The sorcerer plays hooky.

[Bramandin]

This is the beginning of part eleven in a series. I know that there are a lot of names; Grigori is somewhat like a winged elf, Tanyanika is a Hylden (scifi race), Sarah is a vampire. One thing that I'm aware of is that I could remove some dialogue tags, but I feel it's better to have too many with the option of removing them later.

Mostly I'm interested in generalities and how the story is working rather than the technical grammar aspects. Also should I end the chapter there and pick up when they're on a different subject, or should I add a bit more?

~~~~

Grigori hated going to school. While he didn’t consider the lessons difficult, he felt like he was participating in a pointless charade that would still be pointless if he was a normal person instead of having a birthright that he did not want. He didn’t mind that he was chosen from birth to be a Guardian of a Pillar, but he would have preferred being selected by Nature and that Death had chosen someone else. Even Conflict, the only other one that had him as an option, would have been better.

As Grigori walked towards the school building, he decided that he wasn’t up to classes today. He knew that he would be punished for skipping without a parental excuse, but he didn’t think that they would grant one. Likewise, the other Guardians would not lie about him being absent for Circle business; they never had for Birney. Being the Nature Guardian meant that he needed to wander off outside sometimes instead of being stuck in the classroom. The other Guardians knew that but none of them were above the rules. Grigori could tell that he wasn’t nearby, but he might have been excused this time due to family matters.

Grigori considered where he could go. He could teleport himself to Finneas’ territory, but he wasn’t sure the vampire would be happy at him showing up without an invitation. Even if that wasn’t an issue, Finneas might not be sympathetic to his need to not be at school today.

He had a right to be at the Pillars complex, but he did not want to go alone. He could feel the siren-call of his Pillar and the others would probably have mentioned it if they found it as difficult to resist as he did. The last thing he wanted to do was succumb and assume his Guardianship before he had to. There was also the risk that another Guardian could show up and they could insist that he go to his classes.

He could just stay in the village or strike out into the wilderness, but it was a chilly day and he was only wearing a pashmina; he was likely to get caught when he had to come inside to get warm, and that was if Keturah didn’t notice that his presence was not at the school.

There was only one other place he could go: Aschedorf. Archimedes lived there, but then Grigori remembered something about fledgling vampires having trouble staying awake during the day. If he was asleep, Grigori had a chance of not being noticed until the day was over.

The decision made, he ducked into the school’s toilets and cast the spell that would teleport him. The endpoint was in a stairwell below Archimedes’ apartment, but they could sense each other throughout Aschedorf so he’d be discovered anyway if his fellow Guardian was awake. Grigori did not sense Archimedes, but he did sense Sarah and Tanyanika.

Grigori sighed, knowing that one of them probably noticed, and decided to find them so he could try to explain himself. It only took a minute to meet them on the street, but he was surprised to see that Sarah looked like a Hylden. “Why are you disguised?”

“I don’t want to draw unnecessary attention. What are you doing here?”

Grigori figured that lying would be futile. “I’m skipping school.”

“Why?” Sarah asked. “Are you being bullied or something?”

Grigori shook his head. “I just didn’t feel like going today. You’re not going to make me go back or tell anyone, are you?”

“I’m going to tell Catullus that I know where you are so that no one worries.” Sarah adopted the far-off look of someone who was communicating telepathically. After a moment, she sighed. “He doesn’t want you here without an escort.” She turned to Tanyanika. “Do you mind if he hangs out with us?”

“It’s fine,” Tanyanika said.

Grigori was surprised. As one of the school’s guidance counselors, Catullus should have insisted that Grigori be sent back to class. “Did you make up an excuse for me?”

Sarah shook her head. “You’re in trouble, but you should be aware of the consequences and made your choice. I told Catullus that it’s his problem now, but also suggested that the easiest thing would be to leave you to it and deal with you when you go home.”

“That’s fair,” Grigori said.

“It shouldn’t matter anyway,” Tanyanika said to Grigori. “You were right about the lessons not being important.”

Grigori frowned. He’d worked out years ago that if what they were learning mattered, then they would be learning the same things. Most striking was that Jahangir was woefully undereducated by his school’s standards while Tanyanika seemed years beyond them. “Then why did we have to go to school?”

“Archimedes felt it was important you got part of a normal childhood,” Sarah said. “Have you heard Catullus’ joke about how he’s the human brother?”

Grigori nodded and gazed down the street. There were a few vampires and Hylden, but most of the people were human and he was the only vempari in sight. “He told me he grew up here, away from the rest of our kind, but he’s…” He’d heard things about Catullus, that many people thought that he was a disgrace and a pervert. Grigori’s parents had been livid when they learned about it and insisted that didn’t even want him to associate with Catullus’ children. They didn’t know that Catullus was still counseling him at school. “He doesn’t act like a human.”

“Him and Archimedes are both weird because of their cultural influences.” Sarah’s expression shifted to slightly forlorn. “Archimedes would be even more messed-up if Catullus hadn’t been so outgoing.”

 

[The Judge]

Bramandin, I've edited your post so the extract appears as text rather than as a quoted piece -- the latter makes it more difficult for people to read and comment upon it, since it's not so easy to cite specific bits and deal with them as a lot of critiquers prefer to do.

I don't have time to look at this in detail now, but to be honest the opening paragraphs didn't encourage me to read further -- I can cope with a slow meandering opening if the writing is stellar, or there's the promise of something interesting coming up, but to be frank that's missing here, and the problem is compounded by your dumping a lot of information which isn't explained or taking us further. I'd suggest that instead of starting with a lot of teenage-y introspection about bunking off school, you start further down when something is actually going on.

 

[Bramandin]

Bramandin, I've edited your post so the extract appears as text rather than as a quoted piece -- the latter makes it more difficult for people to read and comment upon it, since it's not so easy to cite specific bits and deal with them as a lot of critiquers prefer to do.

I don't have time to look at this in detail now, but to be honest the opening paragraphs didn't encourage me to read further -- I can cope with a slow meandering opening if the writing is stellar, or there's the promise of something interesting coming up, but to be frank that's missing here, and the problem is compounded by your dumping a lot of information which isn't explained or taking us further. I'd suggest that instead of starting with a lot of teenage-y introspection about bunking off school, you start further down when something is actually going on.

You have a good point. I keep forgetting that Harry Potter didn't begin with him waking up under the stairs, but rather with an infestation of owls and a wizard doing magic. It's been a while so I don't remember what later books did. I've got to visit the library for a stack of fantasy once I'm not feeling so contagious.

Though I'm wondering if later is the answer. Could it be that I should back up to earlier, maybe to a character who doesn't need so much setup before something "interesting" happens, and then switch to him?

Thanks for editing the post.

 

[jd73]

Hi, thanks for the read. Couldn't see any SPaG type issues so the actual writing is pretty tight. The issues I have are that nothing of any real note is happening. It seems like a normalish school day. Ask yourself: what is it about this moment that warrants the kickoff of eleven stories? It doesn't seem particularly overtly fantasy-esque either. I would also consider trying to show more. As it is, it tells us that Grigori is doing such and such but I wanted the such and such to "actually happen", not just be informed that it was. As a result, it kept me at a distance. See if you can "be" Grigori and chronicle his story, and maybe give him a moment where things have deviated from the norm, if only a touch.

 

[Toby Frost]

I agree with The Judge and JD73. My main thoughts are first, not a lot is happening, and it's not happening in a particularly exciting fashion. It just feels like the story of someone who can't be bothered to do something. Secondly, the writing seems fine to me and there aren't any obvious errors, which is definitely a good thing. Third, my main question is why any of these characters are supernatural at all. Apart from a couple of small mentions of teleporting and telepathy, they could just be standard teenagers. I would have thought that a vampire or a psychic would have a totally different lifestyle to a human being.

 

[Bramandin]

Hi, thanks for the read. Couldn't see any SPaG type issues so the actual writing is pretty tight. The issues I have are that nothing of any real note is happening. It seems like a normalish school day. Ask yourself: what is it about this moment that warrants the kickoff of eleven stories? It doesn't seem particularly overtly fantasy-esque either. I would also consider trying to show more. As it is, it tells us that Grigori is doing such and such but I wanted the such and such to "actually happen", not just be informed that it was. As a result, it kept me at a distance. See if you can "be" Grigori and chronicle his story, and maybe give him a moment where things have deviated from the norm, if only a touch.

He was a side character previously. This is the first time that he's decided to play hooky, and that decision is what leads to making his life complicated. While there are some conflicts in the story that Sarah was not involved in, a lot of them are directly or indirectly her fault and he's going to put himself in her presence. He has a later decision where he could go back to school instead, but the first decision is what leads to that one.

I could trim out his navel-gazing about where he could go and replace it with a mention that there were other places but he chose Ash-fort; get into confronting his peer's mentor with less lead-up.

I only have a handful of fantasy books handy unless I go to project gutenburg... Terry Pratchett could get away with a bit of worldbuilding and pull back to have a character reading it by the time he wrote Snuff. A Book Dragon; immediately tells the reader that it's about a dragon. Same thing with Last Unicorn. A Familiar Dragon is about a somewhat ordinary man and takes a while to get magical.

Would it feel more fantasy if I mention that the Pillar that he's the Guardian of is tied to the health of the world and in exchange it will cause him to be the most powerful necromancer?

 

[Brian G Turner]

I only have a handful of fantasy books handy

If you're serious about writing, you'll need to be serious about reading your chosen genres.

 

[Toby Frost]

The problem I have is that I can't imagine that the upbringing of a powerful supernatural creature would be much like the upbringing of a 21st century teenager. A creature that's very powerful or has the need/urge to feed on other people would surely be guarded closely. Likewise someone who is extremely important to the future of the world. After all, the child of a powerful politician will usually have agents nearby making sure that they don't get into trouble. What happens if they go missing, or get into a fight with another dangerous entity?

(Also, the idea of school pupils is only a few hundred years old, at least as we understand it, and the idea of teenagers is even more recent.)

But maybe the school setting is vital, and that's just taken for granted in this sort of story.

 

[jd73]

He was a side character previously. This is the first time that he's decided to play hooky, and that decision is what leads to making his life complicated. While there are some conflicts in the story that Sarah was not involved in, a lot of them are directly or indirectly her fault and he's going to put himself in her presence. He has a later decision where he could go back to school instead, but the first decision is what leads to that one.

I could trim out his navel-gazing about where he could go and replace it with a mention that there were other places but he chose Ash-fort; get into confronting his peer's mentor with less lead-up.

I only have a handful of fantasy books handy unless I go to project gutenburg... Terry Pratchett could get away with a bit of worldbuilding and pull back to have a character reading it by the time he wrote Snuff. A Book Dragon; immediately tells the reader that it's about a dragon. Same thing with Last Unicorn. A Familiar Dragon is about a somewhat ordinary man and takes a while to get magical.

Would it feel more fantasy if I mention that the Pillar that he's the Guardian of is tied to the health of the world and in exchange it will cause him to be the most powerful necromancer?

One thing us sff bods love is worldbuilding. Take us there. We want eldritch forests, fabulous skies, hidden locales, hook-nosed magic weavers, brilliant light, enchantment. I'm not saying include exactly or only those but the point is we want something other, and we want to experience it, not just hear about it. So build a setting. IMO the typical teenager, typical life thing absolutely has its place but has had something of a line drawn under it by Twilight and Harry Potter and its ilk.

Anyway, back to your story: okay, so Gregori has decided to skive off school. Then let that be the "thing du jour". Emphasise that one decision (which may well affect the course of the rest of his life or possibly even his entire civilisation's). Keep it and its consequences foremost in his mind. Have him take a risk by bunking off school. Have the threat of discovery or some other outcome. Have him worry a little. Have us care by making him someone we want to hang out with.

 

[Bramandin]

I agree with The Judge and JD73. My main thoughts are first, not a lot is happening, and it's not happening in a particularly exciting fashion. It just feels like the story of someone who can't be bothered to do something. Secondly, the writing seems fine to me and there aren't any obvious errors, which is definitely a good thing. Third, my main question is why any of these characters are supernatural at all. Apart from a couple of small mentions of teleporting and telepathy, they could just be standard teenagers. I would have thought that a vampire or a psychic would have a totally different lifestyle to a human being.

I'm thinking that this part could definitely do with a good pruning. As for the major issue, I'm not sure how to fix it. Sure Grigori is having a Princess Merida moment where he's spending the day cutting loose, but I also get the feeling that you're expecting too much. "This story is set in Japan? Why haven't they met a Tanuki, been attacked by ninjas, or visited a bathhouse before page three?" Or maybe there isn't enough in the setting. In a discarded scene, it begins with one sorcerer using his scrying mirrors to help another sorcerer with a project, then they go out for pizza. In a scene that I put up, one character duels another to the death over a woman, then they sit in a hot tub. There is going to be normalcy in with the magic.

 

[Bramandin]

If you're serious about writing, you'll need to be serious about reading your chosen genres.

True enough and I realize that I need to correct that. Mostly I've been reading fanfiction and self-published stuff.

 

[Bramandin]

The problem I have is that I can't imagine that the upbringing of a powerful supernatural creature would be much like the upbringing of a 21st century teenager. A creature that's very powerful or has the need/urge to feed on other people would surely be guarded closely. Likewise someone who is extremely important to the future of the world. After all, the child of a powerful politician will usually have agents nearby making sure that they don't get into trouble. What happens if they go missing, or get into a fight with another dangerous entity?

(Also, the idea of school pupils is only a few hundred years old, at least as we understand it, and the idea of teenagers is even more recent.)

But maybe the school setting is vital, and that's just taken for granted in this sort of story.

He's not powerful yet; that one is on me because I didn't explain that he doesn't have access to his full power until he assumes his Guardianship. I realize that it's also confusing that he's called a vempari which is distinct from a vampire. I probably also shouldn't have described him as a winged elf. They don't live that much longer than humans and it's more about how a lot of them can do magic.

This is an excerpt from earlier in the story:

Catullus shook his head. “Our kind were the first to suffer from the bloodcurse, and passing it to humans was viewed as a necessary evil. The word vampire comes from the Hylden’s name for us. It happened so long ago that only two survived, though Ozker is the only one left, and even then they used time-travel. Every vempari that wasn’t born in this time were taken from before the curse.”

You do raise a good point about how they're not keeping a close enough eye on the young Guardians, but I don't consider it willful stupidity. One actually is a politician's son as well as being Grigori's peer and wouldn't be wandering around his home city without an escort, but they are safe in that village. Was the hint that Grigori couldn't be unescorted in that one particular city too vague? Do I need to sidetrack into why they don't all have a vampire following them around? I do want to hit a plot point later about how he gets in trouble by being unescorted in the wrong place, which in that particular instance was someone being too careless.

With the way I describe their school set up, the reader is probably going to picture their own high school. I was going off of a vague understanding of monastic schools, (can't remember if I did any research on it,) but the concept of school is older than you seem to think. Really each of them is going through an educational system that was based off of turning children into cogs for their respective societal machines. I have some ideas on how their schools differ from what you'd find in USA, but it doesn't seem relevant. Am I right in just leaving it instead of boring the readers with that information?

 

[Bramandin]

One thing us sff bods love is worldbuilding. Take us there. We want eldritch forests, fabulous skies, hidden locales, hook-nosed magic weavers, brilliant light, enchantment. I'm not saying include exactly or only those but the point is we want something other, and we want to experience it, not just hear about it. So build a setting. IMO the typical teenager, typical life thing absolutely has its place but has had something of a line drawn under it by Twilight and Harry Potter and its ilk.

Anyway, back to your story: okay, so Gregori has decided to skive off school. Then let that be the "thing du jour". Emphasise that one decision (which may well affect the course of the rest of his life or possibly even his entire civilisation's). Keep it and its consequences foremost in his mind. Have him take a risk by bunking off school. Have the threat of discovery or some other outcome. Have him worry a little. Have us care by making him someone we want to hang out with.

It will get to the fantastic elements, but do I need to jump right into it? I turned off Journal of Mysterious Creatures pretty quickly, but I think it started with Joe Average whining about his mundane problems and supposedly will get to the monster girl harem later. Grigori is having a mundane break to his routine, will get to play with an e-reader for the first time, will get a taste of the training his peer is going through, gets to see the vampire he's with single-handedly beat up three other vampires without breaking a sweat, then he's hit with personal tragedy... Do I need to remove this particular bit altogether instead of just trimming it down by about 50%?

Skipping school is his first step on the path to that tragedy and each opportunity to diverge from it will be harder to take. However I don't want to do something to warn the reader like:

When his watch goes haywire and he has to reset it by the time of a stranger, that’s when things take an even bigger turn. That’s when he hears the voice say, “Little did he know that this simple, seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death.”

I also don't want Grigori to really think about the true consequences. He thinks that when he skips school, he'll only get punished by having to scrub out the cauldrons from potions class or something. He'll think that he dodged consequences when he's allowed to completely drop out. I want to switch to someone else's point of view to let the reader know that him dropping out of school would likely lead to a bout of clinical depression unless he's distracted from thinking about things too much. (I could have him learn about it later if he gets depression anyway.) It's only after he accidentally kills a police officer that he realizes how he could have avoided it.

However, trying to figure out why the reader should care about this guy is good advice. Right now he's a bit like Chihiro in the beginning of Spirited Away... Lazy, wants to whine a lot more than he does, hasn't had the sort of struggle that would make him strong. It's going to be difficult to make him earn the reader's care.

 

[Wayne Mack]

It seems that there is an interesting world here, but, as this is part 11, it appears that 10 novels of backstory are trying to be jammed into the opening thousand words. If a reader has already read the first 10 parts, then the info dump is unnecessary. If the reader is starting with part 11, then the information needs to be slowly metered out to allow the reader to digest it.

From your opening comments, I feel you sense the issue of information overload. If the key point is that this is the first time that Grigori has skipped school, tell the reader that explicitly. Provide an instigating reason for him to skip school and what consequences he expects. At this time, do not list the people that he does not visit -- Phineas, Keturah, Archimedes, Catullus, Jahangir. If Grigori is going to spend his day helping Sarah and Tanyanika on their secret mission, provide a better justification than Grigori happened to teleport to the one spot on the planet where they were. If he is not going to be part of their mission, omit them as well.

In the opening, give me a reason to care about Grigori. Let me understand his reason for skipping school for the first time. Let me understand his concerns about skipping and the consequences. I'm sure there is a lot of important information contained in the current text, but, as a reader, there is only a limited amount that I can absorb and what is there should be pretty explicitly stated. This sounds like it can be an interesting tale, but first, I want to engage and become concerned about Grigori.

 

[Bramandin]

It seems that there is an interesting world here, but, as this is part 11, it appears that 10 novels of backstory are trying to be jammed into the opening thousand words. If a reader has already read the first 10 parts, then the info dump is unnecessary. If the reader is starting with part 11, then the information needs to be slowly metered out to allow the reader to digest it.

While there are eleven parts, he's not mentioned until part seven and is a minor character that barely gets lines in parts nine and ten. I'm going to have to go with trying to get readers introduced to him without getting overwhelmed. Sorry, I thought I had a question but lost it.

From your opening comments, I feel you sense the issue of information overload. If the key point is that this is the first time that Grigori has skipped school, tell the reader that explicitly. Provide an instigating reason for him to skip school and what consequences he expects. At this time, do not list the people that he does not visit -- Phineas, Keturah, Archimedes, Catullus, Jahangir. If Grigori is going to spend his day helping Sarah and Tanyanika on their secret mission, provide a better justification than Grigori happened to teleport to the one spot on the planet where they were. If he is not going to be part of their mission, omit them as well.

I did decide to pull out a lot of the stuff where other people are mentioned, thanks for confirming that it's the right course. I think I could also have Sarah ask him for help, which will free me up to choose one of the three characters to use for that chapter instead of him. For future reference where I might need something contrived to happen, is having a goddess of luck and/or chaos enough justification? The last part started when Sarah lost her temper and knocked over the goddess' statue.

In the opening, give me a reason to care about Grigori. Let me understand his reason for skipping school for the first time. Let me understand his concerns about skipping and the consequences. I'm sure there is a lot of important information contained in the current text, but, as a reader, there is only a limited amount that I can absorb and what is there should be pretty explicitly stated. This sounds like it can be an interesting tale, but first, I want to engage and become concerned about Grigori.

This is good general advice no matter which character I start over with.

 

[Wayne Mack]

where I might need something contrived to happen, is having a goddess of luck and/or chaos enough justification?

In general, coincidence is accepted as an adequate justification for negative events but inadequate for positive. One could have a blessing or potion from a god or goddess of luck, but I would have that period of luck run for a limited period of time and be heavily sprinkled with very minor positive events and a small number of important events. Strive to have positive and key events result from planning or primary characters' skills and abilities.

 

[Bramandin]

In general, coincidence is accepted as an adequate justification for negative events but inadequate for positive. One could have a blessing or potion from a god or goddess of luck, but I would have that period of luck run for a limited period of time and be heavily sprinkled with very minor positive events and a small number of important events. Strive to have positive and key events result from planning or primary characters' skills and abilities.

Would it be okay if it's never predictable if they'll be lucky or unlucky? I've set the goddess up as capricious. I read an expression recently, "If you were really that lucky, you wouldn't be in this situation to begin with." It's not like everything is handed to them. Even when things go their way, there's usually something annoying about the way it happened.