Beta 2, General Impressions
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So back to this; had to run to Starbucks.
OK, the real big problem that I cannot easily or maybe even possibly fix is that the overall story is in the “Epic” fantasy genre.
In almost every epic fantasy series, book 2 is the bummer book. By the dictates of the genre this almost has to be the case; it dates back to the trilogy and is clearly seen in LOTR; if you’ve read them; what do you remember of the Two Towers? I bet it is “Ehhh…” although that may be me.
Here is the thing (and this is purely in general):
First book is the setup, the revealing of the mystery/issue/quest. We are introduced to the protagonists and they are set with an epic task. Everything is new and wondrous and exciting.
Book Two though is where we have to get down to the brass tacks of setting up the “epic” part, expanding to show all the players in more detail, demonstrate their motives and significantly expand the world horizons of the protagonists. As such, it is always very much a “transition” book, and in some ways a proforma necessity with getting on with the rest of the story. It’s the first deep dive into the details and first true look at the difficulties.
Book Three (in a trilogy) is the battle, the conflict, the victory/failure
Book Three (in a multipart series) is the first battle, the resolution of the first of several quests (unless you are Robert Jordan–all bets are off then)
Book Four (if there is one) is the second quest/battle, possibly another expansion/transition book, like Book 2.
Book Five is either a final quest/conflict or the resolution or first half of the solving of the book 4 expanded quest/problem.
Rinse and repeat as needed/desired.
In short, the mechanics of epic fantasy make book 2’s a problem no matter who you are. It’s one of those things I have to deal with.
It’s the expansion of the story/world, the detailing of the complexity of the situation and the “full scoping” (hopefully) of the problem at hand.
Nothing is ever fully resolved in book 2 in a 3+ book series. And that is always the problem with Book 2.
Thanks for the feedback. Overall, not sure I disagree but…
Ruiden becomes more instrumental in Book 3, once he’s in the Abyss with Talarius.
Exador’s and the triad’s part is moved up and should be more obviously important, thanks to Ruiden and Exador’s exposure.
I am not quite sure what you think I should do, Rosver? a complete restart with a completely different story?
[i]What would make it that much better?[/i]I get cutting down some stuff to speed it up. But from what I am hearing that would not be enough to make it “zing” I need more concrete suggestions, because I am at something of a loss given the constraints of begining end and the other volumes.
Asmeth parts are marked now as Asmeth, because I may still take them out. They do not change anything in the other stories so could go. But does that speed it up enough. If it improves the story, I will take them out. If it doesn’t make much difference, I would prefer to leave them in as I am trying to tell the story as much in chronological order as possible. I try not to ever flashback much before the previous few scenes, moving Asmeth to the next book is huge flashback.
But as far as saying, so and so doesn’t add to the story; I am uncertain of the validity of these arguments as I have always said, “Demons of Astlan” is one book, one story. It just has to be broken up. So saying so and so doesn’t add to the story is not really justifiable until you read the [b]entire[/b] story.
What do 70% of the characters add to the story in any one volume of A Song of Ice and Fire? Keeping in mind that each of my volumes is one half the length of a single GRRM book. So break everyone of those books in two and then judge the merits of the characters based on each half book.
If I were to make every character and scene relevant to what is in an individual volume, I would basically have to wait and publish the final Demons of Astlan in a single 2500 page book. Which was my very original plan.
Coming of Age is not a genre. It could appear in various genre like Sci-Fi and Romance. There are Adventures with no Coming of Age elements, which is quite true in early fictions. Around the World in Eighty Days for example is a rather clean Adventure Fiction and Coming of Age elements is absent. Gulliver’s Travels is another one. There is Adventure is in Game of Thrones but as I say, it is mainly Political Drama. Anyone who is looking for swashbuckling adventure with find it extremely lacking.
Yes. Politics is not between Kingdoms and your story is full of political factions. But as I said, the political drama haven’t develop yet. While the potentials of political conflicts are there, they are still potential and not an existing conflict… yet.
The whole Council is quite a homogenous political faction. I haven’t really seen individuals having much big political conflict yet.
Randolf and Exador isn’t exactly a political conflict since its not political power Randolf is after but revenge.
The Djinn barely make an appearance or have any political presence.
The Phanteon is a political power, a weak one, but they haven’t really make a political move yet.
The politics in Abyss is barely discussed and as Antefalken stated, mostly hot air. The greatest development seems to be the reemergence of Orcus. which Lillith reacts by attacking… with a very lame attempt.
The Grove is another political entity but as I said before, they are really not much into politics yet, content in ignoring the outside world, until now.
Sentir and Tiernon doesn’t have any conflict yet. The potential of conflict is there but since Tiernon doesn’t know about the stuff Sentir is doing, conflict is nonexistent… yet.
The Oorstemoth and Rod has to start yet any action. So again, conflict is yet to exist.
That is why I stated that political drama is yet to come. We have various political powers but without really any serious political conflict or at all. There are trouble brewing but no drama yet.
Super Mario Bros at least has King Bowser kindapping Princess Peach and forcing her to marry him to gain power over Mushroom Kingdom. That is a political drama… of sorts. Yours has nada.
I am not saying Coming of Age is a genre, not sure where you got that. If I called it that it was a typo.
Fantasy is the genre and there are certain literary story archetypes that cross genres.
Coming of Age is probably the oldest science fiction/fantasy story archetype. This is because most sf/fantasy was written as “boys adventure” fiction and told stories to boys (and girls who dared to read them) that tried to mirror their own growth experiences, the story of growing up and becoming an adult. [Of course, the funny thing today is that for some time (Andre Norton etc) it has been women writing these stories and today they are youth adventures; as well as for adults]
This goes back to Jules Verne, Robert Heinlein, and so many more.
Anyway reading the rest and having thought it about it last night; I actually think we are on the same page and arguing the exact same thing from different angles.
[b]It is an adventure book[/b] in the sense you mean it, I believe. But “adventure” is not what I consider one of the story archetypes that tell you what the story is about.
Very loosely
Coming of Age
The Quest or Voyage
The Redemption
Overcoming the Monster/Adversity
Political Drama
Romance and Fidelity/Infidelity
War
Loss (Tragedy)You see, I consider “adventure” to be part and parcel of most of these story lines. I don’t consider it to be the story archetype. If there isn’t some adventure, why read it? (I mean seriously, I might as well watch Masterpiece Theater–although I do love Downton Abbey)
Comedy and Romance can often get away without adventure. Jane Austen was not particularly adventurous, but I love all of her books. That’s comedy and romance. However, Thomas Hardy, the Bronte sisters, etc….bleck!
So yes, the political drama is coming
Following my diatribe on series
Book 1 was the introduction to the world as seen by Tom
Book 2 sets up and begins the introduction of the world and it’s politics and makes it more clear exactly what sort of mess Tom has stepped into
Book 3 will be the first conflicts resulting from stepping in a pile of politics
Book 4+ dealing longer term with these politics and the ramifications of ones actions. Learning to accept the consequences of ones actions (for multiple people)And here is the thing I don’t say a lot, but goodreads does bring up as Book 1 is on the list of Fantasy Parodies. The book really is something of a parody of fantasy. Although on some levels that offends me because I am not poking fun at the genre.
I think of it more as a winking homage.
Yes it is a comedy, but the comedy is that of human behavior and human misunderstandings. Fantasy is just the clothes it is dressed in.
It’s about how little things get blown way out of proportion and how ego/hubris, tangled histories, false narratives and poor communication cause lots of problems.
This happens all the time in world politics today. And that’s why I see it as a political drama.
Even on the small scale of book 1, you have people with conflicting objectives spinning propaganda and bad information flowing to everyone and pretty soon it infects everyone around them and it keeps growing.
People say and do things as political posturing, to gain small short term tactical advantages and they are taken seriously, perhaps more seriously than intended and then they can’t take them back so they have to double down on them and things just get really out of hand.
That is real politics. And politics is less about good and evil as about us vs them and defining us and defining them. It’s about choosing sides and then what happens if you suddenly realize you are on the wrong side, or that your side has gone off the deep end, what do you do? Do you double down and stay the course?
Anyway, enough rambling for now.
I think it is the context of the word adventure.
Your examples also show where I think we are disconnecting on the word archetype.
There are all sorts of archetypes: character, cultural, political, story.
In literary criticism they talk about story archetypes or basic plots, there are often 7 basic plots, sometimes more or less and sometimes with different categories, but all are similar to each other.
It’s how they categorize “stories” specifically fictional works of prose or poetry.
I use the word story archetype; but there are a lot of phrases for it.
The plot list I gave is my generic example of such a classification scheme. There are several others but they are all very similar, it’s really a binning exercise for literary scholars.
I think the confusion on “adventure” is that your categorization scheme has a different hierarchy, which is fine, there is no right way to do it. But that leads to such confusion when we have different ways of binning. You have adventure stories as a top bin in categorizing works; and using your system you can actually classify non-fiction, journalism, encyclopedias and various forms of fiction.
My scheme is much more restrictive in that I’ve already dove down to “The Novel” as a work of narrative fiction (but the same classification also works for long form poetry and scripts) and am talking about the basic plot lines.
Anyway, I am no longer opposed to the phrase adventure story, as you use it. Because it is true.
As for parody; I recognize it as a parody; but that word often has modern connotations that imply a level of cynicism I am not comfortable claiming. I guess in that sense, going back to the 7 basic plotlines or less, I would call it more a comedy in something like the Greek and Shakespearean traditions.
That is also my feeling. There is not the same sense of escalation and conflict advancing to conflict.
I am just not quite sure what to do about that; again I see this as a Book 2 syndrome, resetting the stage so to speak for much more to come.
We needed to have some recovery and rebuilding time.
In pretty much every way the argument comes back to the “book 2 is 10 days, book 1 was 30 days” so only 1/3 the time has passed. So only 1/3 as much can physically happen (roughly)
The alternative is to go to a longer time period and ignore a lot of the detail of the events to keep the length in check. But in that case we are glossing over the introduction of some significant characters such as Hilda, The D’Orcs, the Orcs that are going to be critical for later. You don’t get a second chance for an introduction.
I don’t know what you have planned for the next books(s). But what will happen if you cut the Lilith, the Oost…, the Rod (with exception of Hilda and that sword) and the council scenes out? They give us some background info, sure, but i don’t think they are important.
Well, Lilith scenes provide two important things which are related:
1) the counterpoint to the D’Orcs. I.e anatagonist for he D’Orcs and the Demon Army
2) She, Sentir Fallon and Aodh are responsible for teaming up to kill Orcs; and it was Lilith and Sentir Fallon who planted the Wand of Orcus in the volcano (there are reasons why there that may be exposed in 3)So I think we lose a lot with her gone.
As for the Rod. Yes, some of the G&G stuff could go; but they are needed for Ruiden and to set up for the invasion of the Abyss in Book 3. Actually that was originally a much bigger part of book 2 that got pushed to book 3.
After finally finishing through beta 2, I’d give it a 3.5/5.0 a bump from 3.0, so I guess either 3 or 4 stars for an Amazon review. I’d suggest since major overhaul is probably too much, just keep polishing the action scenes, maybe put more cool scenes and change the ending somewhat. Tommus surrounding the enemy army and just asking them to join is simply too anticlimactic after all the set up and plotting and all that in the rest of the story.
I’ve read “Poor Man’s Fight” by Elliot Kay, and I’ve given it 5 stars simply because of just a couple of things. One was a short but cool spar between the hero and an antagonist. The other was near the end when he pretty much single-handedly beaten a ship full of pirates (2-3 chapters? can’t recall). Anyways, talk about a climax. That was badass.
“Into the Abyss” was also the same. It had these cool scenes which I’ve liked reading repeatedly. The “pirate” fight with the Oorstemothians with the bonding scene with Rupert and Tom; dinner with Lenamare where Tom told em off, and also Tom’s duel with Talarius which was simply a great climax.
The action scenes with “The Heavenly Host” doesn’t seem up to snuff. While I thought some were cool, like when a lich got turned into an icecube; the one where Hilda dropkicked a big orc; and the scene were Hilda did a 1 vs 5 bit. I never had any inclination to read them again. Hm, actually thinking it over, those are the only 3 scenes that I found mildly interesting. The rest are pretty much forgettable.
Great info! Thanks.
Yeah, I’ve been heavily conflicted on the final battle scene. I know that it calls for a battle/fight. But the demons from Doom’s Redoubt are a rather pathetic lot after being trapped in the fort for 4000 years periodically picking fights that I get conflicted; or rather I feel that Tom would be conflicted. This of course is the danger to seeing both sides of a conflict. Maybe your enemy isn’t as evil as you think. And that’s in part what I want to show with this style of writing. There are some truly evil people; but in many cases it is misunderstanding/poor communication.
With equal number of D’Orcs plus D’Wargs in open combat, with Tom’s magic and the defenses of Doom, it almost has to be a massacre. I suppose one could argue is that the D’Orcs shouldn’t have been hit that hard by any of the demon attacks, even though they would be at some size disadvantage in the tunnels–however they would have had home field advantage.
So anyway; a massacre is something that would sicken Tom. It is not his style–yet. In dealing with the the after affects of an aftermath, it would be a huge downer for Tom; and possibly for the book. It would not be a “blech…” let down, which is the problem now, but rather a depressing bummer sort of thing; which is good break point in high drama, not so good a way to break in a comedy.
Tom is very much a softy, get along sort of guy, he is only 16/17 by the time of the Doom’s Redoubt getting there. He is not, yet, a vicious backstabbing demon/dark lord type.
So the current plan would be to let them in, and then treachery starts from within; teaching Tom a lesson about being too merciful. Plus Lilith has bigger resources than these peons up her sleeve; and hijacking her army will force her to send the big guns after him.
I can add more of Lilith’s response to whet things for next book; but it’s still not the battle that was built up for.
To do a battle that is not a massacre, I would really need to restructure the dynamic of the opposing forces (e.g. double/triple the number of demons) Or something.
Hmmm. I need to think on this. Figure out how to balance a true victory vs a massacre and still have a celebration.
Will polish the other battle scenes some more.
Thanks
Warning: the next part talks about how ancient book 1 actually is and why some of those scenes are as intense as they are:
[SPOILER]
All the battles in book 1 had a lot more polish in that I took a very long time to write the book. I think many people liked the climactic battle at the end the best. And that was a scene that had been building in my head for 20+ years and so didn’t take much written polish. The problem was that I got stuck when the wards went up. I could not come up with a way to move the story along; how to get them out of the corner I had backed them into and get to the battle between Tom and Talarius.And I edited/read/polished what there was now and then and when I finally said enough is enough, this is going to get out of the queue…and really started thinking on it, I came up with “Tell Lenamare about the demons; have him deal with them.” And that was it. Out the door and onto a fight that I’d been seeing in my head for 20 years.
So, my point being, book 1 had a serious time advantage going for it. I started it in late 1985/early 86. That got me to blowing up Lenamare’s school. The next segment from the mushroom cloud up until the wards was written 1992 to 1994. Then not much until blam!
[/SPOILER]
My biggest impression was that there was a lot of conversation and not as much doing as in the first book.
While it allows for information transfer it gives the book a much more passive feel.
I have a theory, which is that the server was trying to process all five of my requests, and therefore didn’t allow me access until it had processed all five.
I’m on page 305, gonna get to 109.1 tonight.Some words on the book so far.
My main points:
-Character development: lots of characters seem to have lost most or all of their personality from book 1, in the space of a couple days
-Relationships: I enjoy how you have created many characters to follow, and I can see how they all relate, my biggest problem with this is you jump around to much to too many different characters, and quite a few of the long strings of writing seem almost pointless, such as Jenn admiring guys
-A lot more mystery which I like, it gives a political feel to it, and not just fighting. The bad part of this is that we don’t get to know more about Tom’s ‘new’ powers or if he has any
-I would like to see more of the ‘book’ which has slowly faded from the main plot, and now seems like something from the pastMy conclusion at this point in time is that, like many other beta demons have said, there is not much of a middle.
p.s. I would like to see more of the old Tom, with more internal dialogue.
p.p.s. There are a few technical problems though; there have been multiple times where you leave out a word or put in a word (most of the time this extra word was ‘was’).
Still, very good book so far, I would definitely like to be a beta demon for the next book, and have thoroughly enjoyed the ‘series’ so far.
Hm, was thinking for a final battle maybe one where at first glance, you wouldn’t know who’d win. But as time goes on, maybe after Tommus fought against another boss type demon (insert cool action scene). He pauses for a bit, starts looking around, he could see his army dominating. Sickened by all fighting , blood, gore etc, he finally gets fed up and does something attention grabbing (dunno: magic applified shout “Enough!” or something) that made everyone stop and look towards him. Then I guess you could put that same offer as before, join or die.
In my opinion it’s not the lack of personality, it’s them difference compared to the first book.
This book is set straight after book one, however, it seems as if it’s set a few months after.
Ok, some charactrs I can see a connection between different personalities (Tom, Tizzy and maybe even Jenn), but some have changed so drastically it’s unbelievable. Gastrope for example, in book on, was not that powerful, and even less brave, and absolutely terrified of demons. Now he is jumping on flying carpets, shooting fireballs at ice dragons and storm liches, and summoning three demons at once, and we don’t see once that he is scared. That is no ‘His face is borderline on green now’.
That was some of my favourite parts of the first book: the descriptions of Gastrope’s face.
I also think Jehenna and Lenamare are no longer their usual self. No more smug looks as someone sees his spell or hears his ‘ingenious’ plan.
I’m going to write you a full page document on other flaws, in my opinion, but these are some of my main flaws.Cool.
The Gastrope’ one is particularly interesting, perhaps in my interest of tightening the carpet stuff up and spicing it up, i wasn’t clear enough on his trepidation. He’s feeling rather forced into this stuff and in some ways I was trying to get “into” him in the scene at the fortress to get deeper on who he is, and in book 3, my plan is to emotionally torture him with his secrets as he sits on the fence between Mount Doom and the Grove.
Gastrope is rather interesting in that he is not incompetent, just young and fearful someone not accustomed to playing in the big leagues; he is in way over his head. In many ways a mirror of Tom. I can see however where the carpet thing as is might be pushing him too far, too fast. At the moment I see him in sort of an almost PTSD state and just loosely hanging on/going with the flow.
Not sure I follow on L&J. They are definitely being busy basking in the glory of having praise them. Hilda is playing him and them like a fiddle, stroking his ego buttering him up.
I could see Jehenna being not as nasty, that may be true, but she hasn’t had a lot to do. Not until the Exador battle.
Looking forward to the detailed document.
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