Climbing the mountain. That’s what I’m thinking about where we are in the story to this point. The last battle looms, subplots are coming to resolution…it’s all just laid out and in need of putting words to the scenes. The trick is doing so in an interesting way, not just bigger, badder versions of the same old challenges, but there have to be some twists and turns on the way to the summit. So, press on with the good conflicts, but we need some thought provoking stuff thrown in the mix too. With that in mind, I decided it was probably best to slow things down a bit instead of jumping straight into the next battle–so slow in fact that we don’t even get to the battle itself in this chapter. What I thought would be better was setting the table for the battle, in such a way that the readers would wonder if it might be lost. I firmly believe that “reasonable doubt” is a key element to successful story telling. Big or small, we have to think things might go bad for us to get a true thrill of victory when it comes. My overarching goal for this chapter was to build the anticipation–and concerns, for the upcoming battle, to the point that it would be almost impossible for the readers to stop turning pages. That’s a lofty goal, but let’s go see how I did.
Well, it definitely had a slower pace for an ‘action’ chapter, but I have to say that I was comfortable with the pace too. I liked how there were enough introduction of subtle, thought provoking things, like Ohrder rationing his spells and Shahdow’s “knowing” how to kill vile beasts, to keep us occupied until we get to the real action. In fact, that brings up a key element of writing for me. I think I’ve mentioned before that I don’t multitask well. So, when I’m reading or writing a story, I don’t like it when there’s heavy duty action happening and a choice bit of background information pops up. Result…I get distracted by the pop up and loose track of what’s happening ‘real time’ in the scene. I think that can be a plausible mechanic if you’re trying to ‘sneak’ something in that you don’t want to be too obvious; mystery writers tend to rely on that technique quite a lot, but for my purposes, I try to avoid doing it. Okay, back to the critique. The writing was fairly strong for first draft; I did find two paragraphs that need reworked–especially the one where Shahdow remembers changing the sign, but I think the rest are just wanting some touch ups. Was it interesting enough…? Yes, I think so, though I have to say that my “can’t put it down” goal fell a little flat. The thing I really liked was that there were some good bits of light humor–which is something that the story tends to be lacking in overall, and that I will have to take a hard look at in the next draft. The thing I didn’t like was that I got no real sense that the upcoming battle could be lost–not acceptable, must be reworked. Still, all in all, a pretty good chapter that should be easier than most to fix.
Take care, until next time,
Mike
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