Planetfurry BBS

[Kaolin]

Ive been working on this for the better part of a week now. I read a lot of the threads in here about writing, a lot of it was very helpful to say the least. Ive been outlining the story and fleshing out the characters, which has made the whole process a lot easier and fun.
To be truthful this is the first time Ive really attempted to write anything beyond a short story for some class I was taking. So I'm really curious as to what you think of it.

All I have written as of posting this is the prologue. I wanted to have something with dialogue written first seeing as that's hardest for me... but I just couldn't wait any longer
I should have the first "chapter" done in a day or 2, but there's almost no dialogue till chapter 2. Which, of course, is what I expect I will need advice on more than anything.

Well, anyways, here it is .
Only the prologue is from the lizards semi-perspective.

Beneath

Prologue:

The claws of his scaly foot scraped across a stone as he stalked forward. The sound alerted his prey to his presence, allowing it to escape into a tiny crack. In furious desperation he lunged at the hole that sheltered his would-be meal. His talons scraped at the rocks and his forked tongue lashed out into the darkness, searching for the escapee. But it was no use, the rat would live to see another day, if you could call it that. Such was the life the cave lizard faced. Luckily for him he didn't have to eat more than once a week. Even then he sometimes neared starvation in his cave. It was not a large cavern by any means, but it was home to him. The pool provided more water than he could ever need and often attracted his food for him.

This hunt being a failure was no more than a frustration for him. He could easily go another day or two without anything. But none the less, any opportunity you get for food in the caves, you would be wise to take advantage of. He never left his cavern. Beyond its safety other lizards and far worse stalked for prey, which they would gladly make of him. Being that there was no further opportunity for him here, he walked over to his favorite crystal to keep warm. This was the largest crystal in the room and its light provided ample warmth for him. Once his brothers and sisters had also sought its light, but they had long grown and left for other caverns to call their own. Often he would dream of them as he slept by the crystal. Perhaps if he were older he would have wondered what had become of them, but that level of consciousness was years off yet. The eldest of his kind could even communicate with sounds, but such rarely happened. Most never reached such great age. Instead they would die from starvation or fighting one another, or even fall prey to something else altogether.

Having reached his crystal, he laid down in its warm light to go to sleep. But only a few moments later he woke to something he had never seen before. The room was filled with tiny green specks of light that floated at near random. He watched them for a moment, then tried to catch one of the nearby ones. It gave him a small shock when he touched it and then vanished. Having so easily beaten this invader, he continued to attack them, each time getting a tiny shock. After a few minutes of this they began to move upward away from him. As he watched they gathered near the center of the room, high over the pool. Growing nearer to each other they also grew brighter. Soon they were accompanied by a faint rushing sound, like one might hear if they were to listen to the shell of a sea mollusk. The sound grew louder and the light grew brighter. Soon it was even brighter than his crystal and the specks had coalesced into a large circle. Around it swirled green wisps of what looked like smoke, but they did not go upward, rather looping around the circle.

Suddenly the circle flashed brighter still and the sound climaxed at a deafening boom. Out of it shot a strange thing, shaped unlike any creature the lizard had ever seen before. Moments later it was followed by two shiny objects. All of them fell into the pool below, making even more noise than the boom had. The circle shattered in a flash of green back into the thousands of tiny specks from which it had formed and fell to the water. Whatever had fallen into his cave, it appeared to be dead. It simply floated in the water, not moving in the slightest. He was not fond of water and so did not venture out to investigate it. All of the commotion seeming to have passed, he moved back to his crystal and curled up again. Hopefully this time he would not be disturbed.

[ScottyDM]

Kaolin:

My initial reaction to this is, "Big paragraphs!" I start reading and the little bit of action you have seems flat and lifeless. For example, you wrote: The sound alerted his prey to his presence, allowing it to escape into a tiny crack. Not only is this lifeless, but you pull just a bit out of your lizard's POV and into the prey's.

In the next sentence you lied to the reader when you wrote: In furious desperation he lunged at the hole that sheltered his would-be meal. At least I assume it's a lie because later you wrote: Luckily for him he didn't have to eat more than once a week. And: This hunt being a failure was no more than a frustration for him. He could easily go another day or two without anything. Which is it? Can he kick back for a few days before he becomes truly hungry, or is he on starvation's door, desperate for food? I suspect, furious desperation, is an attempt to punch up your writing by throwing words at it. The problem is, too many words suck the life out of writing.

Let's look at your first two paragraphs (344 words):
The claws of his scaly foot scraped across a stone as he stalked forward. The sound alerted his prey to his presence, allowing it to escape into a tiny crack. In furious desperation he lunged at the hole that sheltered his would-be meal. His talons scraped at the rocks and his forked tongue lashed out into the darkness, searching for the escapee. But it was no use, the rat would live to see another day, if you could call it that. Such was the life the cave lizard faced. Luckily for him he didn't have to eat more than once a week. Even then he sometimes neared starvation in his cave. It was not a large cavern by any means, but it was home to him. The pool provided more water than he could ever need and often attracted his food for him.

This hunt being a failure was no more than a frustration for him. He could easily go another day or two without anything. But none the less, any opportunity you get for food in the caves, you would be wise to take advantage of. He never left his cavern. Beyond its safety other lizards and far worse stalked for prey, which they would gladly make of him. Being that there was no further opportunity for him here, he walked over to his favorite crystal to keep warm. This was the largest crystal in the room and its light provided ample warmth for him. Once his brothers and sisters had also sought its light, but they had long grown and left for other caverns to call their own. Often he would dream of them as he slept by the crystal. Perhaps if he were older he would have wondered what had become of them, but that level of consciousness was years off yet. The eldest of his kind could even communicate with sounds, but such rarely happened. Most never reached such great age. Instead they would die from starvation or fighting one another, or even fall prey to something else altogether.

If I may be so bold (281 words):
The lizard stalked forward, but when the claws of his foot audibly scraped against stone, his prey bolted for a narrow crack.

He lunged toward the rat as it vanished down a hole too small for the lizard to follow. His forked tongue lashed out into the semi-darkness, searching in vain for the escapee. His stomach twitched in response to the anticipation of a meal, now missing.

Such was the life a cave lizard faced. Fortunately, he didn't have to eat more than once a week. Even so food was scarce in this small cave and in lean times he faced starvation. Still, it was his cave and he had all he needed: a pool of clean water, a crystal that provided warmth and light, and the occasional prey item that was attracted to the water. Beyond the safety of his cave larger lizards and worse hunted. Instinctively he knew that if he ventured forth, they would hunt him.

Having missed his meal of tasty rat, the lizard walked over to the largest crystal in the room, his favorite. It gave him light, and with the light, warmth. Once he had shared the crystal's light with his siblings, but they had grown and left to find caves of their own. Often he dreamed of them as he slept by his crystal. He might have wondered what became of them, but such was was beyond the ability of his still developing brain. Someday he would wonder, even communicate with sounds as the eldest of his species did. But most never reached such a great age. They fell to starvation, or fighting one another, or to something else. Life could be unforgiving.

I've removed redundancy and stripped extra words. I've also strengthened point of view. With this character you can't get in too tight, or we'd be privy to the mental equivalent of hissing and grunts. I'm not completely pleased with the first sentence of my last paragraph, it could be stronger, but I'm not sure what you're shooting for.

Speaking of hissing, does your lizard react verbally to the rat's escape? Does the rat? Also, can you add scent here? For example, "the tangy scent of ____ rat." (young rat? old rat? pregnant rat?) When we write anthrofiction we have characters who have some senses that are heightened from human experience and some senses that are dulled. Use it. Your lizard can probably tell a pregnant rat from a male rat from a young rat by scene alone. The question is, how to write that for this character. Your lizard has an undeveloped brain, so a concept like "pregnant" should be rendered as: "A fat belly, filled with smaller copies of itself and tasty."

Maybe this as a first paragraph:
The lizard stalked forward, the tangy scent of rat on his tongue to guide him in the semi-darkness. A scent that promised a rat, fat with smaller copies of itself—tender and sweet. But when the claws of his foot audibly scraped against stone, his prey bolted for a narrow crack.

With the use of "semi-darkness" in this paragraph, delete it from the second paragraph. Note, I've not said "flickering tongue." I assume the reader will know. I like your description of "his forked tongue lashed out" as it shows his frustration as well as a constant activity of lizardkind. If you had a human character who constantly tugged at his ear, and you wrote that into many of your paragraphs, you'd drive your reader to madness. So with the lizard—I avoided over explaining a common behavior.

About darkness: How much are we talking about here? Caves have a tendency to be black. The kind of blackness that reaches out and sucks all the photons from the air. Your cave has some magic crystals that emit light and heat. How much light, if any, does your lizard need to function? I used "semi-darkness," guessing that the scene would read better if the lizard could see. Otherwise you'd need a rewrite so the first two paragraphs explicitly use only scent and sound—sight is implied otherwise.


It's impossible for me to even guess what this might be about, or why you feel you need a prologue. Usually prologues are ignored by readers, or skimmed over. You'd do well to call it "chapter 1" or to work it in the story as flashbacks—assuming that by the time your real chapter 1 rolls around your character has enough mental development to have a flashback—or perhaps as snatches of dreams.


How's the large-scale structure of your story? What is this about? Can you articulate a one sentence synopsis? A one paragraph synopsis? One page? How well do you know your characters? Your world? What is the sequence of events? Where are the turning points? Are all your events important to the story? That is, do they move the story along or develop some aspect of your characters or world that's important to the story?

By way of example, here's a one sentence synopsis of a short story I'm writing now:
Propelled by disaster, a young man makes the transition from fantasy, to reality and adulthood.

I suppose I could describe him as a "teenage male humanoid-fox," but that seems so clumsy. Besides, in this storyverse humans are a myth from a time long ago, and a "teenage male humanoid-fox" is a "young man."


Good luck with your writing.

Scotty

[Kaolin]

Wow, thanks Scotty.
I can see I have vastly more to learn than I previously thought. It's a lot to absorb, since most of it is brand new to me.

First and foremost, the questions you stated made me realise just how underdeveloped my world and characters are. I have to make a world before I can write about it. The same goes for characters. Only when they live and breath can I build a story around them.

It seems that I thought it out just enough to be able to write what seems to be half of a synopsis, as follows:
A leoran (lee-or-ahn) is sent to the underworld realm known as "Beneath". A massive network of tunnels and caverns stretching for thousands of miles. And the trip has wiped his conscious memory. Through dreams he grows to realise that not only is there a surface world, but that he was sent Beneath wrongly at the hands of a corrupt government.

The main character of this story is, in fact, the figure who came through the portal, not the lizard. The entire prologue is inconsequential to the rest of the story but something I wanted to write. Which is why, I suppose, I made it the prologue. It could be skipped and the reader would miss nothing of great value to the story.

Thank you very much.
This is a lot of food for thought. Exactly what I was hoping for.

[ScottyDM]

Kaolin:

Check this out. Randy is a published author, but he's been heavily involved with teaching writing the last few years. I put a couple of links on that post back to his website. You can find lots of resouces there. I bought the course when it was "pre-publication cheap" and it's well worth it. Six hours of audio lecture. In his free sample he talks about: freshman, sophmore, junior, and senior. I'd say I'm right at the cusp between freshman and sophmore. I still have a few things to work through to get to sophmore. Meaning, I have a long way to go to "graduation". Even if you're not shooting for publication you should be working at being the best you can be.

In his course, Randy talks about the four pillars of fiction: storyworld, characters, plot, and theme. Randy has a technique he's developed called the snowflake method, but oddly enough he does not incorporate storyworld in that method. Holly Lisle, another published author has a tremendously helpful website for writers with about 75 essays on the craft of writing fiction. Here are a few of her essays you might find interesting:

• Questions about Worldbuilding
  
• How Much of My World do I Build?
  
• Maps Workshop -- Developing a Fictional World Through Mapping
  
• Worldbuilding -- Rollicking Rules of Ecosystems
  
• Fantasy is Not for Sissies: Real Rules for Real Worlds
  

That ought to get you started.

Holly has a free e-book in PDF format called Mugging the Muse. It contains pretty much the same information on her site, except if you have the PDF copy you don't have to worry if her site might be offline when you need to look something up.

Are you going to participate in the Watchingstone Writing Contest this season? It was fun for me and I learned a bunch. One of the goals of the contest is to help writers improve.

Scotty

[Kaolin]

That's a gold mine if I ever saw one. Thanks again.

I wont be entering anything this season, but later this year I probably will.

I'm starting to see things Ive always liked doing fall into place around my writing.