The Forbidden People

Ok. Here we go! Comment (late) per CWB thread. Chapter one.

THere's a lot of fancy schmancy made up words in your first sentence. Perhaps just the tiniest bit of familiar language thrown in there? I was a bit confused on the Day 1 entry because my first impression was that she was studying the Forbidden People as part of her duty, but then her parents are against it because it brings dishonor?

Not much more to add. It's polished and easy on the eyes. I hope the journal entries get more detailed and a bit longer in later chapters.

An interesting opening, even if it did feel a bit rushed to me.
Day 2 Evening. Like the other two days, it is written well. My only complaint on the overall story so far is that you seem to be quickly sketching out the days and I feel there should be more detail. I'm a few hundred words into your novel and already I have a princess, a resolved conflict with parents, a journey, bad news and the loss of a friend. You've said in a few paragraphs what most fantasy novels take fifty pages to establish. I'm not sure this is a bad thing, but there are certain genre expectations that your readers will expect (because they're expectations).

Regarding Day 2, perhaps a bit of explanation as to why the sailors are not afraid to flirt with her, when other men are?

Day 3: The second paragraph was confusing for me. Was she waving goodbye to people on a ship or people leaving a ship. I didn't get the connection/inner struggle she was having between luxury and seeing the world. I liked the descriptions and the "Day 3" overall.

Day 5 is where things get interesting. We got the ugly captain, the marketplace, the introduction of a new character and the story starts to flush out a bit.

THe whole thing is well written and, while I'm not a huge fan of journal/novels, you do it well. I hope that you start putting more meat in the individual entries. In my book, I just have a bunch of zombies and yuk yuks. I can afford to skimp on details. But you are heading more toward fantasy and literary fiction. Those genre's require more, not less, detail.

CWB-6

I have read chapter 6, and I'm afraid I cannot offer much by way of critique.

Your prose - while broken, as any diary's entries are wont to be - flows smoothly.Your story advances logically and in a fluid fashion.

I'm sorry I didn't have much else to offer.

I did enjoy what I read, and could see myself buying this book -- provided that the entire body of work is not limited to diary entries.

CWB- Chapter 10 Review for Forbidden People

I like this characters narrative alot better than the one in Pinnochio.It fairs alot better, and is very soothing to read. Yet she is very sad.

I noticed that you put Day 85 twice. I don't know if this was a mistake or not. I haven't found any other mistakes to point out or edit.

Her voice really does wonders as she explains and narrates through her diary, it has a certain downplay to it, but a proud quality in it as well,and you have captured it perfectly. It allows me to read on and on.

CWB – Forbidden people chapter 5
Reading this I feel it could do with a fair bit of editing but should scrub OK in the final draft. Some sentences need re-arranging to read a little less formally and there are maybe a few extra words here and there.
Eg. – ‘he believes this one to have under ten years, but probably has over five years.’ The second years could be lost.
I think that some of the quotation marks could be lost.
Some things I feel could be abbreviated, eg. He has – he’s. etc…
I think there’s a bit missing, or forgotten to delete on day 36, A line simply states ‘Greig said’.
And again near the end, 'it is not as deep as.'
I also think the fight or whatever it may be at the end of the chapter could do with a little more description. I like the use of ‘splatting’ though.

Despite all the above, I really enjoy the story, plot and pace and think it has a lot of potential.

Mark

Chapter 7 The Forbidden People CWB

The diary format of this chapter lacked some tension which is to be expected. It does however work quite well to express the emotions of Omi and allows us to experience her long ordeal without killing the pace of the story. Her voice comes through here as well. I got a little tired of hearing her describe stuff as "very this or very that" and she seemed to obsess on some details like clothing which seemed strange but may fit her character.

There were some tense issues in her diary entry but this is something that may have been intentional on your part.

I thought you could have ended this chapter with day 74 rather than day 75 since this is a stronger ending.

CWB WEEK FIVE
The Forbidden People, Chapter 4

I like this. Your narrator has a distinctive voice and although I don’t know exactly what’s going on, coming in on Day 17, I found it easy to pick up and read and begin piecing together what I’ve missed. It made me want to go back to the beginning and start the book properly, which is good. Your punctuation etc is also pretty darn perfect. Overall, good stuff. I just had a few specific points:

“knyrans keep them elsewhere” – this may be a deliberate lower case, but I would have thought it should be Knyrans? Like Alasei. I guess it depends whether it’s the name of a race or of a species, though.

I assume the ending of Day 19 is meant to be a sudden break in the middle of the sentence because something has happened, but it feels a bit strange – almost like an error – since no reason is given for the abrupt stop in the next day’s entry.

Ah, ‘knyran’ lower case again. Must be deliberate, then, though I’m still not sure of the distinction between this and Alasei/KinInshi, which are always capitalised.

Alasei grammar is fun like that. I'm still not certain why Mayuri is capitalized, but I suspect it's just foreign grammar and a touch of racism. Knyran is just a species term like human, with individual tribes being capitalized (like Miasi). Alasei implies a species, a language, a country and a culture and remains capitalized across the board.

Also, something really fun I noticed last night--some of Omi's odd formality is actually the fault of the person translating the work. I was wondering why he sounded like Omi and rather abruptly realized that he didn't--he was just embellishing on Omi's writings (and she's not entirely happy about though she does have formal writing on her own).

Gonna go through those 'rewording' bits pretty soon (though it might take longer to update it on Autho--I tend to update the files without uploading them) .

I'm very glad you liked the 'bumps' bit and how he smelled. I have an 'aww' moment, sometimes even laugh there.

Thanks a bunch for reading. Glad you found it easy :)

CWB WEEK FIVE
The Forbidden People, Chapter 4

I like this. Your narrator has a distinctive voice and although I don’t know exactly what’s going on, coming in on Day 17, I found it easy to pick up and read and begin piecing together what I’ve missed. It made me want to go back to the beginning and start the book properly, which is good. Your punctuation etc is also pretty darn perfect. Overall, good stuff. I just had a few specific points:

“knyrans keep them elsewhere” – this may be a deliberate lower case, but I would have thought it should be Knyrans? Like Alasei. I guess it depends whether it’s the name of a race or of a species, though. (But even then I’d capitalise, because it’s the first word in that piece of dialogue … hmm.)

‘I have associated it for too long as medical speak’ – doesn’t seem quite right to me. ‘I have thought of it for too long as being’, perhaps, or ‘I have associated it for too long with’?

Incidentally, I found the whole “bumps” section very sweet, amusing, and quite touching, in a strange sort of way.

‘Dark blue velvet, a stream on a summer night …’ – nice. Evocative.

‘Place his fingers … private of places’ – maybe could avoid the word echo here. Ditto in the sentence ‘as one man or another hauled me …’ – I’m assuming the first two anothers are deliberate repetition, but might be able to reword to avoid the third.

‘I know that I wake up’, ‘The crew tells me that I yowl’ – I realise your narrator has quite a formal style, but do you need the thats here?

‘I had not defended it myself’ – ‘I did not defend it myself’ would perhaps be smoother?

‘In essence, that my budding heat …’ – this doesn’t seem to quite follow from the previous sentence. It’s the ‘that’ which confuses me. The previous sentence says he doesn’t know why x, y and z, so if you want this one to be a follow-on for that, wouldn’t it be ‘In essence, why …’? Alternatively, you could take out ‘that’ and just have ‘In essence, my budding heat …’ (Sorry, I don’t think I’ve explained this one very well.)

‘When he had possessed only four years’ – ‘had’ not necessary here?

I assume the ending of Day 19 is meant to be a sudden break in the middle of the sentence because something has happened, but it feels a bit strange – almost like an error – since no reason is given for the abrupt stop in the next day’s entry.

Ah, ‘knyran’ lower case again. Must be deliberate, then, though I’m still not sure of the distinction between this and Alasei/KinInshi, which are always capitalised.

That’s it – not much at all. Will try and find the time to read more.

CWB Review - Chapter 9 - The Forbidden people

This is not something I would normally read, but I was impressed by the writing. The characters, although I am just meeting them in chap 9, are believable and have depth. I sometimes struggled with the names of the various groups of people mentioned. But this is down to me that's all. You have a sentence: I know realize was almost maternal. This should read: I now realise was almost maternal. The only other nit pick is that I think you have sometimes slipped with the tense. I know the tense changes when you are writing journal entries, but this has slipped into the general narrative in places. Other than that, I did enjoy what I read and was transported easily into this world.

Julie.

CWB Review – Chapter 3 – The Forbidden People
Nitpicks first:
“He was hesitant to meet eyes with me” - For some reason this sentence doesn’t sound quite right, perhaps “He avoided meeting my eyes.” Or similar?
The description of the Miasi – the word large is repeated too many times in a relatively short passage.
You spend several paragraphs telling us about a conversation. Have you thought about showing this through direct, rather than reported speech? I would prefer to read the dialogue rather than the account of it.
I tripped up a few times because of “had” and “that”. The writing would flow more smoothly if you “pruned” a few of these.
But:
You have created interesting characters, and a potentially fascinating story which I would like to continue reading.
Lilian.

WiSpY--without a picture, I don't think anyone's ever seen what knyrans look like. I've been working on the race and its various forerunners since early adolescence (and a bit before besides, I think). They're a really complicated oddball work, and they're not like anything I've seen in mythology or other fantasy/science fiction.

If the book ever gets published, I think it needs to have a few good commissioned pieces of art in it--both drawings from Omi and Captain Robanni, and photographs from the later archeologists. I think it'd be especially cool if 'pictures' were taken of Omi's untranslated works. The Alasei language looks quite a bit like Japanese (mostly phonetic but also with extra whole-word symbols, written top-to-bottom left-to-right in vertical columns).

Normally, I don't think pictures belong in adult fiction (we're not toddlers), but the story so frequently mentions pictures and photographs and Omi is such a doodler... it's really unlikely that she hasn't drawn anything around the letters.

What a trip for world-building and conlangs though!

Well done. A convincing and effortlessly introduction to a fantastic world. Cats and what sound like satyrs, and of course the humans...

I've only read chapter one so far, the rest requires my full attention and I'm tired. Without wanting to lay it on thick, I really like it. A lot. I want to read a couple more chapters before shelving it and singing its praises. The only thing I can really offer is that I'd try to write the dialouge a lot less formally than the narrative. eg. dropping the odd word or abbreviating to hint at dialect. Things like that help my brain to distinguish whats on the page. I have no idea if what I just put makes any sense but try speaking the dialouge out loud to see if it sounds natural and write the words as they would come from your mouth. Well that's what I do anyway.
I hoped that might have helped a little, I know it doesn't with your questions about structure but I will be reading more and I look forward to seeing it finished and on my kindle.
Mark

I'm thinking of hacking the book up and posting it in non-linear fashion, perhaps having Omi already quite ancient and evil (and assumed dead along with the rest of the Alasei).

I think the beginning reads like a list of things that have been done. Rather dry. But I am pleased I read on. I thought the later chapters (3 & 4) were much more engaging. This isn't a genre I usually read, actually, I usually avoid science fiction. I do think your writing is clean. I didn't note any typos. And it does flow.

Em.

Thanks a bunch for looking at Forbidden People. I've been told before that adding a POV or two might help break up the early monotony. Perhaps alluding to Omi's future as She Who Destroyed the World might help. It worked for the first three episodes of Star Wars, I guess it could work for her.

Hmm. I looked at the opening chapter and chapter 4. I do find the narrator quite irritating and agree with the comment from J S Watts below. If these genuinely are diary/journal entries then have her show more emotion or self-reflection. But then we have this same first person narrative running through scenes with dialogue, so perhaps they are not diary entries. Perhaps the answer is to have clearly defined diary entries interspersed between 'live-action' scenes. At some unknown point in the future she is re-reading the diary, perhaps before an important event or even just before she destoys the diary, and as she reads she remembers and perhaps even corrects what she wrote in the diary or understands now what she could not then.

BUT, and it's a big but, the world revealed by the narrator is rather fascinating, not least because I detect a grounding in real history when Japan, an over-crowded island nation obsessed with the decorative crafts, opened up and began to engage with the West. This adds to the interest because I don't have to rely on you just making stuff up - which as with any writer has its limitations - but on you twisting real and complex history.

I also now understand your thread on penis size. I thought you just had a naughty mind. Now I know you have a naughty book!
Backed, not so much for the prose style but for your imagination.

PS: It is thoroughly irritating when someone follows up a nice comment with a come-see-mine request, but in this case I genuinely believe you might find Acts of The Servant rather interesting.

A gentle and intriguing novella. I like the detailed envisioning of the worlds and the gradual revelations as to the nature of the narrator. The only drawback to the diary format is the sameness of tone in the opening sections. Maybe a little more variety would hook the reader more strongly?

J.S.Watts
A Darker Moon

Added an Introduction at the end of the story. Hopefully, it illuminates much of my reason for writing the piece.

This is a very interesting story.... a romance in an alternate world. I like it. It's very cool how you have done it in the form of a diary. I like your descriptions and inventions of the other races and customs. Very imaginative.

I think that maybe there are a few days that could be combined into one day or eliminated altogether and you could just say that she skipped a few days. It could just be "tightened up" a bit that way.

I'm going to put this on my shelf. I'll be interested in seeing what other suggestions people come up with since I'm not the best at critiques. You'll find that there are some people on here that are awesome at it.

Good luck!
Jen (LaSombra)
The Summoner