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kitewithfishI've already posted a review on ff.net before I read this, so I'll address your points here.
1. Two Chapters? It is a little long. There are a couple of threads running through it (the food issues for all involved, the care of the eggs, Maevyn's desire to learn more Orkish, and where they want to go next.) that, if needed, could be separated out. However, what struck me as I was reading it was that there was a common theme in many of the scenes- Maevyn is becoming more orkish and they are starting to treat her that way. This makes the whole chapter as now posted feel like a unified whole.
Now, of course, the inter-orc discussion of where to go next and what to do with the eggs don't follow that, but they do give an idea of what is going on at the time. It points the story towards what will happen next, and I personally think that they work well together. Bragdagash looks smart and like a competent, if orkish-style leader, and thereby adds an interesting layer to the characterization of orcs as a species. There feels like a good thematic balance between the heroines and the supporting (read:eeeeeevil) cast.
What adds some padding to both the orc-focused parts and the captive-focused parts is the amount of anthropological explanation that you add to clarify what the orcs are doing and thinking. However, I would advise against trying to whittle those down any more, because as they are, they provide a background to clarify the orc's behavior and reactions to things. Also, it's the "Uruks in the Mist" aspect of the writing that makes this a pleasure for me to read, so I would hardly tell you to make the story less the way I like it.
In short: the chapter works well as a unit, balancing captives and captors and making both interact in interesting and revealing ways. If you really feel strongly about dividing it to two, you could try to filter out the "Bragdagash finds a babysitter and consults a map" subplot into another chapter itself. But then you would have to alter the timeline a bit to make events not contemporaneous and/or make sure that Maevyn didn't overhead that conversation.
2. Descriptions of food situation- possibly jumpy?
The biggest food descriptions passage (from when Nazluk smacks M. to when the focus shift to Bragdagash with Grushak and the map) strike me as Maevyn's thoughts naturally wandering. She's hungry, she's thinking about food and comparing the past to the present. The flow feels pretty natural to me. The small details of what they're eating and how Maevyn got sick and Leni took care of her feel pretty much like M's thoughts. They are cute little details about how they're surviving, and I think that they should come into the story somehow.
However, the thing is, they are not that interesting as parts of the story themselves outside of M's thought process. I can see her thinking about onions and bad berries, but there doesn't seem to be a place in this chapter for them to happen in real time. They make sense as reflections and ruminations, but as they are there is not enough there for them to be actual episodes of the story. They highlight how M is thinking about food and about Leni, and I like them as is, but if you want to take them out of the framework of M's thoughts, you would have to flesh them out more. I don't think you really want to have to devote another chapter to food after this one, but you could if you wanted to make them a bigger event in the story.
3- Would Leni know about the Nettles?
Hmm. Well, she is an elf and she is older, so maybe she should know about this for the pure factuality of it. I see your point there. But having Maevyn know something useful that Leni does not shows a good partnership between the two beyond the constraints of their traumatic bonding. It upsets the dynamic of Leni always being right and/or hoity toity about something (at least in Maevyn's mind), and makes M look less clueless, and a bit more coarse and orky. It's a good interpersonal moment. I say leave it. Maybe elves don't think nettles are pretty enough to cultivate, or maybe her parents were very careful about letting stinging plants grow around their small children's play area. The scene works well on a character level, and your audience will probably be as shocked to find out you can eat a nettle as Leni is. My vote: leave it in.
4. Grushak: the new Celine Dion?
Re-reading the scene, it strikes me as odd that Grushak gets mad as Mushog first, then goes after Maevyn as if she understands what she's saying about the meat. It might make more sense for him to go after Maevyn first as if she realizes what she's saying- she's so contrary that she might actually be that ungrateful (or hell, maybe she can see tapeworms better than orcs can, who knows?) , and he might take it at face value for a minute or too. Then, once he realizes that she's just a pawn for Mushog's joke, he could chastise Mushog, and then turn back to Maevyn to tell her she's an idiot.
Also, just the phrasing of "You may think it’s cute to hear about tapeworms in your food while you’re bloody well eating it, but I don’t. Shut up before I tear you a new arsehole,” strikes me as a little bit anticlimactic. We know she said *something* bad enough to gross out an orc, but we don't find out until Grushak says it- written this way, the humor of the reveal (zomg tapeworms!) gets lost in Grushak's whining. There's no punchline, just description.
Suggestion (free for the taking and entirely without obligation for use), is that you *could* use the situation to hang a lampshade on Hrahagh's less-than-perfect command of the group's dialect of Orkish. If only he hears what Maevyn says, and then asks Grushak if 'dhomaj' still means tapeworms in the local dialect, you get your punchline, Hrahragh doesn't fade into the background so much after giving M the meat, and Grushak would already be inclined to try and figure out what the hell Maevyn was trying to say.
The tapeworm idea works itself- it's roughly the grossest thing I can imagine, and I can imagine that Grushak would think so too, but it lacks a punchline.
5. Grushak as Yoda (will that mental image ever die??!)?
It works. If it were just general captive threatening or something about teaching her to behave or something, it would be cheesey. But he's threatening her with grammar lessons of all things, and he just spent the last minutes yelling at her in a way that I think is generally unprecedented in the history of orcs yelling at their captives ("Learn your vocabulary, snaga!"), so I think the closing lines work fine, despite harkening back to clichés.
1. Two Chapters? It is a little long. There are a couple of threads running through it (the food issues for all involved, the care of the eggs, Maevyn's desire to learn more Orkish, and where they want to go next.) that, if needed, could be separated out. However, what struck me as I was reading it was that there was a common theme in many of the scenes- Maevyn is becoming more orkish and they are starting to treat her that way. This makes the whole chapter as now posted feel like a unified whole.
Now, of course, the inter-orc discussion of where to go next and what to do with the eggs don't follow that, but they do give an idea of what is going on at the time. It points the story towards what will happen next, and I personally think that they work well together. Bragdagash looks smart and like a competent, if orkish-style leader, and thereby adds an interesting layer to the characterization of orcs as a species. There feels like a good thematic balance between the heroines and the supporting (read:eeeeeevil) cast.
What adds some padding to both the orc-focused parts and the captive-focused parts is the amount of anthropological explanation that you add to clarify what the orcs are doing and thinking. However, I would advise against trying to whittle those down any more, because as they are, they provide a background to clarify the orc's behavior and reactions to things. Also, it's the "Uruks in the Mist" aspect of the writing that makes this a pleasure for me to read, so I would hardly tell you to make the story less the way I like it.
In short: the chapter works well as a unit, balancing captives and captors and making both interact in interesting and revealing ways. If you really feel strongly about dividing it to two, you could try to filter out the "Bragdagash finds a babysitter and consults a map" subplot into another chapter itself. But then you would have to alter the timeline a bit to make events not contemporaneous and/or make sure that Maevyn didn't overhead that conversation.
2. Descriptions of food situation- possibly jumpy?
The biggest food descriptions passage (from when Nazluk smacks M. to when the focus shift to Bragdagash with Grushak and the map) strike me as Maevyn's thoughts naturally wandering. She's hungry, she's thinking about food and comparing the past to the present. The flow feels pretty natural to me. The small details of what they're eating and how Maevyn got sick and Leni took care of her feel pretty much like M's thoughts. They are cute little details about how they're surviving, and I think that they should come into the story somehow.
However, the thing is, they are not that interesting as parts of the story themselves outside of M's thought process. I can see her thinking about onions and bad berries, but there doesn't seem to be a place in this chapter for them to happen in real time. They make sense as reflections and ruminations, but as they are there is not enough there for them to be actual episodes of the story. They highlight how M is thinking about food and about Leni, and I like them as is, but if you want to take them out of the framework of M's thoughts, you would have to flesh them out more. I don't think you really want to have to devote another chapter to food after this one, but you could if you wanted to make them a bigger event in the story.
3- Would Leni know about the Nettles?
Hmm. Well, she is an elf and she is older, so maybe she should know about this for the pure factuality of it. I see your point there. But having Maevyn know something useful that Leni does not shows a good partnership between the two beyond the constraints of their traumatic bonding. It upsets the dynamic of Leni always being right and/or hoity toity about something (at least in Maevyn's mind), and makes M look less clueless, and a bit more coarse and orky. It's a good interpersonal moment. I say leave it. Maybe elves don't think nettles are pretty enough to cultivate, or maybe her parents were very careful about letting stinging plants grow around their small children's play area. The scene works well on a character level, and your audience will probably be as shocked to find out you can eat a nettle as Leni is. My vote: leave it in.
4. Grushak: the new Celine Dion?
Re-reading the scene, it strikes me as odd that Grushak gets mad as Mushog first, then goes after Maevyn as if she understands what she's saying about the meat. It might make more sense for him to go after Maevyn first as if she realizes what she's saying- she's so contrary that she might actually be that ungrateful (or hell, maybe she can see tapeworms better than orcs can, who knows?) , and he might take it at face value for a minute or too. Then, once he realizes that she's just a pawn for Mushog's joke, he could chastise Mushog, and then turn back to Maevyn to tell her she's an idiot.
Also, just the phrasing of "You may think it’s cute to hear about tapeworms in your food while you’re bloody well eating it, but I don’t. Shut up before I tear you a new arsehole,” strikes me as a little bit anticlimactic. We know she said *something* bad enough to gross out an orc, but we don't find out until Grushak says it- written this way, the humor of the reveal (zomg tapeworms!) gets lost in Grushak's whining. There's no punchline, just description.
Suggestion (free for the taking and entirely without obligation for use), is that you *could* use the situation to hang a lampshade on Hrahagh's less-than-perfect command of the group's dialect of Orkish. If only he hears what Maevyn says, and then asks Grushak if 'dhomaj' still means tapeworms in the local dialect, you get your punchline, Hrahragh doesn't fade into the background so much after giving M the meat, and Grushak would already be inclined to try and figure out what the hell Maevyn was trying to say.
The tapeworm idea works itself- it's roughly the grossest thing I can imagine, and I can imagine that Grushak would think so too, but it lacks a punchline.
5. Grushak as Yoda (will that mental image ever die??!)?
It works. If it were just general captive threatening or something about teaching her to behave or something, it would be cheesey. But he's threatening her with grammar lessons of all things, and he just spent the last minutes yelling at her in a way that I think is generally unprecedented in the history of orcs yelling at their captives ("Learn your vocabulary, snaga!"), so I think the closing lines work fine, despite harkening back to clichés.
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revisions
Date: 2008-06-25 08:10 pm (UTC)Hrahragh is faintly adorable: "This word is not mine" sounds distinctly like a number of cumbersome German constructions to come out of my mouth, so it rings true.
The flow of attention is better: Hrahragh (whose name I still have to refer to your text to spell correctly...) to Maevyn, M to H, H to Grushak, G to Maevyn, and then finally Grushak to Mushog- it better reflects how Grushak has to trace the path of mischief back to its orkish source.
Reveal in the footnotes: Hmmm. Upon thought, that does seem like it would work better for a scene focused on interpersonal relations and how Maevyn finally gets decent orkish lessons. The scene can either focus on the funny (eeeeew, tapeworms!), in which case the punchline needs to be out there and strong, OR it can be about the interactions between the characters. You've picked one, so play to that aspect. And, after all, this will be something like the third time (explicitly, and certainly there have been more off-panel) that Mushog has lied to Maevyn to make her say something funny. We're expecting it by now. We'll be skipping ahead to read the orkish dialog.
An option for the future (which you may have already thought of) would be to use the usefulness of the lessons to both Hrahragh and Maevyn to give them more screen time together. Hrahragh would clearly not directly engage in the lessons, and probably would be well into his AP Orkish Dialectial Studies, but he might hang around to see if he could get clearer explanations of the finer grammatical points. Just a thought.
(Hrahragh is adorable! Clearly, my sunburn has penetrated my skull- I think an orc is adorable.)
SO, yeah. It flows better, and I'm flattered to be of service.
By the by, Do you have a normal beta reader, or do you self-edit?
Re: revisions
Date: 2008-06-25 11:39 pm (UTC)