How can it get any WORSE?

[Reaver]

Oohh! Fun!

Watching The Revenant right now. Holy Sh*t is that a lesson in MIW lol.

Good movie. I have to say your post gave me a chuckle. Not because of the movie. It's because you censored the word shit. That one's okay to write on Mythic Scribes.

Nasty, derogatory and hateful words (any adult knows what words I mean) are the ones we have a problem with here.

 

[Caged Maiden]

yeah, that's why Reaver's posts are so short. He had to trim out half his vocabulary, because it used to look like he just kept accidentally hitting the asterisk key...repeatedly.

 

[ThinkerX]

Caged, before I forget (again) - is this story you are rewriting the one that opens with the gambling scene?

If so, MIW is probably the way to go.

 

[Caged Maiden]

yes, and I've made the opening much worse. Here's the new first paragraph, since you guys didn't like the magic appearing first:

Raisa sat at a table of liars. A loan shark disguised as a banker, a sailor who transported weapons for warlords, a masked assassin who posed as a thief, and a woman who led every man she kissed to believe he was the only one in the world. And despite the mansion being full to brimming with false faces and lying lips, Raisa was quite sure none came close to matching her faculty for fakery. Her bust was padded, her waist girdled, and a wig of lush auburn curls concealed her shorn head. She was the queen of frauds, with a big old whopper of a secret.

Despite every attempt to behave for Lion’s birthday celebration and embrace the role of a crime boss’ mistress, conducting herself as a caricature of her benefactor’s ideals, Raisa battled a lingering dour mood. She tried to brush it off as anxiety over the party budget and worry for her young ward, Cherie, while the house was overrun with rutting pigs.

In truth, her attention was transfixed on a scruffy stranger who threatened to knock her off her royal throne, taking the liar’s crown for himself. A fellow named Martin, who under any other circumstances might have gone unnoticed amidst the more colorful personalities of Brazelton’s crime syndicate. Under the glow of an ironwork chandelier, Lion’s newest obsession enraptured party attendees with his mellow timbre and gifted fingers. Raisa saw him for what he was, though–a son of a cunt bard who was robbing her blind.

It certainly is worse...but I hope it's also better.

 

[ThinkerX]

It certainly is worse...but I hope it's also better.

Much better. But not there yet.

This is a card game. Start with the card hitting the table. Incorporate each mini-description as that persons turn comes up. And have the MC more than a little anxious. Because A - she could lose big, and B - these are some very nasty well connected characters.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Actually, the card game is very much in the background, so...do you still think the cards should be front and center? I don't really show anyone playing until the end of the chapter. The goal for the first scene is that she's waiting for an opportunity to make a deal with a fiend for a building she wants to buy, the first step for leaving the crime syndicate. So, I have one hand of cards, not very detailed, no aura, just the character waiting, and as soon as her friend gets frustrated with his lousy hand, he says he needs a break, and she leaves the table with him to cut a deal on the building she wants.

So, you'd still put the cards up front? I was trying to focus more on the bard, because he's the person who becomes her enemy in a way, when he stares at her early int he chapter, and the later, he beats her in the card game. And later in the book, he's the love interest, so...Helio told me to put as much focus on him as I could.

 

[ThinkerX]

Caged, the opening is better in that its more compact.

However, you open with your MC sitting at a table, and move immediately to short capsule descriptions of several other characters. You don't mention what those characters are doing, other than they are also at the table, and who don't seem to appear in the next couple of paragraphs. Hence...

'Raisa tossed a card on the table.'

That says *what* she and the others are doing. Then,

'Vin, a loan shark with pretensions of respectability, eyed the placard.'

And so on. Then, when its the bards turn, go into a more detailed explanation, as he is a central character to be.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Hm, that's true, I never thought of the ambiguous nature of the word "table" because it was already in my head that it's a card table. I see what you're saying.

 

[Heliotrope]

Movement interspersed with description is good. When I do my edits I try to find stationary words like sat, stood, waited, etc, anything that implies stillness or sort of general restfulness and replace them with specific descriptions of movement.

So, "Raisa tossed the card, face down, to the table of liars."

Now, what I like about the above is that the reader knows exactly what is happening, but then you also have subtly included a symbol for Raisa herself. "Face down" implies concealment, hiding, secrets... A metaphor for the entire chapter.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Today, I'm writing a fight scene, and it was very utilitarian in the first draft. Basically, I had an elf get jumped (because he was there, I suppose), and my secondary character (a werewolf) came to his rescue. The only real point I was trying to show in the scene, was that the secondary character is a werewolf.

It didn't work.

So now I'm rewriting it with a few small changes. Ones I hope will make the whole scene feel more connected to the plot.

Now, the guys who jump the elf are friends of the MC, who is present in the scene, but hidden. She's a raven, transformed by magic. The men were sent by a friend, to find her, but they find the elf instead, and ask him if he's seen the girl. The MIW moment, is that just before he was jumped by these thugs, he finished having a conversation with the werewolf secondary character, in which they discussed looking for a girl (who just happens to BE the MC in the scene as a raven), and when the thugs are really looking for her because they believe something befell her and that's why no one can find her...the elf believes they've come and attacked him because they know the secret reason he's trying to find her now.

Wow, that probably sounds terribly complicated, but for this scene, it was the perfect way to finally connect the main plot line (with the elf and his search for this woman who can open her family crypt), and the MC, who doesn't know anything about a crypt, but happens to have friends out searching for her because she's missing from her room.

This scene is meant to feel like ships in the night, where they're both looking for the same person, but I haven't told the reader yet, just hinted at it. And while the elf and the thugs are both under the wrong assumptions, they're both actually RIGHT!

Hoo boy...what a day. I'm making my headache worse, for sure.