lane, say around 80 years worth of lane to play in, at the core, Batman is a character that believes one person can make a difference and will do whatever he can to make sure that people are safe and do not have to experience what he did as a child. There are other elements to the character, I am just picking a couple that really stand out to me. Writer over the years have taken their spin on things or shown them from different angles, but at the core, the center of the character remains unchanged, as it is those key elements that make up who that character is, be it Batman, Superman, Spawn, Hulk or any other character.
Yeah, for some reason i was never able to put it in words as well as you did! I usually keep "notes" which is a basic line of who this or that character is, but i'm thinking i could evolve that into some sort of table with 2 or 3 sides of their personality and use columns to expand on those sides so that way i don't lose track. (Or maybe im thinking that could help )
It is really whatever works for you. If you want to go that route with keeping track of things, go for it. I use a note book that I jot down story ideas, themes, character ideas, notes about what I want to possibly have happen in the story, It tends to look a little messy and scribble-ey with lines drawn from this thing to that thing. For me that is what works. There really is no right or wrong way to do it. You as the writer are essentially god and can do what ever you want in your stories. The responsibility you have with that power [sorry for the unintentional spider man reference] is to make it believable or at least explain in a way that would make sense to the reader.
Oh, and one other thing: don't be afraid of changing the direction your story is going in or the focus
I've been seriously considering doing that with some chars, especially since the main will have to go at some point.
