No worries. Tighten the vice slowly
Breaking down chapter 1 a bit, here are my thoughts:
The concept itself is sound. I got no complaints there. But the major issue I'm finding is with the dialogue. Without getting too into it because I think it will be fairly obvious once I say it, the characters spend a lot of time stating the obvious, repeating themselves, and acting very stiffly.
For a few examples, they repeat the phrase "elven village", three times in the first three pages. In the first panel they say "village of bones" twice in a row. It feels very awkward to say out loud. You wouldn't go around real life saying "It is now time to go to The Wal-Mart Super Store", with you're friend responding with "Will you buy me some chips at The Wal-Mart Super Store?"
So much up word use, have them actually name the village. If they know so much about it they should learn the name.
Similar thing later on when they rescue the scout. Y'all spend most of a page on them making long speeches about how they're in the forge and not the order. If you're a dude who's been imprisoned and is presumably looking forward to summary execution at worst and rotting in jail at best, you're not going to worry about who's breaking you out. The secret code is a nice touch, but chop it down.
Speaking of stiff, our new orc friend's introduction doesn't make much sense. If someone slams me in the head with a hammer, I'm not going to come to the conclusion that "these guys aren't out to kill me." Since you're not focusing on the art of the combat very much, this scene would be better handled by getting to their conversation earlier. If the orc initially assumes their baddies, why not have him attack first, only for the pair to talk him down? The roles are oddly reversed.
And speaking of the combat, you remind us several times that the forge members don't kill, but they barely seem to remember that themselves. It's great that this is a splinter group trying to change its ways, but you're telling and not showing. Maybe have the characters stop themselves rather than being told to stop. You could give us the same information more effectively by having someone stop themselves in the middle of the killing blow. We could learn the rules they're playing by without a line of dialogue, which is always a good writing technique. At the very least, you could cut out the paragraphs of exposition.
Finally, you leave open a major question, especially since you call it an "elven village" ad nauseam. The characters entering the village are elves, so why make such a big deal about them breaking in? They could just walk through the front door. So what if the village doesn't like outsiders? We don't actually know for certain that the scout is in there, so why not try recon first?
You do make a point of saying they only let pure elves in, but so how did the scout (not an elf), make a report FROM that village? Are the elf characters we see not pure-bred elves? It's not said.
Well, as not to bury you in negatives, I want to list out what I liked best, lol. For starters, having the two factions being two sides of a schism is really good, and leaves open a lot of room for interesting character relationships. Although to do it the best you can, it would be better if one side isn't just purely evil as it seems they are. The little romantic goodbye was also quite nice. It's a touch of actual character and realism that is always welcome in a fantasy setting. As I've said for years, if you concentrate first on writing human feeling characters (fantasy race aside), then the actual story around them will fall into place.
So good job for what it is, and I hope to see y'all continue to improve it!
Topic: The Eye of Light [Prototype] (Read 3970 times)
