30 KiB
[RST] Guardian, Chapter 1 (My new original fiction story)
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Author: u/DaystarEld Pokémon Professor*
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Score: 62
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Created: 2017-03-16T20:06:11
Post:
Comments:
u/DaystarEld [+14] Pokémon Professor (a minute later)
Hey everyone, this is the new story that I've mentioned a few times on Rationally Writing. It's aiming to be a YA novel for eventual publication, and I have no idea how quickly I'll be able to get through it, or how much of it will end up going online, but for now I'd like to put it up here for people to read and give feedback on.
Title is still a work in progress. Enjoy!
(For those of you that might be worried, I can promise that this won't interfere with Origin of Species, since this one chapter took me a few months to write with whatever spare time I had between all the other projects. It's nice to be able to switch gears and work on something fresh, but the new Pokemon chapter is still being worked on too.)
u/Dwood15 [+2] (a day later)
While I am excited to have another original rationalist story, i hope you try to balance out the action and story with the rationalist sections better. I think you could work on sprinkling out the rationalist stuff in OoS further apart instead of having 60% of some chapters being ai discussion and whatnot.
u/DaystarEld [+3] Pokémon Professor (a day later)
I'll try to keep that in mind! I'm aiming for shorter chapters (and a shorter story) in this, so I definitely won't be including as much wide scope concepts.
u/None [+12] (2 hours later)
Some quick thoughts:
- Incredibly fun to read, I love the premise so far
- The bit at the end (!), as well as all the other little places where you injected context felt very natural, and it flowed very well.
I'm unsure what Terra's motivations are for approaching the fourth "girl". As in, if it were me, I probably wouldn't have taken a brazen approach, but I suspect there's more info here that is probably important, like maybe fae are notorious for messing with people.
u/Anderkent [+4] (4 hours later)
Incredibly fun to read, I love the premise so far
Yep, +1
The bit at the end (!), as well as all the other little places where you injected context felt very natural, and it flowed very well.
Actually that last reveal was jarring to me, because it didn't feel like something anyone would actually say. Compare:
It makes sense for Terra to be thinking about the background. It doesn't feel natural for him to point it out to Puck explicitly.
I'm unsure what Terra's motivations are for approaching the fourth "girl".
I felt like he was just looking for more interactions with fae, with the feeling of security that Puck would intervene if he was doing something really wrong. It makes sense, he does need to learn how to interact with them better if he's to ever improve on Puck's oath.
u/DaystarEld [+5] Pokémon Professor (5 hours later)
It makes sense for Terra to be thinking about the background. It doesn't feel natural for him to point it out to Puck explicitly.
Yeah, this was bothering me a bit too, but I wasn't sure what the best edit might be.
What do you think of this?
“And my dad's murderer is the last person I’d listen to about respecting his memory."
Still too explicit?
u/Anderkent [+3] (5 hours later)
I do like that phrasing better, yes. It feels less redundant to address Puck as the murderer, than to address him directly and then call him the murderer.
u/CarVac [+1] (a day later)
I think I like the original wording the best.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
If you wanted to do it more subtly, you could connect the idea of murdering to Puck with some piece of imagery, then bring it up again in the context of Terra's dad?
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (2 days later)
That's a good idea too. I'll think it over and see if something comes to mind :)
u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (3 days later)
I think it sounds fine the way it currently is.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (5 hours later)
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
u/InfernoVulpix [+12] (7 hours later)
I'm noticing a good amount of influence from Pact here, so I'm guessing that this story is partially inspired by the question "What would Pact be like if things didn't always suck everywhere forever?" You'd still have the clever words and mind games, the blood magic and assorted other magics, and the severe risk of horrible fates if you're careless, but put instead in a package where, if you play your cards right, you can win or at least break even.
The fig trick was intriguing. Terra somehow knew that he was being affected by something, even though he was being blocked from comprehending it when not seeing it, but it was only when he had physical proof of her existence that he could actually remember her. I'm not sure what that means for the nature of glamour and illusions, but it's an interesting data point.
Naming scheme so far seems a bit esoteric, what with Terra and Puck. I'm guessing Terra was given an unusual name by his dad, who presumably was thoroughly immersed in the spooky stuff, and Puck's not even human, but I wondered for a moment there if this was a 'fantasy academy where everyone has weird names' story.
So far, it looks like it has good potential to get Terra more and more sucked into the supernatural world like Blake did, though hopefully less tragically. I can say right from the get-go that I hope Terra finds some peers to confide in and drag along with him. Alternate perspectives and reactions are a significant chunk of what makes stories compelling for me, so loner stories don't resonate quite as well.
u/noggin-scratcher [+6] I am a happy tree (19 hours later)
"What would Pact be like if things didn't always suck everywhere forever?"
Give it time, we don't know where he's going with this.
I mean, Pact didn't make its maximisation of global suck levels visible right away in chapter 1.
u/DaystarEld [+3] Pokémon Professor (20 hours later)
As much as I enjoyed it, I definitely found Pact wearing to read over long periods of time, so I can at least assure you it won't get that dark :)
u/CeruleanTresses [+3] (9 hours later)
Terra somehow knew that he was being affected by something, even though he was being blocked from comprehending it when not seeing it
My interpretation was that he was able to recognize the memory trick because he could only remember three girls, but he remembered them acting like there was a fourth person there. Like their body language didn't make sense if there were really only three. So the memory trick made him forget the fae, but it couldn't alter how he saw the human girls behaving.
Puck's definitely not the fae's true name or I'm sure he would have objected to Terra revealing it, so I have to assume that he adopted it (or someone gave it to him) as a joke. I mean, assuming that Shakespeare is a thing in this universe.
u/DaystarEld [+4] Pokémon Professor (12 hours later)
Correct on both counts :) The reason the other fae rolled her eyes was because "Puck" is a common pseudonym for fae to take when they want to be cheeky.
u/garethh [+2] (3 days later)
As an aside, whose the author of pact, and would you recommend it?
u/DaystarEld [+3] Pokémon Professor (3 days later)
Wildbow is the author of Pact, same author as Worm. I'd recommend it if you like urban fantasy and don't mind suuuper dark and gritty stories.
u/ProfessorPhi [+1] (4 days later)
I instantly though of Puck of Pook's Hill when I saw the name of the fae
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (15 days later)
Huh, never heard of this! Have you read it? Worth checking out?
u/narfanator [+5] (43 minutes later)
Love it.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (12 hours later)
Thanks!
u/None [+5] (3 hours later)
[deleted]
u/696e6372656469626c65 [+5] I think, therefore I am pretentious. (3 hours later)
To quote a famous philosopher
u/DaystarEld [+7] Pokémon Professor (4 hours later)
Fixed the typo, thanks! And glad you like the premise :)
As for the tense, yeah, this is one of those things I feel like I might be most irrational about. I know that I'm losing readers by having Origin of Species and this novel in present tense, but... something in me resists the notion that this is wrong or taboo, and wants to fight back against it out of sheer stubbornness that others have such an aversion to it.
No disrespect to Phillip Pullman, I love his work intensely, but I find the argument unconvincing. I think it's something that's evolved as a taste simply because of convention. The idea that present-tense is just not how stories are told is strange to me, who finds it a natural voice to tell written stories in. The Dresden Files makes sense to be in the past tense because the writer is documenting his past. Stories explicitly about past events ("Long ago," or "Once upon a time,") make sense to use past tense because it's part of the setting.
I'm not writing a journal, nor are my narrators or characters recalling things that occurred in the past. The narration serves as a simple lens of a story of what's happening right now in the world my readers are reading, as they read it. I find it engaging, personally, and it allows me to use past tense as it's intended: to describe things that happened in the past.
If I end up getting to the point where I have to get this thing published and all the editors notes and denial letters are saying "gotta put it in past tense," I'll cave. But if I can help contribute to normalizing present tense as a form of storytelling, and have people able to more easily read both, I count that as a plus :)
In the meantime, I'm sorry if it bothers you, and hope the other aspects of the story make up for it!
u/CeruleanTresses [+7] (9 hours later)
Honestly, I read the comments first and saw people saying the present tense took them out of it, so I went into it knowing this was a concern people had--but when I actually went to read the chapter, I immediately forgot and didn't give the tense another thought all the way through. I didn't even really register that it was in present tense, despite having been "warned" in advance. I might be outvoted on this one but I think it's fine, personally. The writing flows smoothly enough, and the plot is immersive enough, that the tense doesn't get in between me and the story.
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (3 days later)
Good to know :) This is exactly the way I read stories, I might notice present or past tense initially but once I get into the story it doesn't matter. I find it kinda odd that others can be so distracted by it, but maybe people like us just read more present tense stories growing up.
u/CarVac [+3] (6 hours later)
I think that you may be projecting your feelings as the author onto the reader when you say that it gives a feeling of things happening "right now".
For me as a reader, past tense works as a way of mimicking how I would sort through my own memories, discovering things as the chain of association makes its way through my memories of a series of events.
By contrast, present tense makes me feel like an observer, not a participant.
But I can definitely see that present tense might be more conducive to writing.
Also, anecdotally, present tense narration makes it harder for me to remember past plot events. I remember liking Ra, but I don't remember anything that happened in it. In your Pokemon Origin of Species I find myself having to go back and review more often than in other fictions.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (12 hours later)
I think that you may be projecting your feelings as the author onto the reader when you say that it gives a feeling of things happening "right now".
Very possible! But it's also me as a reader, when I come across present tense stories.
Don't get me wrong, I don't get bothered by past tense stories because I'm very used to them. But I do find it interesting that you find it harder to remember previous events in present tense stories. I wonder if anyone's ever done research on this... I'll have to look for some tomorrow.
u/Zephyr1011 [+5] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (22 hours later)
I didn't notice that this was in present tense as all until reading the comments, so it didn't bother me in the slightest
u/None [+3] (4 hours later)
[deleted]
u/DaystarEld [+7] Pokémon Professor (5 hours later)
I mean, that's exactly what it is.
Right, but Pullman didn't say that, he tried to make an argument about how the past tense is intrinsically a better medium to tell stories in, for various reasons, and how the shift to present tense can be used artistically. I feel kinda the reverse. The hand-held cameras comparison is a good one, but I do think that it's just as natural to tell stories in the present tense as the past tense.
Like, a friend could be telling you a story and describe it like this:
"So I was at the bar last night, and this big guy came up to us and started making fun of my buddy's shirt. I stepped between them and tried to calm everyone down, but he took a swing at me! I got knocked on my ass, and I was like, 'what the hell,' you know?"
Or they could say it like this:
"So I'm at the bar last night, and this big guy comes up to us and starts making fun of my buddy's shirt. I step between them and try to calm everyone down, but he takes a swing at me! I'm knocked on my ass, and I'm like 'what the hell,' you know?"
And in my perspective of how people react to this, no one is confused or taken out of the story because they know that the person isn't literally at the bar right now as they describe it, they're just using the present-tense as a form of immediacy/immersion, unconsciously.
That's how it is for me: when I write, it comes out in present tense because the events are happening now as I envision them. The reason I don't change it is a bit of wanting to break taboos and buck tradition, but it's more because I'm stubborn rather than the first cause, which is that it's just natural to me :)
u/noggin-scratcher [+1] I am a happy tree (19 hours later)
For what it's worth, the only time I noticed the tense was "This is the first time he’s interacting with a fae other than Puck". Which I'm not certain is grammatical; even speaking in the present tense, I feel like that should be "first time he's interacted"
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (20 hours later)
Fixed, thanks!
u/Anderkent [+3] (4 hours later)
not insignificant number of potential readers have negative associations with the use of present tense in fiction
Huh, well I guess you learn something new every day. I didn't even consciously notice it was present-tense until you pointed it out.
I wonder if it's a native language thing - a lot of Polish fiction I remember was in present tense, and it's not really a weird thing.
ETA after reading the article:
I agree with everything Philip Pullman has to say about the matter.
That rant is really confusing. It's somehow assumed that using present tense as the base of the story means that only present tense will ever be used?
But if every sound you emit is a scream, a scream has no expressive value. What I dislike about the present-tense narrative is its limited range of expressiveness. I feel claustrophobic, always pressed up against the immediate.
I want all the young present-tense storytellers (the old ones have won prizes and are incorrigible) to allow themselves to stand back and show me a wider temporal perspective. I want them to feel able to say what happened, what usually happened, what sometimes happened, what had happened before something else happened, what might happen later, what actually did happen later, and so on: to use the full range of English tenses.
Starting with the present tense as what's happening now in the story doesn't prevent you from using the past tense to talk about what happened before, nor the future to talk about the future. In fact, talking about the future seems easier in english if your base is the present tense - you can now simply use future tenses, rather than have to reverse the relationship and use past perfect, or use some kind of contextual expression to provide the 'jump forward in time' and then get back ('A. Later, B. But for now C').
I must be missing something. Guess this will be a thing to pay attention to next time I read something streatched over a large time scale
ETA 2: I am now thinking of a story written mainly in future tense. I don't think it works well in English, alas (too much 'will'); but for something like Polish where the tense is built by transforming verbs, and so without annoying repetition, it could be a fun read.
u/Kodix [+1] (12 hours later)
Same here. Polish is my native language and present tense storytelling in English feels just as right to me as past tense storytelling.
I don't know if it's an ESL thing, a native Polish speaker thing or completely unrelated, but there you go.
u/Kodix [+3] (12 hours later)
Very good first chapter. Sadly, I have no criticisms, only praise.
I tend to find original web fiction difficult to get into. This chapter was the opposite - it really drew me in from the get go, with no snags along the way. It explained what it needed to explain, but didn't overshare information.
I was surprised to find that this was meant to be a YA novel. One chapter isn't much to judge by, but it didn't feel as simple as typical YA fiction. This may be good or bad. It appeals to me, but I'm not in the target audience. On the other hand, the very best writing should appeal to all ages, IMO - look at Avatar: TLA.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (12 hours later)
Thanks, glad to hear you enjoyed it! And yeah, I'm envisioning it as YA because the main character is in High School and it won't get too dark-and-gritty, but it's definitely going to be rationalist fiction, so it remains to be seen if that's a disqualifying trait for the genre.
u/gommm [+3] (19 hours later)
I was instantly hooked. Very interesting premise with a lot of potential for fun clever mind games :)
The present tense didn't bother me as other commenters, I actually had to look back at the text to notice it had indeed been written in present tense...
Hoping to read the next chapter soon :)
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (20 hours later)
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it :)
u/alexanderwales [+3] Time flies like an arrow (23 hours later)
This is a great start - I'm looking forward to reading more.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (3 days later)
Glad to hear it :)
u/SeekingImmortality [+2] The Eldest, Apparently (21 hours later)
I am intruiged! Please continue writing this one :)
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (3 days later)
Will do!
u/Cariyaga [+2] Kyubey did nothing wrong (3 days later)
Well, now. This is quite interesting indeed. Funny that I played my first game of Changeling: The Lost the very day you published this!
Regardless, I quite enjoyed it. Looking forward to more!
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (3 days later)
Oh nice, that's my favorite WoD module :) How'd you like it so far?
u/Cariyaga [+1] Kyubey did nothing wrong (3 days later)
It's cool! I made a pledge to help overthrow the leader of a freehold because he's a jerk! (and as a play to gain political power in efforts to make my own Court, but shh)
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (4 days later)
Nice ;) I've often found the political and social aspects of the Changeling games by far the best of any tabletop setting. Hope you continue to enjoy it!
u/None [+2] (15 days later)
I liked it a lot. Two minor things that may or may not be intentional: I wasn't really clear what age teh characters were supposed to be, at different points I oscillated between 8 and late teenage. That changes how I interpret the protagonists behaviour.
Secondly, I kept thinking the protagonist was female because of the name "Terra", but the comments here seem to imply they were male.
General thoughts: I'm interested to learn how different the world in this story is from ours, whether its 99% the same with the magic happening invisibly to most people, or something more like unsong where the world is radically different.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (15 days later)
Glad you enjoyed it! Can you point to what made you think the characters were 8? I don't explicitly mention their ages, but this line is supposed to help:
Puck currently looks like a lanky teenager about Terra’s age
Along with the "pair of 10th graders" that walk by to give an idea of what year Terra's in.
As for their gender, I never realized Terra would be a female name: I'm really bad at coming up with names, and the only place I've seen it used is for a male character in Kingdom Hearts. Maybe I'll change it at some point.
I'm interested to learn how different the world in this story is from ours, whether its 99% the same with the magic happening invisibly to most people
99% the same but with the masquerade of magic and monsters in place :)
u/Calsem [+1] (7 hours later)
I really enjoyed it :) When do we get another one?
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (12 hours later)
No clue! Hoping to start the next chapter next month, and it shouldn't take too long for them. Each is probably going to be much shorter than OoS chapters.
u/technoninja1 [+1] (8 hours later)
Is Puck the Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream?
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (12 hours later)
Good question :) But the other fae rolled her eyes because it's a common pseudonym used by fae, who do like to mess with humans, after all.
u/CeruleanTresses [+1] (9 hours later)
I really enjoyed this. The adversarial dynamic between Terra and Puck hooked me immediately, because it introduces a source of tension right away. I'm interested to see what mistakes Terra will make and how Puck will exploit them. (One possibility that strikes me is that Puck might take advantage of Terra's assumption that he'll only give hints if he thinks Terra's wellbeing is at risk--since it's an assumption on Terra's part, it wouldn't require Puck to lie.) And the part with the figs was clever and immersive. It made me feel the memory trick.
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (12 hours later)
Thank you, glad it worked so well for you!
u/Veedrac [+1] (13 hours later)
Minor typo
Terra does his best to ignore the it.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (20 hours later)
Fixed, thank you!
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+1] (19 hours later)
Minor complaint:
Guardian and OoS are on the same RSS feed on your site, so unless you include something in the post titles other than "Chapter xx", its impossible to filter one out from the other with an RSS reader.
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (20 hours later)
Noted, thanks! I'll add "Guardian" to the titles.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+1] (a day later)
Awesome, thanks!
u/kaukamieli [+1] (a day later)
Very good!
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (3 days later)
Thank you!
u/thrawnca [+1] Carbon-based biped (2 days later)
Hmm...I'm a bit squeamish about having blood drained, which distracted me a bit from the story. Plus it gave his verbal sparring a bit more of a rushed feel; he couldn't really take the time to properly assess all his options lest he pass out on the floor.
However, the mind games were intriguing.
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (3 days later)
Sorry about that! I wanted to add stakes to both the magic and the scene. Two themes I want to have in the story are "Magic comes with a price" and "Sometimes you have to think under pressure, and make suboptimal decisions as a result."
u/sourcejedi [+1] (2 days later)
Fun.
"then remembers Puck’s presence" has an extra space in the middle. It doesn't show up in the spelling doo-hicky, only on the page.
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (3 days later)
Think I fixed it, thanks!
u/sourcejedi [+1] (2 days later)
I'm also nosy about why you don't use em-dashes. I think the use of dashes looks ok, they're just not using the specific character. AFAIK both the default wordpress editor and Microsoft Word will format "--", replacing it with a single long dash character. & it should still round-trip fine after conversion, if you have a more complex workflow. (More often I'll see someone blogging code, and the automatic replacement breaks the code).
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (3 days later)
Hmm. Am I not using em-dashes where I should be somewhere? As far as I know they're meant to indicate pauses between words, right?
u/sourcejedi [+2] (4 days later)
I don't have an authoritative guide to hand, except that wikipedia looks good.
Then he closes his eyes and thinks back to the three girls who were all laughing-
^ you don't see this in a (deliberately) typeset book. You'd see an em dash, or as a variant style, an en dash preceded by a space.
So that's what I was nosy about. But resolving it doesn't seem to be quite as simple as I was hoping.
- use the em dash style throughout, or the en dash style?
- use a variation where the em dash is spaced (like AP style - maybe less used for books / longform)?
- how to generate your chosen characters
I think I read it wrong about WP rendering "--" as an em dash. I think "--" shows an en dash, and "---" shows an em dash. But e.g. if you ever edit in Word with the default auto-replace, then it may permanently replace the characters, using a different conversion.
(Editing in Word is another thing I'd say is Probably Wrong, but serves a purpose & takes more effort to describe what a preferable approach would look like).
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (4 days later)
Hmm, okay, so it looks like em-dash would be used for an interruption in dialogue, but I can't find anywhere saying that it's used for an interruption in narrative too. I guess the same principle might apply? But it's curious that it's not mentioned there, since it goes over it pretty thoroughly but specifically only mentions speech.
For now I'll replace the dashes where speech is interrupted, and keep the ones where narrative is :) Thanks!
u/sourcejedi [+1] (4 days later)
Heh. Perhaps "good" is over-estimating Wikipedia, at least for how clear it is.
I guess speech is the most traditional use for dashes.
For now I'll replace the dashes where speech is interrupted, and keep the ones where narrative is :).
Absolutely up to you, what style you want to follow. What I'm mostly confident about, is that the ASCII hyphens that were used are not considered dashes. And there's no traditional style that uses hyphens to show an interruption or pause (except stuttering, as Wiki points out to me).
(You'll also see pedantic references to the ASCII character as a hyphen-minus, since it is overloaded to represent both hyphens and minus signs. But if someone's worried about typesetting math, they've probably used something like Latex or MathJax, or already wrestled with fonts & encodings to get text figures).
u/alexeyr [+1] Steersman (22 days later)
but in any given setting, the middle of a crowded lunch room is probably his safest for such an experiment
English is not my first language, but should this be "of any given setting" instead? I've also submitted this directly on the page, but decided I wanted to actually learn if I was wrong.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (22 days later)
I believe it's "in any given setting," but I think "of" works too. A quick google search doesn't really settle it one way or the other, as far as I could find :)