Welcome to another installment of KP Critiques!
KP Critiques is where brave KeePers submit their work to Kingdom Pen for feedback.
At Kingdom Pen, we talk a lot about techniques for good writing, but here - through KP Critiques - we hope to show KeePers good writing techniques in action!
We hope that through highlighting all the strengths, and offering ways to improve will not only help the author, but also help other KeePers seeking to find ways to revise their own work.
Today, we have an excellent excerpt by Samuel Robbins from his novel Sword of Light.
Thank you so much, Samuel, for submitting your excerpt. You have such an amazing talent for writing, and I hope this will help you sharpen your writing skills even more!
Now, on to the critique!
Sword of Light
Chapter 3
By Samuel Robbins
Sydney sat in the central pavilion of the camp, surrounded by the Lysandrian leaders. Since they’d entered the camp two hours ago, she’d felt completely overwhelmed. All these people... she knew them, but at the same time she didn’t.
She’d told them about . . . Simon. What had happened to him. Once she’d held on a to a hope that he had to be still alive—he’d only tripped!—but she had long since forsaken it. That city was cursed, and Simon had been trapped there with Alliants and other vengeful spirits. There was no hope of survival.
The air was silent after her announcement. Sydney looked around the table and saw it in their eyes. Anger. Fear. Sorrow. Grief. And—most curiously of all—she saw hate in Wilhelm’s gaze. His eyes met hers for the briefest moment, and Sydney felt a chill pierce her to her core.
What was he hiding?
Then another chill of shock went through her—Finley was sitting beside Wilhelm. Finley.
Confused emotions roiled through her mind. She stood up without thinking, clenching her fists. “Traitor!” she shouted across the table at him.
Dimly she felt the gazes of everyone in the room, fixed on her. The red haze that had gathered at the edges of her vision began to recede, and the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding slowly let itself out of her chest. She unclenched her fists, her fingers aching slightly.
You did an amazing job here describing her emotions. Focusing on internal and physical sensations, rather than just telling the audience how she feels. Great job!
The room was completely silent, all its occupants apparently dumbstruck. Finley’s eyes met hers, and she saw something different in them. She couldn’t exactly identify what it was—but he looked like a different person entirely than he had when he’d betrayed them in the secret Herlenian base, back in Lysandria. Those eyes . . . besides that unknowable quality that continued to elude her, she saw something deeper—emotion. It was the first time she’d ever seen something besides condescending evil in his gaze. And he looked . . . sad, like he felt sorry for Sydney. That couldn’t be possible. Could it?
I haven’t read your other books, and I’m not completely sure what is going on. But I am completely intrigued by the mystery you set up!
She remained standing, suddenly feeling stupid and very embarrassed, at a loss for what to do.
This last sentence would be stronger without that last part. It's already implied that she is at a loss, and the inclusion of this sort of feels like a run-on.
Finally, Wilhelm—she hadn’t realized he was standing as well; he must have jumped to his feet when she’d made her accusation—spoke. “Finley is no longer an enemy of our people, Sydney.” His tone was cold, angry.
“He betrayed us!” she said, her anger back in full measure.
This whole chapter is really well-written, and quite polished. So I’ll be giving you some more minor and more advanced critiques. Here you say “her anger back in full measure”. This is a piece of telling. Your writing would be stronger if you 1) took it out and 2) show that her anger is back. You already did this with her obviously indignant piece of dialogue. To add more showing, you could even add some of her thoughts. For example, fuming about Wilhem and how he decided to trust Finely so soon. This way, not only will you be showing her anger is back, but it can also double as a way to get into Sydney’s mind.
Triton—who had been the ruler of Euchar, a town in Lysandria, before the Herlenians had overrun it—stood from his chair as well. “He has since atoned for his crimes,” Triton said. “Without him, we would not be standing here.”
“He didn’t help me,” Sydney growled, glaring at Finley. “I fended for myself, abandoned in the wilderness of rural Tarthia.”
“We didn’t abandon you, Sydney,” said Wilhelm. His tone had shifted from anger to that of a parent trying to soothe a screaming child. “You disappeared after the battle of Hyperion’s Gates and the eruption. We didn’t know where you—”
“I didn’t know where I was either!” she screamed back at him. “I just woke up and wandered for days, utterly alone. Then I met Simon, and...” All the white-hot rage seemed to drain out of her like a punctured wineskin. From his place beside her, Bruce reached out to embrace her, and she sank into his arms. “Then . . . then he died,” she said with a heaving sob.
The council watched, unmoving. Sydney felt their gazes on her back, but she didn’t care. Simon was dead. The world did not matter. Nothing mattered.
When at last they separated, she leaned back, grasping one of the tent poles for support. Bruce’s face was a tiny bit red. His eyes met hers, and it seemed as if a silent message from him to her.
I’m not trying to replace him.
She let out a deep breath and took her seat again, feeling herself blush a bit as well as the council fixed slightly reproving looks on the two of them. Bruce didn’t mean to replace Simon in her life—that is, he wasn’t falling in love with her.
She didn’t know he she felt towards him at the moment. In the past few days, their friendship had grown from something distant to something . . . closer. Not close, not like she’d had with Simon, not yet. . . . she pushed the unwanted feelings away. She would deal with them later. There were enough pressing things on her mind than boys at the moment.
Ultimately, it depends on what you want to do here, but I recommend being careful with scenes like this. Making Sydney go from grieving for Simon one second and then thinking like this the next has the danger of making the reader lose respect for Sydney, and also feel a bit forced and unrealistic.
For something more genuine, I recommend Sydney, at this point in her life, to just be simply grateful for Bruce for being there for her. Start there, and then build from that. And then later, if you want, when the wound is less raw, you can add that confusion in. This would be a more gradual and natural way to develop their relationship.
The awkward silence stretched on for several moments more, then Wilhelm finally cleared his throat and spoke again in his islander’s brogue. “Well . . . after that interruption, I suppose we can continue. Lord Triton has suggested that we sail north, to seek refuge at Carmarthen and the Wall. What does the council say on this matter . . . ?”
Sydney tried to listen—really, she tried to—but searing pain reverberated through her skull, seeming to bounce from temple to temple, and wherever the sudden headache had come from, it was getting bad. She winced and pressed a hand to her forehead, resting her arm on the table.
Wilhelm’s voice cut through the haze of her mind again. “If everyone agrees, we will take a vote. . . .”
The pain got worse. She squeezed her eyes, grasping at her temples, gritting her teeth against the agony. “I can’t . . . !” A cry was forced from her lips. She rocked once, then her vision upended and trembled as a cat shakes a mouse in its mouth. She seemed to be falling down a deep hole, an endless hole. . . .
Sydney goes through a lot of extreme emotions in the past scene. From anger, to grief, to confusion, crying out in agony, and more. While you certainly don't want to make Sydney emotionless, you also don't want to run into the trap of making it feel melodramatic. Especially since most of the characters around her aren't expressing very much emotion, Sydney's display of emotion feels over-the-top at times. Consider toning it down a bit, and honing in on one or two emotions. Try to find a balance.
With effort, she looked up and realized the horrible, searing pain was gone. “Wilhelm? What did. . . .” She trailed off. She was no longer in the Lysandrian council tent.
Instead she stood in a ruined, circular chamber built from sand-colored stone. At the far end of the room was an elevated throne, surrounded by a semi-circular staircase. The throne was plain—made from pure, dark iron. The fronts of the arms were engraved with the likeness of a wolf’s head, with two orange stones set into the iron for the eyes of each head. What caught her attention most was the metal fan that spread in a semicircle across the wall behind the throne.
Then she realized it was not a fan at all—the wall directly behind the throne had swords set into it, dozens of them, stretching out in a half-moon shape up from the floor on either side of the throne until they met in the middle, at the highest point of the wall. The swords were not identical—each one was different. Some were straight, others curved; Sydney saw just about every kind of blade imaginable on that wall.
She was alone in the room. She had no idea how long she had been standing there, just staring at the throne and the swords arrayed behind; it had felt like days. Shaking her head slightly to clear it, she stepped forward, calling out hesitantly.
“Hello? Is there anyone here?”
Only the harsh gusting of the freezing wind through the cracked bricks of the chamber’s wall answered her.
She took another step forward. The throne was just five feet away from her, now. If she could just reach it. . . . she suddenly felt a burning desire to touch the iron, to see the wolf heads move for her. That haze was in her mind again . . . she took another step, reaching out to grasp the right arm of the iron throne. . . .
And the floor gave way beneath her foot. She let out a startled scream, her hand just falling short of the throne’s iron surface, and plummeted into darkness.
An eternity seemed to pass after that; she was not sure if she was falling or just floating, suspended in the same place of darkness for hours, weeks, months, years.
“Hours, weeks, months, years” this phrase seems a bit melodramatic. And it’s kind of hard to believe that she would think she is there for months or years. But I do really like the magical and mysterious feeling you are setting up here with her not being able to track time or tell if she was falling or floating. You could change it to, “... suspended in the same place. Not sure if it was seconds, minutes, or hours.”
When at last a sliver of light cut through the shadow, she grasped at it, feeling the warmth soothe her hands. She had to reach it, had to escape the darkness. . . . The crack of sunlight grew wider, and a grin broke across her face. She swooped upward, her hands gripping the loose stone, pulling at it, letting more sunlight flood the dark chamber. . . .
Then fingers smashed into hers, crushing her hand. She gasped in pain and fell downward, everything draining out of her in one wave. Far above she saw a face through the widened crack in the stones that covered the pit she lay in. She recognized the features . . . it was. . . .
Her blood turned to ice in her veins, her heart freezing. She seemed to stop breathing, and a scream was forced from her throat.
Simon’s gaze lingered on her for a moment longer, then he dragged the loose stone over the crack, and she was once again lost in darkness. She screamed and screamed, but no one heard her cries . . . she was trapped, forever.
Then a crashing rumble echoed through the shadows, dispelling her fear. Flashes of flickering light lit the shadows, and she was suddenly somewhere else. A huge bank of flashing clouds loomed before her, the same billowing rumbles echoing from it. A biting wind rippled her cloak, whipped at her face.
Wow! A lot of stuff is happening here. Writing fantasy in particular is a balancing act between putting in all the mysterious and magical elements, but also making sure to ground the audience enough so that they don’t feel alienated. And the best way to ground your readers is by using your main character’s mind. What does Sydney think about all of this? What does she assume this is? Does she think Simon is a ghost? A vision? Some kind of trick? When your character starts asking and wondering the same questions your reader might be asking, then the reader won’t feel as alone, alienated, and they will also get to wonder along with the main character. Thus, they will feel more connected to the story, no matter what kinds of fantastical elements you throw their way!
For example, in Alice and Wonderland, when Alice is falling down the hole, Lewis Carroll continuously tells us what Alice is wondering and thinking. How many miles has she fallen? What else will she see? Will she end up in some other country? What country will it be? And… will her cat be okay?
This was a brilliant move on Carroll's part. A way to keep Alice wondering along with the readers, so that the readers wouldn't feel alienated or weirded out. They could wonder along with Alice and see the strange world through Alice's eyes.
Not only will this add more wonder to your story, but it also grounds the readers a bit more, as they know that the character is just as confused as they are.
She was suddenly aware of another presence in that place with her—not a physical presence, but a mental one, a spirit. It spoke, in a voice that soothed her fears.
“Stormdancer . . . you have come, at the turning of the tides.”
The black clouds making up the breathtaking wall of storms before her began to part.
This is from Sydney’s POV, so would she describe the wall of storms “breathtaking”? Or would she see them as terrifying, formidable, or threatening?
The inner walls of each half of the cloudwall drifted to each side, revealing a narrow but calm passage in the middle like a valley between towering mountains of water and clouds. Lightning flashed from deep within the clouds, and the loudest crash of thunder yet deafened her.
“Return to the world of the living . . . become who you were meant to be!”
Then a flash of light erupted around her, and the spirit was gone. She was standing on the deck of a ship. The wall of storms still loomed above her; the ship was sailing through the gap, the waters around it roiling in anger. The cloudwalls on either side were flashing with incessant lightning, the bolts lancing out from inside the mist and striking objects inside the passage: rocks, uprooted trees. And ships. Dozens of them, perhaps hundreds. The remnants of a great fleet, all defeated by the wall of storms.
“Selene!” shouted the man beside her. Her eyes snapped to him; he had sandy hair, with green eyes. Somehow she knew his name was Damian.
“Use your powers!” he yelled, his voice nearly lost in the howling of the wind around them as they neared the stormwall.
Sydney faltered, panicked. She didn’t have any powers! What was Damien talking about?
Something seemed to blossom deep within her, like a flower unfolding its petals. A river of light flooded her mind, blinding her. She stumbled backward, gasping, and the skies above the stormwalls opened.
The ship shot toward the rapidly-shrinking gap between the stormwalls, sprays of water arcing from port and starboard. Sydney raised her hands; a great crash of thunder shook the sea and the world turned white. Pain flashed in her head, spots imprinted on her eyes from the light. She felt a wall of cool, refreshing water wash over her, and she opened her eyes.
She was somewhere else. The ship and the stormwall were gone. That voice was there with her again—she felt her presence as steadily as if they were standing side by side.
“You must go south,” said the voice, sending shivers down Sydney’s spine at the sound of her words. “Your beloved waits at the jewel of the Shining Lands. You have six weeks.”
“Simon? He is dead!” Flashes of lightning reached her eyes from beyond the ocean-blue chamber of water she and the voice were contained in. The room shook.
“It will not be long now before the storm takes us both!” said the voice. “Listen carefully: one twin will live, the other will die. One must go south with you; the other will go west with his people.” The room shook again; lightning flashed closer than ever before, and thunder crashed in Sydney’s ears. “Your choices will decide which one will live and which will die.” The walls of calm, smooth water began to break, impaled by rocks, broken trees, bolts of fiery lightning. “You must look inside you and find what has been there all along. . . .”
“Been there all along . . . What does that mean?” Sydney shouted. “Which one will die or live? What in Rostigar. . . . !”
Before she could finish her sentence, the room ruptured. The voice was gone. Sydney fell into darkness. She was dimly aware of two gigantic waves rearing up on either side in her rapidly-darkening vision before biting cold enveloped her and she knew no more.
--
Final Comments:
I’m honestly blown away at how much your writing has improved over the past few months. You were already such a skilled writer, but in the past few months, your writing has reached a whole new level!
Your description is absolutely breathtaking. All of your similes really add to your fantasy setting and atmosphere. Your prose is beautifully written and so well done. Most of all, the whole excerpt was so gripping and immersive! From beginning to end you managed to capture the audience's attention, and keep it. I can see that you applied the tips I gave you last time, and you have already mastered them. It's amazing how far you've come in such a short amount of time. Fantastic job, and keep up the great work!
So really, there wasn’t too much to change here. My main critique is what I already mentioned about grounding the reader in a fantasy setting. So many different things are happening to Sydney, so what does she think about all this? What is she wondering? What is she assuming? This will connect your audience with the world and what is happening all the more.
Otherwise, amazing job! You have such a gripping story in such a unique and fascinating world. I hope I can read the entire saga one day!
I hope this helped, and keep writing!
~ Erin Ramm
Become an Unstoppable Writer!
Wow! I want to read this story when it’s published.
I loved the mysterious atmosphere of the excerpt! And the characters sound so interesting as well. I agree with both Keilah and Erin, I’d totally read this story if it was published!
Thank you so much, Kathleen!
My goodness, I haven’t been this interested in a story in weeks, that was so intense. I would definitely read this story if it was published.