Thanks for taking the time to read! Thanks also for your insightful comments. Some of your points are very well taken. Character, world, motive, crisis. I think that I've focused too much on scene-setting, and then pivoted (but failed to fully commit). I'm probably guilty of writing a long fight sequence just to practice writing action prose-this is the first creative writing that I've done in almost 20 years.

I may just rewrite completely. If not, the fish market description should probably be cut (or amended, per your advice, to reflect a more active participation by MC). I also understand your point that a chapter focusing on a large fight, and not much character development, is poorly suited to initiate a story.

That said, I'm surprised that the general premise of what happened confused you. This is an important insight, also-I'm sure you aren't the only one.

The corrupt lord is the inspector's employer. He has intelligence that someone intends to smuggle something into the mark

**General Remarks**

The story is a bit confused... The was a guy who is investigaing a... dirty manipulative lord? He and his partner was lured into a supposingly trap, maybe? And there is a big fight in a market or close. But how or why it happened is unknown, which is a big problem.

**Mechanic**

I would skip the title a bit, since I think it is somewhat related to the story. But for now, the biggest problem here is not in the title, but *the way of the story is written*.

I guess the writer want to catch readers' interest by introducing a big fight, *which is not a good idea* (speaking from my personal experience here). Most of the time, novels must introduce the characters, the world, the motive, and the overall crisis to catch readers's interest. All of that must be introduced in a very short among of pages (around 2,000 - 4,000 words), which is why novels are extremely hard to write (and also, very expensive to do so).

I would use Harry Potter in the first chapter as an exampl

Thanks for the read and comments, I appreciate the insight. I am definitely working to prune my prose to minimize the extravagance. Point well taken regarding “imbroglio” and “proclivity”, I’m drawn to the specificity and lyricality of these types of words, but it’s easy for me to overdo. The more I read it back and cut extraneous words, the better it gets (I think). I have a pretty high tolerance for this type of writing as a reader, so it’s a challenge for me to really whittle it down. Plus, I get married to a phrase-or a whole paragraph-and I struggle to excise the offending content.
“Their most brazen…” being one such instance; ironically, another reader, in a separate sub, specifically called that sentence out as one of their favorites.
I do agree that three instances of the “br” sound crosses an invisible line-case in point, you were jarred by it. I enjoy, and want to write, text that has a musicality when read aloud, but I don’t want it to disrupt narrative readability.
Did you 

I would say this is good in small parts, but eventually the style becomes overwhelming and distracts from the prose. It almost becomes self-conscious of itself, and the focus slips from the story to the grandiosity of the prose.

I can see what you’re trying to do, but this is too highfalutin for my tastes. You mentioned it has been toned down already, but I still think there’s more that could be economised to make this better.

This particular excerpt stood out. Having a long sentence and throwing in proclivity and imbroglio in proximity to each other is too much for me. 

> His knowledge of Dal encompassed everything from the proclivities of the underworld, to the imbroglios of the nobility, to the constitution of the maritime traffic that should be expected to patronize its docks.

When it works, it’s really good. I like these two passages of description. ‘Filamentous’ shouldn’t work, but it’s perfect here.

> He was perched on an inadequate wooden stool, his knees projecting at awk

Sorry for the delay.

I read your comment this morning, but I wanted to reread this part before commenting.

In my first read, I'm pretty sure I didn't think the fear was magical by any means. By the jolt of energy, I imagined some kind of "aura" or magic running through the beast's body, something so powerful that Arden knew he would die miserably if he stayed there. But that's it.

You are in a close third POV in that part of the text. You could make me understand that the fear was induced by magic with thoughts or feelings?

"The flexion of the enormous fingers filled him with dread. He watched as they clenched into a church-bell sized fist. The fist abruptly swung forward, accompanied by a popping sound as unseen leather straps exploded.

Arden spun and sprinted toward the frigate, his legs moving by themselves. Fear had crawled under his skin like a parasite, taking over his body. Even if he wanted to stop, he couldn't. The mysterious force was now the captain of the ship, his own

Thank you so much. There is a wealth of useful information here. I'm going to read through this a few times and try to internalize the lessons.

Frankly, it makes total sense. I decided to write a story and launched into it with zero planning. I described a scene in complete detail as I imagined it, then placed my characters, then...released supernatural monkeys to knock it all down.

On edit, I tried to correct course, rearranging things (unsuccessfully), and pruning adjectives/adverbs/paragraphs—but it's clear that I need to do (much) more. Thank you!

Your comments basically reflect my exact process, which is perfect.

Plus you *finally* taught me how to type a frickin' em-dash. I've been wrestling with that. I had to google how to make it appear, lol.

I think part of my problem is that I'm trying to get cute with the tone: the whole thing is intended to be dry, sarcastic, overly academic. Arden's catalog of Chimpeen knowledge is an egregious example of this—it's supposed to be fun

**POV**

What is the POV for the story?

That's a good question.

You switch between omniscient POV and third close POV

"The smell of the fish guts sortied north from the docks, lingering in the air, before inserting itself in the market."

"Miscreants of Mir, degenerates fleeing the combat embroiling their homeland."

Those are examples of the many descriptions you made with an omniscient POV. You want to tell me so much about the setting that I don't feel in a third close POV.

You should keep it to a close POV, and like you did many times.

"Arden cataloged his scant knowledge…."

You didn't over-describe the Chimpeens since you only use the knowledge of Arden. It brought me closer to the MC.

I think you should reread your chapter and ask yourself if Arden would know it. If you want to keep the omniscient POV description is fine, but I believe it breaks the flow and the immersion.

**DIALOGUE**

The dialogues were good—nothing to say about them, great job.

Your dialogues tags fel

This is my first critique here and also my first one in English, so take it with a grain of salt. It's coming more from the perspective of a general reader rather than a writer since I'm even less than a rookie writer.

**GENERAL REMARKS**

So my first impression: hard to read. I read a lot of English fantasy (unpublished and published), and I can go through an entire chapter without thinking about the meaning of some unknown words since the context explains it by itself. But while reading your chapter, I had to stop multiples times and reread sentences to catch the meaning behind them. You can take this remark or not since I'm not a native English speaker.

Also, while reading the story, I had difficulty bringing myself close to the MC; the POV seems to switch many times. Sometimes your prose sounded like Close third person, and other times it seems omniscient.

And as a last general remark, I found the intrigue and the world interesting but only felt several smalls hooks. I think you

Hi all!

I'm a rookie.

This piece is the tentative first chapter of a fantasy novel that I'm conceiving. I'm envisioning a detective-fantasy mashup kind of thing. I'm trying to do pulpy, almost campy, low-brow adventure, but written in a slightly high-brow style. Or something like that-I'm drawn to needlessly complicated phrasings. I've tried to tone it down quite a bit, and also to eliminate (after prior feedback) almost all of the big, distracting words-sorry "garrulous". Hopefully the style isn't too off-putting. I'm looking for feedback on any aspect, but especially on flow and readability.


Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read, comment, or critique.



Legends of Dal, Chapter One, Draft Two

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16yfYo90s4aTGswlMKddznQMsPveZsOTD/edit?usp=sharing&amp;amp;ouid=103978990367360071329&amp;amp;rtpof=true&amp;amp;sd=true


My Critique:


https://old.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/tipobv/5138_after_all/

[2460] Legends of Dal, Chapter One