Does this kinetic novel even make sense?

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risingdreams
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Does this kinetic novel even make sense?

#1 Post by risingdreams »

I'm writing a kind of kinetic novel, nvl style story. It's more or less written like a novel and focused on friendship, focused on two boys in a world were mages are discriminated against. I'm not sure if I should continue writing it?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/18ss ... sp=sharing
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RotGtIE
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Re: Does this kinetic novel even make sense?

#2 Post by RotGtIE »

Your premise is certainly sensible in and of itself. It's plausible, relatable, and flexible enough for you to build a story using it as a foundation, and that's very good. You've also chosen a good format for writing your story, and are following its conventions for the most part. Your prose needs some work, I think, but you're doing it the right way and that's the most important thing for now. In general, I think you could stand to go into more detail with regard to what you are trying to communicate to the reader, so that you can wind up doing more showing than telling and really get the audience immersed in your story right away.

I'd like to go into further detail using some excerpts of your sample, but I'm short on time at the moment, so it'll have to wait a bit. In the meanwhile, I would say that you have an excellent foundation to work from and I would certainly recommend you continue writing. You've got the beginnings of a great project on your hands.

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Re: Does this kinetic novel even make sense?

#3 Post by RotGtIE »

Alright, here are some of my impressions regarding a few samples of your work.
As usual, two boys were playing in the ruins that were once a prestigious school of magic. Most children would be terrified of magic, unless they were mages themselves, which both children were. Untrained mages, but mages nonetheless, like their parents and probably grandparents. That place had been noisy once, but now it was filled by nothing but the boys’ voices.
I mentioned "show, don't tell" earlier, and this opener is a prime example of what I meant by it. Every sentence in this paragraph provides information about the characters and setting to the audience, but in a way that is kind of too quick - data is kind of dumped into the reader's lap like it's a hot potato that the author really really wants to get rid of right away, and the result is a bit of disorienting effect on the reader. Every sentence here could be expanded into its own paragraph, and each point could be made implicitly, rather than explicitly.

For example, rather than telling the reader that the ruins are the remains of a prestigious magic school, you could spend more time describing how the boys were playing among the ruins, describing the scenery in more detail without actually saying what they are. You could write about the boys pretending to give a lecture from a podium at a moss-laden amphitheater, or how they attempt to interpret the shapes of runes carved into the crumbling structures around them. Maybe there are fixtures which used to hold magical objects but now lie empty and purposeless. Ruins have a lot of features to describe, especially when you already know the former function of them, so go to town here.

In your second sentence, again, you simply point out that most children are terrified of magic. Instead, you could have portrayed this by introducing a few lines of dialogue between the boys in which they comment about the absence of some minor characters - the terrified children in question - mocking the other children for being too fearful to approach a site associated with magic. Again, without plainly saying so, you can communicate indirectly to the reader that children are usually afraid of magic, and that these particular children are not, with a mere demonstration such as this. You also directly point out that both of these children are mages, which could also be demonstrated rather than explained. Why not have one of the children use some mundane magic to light up some inscribed runes or get an abandoned magical contraption to function for a few seconds before finally succumbing to the effects of entropy? You even have the opportunity here to perhaps have the other child comment that they should be careful to make sure nobody is watching when they use magic, since in this setting, mages are few and marginalized.
Some nights, the shorter boy, Allen, would name the stars. The other, Ellis, would never cease to be impressed. How come Allen was so good at astronomy without a tutor? Didn’t Allen tell him no one taught you astronomy at school? Why did Allen like the stars so much, anyway?
I find myself unsatisfied with learning about these characters' heights relative to each other before getting to know anything else about them that distinguishes them from one another. I think it would be best to re-attempt your approach to introducing the boys - I would go with dialogue, personally - to give the audience a better idea of what these characters are like both individually and in relation to each other. I don't really care about which one is shorter or taller unless there is a reason for me to, like if one of them were having trouble parkouring his way up to the top of some part of the ruin that the taller one had little difficulty scaling. If these traits come up for some reason, by all means tell the audience about them, but otherwise, focus on the important stuff. Stories are essentially collections of highlights, and readers don't much like being told extraneous information that will, for all they know, have no impact on the story. They expect every detail they're told to be important or have some purpose.

Once again, you simply tell us that Allen names stars and that Ellis never ceases to be impressed. This could be demonstrated through a dialogue, especially since this scene appears to be a flashback. Flashbacks tend to tell small picture stories in bits and pieces until, over time, the many bits and pieces eventually come together to form the big picture. Otherwise, it's exposition, and right now it's too early for you to be using exposition to your audience. You've got to hook the audience and make them interested in what's going on before you start dumping information on them. Prime the brain to want details and it will perk up for every tidbit you send its way. Simply push information at the audience, and you will test their patience and attention span. Capture that interest first, then you can explain things more clearly later.
“My mother told me stars are the souls of people, living and dead, and every person has one,” Ellis explained while resting after a particularly long game of hide and seek in the ruins, “It’s really silly, though,” Allen also thought it was silly. Stars were stars, after all.

“But if she was right, our stars would be next to each other, I think,” the shorter boy immediately regretted his words. Ellis would probably laugh at them. But he just nodded.

“You probably know stars better than I do, though. It’s what you want, after all,” The taller boy noted, the other one nodded slowly, “That doesn’t mean they can’t be everyone’s souls… Right?"
This dialogue might work better if you started it with smaller talk before rolling into the heavy topic. This can easily be done by having Allen ask Ellis about where a certain constellation or guiding star is and gradually escalating to this topic from there. As it stands, this is kind of sudden and it bulldozes straight to the point in the same way that the previous paragraphs did.

By now you should be noticing a pattern - you're putting a lot of heavy information up front and directly explaining it to the audience before you've given them a reason to be interested in any of it. I would recommend you step back, take in the major points from each paragraph that you wanted to communicate, and expand their content into scenes of greater detail so that you can provide more immersion to the audience and allow them to draw reasonable conclusions from those details.

Other than that, I would say to avoid unnecessary deviations from standard prose, such as your bolding of all quoted dialogue and your screenplay notes on where exactly the next paragraph is taking place. Quotes don't need to stand out like that, and you can work on your screenplay after your prose has been written and edited. If it's not clear who is speaking or when, or where the current scene is taking place, that is something for you to correct within the content of the prose itself, rather than by leaving notes or making visual cues via bolding.

It's not a bad start. Just shape up on the conventions of writing, re-attack any areas that need to be expanded upon, and take your time setting the scene for the reader. Remember, they won't lose interest on the basis of you not telling them what's going on - they'll lose interest on the basis of not caring what's going on. Address that first, then work from there.

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