"A Midsummer's Saga" - seeking your wisdom

[oneCresserelle]

I'm working on a fantasy story, A Midsummer's Saga. It's kind of an adventure story about two people who got themselves in trouble with a powerful kingdom - sex being a central part of the adventure. So far I've posted first three, relatively short parts - you can find them here.

The first seemed to be received well enough, the next two somewhat less. I'd really appreciate any and all feedback on this thing - the prose, the pacing, the plot. Do the characters make you care about them? Does the story draw you in?

Thanks for your time.

 

[ElectricBlue]

You've mixed twenty-first century slang with your mediaeval world building and it grates. I stopped reading shortly after this:

"Uh dude! What the fuck, you got your iron spurs?!"

Make your mind up if you've got college boys drinking beer or a coming of age ritual set long ago.

Every multi-chapter story drops views in the second and later parts. My rule of thumb is 50% drop for chapter two, another 50% drop for chapter three and steady-state after that. You got a much bigger drop than that with your second chapter, so readers made their minds up early. It might be too early to really tell, though. They're all new chapters and it's possibly too soon to draw any conclusions - your scores are consistent, but you don't have the views getting votes on the later parts.

For me, it was the inane dialogue that did it - I really couldn't be bothered with a bunch of frat-boys playing a bad version of Hunger Games, so I didn't get as far as your first sex scene. As I say, don't mix your eras, not like that.

 

[oneCresserelle]

Okay, thanks! Yeah, having the characters speak modern was a deliberate choice I made early on for several reasons. In this case, the guys sound like frat boys because they essentially are a universe-equivalent of frat boys, with all the implications for their decision making about to follow.

Use of slang or anachronism in a period piece to make characters easier to approach is in general a device I really like. Hamilton is a huge example of this, though of course a musical is a heavily stylized art form and audience expectations for immersion are different. But then there are also movies like A Knight's Tale or Marie Antoinette, or books such as many Discworld titles, that use this very effectively. Often to a more or less directly comedic effect, but this is also what I'm going for to a degree.

On the other hand, this is also a bit of an allergic reaction of mine against stories that attempt to create immersion by over-stylising the speech. GRRM is a huge offender for me. There was a character in one of the ASoIaF books that informed a lot of people that she's "looking for a maiden of three-and-ten" and every time that happened I'd die inside a little and be like, no, stop being precious, you're looking for a thirteen-year-old girl! Three-and-ten isn't even a valid archaization, the unit-and-decade thing only starts with twenty! Even as early as in old germanic! I'm calling the linguistics cops!

So I vowed on that book never to build immersion on archaised language, and welp, here we are.

But I can justify my choices all day long, and the problem will remain that there is a wormhole somewhere in my writing that warped you out of that ritual field and spat you out at a college campus somewhere. Do you think it's the word "dude" itself, with its stoner comedy chic, that set you off that way? I mean using modern slang in general is a hill I'm kinda willing to die on, because of all the above, but maybe I could identify and bulldoze down some of its more harrowing approaches if they get in the way of immersion.

 

[ArtfulRyder]

Is your story hidden? I can't see it on this thread.

 

[oneCresserelle]

Should work fine:
https://www.literotica.com/s/a-midsummers-saga-pt-01
https://www.literotica.com/s/a-midsummers-saga-pt-02
https://www.literotica.com/s/a-midsummers-saga-pt-03

 

[ElectricBlue]

But I can justify my choices all day long, and the problem will remain that there is a wormhole somewhere in my writing that warped you out of that ritual field and spat you out at a college campus somewhere. Do you think it's the word "dude" itself, with its stoner comedy chic, that set you off that way? I mean using modern slang in general is a hill I'm kinda willing to die on, because of all the above, but maybe I could identify and bulldoze down some of its more harrowing approaches if they get in the way of immersion.

Not just "dude" - that was just the first one where I thought wtf? All of the frat boy dialogue fell flat on its face for me; but then, if it was a twenty-first century story actually set on a campus with the same dialogue I'd have run away just as quickly, because it's not my thing.

Remember that this is just one opinion - and from someone who wrote a 100,000 word thing set in the fifth century where I tried to create archaic but not overly stylised dialogue. So we've both addressed the same problem in polar opposite ways. It also demonstrates that comedy is tricky - not only do you have cultural differences between countries, but what's a belly-laugh for one person is the high point of lame for the next.

You need to get more input though, because as I say, I'm just one reader who bailed out. Everyone else might rock up and give it a thumbs up .

 

[SimonDoom]

I didn't read your whole story, but I read some of it because I was curious about the issue EB raised regarding dialogue. I don't quite agree with him, although I see his point. In my opinion you are free to have your characters in a fictional medieval-ish world talk however you want them to. It's not a real medieval world so you don't have to have them talk the way people actually talked in the past. In fact, I prefer non-archaic speech. Game of Thrones is a good example. It's not archaic at all. People talk the way they would talk in modern-day England. I personally find that this style helps immerse me in the story more than if I have to get through lots of "thees" and "thous."

There are a few words that push or break the envelope, like "dude", because they have strong connotations that don't really fit with a medieval-ish world. My recommendation would be to continue using modern vernacular, but be careful about specific modern slang words. Having your characters say "Totally radical jousting with that lance, bro!" isn't going to sound right. Tone that down and I think you'll be fine.

 

[oneCresserelle]

Remember that this is just one opinion - and from someone who wrote a 100,000 word thing set in the fifth century where I tried to create archaic but not overly stylised dialogue. So we've both addressed the same problem in polar opposite ways. It also demonstrates that comedy is tricky - not only do you have cultural differences between countries, but what's a belly-laugh for one person is the high point of lame for the next.

Yes, the different angles you can take with language depending on your aims is really quite a subject. And really shows that writing, say, a 50,000 word novel is kinda like completing a slalom through a field with 50,000 buried mines

There are a few words that push or break the envelope, like "dude", because they have strong connotations that don't really fit with a medieval-ish world. My recommendation would be to continue using modern vernacular, but be careful about specific modern slang words. Having your characters say "Totally radical jousting with that lance, bro!" isn't going to sound right. Tone that down and I think you'll be fine.

Ha, I'm starting to think that it was a mistake to have that particular character be the first to speak in the story. He's a sort of comic relief/wise fool type who's very deliberately being slightly obnoxious, and his speech reflects that. It might give people a wrong idea about the overall style; the chapter ends with a conversation of two adult characters that's probably a lot more representative of the dialogues throughout the story.

 

[SimonDoom]

Ha, I'm starting to think that it was a mistake to have that particular character be the first to speak in the story. He's a sort of comic relief/wise fool type who's very deliberately being slightly obnoxious, and his speech reflects that. It might give people a wrong idea about the overall style; the chapter ends with a conversation of two adult characters that's probably a lot more representative of the dialogues throughout the story.

That's not necessarily a mistake. There's nothing wrong with some comic relief. I thought most of the dialogue was fine. "Dude" stood out for me as jarring. But I had no problem with your use of "shitfaced" , "what the fuck", "make shit up" and the like. That's not that different from what you'd hear watching Game of Thrones.

There's nothing wrong with experimenting. Just be very sensitive to how the words sound and how they will come across to the reader.