Thorfinn lands on the shores of Lit

[SaxonSword]

Thofinns Saga

I managed to get the first one published (with help).
Would love some feedback positive or negative. Already writing the next chapter, where Thorfinn arrives at the abbey and Brynhild takes her revenge with Thorfinns help.
But where after that?
Ta very muchly

 

[elfin_odalisque]

Firstly, SS, well done on becoming a lit author.

I like Viking raid stories and you clearly know a lot about the subject. However, I feel the balance here is all wrong to get us sitting on the edge of our seats.

First, you spend far too long describing Thorfinn, his clothes, his life, his gray hair etc, when the real focus of the story is the raid. More attention to the action (whilst dribbling out description) would have made things more punchy.

Who the heck thinks of when they were '13 summers' when they're risking life and limb attacking the English coast in the pitch-dark and a freezing sea? Your misplay of diminuendo and crescendo takes a lot of excitement out of the raid.

You could have got more out by having Thorfinn and Ivar talk - you're not too generous on dialogue - and let that explain the axe.

Also, after building us up to some major battle/incursion, it just goes off as a damp squib and Brynhild yells, in Norse of course, 'fuck me harder'. This stretches believability a tad.

You ask where to go and I struggle to find a plot bunny. In one very truncated piece you have totally explained Thorfinn, dissolved any sexual tension between him and Brynhild and . . . The only thing I can think of is they are captured by marauding Picts/Celts and have to sell their way out of captivity through sexual slavery.

You do need an editor, as someone commented. Apart from some punctuation issues, try these;

Slinging his pine wood shield with its twin ravens in black on the front over his back, and settling his helm on his head he grabbed his Dane axe.

Although he had survived for 44 summers so far, his body was taut and strong.

Sliding up the side of a wood, the crew made their way, invisible to their victims,

Also, you confuse the boat as being the Fjord Wraith and the Sea Wraith.

I criticize only because I think you have a great story in you but feel you are rushing things to get published.