Crit Request: Creation: Truth, Myth & Other/Arclund Bestiary Entry

Crit Request: Creation: Truth, Myth & Other/Arclund Bestiary Entry

Arclund 26 Jun 2024 21:17

http://wanderers-sandbox-2.wikidot.com/arclund

A set of drafts I’m working on, one detailing a creation myth and the perspective surrounding it/mysteries tied to it. The other a bestiary entry about a monster-horse.

SPaG is appreciated, but just over all critique is what I am after.

Re: Crit Request: Creation: Truth, Myth & Other/Arclund Bestiary Entry

AKAM80 07 Jul 2024 03:19

Howdy! Apologies for the delay, a mixture of being busy and forgetting fueled this. I'll also preface this with my usual crit warning: I'm no paragon of writing, feel free to ignore as many of these as you want. Anyway…

+ Creation myths

Immediately something I notice is that the structure of the poem is wonky. You can have a different number of lines per stanza, but there's typically a pattern to it, like 3 3 4 3 3 4 or whatever, but here you jump to four lines outside of any kind of pattern. The capitalization is also inconsistent.

And brought it along, a melody of melancholy to while away the hours.
….
Candles are oddly central to most forms of magical ritual going back for as long as history recalls.

If you're going for a pause here, said pause needs to be formatted the same way as everything else (i.e. as its own paragraph). Also, I believe, an ellipsis is typically three periods.

Yet…deep down…he wanted it.

You need a space after each ellipsis.

“Mum….he won’t wake up

Combo of both previous crits.

A general crit for Nero's Truth, even though you haven't closed the quotation yet, each new paragraph has to start with a quotation mark. For example:

"I am speaking words here, and now I will move on.
"But the quotation is still going…

General thoughts:

I find it hard to get engaged with this. I understand the connection between the four sections, but they're all so ungrounded in anything for me to anchor my investment into. They're so short and nebulous that I can't just indulge in the folk lore by itself either, it feels like I'm missing a huge cultural background to bounce off of. Of course, I could be alone in this and I will, as always, encourage you to seek others' opinions too.

+ Bestiary

On to their diet, and while all equines are given to minor cases of omnivory, tol’Gorga lean more towards carnivory.

The beginning of the sentence reads strangely. I'd reword it to be something along the lines of "In regard to their diet, while all…" imo

features of most Equines on Ruudash

"Equines" should be lowercase.

their tempers and ability to ignore

I'm like 90% certain that it should just be "temper".

grum'Kar(Orcs)

Needs a space.

kod'Kar(Ogres)

Again, a space.

General thoughts:

This was a neat little entry, though I will admit a lack of a general enthrallment, but that stems from personal preference as this tended to sound very textbook-y. Nyx seemed to think it was engaging so I'll pass of that area of them as I'm biased in the matter.

I think the mixture of history with the details of the creature were woven together in a logical way, letting you go into depth with why certain things were the way they were.

My one big criticism is the formatting. There are a lot of times where I felt that paragraphs could have been brought together instead of being separated. It only disrupted the flow and made it feel too much like a star-stop-start-stop kinda thing when it coulda flowed into the next part. For example:

This diet and their bipedal stance are believed to be features of most Equines on Ruudash, as seen in stories and records taken from Ruudashi archives.

These records discuss truly massive water-wading beasts that ate fish and horsetails in equal measure along a vast edifice of water called the "ruu'Matra-Tal" or Ever River and the slight, multi-toed mountain climbers that hunted moss, rodents, and bird eggs across the peaks. They are believed to have died with Ruudash.

These two should go together, not be separated. My suggestion is to take a closer look at the individual sections and see where you can bring them together to make a more cohesive section.