Critique: Night of the Demons

This is an excerpt from a piece I found at writingforums.org, used with permission.

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Danath hoisted the elk that was draped over his shoulders, [Comma error] in a futile attempt to spread the kill’s weight out over his back a bit more evenly. [You’re using a lot of extra words here. How many of these words are pushing you closer to the start of your story, and how many of them are just sitting there? “Danath struggled beneath the weight of the dead elk” expresses the same idea quicker and clearer. Beware of adverbs, especially ones that end in the –ly suffix, and forms of “to be.” They’re both stylistically weak. Compare my example sentence to your own. Mine may not cram as many ideas into the sentence as yours – but it expresses them all the same, and with fewer words. Also, try to avoid using phrases like “a bit.” Where they work well for certain narrative voices, they are disastrous for others. Notice how, in your original sentence, “a bit more evenly” can be sliced off the back without changing the meaning. Spreading the kill’s weight over his back implies a need for evenness. “A bit” literally serves no function for you. Treat it like any bad employee and fire it.] It was no good; he knew they would hail him as a conquering hero back in the little town, for bringing in a bit of meat in these trying times, but that certainly didn’t make the actual act of bringing the stag in any easier. [You’re trying to pack too many ideas into one sentence. In this single sentence we have several ideas: {1} His efforts aren’t helping (“It was no good”) – {2} The villagers will praise him for the meat he brings – {3} He lives in trying times, and – {4} their praise won’t make bringing the stag in easier. Relate ideas in complex sentences to one another more closely. Idea three really doesn’t connect well with the other ideas, so put it somewhere else. Also, consider that “the little town” and “they” do not tell me anything about your world. In fact, they make it seem somewhat generic. If Danath lives in this town, he’ll know what it is called. He might even have a cynical or endearing pet name for it. He won’t be thinking about the townsfolk as a faceless pronoun, he’ll be thinking about specific people.] Nor did the thick blanket of fresh snow; he desperately wished he hadn’t stayed that last day in the forest. But then, through the thicket of trees he would not have been able to tell if it was snowing, [How could a thicket impede one’s ability to detect snow? Spend a night out in the woods; believe you me, you’ll be aware of every single iota of horrible weather. If the trees are so thick at their tops that snow can’t fall through, you need to point this out.] and this new carpet might have been days old yet. He was nearing the tall, timber walls that protected the town from attackers, [Everyone knows what a town wall is for. You don’t need to specifically point out that it protects the town from attackers. Be aware, though, that Danath would be coming across houses and farmsteads long before he got to the wall. The walls would protect a central portion of the town, and people would flee to them for protection.] thinking that he might, after all, need to lay down his burden and rest, when an arrow whizzed past his head, whistling in his ear and making him whip around in search of its source. [Try to express this action sequence with fewer words, and disconnect it from the idea that he needs to lay the elk down. I would start a new paragraph and then go into the attack. EG, “An arrow sliced through the air by Danath’s head. He whirled around, his eyes moving in zigs and zags as he scanned the trees.] The force of his turn was carried mostly in the body upon his shoulders, and the weight swinging around him knocked him, unbalanced, into the snow. Furious, and fearful, Danath fumbled his sword and his footing as he tried to stand, wallowing in the white annoyance, and then his fear deepened; he heard the indistinguishable [Indistinguishable or unmistakable?] sound of laughter ringing towards him.

I have two pieces of advice for you.

1. Misusing a word (or using it strangely) will cause any editor worth his pen to send you a rejection letter, stat. You might consider buying the Merriam-Webster Vocabulary Builder. It is packed with information, and if you actually do the activities inside it, you’ll be a walking word expert inside of two weeks.

2. Use fewer complex sentences. A smattering of simple sentences will lend your prose readability. People reading fiction are generally doing so to relax. A paragraph full of 50 word sentences won’t let them do so. Many will stop reading for no reason besides, “I just didn’t like it.” Simple sentences, and even an occasional well-placed sentence fragment, add a pleasing rhythm to fiction.

But don’t abandon the complex sentence! Instead, pick up a few books by authors you enjoy and diagram a few of their paragraphs at random. Compare the number of simple sentences to the number of complex ones. Compare the rhythms of different ratios.

A human was walking towards him, her step light and graceful, the type of person who could move through thick undergrowth and beds of autumn leaves without leaving a trace of sound or step. In fact, he looked behind her, and noticed the tracks she left in the snow were neither as deep nor as pronounced as his own. She wore a tabard; the crest of the kingdom’s guard was upon her chest. Danath had to smile, now. Only one woman could wear those colors and send an arrow flying so tantalizingly [Tantalizingly?] close to his ear. [What does her ability to wear the town guards’ tabard have to do with her ability to fire a bow?] Jenna stopped laughing as she approached him, her expression turning to one of amazement as she saw the carcass he had dropped.

“Good hunting, Danath! And successful, I see!” She was still too far away to speak in normal tones, and Danath’s hand tightened on his sword. Jenna noticed, of course, [Of course is a lot like a bit. Kill the phrase and your sentence works better.] and although her tone was mocking, she did indeed lower her voice.

This is a point of view error. You’ve been inside Danath’s head right up until you introduced Jenna. Now you’re in her head. Danath won’t notice her noticing. He might noticing where her eyes are, but he’ll never be 100% sure what she notices. Also, I’m not sure how the beginning of this paragraph relates to the end of it. She indeed lowered her voice… because his sword hand was tightening… because she fired an arrow? I don’t see the logic. More logical would be his sword hand loosening because he recognized a friend… and her voice lowering as she approached.

“No one is around, you worrywart. I would have seen them from my tree… you were the only soul for miles.” She smiled, and he was warmed by the expression. Jenna wasn’t his; and in any case, it was a look of friendship in her eyes. She was not the sort he could harbor affection for. Even if she was not married, and a mother, Danath fell for the more ladylike; a woman who needed help climbing a tree was far more attractive to him than this, he had a hard time thinking woman, but forced himself to, who spent her days climbing trees to do the man’s job of guarding the town. [This sentence has 57 words. Remember your audience! They’re reading for fun, not to work.] Indeed, [Indeed either means “in fact” or else is used as a surprised exclamation. Would you have written “in fact” here? This word is over-used, especially in unpublished fantasy. Consider that, when you revise.] even though her children had often sat upon his knees, Danath had a hard time looking at Jenna and considering her a mother. He knew her to be a soldier, and a good one at that.

“Jenna.” He smiled back at her, meeting her look of kinship, and then looked to the animal on the ground. She followed his gaze.

“I see you made a kill on your hunt.” She repeated her earlier sentiment, but without the cheer she held last time.

“I did. A stag… I know. But there’s precious little else to hunt. Would you have preferred a bear?” He couldn’t meet her eyes when he said it. He tried not to kill elk for no other reason than her affection for them, and had probably known in his heart that she wouldn’t be able to join in the feast his kill would bring. She didn’t reply directly to him, nor did she continue to look at the animal. With effort, Danath pulled it back onto his shoulders. Jenna no longer looked at him, training her eyes on the town gates. He knew she would have preferred a bear.

What part of Jenna’s upbringing caused her to be fond of elk? Why does she hang around in trees? Why is she different? These aren’t necessarily questions you’ve got to answer here, immediately, but they’re factors you must think about if you do not want Jenna to seem like a stereotype.

“We’ve missed you ‘round here, Shea will be happy to see you back.” She paused, the abrupt change of subject was something she had never been particularly good at. “I think it’s because her house is snowed in to the windows. But that’s what you signed up for, isn’t it?”

[…] Jenna’s home looked like a frosted brown cake, with snow piling high on the roof and a candle glowing in every window. […][I love this sentence.]

And cut.

Every paragraph, you need to consider how your opening connects to your ending. Even in fantasy, the beginning sentence of your paragraph needs to be the leader of the rest of the paragraph.

If you open up a paragraph with an arrow flying past someone’s head, then the rest of the paragraph needs to support that idea. It needs to contain character reactions or events that directly unfold because of the arrow. The same is true of dialogue. A new topic will almost always equal a new paragraph.

Later in the segment you sent me, demons attack while Jenna and Danath are eating. You need to start your story there, instead of with Danath killing an elk.

Why?

Because the death of the elk does not appear to be central to your plot. You introduce your characters there, but you don’t give me any special information about them – nothing that you’ll be able to specifically draw upon later in your story. The demon attack, however, is an important event that appears to set your entire story in motion.

I hope some of this helps.

Over and out.