Snippets from 'The Eightfold Covert'

[Tecdavid]

This is my first time asking for a critique, so I hope you understand that I'm a little nervous. What I want to show you is two snippets from my book, The Eightfold Covert, which is Young Adult Fantasy. They're from entirely separate scenes, with entirely different atmospheres.
I have my own doubts, of course, but I'm eager to learn whether they're just the natural frettings of a writer, or whether there's something I really ought to consider changing.
Thank you very much for reading, and I hope you enjoy.

[FONT=&quot] A Trudge beneath the Tower

[/FONT]​

The downward, dimming trek into the Vaults of Memoire was an eerie one. A darkness, thick, musty and dust-strewn, greedily devoured all light and vision. Only with a small sphere of flame, flickering warmly in his hand, could Erril see, and even then the murk was hesitant to part. This darkness was as thick as fog, and deep as void.

This hall, which led to the Vaults’ many chambers, jutted crudely and jaggedly at every pace, rocky and time-withered. It was like walking within a branch, gnarled, twisted and rotted. A fetid, crumbling rock paved the forgotten walls, as it did the floor, cracked like a quake-struck mosaic, and while the Tower’s higher floors boasted gold and jewel, here had only dirt. This place truly was cast aside by the Prodigies, buried and forsaken. For ages it had festered, and what rose from its rot was an ambience of silent madness. It filled Erril’s nose like a sickly smog.

The dead air grew colder and colder as Erril walked. A faint, nearly unnoticeable breeze trickled through the hall like a sigh, and with every gust that touched Erril’s ears, he swore he heard distant, despairing screams, and hollow cackling. Whenever the breeze fell, the gentle crackling of his summoned flame was again his only company, besides his crunching steps across the brown, broken floor.

The hallway descended deeper, seeming more like a chute to the deepest crypt with every step, and more like an icehouse with every breeze. The surroundings grew ever more ragged, as if they themselves wished not to be remembered. Their very look pleaded him, Get out. Leave us. Take that light away! The walls, streaked with a black ooze, looked to be wailing.

The Sugar-Swathed Wares of Formicko's Flippantry

​

An endless, wavering ocean of colours swept across the walls as if a madman did the decorating. The halls, tables and counters were laden with countless gadgets, massive and miniscule, that vouched for the place’s total lack of sanity.

Spires of candyfloss, wrapped around poles of rainbow rock-candy like a helter-skelter, sat in jars fit for giants as they stretched from the floor to the height of the ceiling.

A river of ice-cream snaked and meandered across the shop, amidst a marzipan countryside. A lever could be pulled which would release a hail of sweets into the river’s flow, from which children could fill a bowl.

A massive golden tube, shaped like a Swiss Horn, hung from a wall and belched ludicrously large bubbles which drifted playfully throughout the shop, and within each was a generously large gobstopper, kept afloat by goodness-knows-what. A sign on a pillar read: “Find a Golden Gobstopper and take it to the counter to claim your prize!”

Another division housed a matinee stage, where a cast of chocolate and marshmallow figurines were made to act and dance by long strawberry laces, like puppeteers’ strings. Kids would humorously use lollipops they’d bought to pick swordfights with ones looking like knights and lancers.

Oswin appeared much like an eager child himself as he led the two into the store, their eyes fixed on the sugar-coated dreamscape before them. Children darted by them, hoping to catch the next gobstopper drifting their way. Erril ducked to avoid a cheering matinee doll rocket through the air on a pouch which streamed a rainbow of sherbet. Onlookers stuck out their tongues to taste, as though it were snowflakes. It reminded Erril of the Resplendist’s feathergale, and how drastically the two shops contrasted.

[FONT=&quot]‘Help yourselves, folks. Treat’s on me.’ Shouted Oswin as he wandered off to explore the dream-factory. There didn’t seem to be much limit to his offer, as he pretty much filled his arms with things from every jar and bowl on display!


If you happened to like them, and would like to see a little more, you can find a third snippet, as well as the first two chapters and blurb, on my blog.

Thaks again for taking a peek.
[/FONT]

 

[The Judge]

Tecdavid, the software rips out any formatting you might have put into the piece, and in particular it doesn't allow for first line indents, so you have to separate paragraphs out by having a clear line's space. I've done it for you this time, but as and when you post more, please do remember to check before posting, or edit it immediately after. Thanks.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Hi tecdavid; I'm sure you'll get loads of feedback and each might say something different! Anyway, here goes

[FONT=&quot]A Trudge beneath the Tower[/FONT]​

The downward, dimming trek into the Vaults of Memoire was an eerie one. A darkness, thick, musty and dust-strewn, greedily devoured all light and vision. Only with a small sphere of flame, flickering warmly in his hand, could Erril see, and even then the murk was hesitant to part. This darkness was as thick as fog, and deep as void.
Okay evocative setting, nice and visual. thick as fog is a bit of a cliche, but followed by a non cliche, so this may be deliberate.
This hall, which led to the Vaults’ many chambers, jutted crudely and jaggedly at every pace, rocky and time-withered. It was like walking within a branch, gnarled, twisted and rotted. A fetid, crumbling rock paved the forgotten walls, as it did the floor, cracked like a quake-struck mosaic, and while the Tower’s higher floors boasted gold and jewel, here had only dirt. This place truly was cast aside by the Prodigies, buried and forsaken. For ages it had festered, and what rose from its rot was an ambience of silent madness. It filled Erril’s nose like a sickly smog.
Too much description for me, but some of it is very good. I think you need to decided which are the key descriptors, keep them. At the moment my head's a little full reading this.
The dead air grew colder and colder as Erril walked. A faint, nearly unnoticeable breeze trickled through the hall like a sigh, and with every gust that touched Erril’s ears, he swore he heard distant, despairing screams, and hollow cackling. Whenever the breeze fell, the gentle crackling of his summoned flame was again his only company, besides his crunching steps across the brown, broken floor. Better but still a lot of description.

The hallway descended deeper, seeming more like a chute to the deepest crypt with every step, and more like an icehouse with every breeze. The surroundings grew ever more ragged, as if they themselves wished not to be remembered. Their very look pleaded him, Get out. Leave us. Take that light away! The walls, streaked with a black ooze, looked to be wailing.

I felt the excerpt was leading me, this is dangerous! this is dark! and read a little bit cliched.

The Sugar-Swathed Wares of Formicko's Flippantry​

An endless, wavering ocean of colours swept across the walls as if a madman did the decorating. The halls, tables and counters were laden with countless gadgets, massive and miniscule, that vouched for the place’s total lack of sanity.I like this better it's livelier, it's more colourful and I can use my own imagination to imagine the gadgets etc. I'd change the that vouced to which vouched, but that's probably academic.

Spires of candyfloss, wrapped around poles of rainbow rock-candy like a helter-skelter, sat in jars fit for giants as they stretched from the floor to the height of the ceiling.
the imagery is good but going a little over the top for me.
A river of ice-cream snaked and meandered across the shop, amidst a marzipan countryside. A lever could be pulled which would release a hail of sweets into the river’s flow, from which children could fill a bowl.My 11 year old's heaven.

A massive golden tube, shaped like a Swiss Horn, hung from a wall and belched ludicrously large bubbles which drifted playfully throughout the shop, and within each was a generously large gobstopper, kept afloat by goodness-knows-what. A sign on a pillar read: “Find a Golden Gobstopper and take it to the counter to claim your prize!”

Another division housed a matinee stage, where a cast of chocolate and marshmallow figurines were made to act and dance by long strawberry laces, like puppeteers’ strings. Kids would humorously use lollipops they’d bought to pick swordfights with ones looking like knights and lancers.
I've got the picture by now, and probably didn't need this para.
Oswin appeared much like an eager child himself as he led the two into the store, their eyes fixed on the sugar-coated dreamscape before them. Children darted by them, hoping to catch the next gobstopper drifting their way. Erril ducked to avoid a cheering matinee doll rocket through the air on a pouch which streamed a rainbow of sherbet. Onlookers stuck out their tongues to taste, as though it were snowflakes. It reminded Erril of the Resplendist’s feathergale, and how drastically the two shops contrasted.

[FONT=&quot]‘Help yourselves, folks. Treat’s on me.’ Shouted Oswin as he wandered off to explore the dream-factory. There didn’t seem to be much limit to his offer, as he pretty much filled his arms with things from every jar and bowl on display!Treat's on me," shouted Oswin,


If you happened to like them, and would like to see a little more, you can find a third snippet, as well as the first two chapters and blurb, on my blog.

Thaks again for taking a peek.
[/FONT]

Overall I preferred the second excerpt; I thought it was livelier and more original. I find your style a little too descriptive, but the writing is tight and flows well. But, I am really new to all this, so please don't think I know much. Overall nice and interesting.

 

[Tecdavid]

Sorry about that, Judge, and thanks very much for correcting it. I'll try to keep an eye on that next time.

Thanks very much for the critique, Springs. I see what you mean about the abundance of discription - that was, in fact, one of the things I was wondering about. I think I worried I wasn't painting a vivid enough picture, at the time.

 

[Tecdavid]

To anyone reading and critiquing, there's something I'd like to ask: Does anyone else feel the first five paragraphs of the second excerpt are too much? This scene is one of the book's most whimsical, and I really wanted to express that with a good few moments of childish fun. But maybe Springs is right - Too many?

 

[The Judge]

For my taste, yes, both scenes were over-worked and over-descriptive, and the second was a bit too twee (that final exclamation mark is a real problem for me) and goes on too long. But I'm not your target audience, so I've no idea whether this kind of description-heavy prose is enjoyed by young-adults. I suspect not, however -- aren't most YA books more concentrated on things happening, rather than extended passages of atmosphere etc?

Also, I don't know how old Erril is, but if -- as is usual? -- he's of YA age himself, then this doesn't seem to be written from his POV. It's too adult in its language and tone. It's also, for my taste, too uninvolved. You tell us how dreadful the first place is, how wonderful the second, but I don't get the sense that he is truly experiencing either. We're looking through his eyes a little, but were not feeling though his heart.

 

[Tecdavid]

I see what you mean, Judge. In fact, my first draft was even heavier on description than this. I tried to tone it down, but perhaps it wasn't enough. That worries me a little, as I felt quite comfortable with the pictures I was painting, and I deeply enjoyed painting them.

Yes, Erril's a teen, and again, I see your point. These two scenes are introductions, really, to brand new areas in the story, and I felt I wanted to fix an image in the reader's mind before going on with the characters' individual views and reactions. However, perhaps that isn't excuse enough, or perhaps I should've included a more character-involved scene in my post.

Thank you for the critique.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

For what it's worth Tecdavid, I found after my first critiques I had to go back and take out loads of descriptions and linking words and just keep the ones that I felt were really central. But, as The Judge warned me, keep your drafts, in case you come back later and find you've removed something you really liked.

Also, the discipline of the challenges, both 75 and 300 word really helped me with this, and started me thinking what was actually needed to tell the story and what I was putting in just because I liked it.

I'm working on a section of my WI(very slow)P at the mo, where I've been really guilty of this in the first write; I enjoyed it, but there's far too much and I'm really editing this bit down. It's painful, hence why I keep distracting myself with the Chrons, but already the sections completed are improved.

 

[The Judge]

I think you're right to want to put in description when we first see these places. And I go too far in the oppostite direction, in that my characters could be walking in a vacuum for all the description I originally put in the stories in the first drafts -- I have to add it all when I revise/edit. But for good or ill, readers nowadays -- and I imagine teenageers are worse than me in this -- have short attention spans for the purely descriptive.

What I'd suggest is instead of front-loading the description, just have one or two short paragraphs, and then bring in other bits as Erril moves further around. But personally -- and again this is a question of personal taste -- I'd go easy on the poetic language unless he is a poetical kind of person, and write it in a more down-to-earth fashion. More importantly, I'd get more of him in there at once -- use the description to show us what he's feeling. You say the rot fills his nose, but we're not told whether this makes him feel nauseous, or excited, or what. I think if you root the description in his senses and emotions it will be both more visceral and involving -- which in turn will make us want to read on without noticing how much is in there.

 

[Hex]

I liked this very much. It's very well written and you paint a clear picture of the environments. I do wonder about this much description in one section -- I read a fair amount of YA fiction and my impression is that description tend to be fairly light, or at least broken up into chunks. ​

A Trudge beneath the Tower​

The downward, dimming [I like the image -- I'm not so keen on the alliteration, although I don't have any clever suggestions about alternatives] trek into the Vaults of Memoire was an eerie one. A darkness, thick, musty and dust-strewn, greedily devoured all light and vision. Only with a small sphere of flame, flickering warmly in his hand, could Erril see [not to be picky, but if the darkness devours all vision, then Erril probably can't see -- you could probably get away with this, though, by dropping 'all'], and even then the murk was hesitant to part. This darkness was as thick as fog, and deep as void. [loved that image]

This hall, which led to the Vaults’ many chambers, jutted crudely and jaggedly at every pace, rocky and time-withered. [I know I'm being thick, but I don't understand what's jutting -- is it the walls?] It was like walking within a branch, gnarled, twisted and rotted [for me, I wondered if 'rotted' belonged here -- gnarled and twisted worked nicely for me, but rotted seems like something else]. A fetid, crumbling rock paved the forgotten walls, as it did the floor, cracked like a quake-struck mosaic, and while the Tower’s higher floors boasted gold and jewel, here had only dirt. This place truly was cast aside by the Prodigies, buried and forsaken. [nice!] For ages it had festered, and what rose from its rot was an ambience of silent madness [I wasn't sure about 'ambience' -- it seemed -- sort of positive for this context.] It filled Erril’s nose like a sickly smog.

The dead air grew colder and colder as Erril walked. [I understood dead air to be air that wasn't moving, so this confused me a little] A faint, nearly unnoticeable breeze trickled through the hall like a sigh, and with every gust that touched Erril’s ears, he swore he heard distant, despairing screams, and hollow cackling. Whenever the breeze fell, the gentle crackling of his summoned flame was again his only company, besides his crunching steps across the brown, broken floor. [I like that image]

The hallway descended deeper, seeming more like a chute to the deepest crypt with every step, and more like an icehouse with every breeze. The surroundings grew ever more ragged, as if they themselves wished not to be remembered. Their very look pleaded him, Get out. Leave us. Take that light away! The walls, streaked with a black ooze, looked to be wailing.
It's very well written, so I've had to try quite hard to make sensible suggestions and I've been very picky. Discard anything that seems like over-pickiness or is unhelpful.
I'm not very good at description, and I don't like reading it much either, but you do it very well. I wondered -- like TJ said -- if you're maybe expecting a lot from a YA audience to read so much description, however well-written. I wondered if something could happen -- might he worry about hearing something? Being followed? So you could intersperse the description with something else that engages the reader.

The Sugar-Swathed Wares of Formicko's Flippantry​

An endless, wavering ocean of colours swept across the walls as if a madman did the decorating. The halls, tables and counters were laden with countless gadgets, massive and miniscule, that vouched for the place’s total lack of sanity.

Spires of candyfloss, wrapped around poles of rainbow rock-candy like a helter-skelter, sat in jars fit for giants as they stretched from the floor to the height of the ceiling. [I love this image]

A river of ice-cream snaked and meandered across the shop, amidst a marzipan countryside. A lever could be pulled which would release a hail of sweets into the river’s flow, from which children could fill a bowl. [a river of icecream? Melted icecream or is the river slow-moving, icy? -- a tiny shade of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory here, but hard to see how you can avoid that!]

A massive golden tube, shaped like a Swiss Horn, hung from a wall and belched ludicrously large bubbles which drifted playfully throughout the shop, and [I personally didn't like this 'and' but I under-and, so it's likely to be a personal tweak] within each was a generously large gobstopper, kept afloat by goodness-knows-what. A sign on a pillar read: “Find a Golden Gobstopper and take it to the counter to claim your prize!” [a hint of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory again -- golden gobstopper, golden ticket...]

Another division housed a matinee stage, where a cast of chocolate and marshmallow figurines were made to [this suddenly seemed a little sinister -- 'made to' -- but maybe it's just me] act and dance by long strawberry laces, like puppeteers’ strings. Kids would [humorously -- wasn't sure you needed this] use lollipops they’d bought to pick swordfights with ones looking like knights and lancers.

Oswin appeared much like an eager child himself as he led the two into the store, their eyes fixed on the sugar-coated dreamscape before them. Children darted by them, hoping to catch the next gobstopper drifting their way. Erril ducked to avoid a cheering matinee doll rocket through the air on a pouch which streamed a rainbow of sherbet. [I really like that!] Onlookers stuck out their tongues to taste, as though it were snowflakes. It reminded Erril of the Resplendist’s feathergale, and how drastically the two shops contrasted.

‘Help yourselves, folks. Treat’s on me[comma]’ [small s]Shouted Oswin as he wandered off to explore the dream-factory. There didn’t seem to be much limit to his offer, as he pretty much [I'd get rid of 'pretty much', personally] filled his arms with things from every jar and bowl on display!

I liked this description too. There were a couple of slightly Charlie and the Chocolate Factory moments, but it's hard to see how you could avoid them. Perhaps if you wanted to break it up a bit you could have more conversation going on and the description in snippets in the background?

 

[Tecdavid]

Thank you very much, Hex. The compliments meant a lot to me, and the criticisms helped confirm a few of my doubts.

I'm noticing a pattern here. I see descriptiveness is something I should either cut down on, or use as a seasoning upon more "involved", "action-filled" moments. These were two of the three snippets I featured in my blog, and the third contained a little more action and dialogue, so I might post that here too.