Strands of Darkness

[Mattias Westlund]

I split this off from the Lore thread since I'm about to go even more off-topic here.

I know this is probably not the place for stuff like this, but I don't know where else to post it TBH. I haven't done any serious fictional writing in years and I'm not a member of any writing forums -- in fact I'm not even aware of any. So I'll just throw this out here and see where it goes.

When I wrote Greater things, I was fully aware that while it does work as a self-contained little yarn, it also felt like the first chapter of a bigger story. Writing about locations and briefly mentioned characters (Olvan and Jedd in particular) I got a lot of ideas for expanding on what was in there. For fun, I started writing a second chapter. And came up with even more details that I wanted to expand upon. And then a third. And now I'm at the point where I think I could actually make a small novel out of this.

The working title is Strands of Darkness and it's an oldschool sword and sorcery romp, inspired by pen & paper roleplaying games, the gamebooks of the 1980's, and the pulp stories of the early 1900's. Actually, there's a little bit of Western in there as well, with its frontier settlements, lawless regions, ghost towns and whatnot. The first three five six eight ten eleven chapters can be found here:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

I'm probably deluding myself here, thinking that I could write something in a second language that someone would want to read, but hey. It's mostly for a bit of fun. It's not meant to be a highbrow fantasy epic.

Taking a break from the mixing and tweaking for a few days because heat is killing me, I wrote a short story called Greater things. Kind of [edit: not kind of, directly] inspired by the theme and song titles of Lore. PDF version here, EPUB version here. If you're interested in checking it out (it's just 12 pages long), let me know how it looks on your end and if you spot any grammatical errors or other language blunders.

[Nayrb]

Well done. Looks pretty good to me on my first read-through. Here are a couple things I noticed that you may want to look into. Nothing severe, really.

P.2

"The ground was littered with dry leaves and twigs
and not even a cat could have traversed it in complete silence"

Consider something a bit more to the point such as: "The ground was a carpet of dry leaves and twigs not even a cat could traverse in silence."

"as was the embroidered patterns around the hem"

Should be "as were the embroidered patterns around the hem, or "as was the embroidering around the hem."

P.3

"...they would blow on great brass horns to warn the city of the danger"

You don't need "on," here, just, "They would blow great brass horns."

P.5

"Though, of course, this fact she kept to herself"

I would rearrange the words here to something a little less clunky, like "Though she kept this fact to herself, of course." or "This fact she kept to herself," or just omitting "of course," altogether.


P.7 "more well-built "

could be, "more sturdily built" or something like that.

[bigcat1969]

I run stuff I write through the free version of Grammarly. It finds a surprising amount of stuff wrong with what I do, so maybe it will offer a suggestion or two to you.

[Mattias Westlund]

Nayrb: big thanks, and well spotted! I've read through this thing countless times by now, but some errors you just become blind to. Edited version coming in a few days, as I'm out of town.

bigcat: I wasn't aware of that one, looks like a great tool! Thanks for the tip.

[Nayrb]

(07-26-2018, 11:21 PM)Mattias Westlund Wrote: Nayrb: big thanks, and well spotted! I've read through this thing countless times by now, but some errors you just become blind to. Edited version coming in a few days, as I'm out of town.

For sure! I'll read through again next chance I get and see if I spot anything else, but it seemed perfectly fine grammatically, otherwise. Maybe we or someone else will spot a repeated word or something here and there, but that's what proofing is for.

Nice job on the dialog, too. That's not easy to write, but your stuff flows well and doesn't feel forced, even with the dialectal stuff for the old man at the tavern, which is another thing that can be hard to do effectively.

[Paul Battersby]

(07-24-2018, 04:57 PM)Mattias Westlund Wrote: I wrote a short story called Greater things.

I just finished reading it. I like it. I found it interesting. I kept wondering what would happen next. Always a good sign in a story.

I only noticed one mistake, though I wasn't looking too hard. I was mostly interested in reading the story. Very first word on page 11 should be "be" not "bee". I can see how that would slip though a spell check.

[Mattias Westlund]

Thanks Paul! Before posting the story I also edited out several trailing e's, like "here" instead of "her" in some places. I guess I'm just a sloppy typist

[Mattias Westlund]

*bump*

Split and edited threads won't show up in the "most recent" panel otherwise. Please see the first post.

[Nayrb]

Right on! I haven't been able to get through it all properly (lots of distractions at the moment), I'm very interested in this. I wouldn't worry about English being your second language; I honestly can't tell. A few minor things here and there can be easily fixed (for instance, change "hacked into two " to "hacked in two," it's a bit more recognizable on the idiomatic side)

Perhaps consider changing a line like this: "Baylon squinted at his guest, or the intruder, or whatever she counted
as." To something simpler like "Baylon squinted at his guest." Ironically implying "intruder," rather than stating it directly, helps you stay in Baylon's character even during narration. The reader will get that "guest" is meant to be a euphemism.

The little bit about Jenandra running rather than riding could also provide a place for you to further develop Baylon as a bard. You could add something to his reflections about good money to also having knowledge of the Weaver and his/her ways (Previously Baylon suggests he's heard of Elves because he is a bard).

I like "Scrambled Eggs." That sort of things is memorable and funny and helps to further establish the character.

Have you read any Fritz Leiber? He's the paragon of the humor-laced rogue-ish stuff. Plenty of wine-soaked tavern shenanigans in Lankhmar!

[Mattias Westlund]

(09-08-2018, 03:05 AM)Nayrb Wrote: Right on! I haven't been able to get through it all properly (lots of distractions at the moment), I'm very interested in this. I wouldn't worry about English being your second language; I honestly can't tell. A few minor things here and there can be easily fixed (for instance, change "hacked into two " to "hacked in two," it's a bit more recognizable on the idiomatic side)

Perhaps consider changing a line like this: "Baylon squinted at his guest, or the intruder, or whatever she counted
as." To something simpler like "Baylon squinted at his guest." Ironically implying "intruder," rather than stating it directly, helps you stay in Baylon's character even during narration. The reader will get that "guest" is meant to be a euphemism.

The little bit about Jenandra running rather than riding could also provide a place for you to further develop Baylon as a bard. You could add something to his reflections about good money to also having knowledge of the Weaver and his/her ways (Previously Baylon suggests he's heard of Elves because he is a bard).

I like "Scrambled Eggs." That sort of things is memorable and funny and helps to further establish the character.

Thanks Nayrb, good suggestions all of them.

(09-08-2018, 03:05 AM)Nayrb Wrote: Have you read any Fritz Leiber? He's the paragon of the humor-laced rogue-ish stuff. Plenty of wine-soaked tavern shenanigans in Lankhmar!

I have actually, though it was a long, long time ago. I read several of the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books and I remember liking the early ones, but later on they got really weird and turned into what almost felt like a sword and sorcery parody. Then again maybe I'm confusing them with some other books, like I said it's been a long time.