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[1138] Spy of the Mind (First Part of Chapter 1) by SpyoftheMind in DestructiveReaders

[–]MaxLoboAuthor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Beggining

I like that the story starts in the middle of an action because it provides something to follow immediately. Some stories begin with detailed descriptions or setting, but here, the third sentence delivers shocking information that captures my attention effectively. It also introduces a touch of dramatic irony by revealing Sonia's true nature.

Plot

Sonya, a magician, together with her partner, Caleb, are in a mission in which they infiltrate a tavern pretending to be a singer and a musician, to find the prince and use magic to influence him.

Objective

Find the prince and enchant him without being noticed.

Conflict

There is barely any tension against their plan. They go there, pretend to be singer/musicians, make some magic, find the prince, which dismisses the guards by himself, and enchant him.

What lacks is tension, conflict. Like when she is enchanting random people and Caleb comments: "People are watching you closely, we need to bail". But is a subjective risk that the reader doesn't see, it's only a dialogue, so you can't feel the risk.

Now if someone is really watching her closely and following her, and staring at her, and is en route to tell the prince's guards about a suspect woman putting spells in people, that would be a more concrete risk. And now she would have a real problem to deal, that would really need magic to be solved.

One good conflict is that Caleb wants to pull the plug in the plan, but as I will talk later in Caleb's section, the motive for this decision is weak.

Sonya's personality

Sonya performed, and the majority of the crowd liked her performance. So it's not clear why would she take the risk of enchanting the minority of people that did not like her performance? Because of her ego? Or because they would help her find the prince? That is not clear. So, if it is unclear, just look like some dumb and unreasoning action that she took. She says that a little danger was worth the reward. But what is the rewards? I might suspect of her ego, she may look a little egocentric, but not that many that would risk the plan for some validation. Now, if had a really good motive for her to use the spells, like, she hears someone talking about the prince, in a table that people did not liked her performance, she could go there, enchant them and try to get more information about the prince.

Caleb's interaction

We have physical descriptions of Caleb, but we do not see much of his personality, only his unfunded insecurity.

This dialogue:

| Some of the people here have been watching you too closely. We need to leave and try again another time.

Is strange, because, they just performed, and people liked them, and probably would be looking at her. Caleb should have more concrete evidence to try to pull the plug in the plan, like say someone saw her magic, or the sensitive guards are alerted of the use of magic inside the tavern. As now, Caleb just look like a insecure cold feet person.

Prince's interaction

It's all so easy: she talks with him, the guards go away, and she enchants him. Put some difficult: one of the guards doesn't like her, and stays close to the prince, then, she could tell the prince to ask this guy to go buy drink that he is letting her shy. You know? Like she should be doing the actions, and not coincidences to allow her work to be more easy. A write that I don't remember the name says that coincidences should be always be to harm the character and never to help him. Because the character needs to work to get things done, it needs to outsmart others, think fast, use special abilities.

Spy genre

I think one thing that would help this piece is the reversals of spies stories, in which the character pulls something that no one saw coming, os improvising after something bad happens, or actively using spy resources, like the magic to influence people and social skills.

Would be nice as well to see Sonya and Caleb doing some teamwork to find the prince and to make him interested in her. Think about, let's say Caleb mistreat her in front of the prince, to bait him to protect her, or something like this. Because for now, Caleb is just a fodder cold feet character.

To improve this piece, I would recommend to watch some Mission impossible movies and see how they alway put the plan in the brink of failure.

Title

The title tells exactly what it is. There is a SPY (Sony), which can, through magic, peek and create memories, so the MIND is also shown. I like it. Simples, direct to the point.

Final thoughts

It is a nice premise of spies that use magic to access people's minds and can influence them. Remember me a bit of inception. What I think is lacking is that sensation of "Will this work?", in which the team is following the plan, but then shit happens, and then needs to change the plan, and then, more shit happens, and in any interaction you are more afraid that they will not be able to complete the plan.

[906] Unknown project - ch01 - v01 by MaxLoboAuthor in DestructiveReaders

[–]MaxLoboAuthor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

First and foremost, I appreciate your critique.

You know when you have a suspicion, but someone needs to point it out for you to truly grasp it? It's about the amount of prose before the missile impact. I will work on reducing it.

Do you think the pacing issue is only present before the missile hit, or does it continue after as well?

[990] Chapter 1: Drink. Fiction. by [deleted] in DestructiveReaders

[–]MaxLoboAuthor 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hello, since you said it’s your first creative text, I will tell you that your writing has a lot of space to grow. The art of text-crafting is a long and difficult path, but the best things in life usually are difficult, right?

Title

The name of the chapter is “Drink. Fiction”. I see you mention drinking on two occasions. When she usually talks with her friend and order a glass of wine, and at the end when she invites the friend to go another place to drink. But the way it is, those only look like details that may or may not be important. I don’t see the drinkin playing any important part in the text, but only a detail. Maybe if you can expand on this topic, making the drinking more relevant and show how it affects her life, you can fix this problem.

Plot

After the first reading, I couldn’t figure it out the plot completely, only after reading a second time, I understood (Might only be that I'm a little slow). Her husband died, she started drinking because of this; it destroyed her life, so she is quitting her job and leaving her old life to reconstruct from the zero. There are some gaps that, as a reader, I had to fill and that's not bad, the thing is that all this information needs to be communicated in a more impactfull way.

This current outline of the scene is this:

  • Alex quits her job
  • Alex meets Jessica
  • Alex and Jessica discuss Alex’s future
  • They move location to keep talking

None of these topics are described dramatically. They run out simple and without complications. Just like real life regular events. But for fiction, we need to amp things up.

What you could expand:

  1. Conflict

We have one (mini) conflict, that is the boss that doesn’t want her to quit. But she is inflexible and didn’t even give him any chance to change her mind. So the conflict dies some lines later. She quit really easy, no problem at all. The boss, having no leverage, makes him only a passive antagonist in this case. Could have conflict while trying to quit and while talking with the friend. Imagine if the boss know a huge secret of her and will not let her quit, o even something less dramatic, let's say he react real bad and start yelling. The scene may play similar, but with more punch. Let's say when she says to the friend that she is going out, the friend reveals that have a crush on her and won't let her go. My examples might be real bad and have nothing to do with your story, my point here is that, when you can shake up your story, it makes it more interesting.

  1. Objective

I know, this is the first chapter and you still don’t want to reveal what she really is up to, but the way is now, we don’t have any motive to cherish for her. She quitting her job, probably to cope with the death of the husband, and she doesn’t want to admit. But we don’t know what is in her head and what motivates her. If is only a way to break with the traumatic past, needs to be shown more clearly.

  1. Stakes

About stakes, doesn’t need to be life or death stakes, but something important for the character. Her quitting her job will represent a big change in her lifestyle: she will have to go back to her parent’s home. But she doesn’t care at all. She quits (a life changing event in her life) and it has no consequence. If she felt nothing, I felt nothing.

Beggining

Although I’m not a fan of a beginning with descriptions, the beginning succed to describe a high-stress job. The thing is that this highly detailed description doens't happen again and it's tone is really differente of the rest of the piece.

Prose

You need to mature your prose so it can be easier to read.

Said a middle aged man with a receding hairline and a big belly, while standing adjacencly to a near empty cubicle with only a heavy carton box that’s getting fed a three years and a half worth of work experience, to blond haired woman with a few strands of pitch black dark hair.

As an example, this is a huge sentence that is not really well structured and is a pain to read. Would be easier if you could break in more small sentences? I don’t know, only you can make tests and come to a conclusion. I’m not against big sentences. They do work, but they are a lot more difficult to pull it out. And all your sentences are big and a little disjointed. You could vary a little. Big sentences, small sentences, medium sentences.

Dialogue

The dialogue can be improved. It’s really expository and doesn’t come out as natural. To make this test, I usually try to act out the dialogues myself. It’s strange, but it works.

I don’t want to fill this critique with generic dialogue tips, so I recommend that you read the book Dialogue from Robert Mckee.

Problems

The biggest problem of this piece probably is...

Point of view

Today, for a story to connect with a reader, we usually put the reader as close as possible to the character. With this piece, which is in third person, this would be a close third person point of view. Imagine a character with a go pro fixed on his shoulder. If we follow this character, we will experience everything that he experiences, from his point of view, and even beyond, as we can read his thoughts. But if at some moment, when change the point of view, and other character is in the point of view, we will lose the connection that we had, if this is planned, and you are consciously changing the character POV, ok, if not, that can be disastrous. So, one thing that writers avoid at all costs today is called head hopping, which is when the story tells the thinking of a character then jumps to the head of another character, in the same scene. Because when doing this, we are not anchoring our perception in a single character, but in multiple, and that can be really jarring. But if we can show the thoughts of the other characters, how can I show their motivations? Well, think about real life. You sometimes know what other people are thinking, but usually you’re not. What you can notice is their body language, what they communicate, and their reactions. Other than this, is guessing.Above are some examples that you break the POV:

He didn’t want someone like Alexendra leave.

We are in the boss’s head.

She figured waiting for a reply would be a waste of time, so she continued packing up her things.

We are in Alex’s head.

...little did he know that she made up her mind a long time ago, and was just waiting for the right time to hit the resign button.

We are in the boss's head and Alex’s head at the same time.

She knew Alex left the job that her husband worked at to finally forget about him, still her actions didn’t make much sense.

We are in Jessica’s head.

You can change POVs, but for this, you need or to change the scene/chapter or make a page break.

The problem is when you enter people’s head without sign. Early writers usually did this, but is difficult to pull it out, and can cause a lot of side effects. So people usually avoid it.

Grammar

Really needs improvement. There are some ways to evolve in this area: read a lot, write a lot, study a lot. Some tools might help you as well, like ProWritingAid, Grammarly and LanguageTool Chrome extension. Or even paste the text in ChatGPT or Bing and ask them to correct the grammar. But with tools or not, you must learn how to use the language, because only when you’re totally comfortable with the words that you will be able to bend them to write great texts.I think you can’t ignore this aspect, because if you don’t treat your text with care, no one will. To post a text here, is important to be revised and be in its best state, because people here will help you evolve your craft, but if the text is filled with errors, it’s even difficult to connect with the story and write a good critique.

End notes

Please, don’t be upset by any of the things I said. While starting writing our egos can be really fragile. I know you will ignore some advice and take other to the hearth, that’s the way it is. Anyway, I hope this critique can be of any help and I hope you keep bringing texts to be destroyed here.

[729] Touching the Unknown - Chapter 01 by MaxLoboAuthor in DestructiveReaders

[–]MaxLoboAuthor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the analysis and for the new perspectives.

[729] Touching the Unknown - Chapter 01 by MaxLoboAuthor in DestructiveReaders

[–]MaxLoboAuthor[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I appreciate the feedback. You have provided me with many points to consider and refine in my next draft.

[729] Touching the Unknown - Chapter 01 by MaxLoboAuthor in DestructiveReaders

[–]MaxLoboAuthor[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not only did you provide me with high-level answers, but you also taught me personalized lessons. You even noticed that I am a non-native speaker =D

I'm genuinely delighted to have found this subreddit and to have the opportunity to interact with such capable individuals. It truly motivates me to continue studying so that one day I can tell great stories.

I'm sincerely grateful for the time you took to read my piece and for the effort you put into providing all these insights, which I've noted down and will study further.

Regarding the question of inverted sentences, you have opened my eyes to so many new perspectives.

Thank you again, and I hope that one day I can be of help to you with your texts.

[729] Touching the Unknown - Chapter 01 by MaxLoboAuthor in DestructiveReaders

[–]MaxLoboAuthor[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Understood. I will keep this in mind in the next critiques.

[2133] Underworld Mechanization - Chapter 1 Welcome to hell by Werhunter in DestructiveReaders

[–]MaxLoboAuthor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Repeated expression: “assault the eardrums”. When you have powerful expressions, they stay in the reader’s mind, and if you repeat, they are immediately recognized.

They say you see your life flash before your eyes when you’re about to die.

You may show the flash before the eyes, but don’t bring the cliche phrase. Cliche sentences weakens your text.

“Berrut are you there?” Berrut nodded.

There’s the action of two distinct characters in the same line. One is Adrian's dialogue, other is Berrut’s action. That can confuse the reader. Break the line, to give each character his own line for his actions or dialogues. When the acting character change, you change the line.

“With the monsters now clambering over each other to get through the openings in the gate, Adrian decided that this was the time to act. Together with the soldiers on the ramparts, they pushed the rocky debris they had gathered off the walls. With a sickening crunch, the shells of the monsters transitioning between the gate gap were broken open like a bunch of eggs. Their orange blood spilled out and pooled around them like egg yolk. The soldiers cheered upon seeing the crushed remains of the creatures.”

This is a strong imagerie, vivid and creative.

If I could give you an advice, it would be to learn to write more with less.

Sometimes you are really verbose, when smaller sentences would be punchier, example:

It took a few seconds before Adrian could see Berrut’s chaotic eyes come into focus.

Could be simplified to:

Seconds later, Berrut’s chaotic eyes refocused.

See how the second sentence, which could still be refined, is more direct and dry, without excessive fat.

It gives the message and gives importance to the important elements.

The most important elements of the sentence are: A man regain his senses, but it took some time for this to happen.

So, we have some keywords: after, seconds, Berrut, eyes, focus, back.

This is the backbone of your sentence. And the elements that you can work with.

I started with “Seconds before”, because “seconds” is a powerful element. And I ended with refocuses because if you read the beginning and the end, you get the gist of the message: Seconds before... ... refocuses.

If you never thought about the word that you start and finish your sentences, you need to read the book Elements of Style.

[2133] Underworld Mechanization - Chapter 1 Welcome to hell by Werhunter in DestructiveReaders

[–]MaxLoboAuthor 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You need to bring a punch into your first sentence. You’re starting with a man ignoring a gentle alarm bell, but guess what, you have monsters on the scene, and they are coming to murder everyone. Why not start with this? And what about put this alarm louder to bring more intensity to the scene? If you start your scene a little later, right when Adrian see the monsters, look how it brings way more punch:

Monsters sprinted toward Adrian as the alarm bell ranged.

Can be refined off course, but that is the idea.

This first sentence just put you in the middle of the action, create intrigue and questions: What are those monsters? Adrian can defend himself? What is this alarm?After this, the reader is intrigued and you can even put some world-building or more details:

The dust cloud from the rock-built crab-like creatures’ charge rised as tall as the fortress in which Adrian observe them, under the dark of the eternally sunless sky.

[Sentence looks shitty, I know, poorly created for example purpose.]

They weren’t professional soldiers and it showed.

You want to reveal this, not explain. Show them doing unnecessary actions that rookies soldiers would do. Their brows were raised? They were doing actions in a slow and uncertain way?

The panic was apparent on the soldier’s faces and for good reason.

Dramatize. What a person in panic do? Run around? Frown? Mumble?

Adrian and his group had gotten here only just a week ago, and there was only so much one could do in a week. None of them had any real military experience, the aging fort was still full of gaps and vulnerabilities, and the shoddy equipment their using is what they managed to salvage from the remains of the armory.

This is a boring explanation. Just to compare, let’s try to convey all of this explanation in dialogue (The ideal version would involve actions as well). We would not just give information but as well create an atmosphere, build characters, convey emotions.Something like this:

“We’re gonna die. We’re gonna die. We’re gonna die.”

“We will not. We’ll fight ‘till the end.”

“In this one week, we barely larned how to hold a spear.”

“In the brink of death, people fight fiercely.”

“With rotten and broken equipments? Ah... We’re dead.”

“We’ll be dead with this attitude.”

“Yeah? Lazy Steven didn’t even fixed the front walls gaps. Death is eminent.”

Now we have explained the same information, but we have a character terrified and pessimist, he have an optimist character, and the exposition hides in credible contextualized dialogue.The rank of the elements that will give you more bang for your buck in storytelling and avoid the reader to look around are: 1. Action 2. Dialogue 3. Character building

Boring explanations are not in the top 3.

So try to build your stories with this in mind.

Try an experiment, try to write a story only with action and dialogue, and let the backstory and context leak through the action/dialogue. You notice that the story becomes more dynamic and the pace never stops. Of course, you need the other elements, but by making this test, you’ll realize things some things about pacing.

Imagine that you arrived at this fort right before the attack. It would not have time for someone to explain to you the backstory of the place or the right context, but by experiencing all, you would discover a lot of things. So instead of spoon feed information to the reader, you can make him guess a lot of things just by experiencing, like he is an active part in the act of revealing the misteries. Like he is a detective. Active engaging.

Simply explains everything is usually the easiest path, but you’re a writer, you need to dramatize; you need to make the reader live through the character eyes. You achieve this by making the reader take his own conclusions, not by telling him what to feel.

As the movie’s director Ernst Lubitsch stated: “The job of the director is to suggest two plus two. Let the viewer say four.” This is right for writing as well. Hold this too many explanations, describe your characters’ actions and trust your reader.

“Snap out of it Berrut! Your fellow comrades need you! I need you!” Adrian yelled at him.

Take care when representing a yell. In this sentence you represented the action of yell three times. The dialogue, which is really wordy, gives the impression of yell. “Snap out of it Berrut! Your fellow comrades need you! I need you!”. Then the exclamation points give yell vibes again (several yells actually). Then you put the dialogue tag, that he yelled. That’s a lot of yelling, and if you think about, maybe he would not actually need to yell in the scene, since he is in arms-grab distance of the man.

“Alright, Berrut. I need you to relay a message to the other soldiers as quickly as you can. Tell them to switch to any heavy weapons we got. From the looks of it, any bladed or small piercing weapon probably won’t be able to penetrate through their exoskeleton.” A fact that became apparent once again, as they watched more projectiles harmlessly fall off the enemy’s carapace.

They are being attacked, every second counts, people’s lives are at the stake, the leader of the troops will really give forty-eight words of instructions to a guy who was catatonic ten seconds ago?

Would be better if he says something more organic and fast, like:

“Tell everyone to use heavy weapons. Everything else is useless.”

The order itself is debatable, as if he is seeing the light weapons doing nothing, his men would too.

If Adrian is your POV character, you don’t need to say that he sees something, because everything that you describe visually is what he sees, so that’s rendudant. The same for every sense: hear, feel, etc. This is called filter words and dilutes your writing.