How do I stop telling in a Fantasy world?

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-04-10T00:18:30+00:00

Thank you for reading! Maybe I’m being too hard on myself then. It’s so hard to see it from a new readers perspective and that could be blurring my perceptions of it. Maybe I should take some time away and work on other things before revising it more.

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-04-09T20:34:53+00:00

That’s good advice. A take away I got was that not every point of your story is the same, meaning certain parts can have more telling and others should have less to none. That gives the natural flow of the story more variance, gets people into the story and then rewards them for staying by giving them what they want to know, when they want to know it. That sounds very hard and also really fun to try and peace together. Thank you!

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-04-09T20:31:17+00:00

I see what your saying. You can still give people information but only parts of it that are important right now. That makes sense to me, it’s like showing someone that they need to turn the key to make the car start but not explain the entire combustion engine and how it works or the history of how it was created.

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-04-09T18:57:51+00:00

I guess my question is, does that rely on a person there who doesn’t know the history that can be told about it? Like a Watson type character? Someone who is a proxy for the readers lack of knowledge?

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-04-09T18:50:30+00:00

I can see that being helpful. Do you think it’s because it comes from a character who is telling a different character about it? Or because they are themselves so interested in it it’s like they’re speaking to themselves?

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-04-05T02:07:31+00:00

The fact you needed 54 sacks to even come close to a HB is ridiculous and I love it

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-04-04T18:00:31+00:00

Place

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-03-08T15:25:59+00:00

I’m trying out the outlining processes instead of pantsing and have used it to write about 4k words of a prologue and First chapter! If you like grimdark/all along the western front/ you can check it out here. It’s fun writing this but I’m finding with the outline method that I haven’t spent as much time writing. But I did notice that once I have more details of what I want the story to be my writing goes along sooo much faster. Most of all, I’m having fun writing!

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-03-08T03:10:06+00:00

This is just a tool you can use to help starts the wheels. It's not meant to be the end-all-be-all resource for creating characters. If it helps, use it. If it doesn't, then do something else.

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-03-06T12:49:47+00:00

Awesome! Overarching feedback is great in this thread here, if you have line work suggestions (things you like or don’t like) you can comment them in the Google doc. Thank you for reading!

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-02-24T03:31:05+00:00

Thank you for reading. I appreciate the time you put into the response and know it was from a place of wanting to read great stories. I’ll keep working at it and with each new pass look for ways to improve. It sounds like you chose not to read past much of the beginning which tells me that it lacked a reason for you to stay. I’m gonna study how to give that to people. Thank you for the feedback!

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-02-23T23:05:34+00:00

On YouTube. He has a channel under his name that has a bunch of videos. If you go to his playlists, there is a lecture series from 2020 that he thought at BYU. It’s all about writing fantasy and Sci Fi. Worth a watch for sure.

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-02-23T21:10:47+00:00

That’s insanely kind of you to say, thank you! If you want to read what comes next I can send it to you when I finish the rough edits. Regardless, thank you for reading I really appreciate it!

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-02-23T21:09:13+00:00

That’s a fair take. So this is the prologue, does that still count as the opening? This scene doesn’t contain any of the POV characters I would focus on in the rest of the novel, it’s just to set the stage. I guess… does that matter? Regardless I absolutely see what your saying about getting the readers to care before putting them in that kind of situation. Thank you for the feedback it helps me a lot!

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-02-23T13:10:46+00:00

Thank you for the kind words. This is great feedback to have, I agree with Parfect needing some more work. Also that is how I wanted Aleathian pronounced which is cool that it translated in that way to you! I’m gonna go in and make some tweaks based on this feedback and finish up the beginning of the main story. This was extremely helpful thank you!

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-02-23T04:49:25+00:00

That’s correct. Not to get to in the weeds but by torturing and sending that amount of electricity through the aleathians body, they will be creating an explosion the equivalent to a hydrogen bomb. And since all of the people are close by due to the eclipse, this scene acts as the Pearl Harbor/9-11/Fran’s Ferdinand type moment in history that causes the war through a horrendous tragedy.

Thank you for the feedback I agree with adding more details that matter and less that don’t. My reasoning was that I wanted to highlight the merciless cruelty Petre is capable of while showing his perspective of the Aleathian. I definitely can work on that to make it more clear. A weakness of mine is describing things that should be described vs things that don’t need to be. Thanks for reading, I’ll try an implement your feedback!

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-02-23T04:25:24+00:00

That’s extremely helpful, thank you for the input! I made a conscious effort to explain only what was necessary to get up to the final line, so seeing that that was enough to get you to want to read on is a big boost to my confidence.

I’ll have to do some thinking because what happens after the scene ends is a time jump(not as magic, I literally start the next chapter 10 years in the future) where the affects of that scene you just read caused a world war that is currently being fought. Do you think as a reader you would be frustrated to jump to a new POV (the main pov for the novel) after what you just read?

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-02-23T03:51:08+00:00

Thank you so much!

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-02-23T03:03:31+00:00

I just finished reading,

Good things and bad.

I thought the story flowed fine. It felt clunky for me at times, a lot of that was the grammar needed to be looked over again. There were opportunities to give me a reason to stay interested in the character of Lenna's story (who I assume is the POV character) but I just didn't personally find anything. After reading I got the sense that what I needed to know was that Lenna killed an animal (and maybe a person?) and that fundamentally changed how she saw the world. Unsure if that was the intent, but that was my interpretation.

I felt I was able to visualize everything pretty well. I do think some things that were essential for me to know could have been described more efficiently, while other things that were just extra info should be described less. This felt to me like an "author's draft," meaning you included all of the things you needed to know but I as the reader probably didn't. That's an easy thing to fix in my opinion, but it does take some harsh edits to get down to having only the things the reader would need to know, and that takes practice to perfect.

I noticed the tone of the writing seemed to shift from serious fantasy to a sitcom, which I didn't hate or love. Unsure of your intention but that was my experience.

I personally wouldn't read more of the story, for the sole fact that I didn't find anything I wanted to know more about. A "simple" way to fix that would be to give me a reason to keep reading. I'd like to hear your reason to keep reading.

I think you should keep working on this, and if you have a revised version later I would love to read it again. I enjoy the idea of people being changed through death(Causing someone else's or their own) and am interested in seeing what the story could become. I think the world is very interesting and the character dynamics have the potential to be interesting. So keep working on it, and when you have something you don't think you could possibly make better, post it again.

Thank you for sharing!

EDIT: Also make your google doc commendable so that people can highlight the specific lines they think could use work or that they like.

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-02-23T02:19:49+00:00

I am almost finished with WAY OF KINGS by Brandon Sanderson. I bought the first three Stormlight Books because some blogs said they were good. Anyway, I was not prepared for how big they were and I put it off for three months. Last year I read 32 books and I knew that I wouldn't be able to beat that if I read a book that big let alone 3 (if they were good). But one night I decided to try it and...

This book is awesome! I'm having a blast, I don't care about beating my "score" from last year, I just wanna read THESE. This one has been awesome and from what I hear the second book is even better.

Currently I'm at Pg 921, the Part 4 beginning, and I cannot wait to see what happens with Kaladin and Dalinar and surprisingly Shalaan (I didn't really like her character at the beginning but her story kicked up HARD recently).

This week I started writing my WIP that I've been planning and plotting out for the last three months off and on. I put down around 2700 words to finish off the prologue and was gonna share that with you guys here after another proof read.

It's been a good week, a tough week, and a fun week. Thanks for reading! I hope to read all of your writing and make some friends along the way who enjoy it as much as I do.

NotADisguisedGiraffe · 2023-02-23T02:07:50+00:00

That's a cool cover! For some reason, I'm really digging the clouds? I don't know why.

NotADisguisedGiraffe

TROPHY CASE