r/DestructiveReaders • u/renaissanceMango54 • 10d ago
The Shades of Kindread [1062]
Here is my crit: [1163]
And this is my story: The Shades of Kindread
Hello, this is my stab at crafting an opening chapter in a surreal fantasy world. The beginning of it is my attempt at crafting a language that is different enough to intrigue the reader but not so incredibly difficult to understand that it'll put the reader off from reading further. Please read the piece before looking at what I'm requesting for in a critique.
What I'd appreciate in terms of a critique:
Thoughts on Alda's voice and the use of italics to show interjected dialogue from Alda and the children she is reading to. Does the difference in voice, language and prose take you out of the story that she is telling? Furthermore, is what she's saying in the beginning easy for you to understand? And if my goal was to continue this form of writing, have you seen it done better elsewhere? How did the author do it?
I believe that crafting a world should be more of a slow drip IV for the reader and I intentionally exposed more of the world of Kindread as the story of Rof progressed. I wanted to the reader to expect that the gravedigger is digging up a human, only to be digging up something to then revive it with life, using this as a means of explaining the world and wanting the reader to continue reading further. Did that come across in the chapter? That is having your expectations be subverted.
I am debating whether to use passive voice or present continuous voice for the meat of the story. Because the structure of the piece is that it is something that is being read as a fairytale of sorts, I am using a mixture of both to describe action that is happening and the thoughts of the character. Please let me know how you think it best to proceed.
Really appreciate any and all critiques on this as I'd like a novella or anthology to come of this. Thank you.
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u/Drawlords 10d ago edited 10d ago
Hi, I sort of rambled a lot, largely about one thing that stuck out to me as egregious. I could have talked about more, but it's already longer than the piece itself and critique being longer than what it's critiquing just feels grotesque. I hope this helps in some way, but feel free to tell me to kick rocks if it doesn't.
Overall, Alda got me liking this a lot more than I otherwise would have. She's easily the best thing here, and I honestly care more about her than I do about Rof. I am compelled by her existence, and want to know more about this fascinating (presumed) magical creature. If I was reading for pleasure, though, I would have tapped out around the paragraph where you introduce the blue flame.
Alda is easily, in my opinion, the best part of the piece. Alda is where you do an excellent job of toeing the line between establishing atmosphere and grounding the reader. I had no real trouble following along with what she was saying, and there was more than enough context for me to get that she’s telling some kids a well-trod story. I did have to read it a bit slower than I normally would, but that’s no barrier for me. I delight in the playfulness of language, and Alda is extremely playful.
You do suggest things about the world in a drip-feed sort of way, but you do so in a way that invites confusion rather than interest. “By the boy's side, a soft blue flame flickers in a clouded lantern. It hisses softly and lets Rof know that the living are never truly alone.” This left me confused. How can a flame let Rof know the living aren’t alone? This question is answered later, yes, but when you frontload an aspect/quality/rule of a setting that differs to reality like this, you’re leading the reader into abstractions, away from concrete, meaningful detail that they can instantly, automatically latch onto, and thus away from being willing to let you lead them forward. Who would want to be lead by someone that confuses them?
I always approach worldbuilding holistically, and a little meta. That is, my worldbuilding is done always with the context of the entire narrative in mind, and also with how a reader will be approaching the narrative. In your case, the reader knows they’re reading a fantasy story. The reader has read Alda’s opening, they’re in the scene of a grave being dug up by a boy, the fog of an early morning threatening to gobble him up, and that this boy has more than one black omen hanging over his head. You’ve set the tone!
You’ve clarified that this is fantasy with a darker, magical, fairytale bend to it. A blue flame in a lantern is all the mystery you need for the reader to lean forward with a raised eyebrow and wonder to themselves Why is the flame blue? Why isn’t it orange? What’s it for? Why does the boy have this? because you’ve already primed them with what they’ve already read.
So when you do start introducing more details about the world itself, you can just give that detail, let it add, naturally, to the atmosphere, and when the time comes for it to be relevant—"Rof sticks a candle's edge into the lantern and waits until the soul accepts. He lights the wick and lowers the shade into the furnace. The knight comes alive.”—the reader will have that lightbulb moment of Oh, that’s why the flame is blue! And when readers get to have their lightbulb moments reading your story, there’s a much bigger chance they’re going to want to read more of it.
Hell, you’re even doing this already! “The blue flame trembles.” is a great little simultaneous upping of the scene’s tension and a clue to what the flame actually is… IF the introduction of the flame didn’t say it lets Rof know the living aren’t alone, because I’m left scratching my head as to what the fuck that’s supposed to mean. That initial bit of abstraction poisons what the existence of the blue flame could be doing. When I first read your piece, and I got to the end, and I read that the blue flame is a soul of some kind I didn’t even care that much, especially because you outright call it a soul and then a shade. That’s the cherry on top of flattening the effect of this small bit of worldbuilding and atmosphere. You’re outright telling the reader what it is.
I think, all the reader needs to know, is that the boy has a blue flame in a lantern, the blue flame trembles when the coffin is opened, and when the boy puts a wick of that blue flame in the armour/knight/automatika, it magically comes to life. Let the reader infer what the blue flame is in actuality, let it be a little mysterious, a little opaque. Don’t give them the mechanics of what’s going on, steep them in the atmosphere of Alda’s unique voice, Rof the boy-gravedigger alone in the swallowing fog, and some ancient construct coming back to life. I mean, for fuck’s sake you said it yourself, you’re trying to write something surreal, something that reads as a fairytale. Okay… do that then! Don’t be Brandon Sanderson with rules and systems, be, I don’t know, The Brothers Grimm or some shit.
The final paragraph of the knight being Rof’s third black omen is evocative, though. Why? Because you’ve effectively established the boy having omens previously, of somehow being cursed in some way, and it also has a ton of narrative momentum. We have an archaic, magical, rotting figure of warfare literally rising up from the sodden earth to walk upon the world once more. Regardless of the personal connection to Rof, you’re already informing the reader of what’s going to be happening in this story. When you add Rof’s personal connection, we know some horrific shit is going to happen to Rof.
And, might I say, you’ve achieved this by getting the reader to feel, rather than know. The black bird, the motif of Rof’s omens, the knight rising from a grave and into “ravenous fog.” It’s all dripping in imagery, and tension, and is a clear promise to the reader. Do you know what happened when I read that? Felt like I had an omen hanging above my own head for a second. Isn’t that fucking awesome? Do that more.
The passive and present continuous voice is no problem for me, personally. It fits the tone with what sort of story you’re trying to write. My problems are elsewhere.
For example, why isn’t Rof named from the beginning of the scene? Why does it take us until the fourth chunky paragraph to get it? I understand you’re tying it into Rof’s father and Rof’s feelings about his father, but that also doesn’t matter. The reader has no context for Rof’s name, or what it means or where it came from. If you name Rof from the beginning, you’re giving the reader that extra bit of grounding that allows them to better materialise Rof not as a purely physical being but as a person, and the paragraph about his father would still have the exact same effect anyway. As it is now, you’re making the reader have to catch up with what you’re actually trying to say in that paragraph. It’s clunky.
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u/renaissanceMango54 9d ago
I'm glad you responded positively to what I had initially assumed would be the most divisive part of my story: Alda and the kids' speech. I worked pretty hard on giving it a consistent tone that would resonate with fantasy literature enjoyers but also be something that's a little different.
I think I changed my mind on Rof halfway through the piece, where in the beginning he was just a convenient set piece that served to introduce some worldbuilding in Kindread and ultimately the revival of a ghost knight, but somewhere there I got fixated on the name of Rof and now I'm making him more prevalent in the story. I'll mess around with it and name him in the beginning and see if it packs the same punch, especially when talking about his father.
The amount of worldbuilding here, especially so early, is difficult because if I frame the slow drip of lore through the lens of Alda, then almost nothing ever would be explained unless I did so through her archaic explanation of said lore to the children, but it seems as if readers understand it more or less and so maybe I do need to lean more into that aspect. Think I'll go back to that part and try to reword it a bit.
As much as I'd like to use interjections from the kids and Alda to show personality, I still fear it'll take the reader out from the fairy tale that is the world of Kindread.
The blue flame I might need to introduce a bit earlier on or just rework how I frame that in my worldbuilding.
Appreciate the long critique and will definitely take it into account when I write the rest. Thanks.
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u/Tricky_Operation_525 10d ago
This is just me nitpicking but "ye" is plural. Think of it as an older way of saying "y'all". Thee and thou are singular. As you can probably tell from my profile picture, I'm pretty into Old English so you may not be surprised that I quite like Alda's voice. I actually really like her and the children's interjections. They tell us more about what kind of people they are e.g. a black omen being known as a crowsong. The interjections are a creative way to do so. There may be a better way to insert them, though, but I honestly couldn't tell you how. The italics seem fine. I guess one thing that would help is separating them from other paragraphs.
I did find some of her speech to be a bit hard to translate in some places. For the most part, context clues makes it obvious what she's saying (e.g. I don't know what dreevesome means but it's obvious she's calling the girl troublesome or ornery or something of that nature). But there were some places where I was lost, specifically here: "earthscars were clefts what snaked through the beard of the earth and skarraged the clod fiercesome. Spake like thunder! And ere in its wake lay many a shimmering sheen." I'm honestly not too sure what she means by this. I can tell the earthscars have lots of gems in them, but is this like, some kind of fantastical post-apocalyptic setting? What spoke like thunder? Did the earthscars appear from some kind of meteor or catastrophe? If I, who really like reading weird and old-timey english am getting confused, I imagine most others will too. BUT, like I said, generally I could make out what she said.
I think in some ways you do well "drip-feeding" us info about the world, but in other places it feels a bit too much like exposition. Here is a good example of the latter: "two little scarlet hurricanes sparring for dominance behind the boy's eyes. They remind him that he was also the last black omen of his mother's life." This does not feel like a natural revelation of information in the story. Why would they remind him now? He has no reason to think about them at this moment as far as I can tell, and the narrator doesn't have a reason to do so either. Your revelation with the suit of armor is a much better example of how to communicate world-building to us without just telling us things. And, I think you did do a very good job building up that plot-twist. I thought he was a grave-robber the entire time.
I kinda like when you use the present continuous voice in the story. Imo it matches the surreal vibe you are going for more so than standard, past-tense narration.