Quest to Oblivion

Throughly enjoyed this story, well paced and the action descriptions were top notch. Deva seems to have (had?) a bit of a dark side to her which makes the story all the more interesting.

I have to admit it took me a couple of reads before I could fully understand what was happening largely because I continually confused the characters with one another. Maybe that it is a problem on my own, but the main character going from Devapriya to Deva to Inanna in a couple of spots was a bit jarrinig for a short story and I found myself having to backtrack to remind myself who a particular character was.

But other than that I felt it was a well envisioned world which opens up many more opporunities for storytelling. Well done!

Steven,

Thank you for inviting me to read your story.

What I liked:

You start with action, which is great. I also like your themes, especially betrayal. Akimba using the gems to heal people rang true. Your story moves, and some of your descriptions are nice enough. Overall the piece reads relatively cleanly, except for an overabundance of telling vs. showing (I’ll get to that in a moment).

Unfortunately, your story has major, major flaws.

The worst of them has to do with helping the reader understand what’s going on in this story.
I don’t know who Deva is, why she’s queen, what she wants, who the antagonist is, what he wants (with the exception of overthrowing the queen), and most critically, why I should care. The characters have no character. You rush me from one scene to the next without establishing much anything about Deva or the antagonists, or Akimba. I don’t feel anything for them—they’re cardboard cutouts.

Similarly, the world you’ve created (which I can tell you can see and care about) feels empty. You tell us that hundreds of billions die in a war (which seems to be going on all around Deva at the beginning) but we never feel anything for them. Think of when The Empire destroys Alderan in Star Wars. You care in that moment. Why? Because it’s Lei’s home world. Because Obi Wan feels a disturbance in the force. Because of the excellent acting of course, but even more the good writing: “I heard millions of voices crying out at once.” We care because the story  connects us to those events in a visceral way. You’ve killed 10x the magnitude of people but it’s as captivating as a squashed insect on a windshield because we have no connection to them at all. Telling us they died isn't enough.

Your story rips along without any thread of human connection. Who is Deva? Is she good, evil, a mix of the two? Does she rule justly or is she corrupt? Do you see what I’m getting at? I can’t tell you one thing about these characters other than what they did in the story because you’ve not taken the time to give them real motives and feelings. They careen along on the path you guide them down and that is all.

You also do A LOT of telling.

I’ve tried to highlight as many of those as possible in the attached word document. Numerous helpful articles on showing vs. telling exist on the internet. Here are a few you might find useful:

Article One
Article Two
Article Three

A few comments on dialogue:

When you have a character hiss, growl, beg, demand, or (insert another descriptor here) a sentence, you’re violating the “show don’t tell” principle. It’s usually a sign of weak dialogue. If you feel like you need to use a tag other than said, asked, and occasionally, whispered or shouted for the reader to understand your meaning, you need to rewrite your dialogue and the beats around it to make it stronger and clearer.

While I’m not a purist (there’s a time and a place for word like “purred” or “whispered”), almost all adverbs weaken rather than strengthen writing. You’ll find those who disagree, and to them I’d say this: check out the last 15 stories published by Lightspeed or Clark’s World and go through and count how many adverbs you find attached to dialogue tags. I’ll save you some time: very, very few.  Most stories will have 0 instances. The folks getting published understand that if you use your action beats well, you don’t have to tell people what tone folks spoke in, or us things like “She threatened” and the like.

Even if you use asked or said, you might still be telling if you tack on adverbs. (An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, adjective, or another adverb.)

She said sadly. He asked sulkily. She said angrily. Telling:  “Are you sure he escaped?” Annabelle asked anxiously.

Showing: “What do you mean he might have escaped?” Annabelle’s gaze darted to the door, and she chewed the edge of her thumb nail. “He either did or he didn’t. Which is it?”

See the difference?

Please don’t be demoralized by this feedback.

Writing, like everything in life, takes a lot of practice. The only way to get better is to write, make mistakes, and then learn from them. I’ve written stories nearly identical to yours with just as many problems—working out the kinks is part of the experience of becoming a good writer. Keep at it! You can and will get better.

Warmly,
Nathan

I want to start by saying that your additions, particularly the first couple pages explaining the history of Deva/Buhara has really helped me better understand the world youre setting forth. Your orignal draft was a bit sketchy on the details and motives of the characters but these changes have addressed those in my opinion.

However I did discover a problem in your descriptions of the technology on the first page:

"Their pranic energy centers, their 'chakras',  as they were commonly known, were fully activiated and resonant with the sacred geometry of the room; this amplified their power, acting as a type of 'spiritual transducer."

I found this description to be a bit heavy worded. I'm very new to short story writing so this may reflect my inexperience but your reader may have difficulty understanding what you're trying to get across. Are they suspended in animation? Meditating? In prayer? Although the author may know what they are saying, the reader may not. If there is a way of simplying this statement I would do so simply because it keeps the reader in the know. It may not sound as sexy but it still paints the same image.

Overall though I feel your edits were positive changes to the story. If you would be interested, make your next installment about an encounter between Deva/Buhara and how they ended up at war with one another. Or maybe focus on Jahnu trying to educate Deva as a child about the rituals and him struggling to understand why? You have an interesting universe here and I would love to see how you expand on it.

Cheers

-Daniel.

The revision is better. I read through the beginning of the original and found it very hard to follow. I'm glad I skimmed the comments and found the revision. What you could do on your next run, is to combine the openings - drop straight into the action as in your original (and later in the second run), but drip feed bits of the backstory into it to give it context. It's a nice adventurous style, so you might as well embrace that from the start. What you have here is fun to read, and clearly a glimpse at something bigger. Thumbs up!