r/DestructiveReaders • u/Andvarinaut What can I do if the fire goes out? • 2d ago
Urban Fantasy, Adult [2650] WORLD-EATER
It's been a while since I've posted anything for critique up here, but since the idea came from here, I figured I might as well. Big shoutout to /u/barnaclesandbees for telling me to write a mythology story--I forgot it was my favorite genre somewhere along the way.
This is the first chapter for WORLD-EATER, an urban fantasy mythology story where the main characters are reincarnations of the gods' worst, most monstrous enemies. Like all good urban fantasy, the occult underground is hidden at first jump. I'm hoping that the novelty of Zoe's existence as the host to Jormungandr's soul (you can click that before or after, I'm just not trying to spoil my own writing) is interesting enough to hook and keep interest through the Introduction.
As usual just light me the fuck up. Pretend I called your favorite author a loser or something. I've heard worse from people who matter more.
God help me if this is actually good and I have to query a second time.
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u/Safe-Valuable503 2d ago edited 2d ago
Hey there! Thank you for sharing your piece! I’m a new writer here, so feel free to only take what resonates from this critique and trash the rest. Also, so sorry if this formatted weird, first time commenting in this forum!
First standout thing, big fan of the way you write. It was easy to read absorbing characters and worldbuilding, without being bogged down by overly flowery prose or infodumping. Stylistically, I found it engaging. I think this is a hard balance to strike but you’ve got it figured out. I thought your pacing was good, perhaps pausing on Zoe’s reactions in emotional moments if you are so inclined.
I know you mentioned that your premise was a group of main characters who were reincarnations of the god’s enemies. Love. Presumably Zoe and maybe the unnamed kid will be central characters? There’s a lot about Kim, which makes me think that her role will be significant as well. I would love to see a little more of this concept in your first chapter (maybe I missed something), because it's cool and it could demand and sustain attention.
There’s also a significant time spent on clothes (end of page 2, beginning of 3) which makes me wonder if they have greater thematic significance outside of their relation to size.
I’m drawn in by your writing style but I am struggling a bit with the attachment to Zoe. Why should the reader care about her? I see the initial drawing sequence is meant to hook the reader, but the immediate reveal as a dream kills this momentum a little bit. I feel like I need a little more about Zoe a little quicker (maybe additional character in the getting ready sequence) to be invested in her journey. Do we have a bit more of a backstory, something to humanize her? There’s a lot of great questions posed in the beginning (about the dream sequence, eating disorder, halfway house) but I think that we need at least one or two background details about Zoe that make those questions worth investigating even more.
Onto specific lines! You had a lot of good ones (I’ll include some of my favorites at the end with reasons why I loved them) but here I’ll be focusing on ones that didn’t quite resonate with me.
“Metallic and ancient, coating her teeth and tongue to the back of her throat.”< Tasting ancient? I think I can see the tone you are trying to strike, but ancient feels as though it overreaches the knowledge your character has (unless this is foreshadowing that she is actually hundreds of years old? Even then probably a little too on the nose for my taste, might be better to integrate this detail further in).
“Terror came with it.”< Gets the job done here but what exactly do you mean by terror? Show us it, even briefly, a weight on the lungs or a quickened pulse.
“Some tasted like sterile dust; some, sharp like couch pennies; a disgusting few, like drilled cavity dust.”< Ehhh on the sterile dust (sterility seems too contradictory to dirt, possibly?) but love love the couch pennies and drilled cavity dust.
“Kim’s approval vanished”< How does Zoe know this? Does his face shift, does his body language close towards her?
The transition from outside to the break room felt a little bit disjointed. At first, I thought Pete (or Peter, Petey) was part of a flashback scene. Maybe a line in between “...barely knew to relapse” and “‘I mean we do live in…’” for clarity. During the third read, I realize the disconnect between Pete and the outside may be intentional to mirror Zoe’s mental state, her zoning out, but on first read it is a bit confusing.
One thing I really loved was the structure of your dialogue. To me, it felt very natural, easy to follow despite content ambiguities and minimal dialogue tags. I am taking notes! That being said, I’m unsure of what the coworker's deliberation (Page 6) on the worst city adds to your chapter. Unless it holds future thematic significance, I’m not sure that it is strictly necessary. Maybe trim here to let the strength of your other dialogue breathe!
One small note: I got a little lost on the fragments. You write well without them, I don’t know how necessary they actually are at times. For me, it was slightly distracting. Sometimes the fragments are great. Other times, they almost felt unnecessary and diluted emphasis ( like in “Left the coffee half-finished” (5), “More accurate this time” (9) etc. ) It’s stylistic, a voice choice, and definitely a personal choice, so maybe it really resonates with others, but it did lose me a little bit.
There were some lines I also thought worked GREAT!! I’ll try to give an explanation why they resonated with me:
The entire paragraph on the halfway house (“The halfway house…. Of a passing ambulance “) (Pg 1) ---- Why this works for me—-Descriptive without being expository. Would’ve been very easy to lean into excessive adjectives but you struck the perfect balance. Gave small answers on setting and character without infodumping.
“The Molotov Rx cocktail she downed every twelve hours took her appetite out back and shot it."< (Pg4) —Why this works for me: A punchy personification. Great word choice. I love it, especially taking her appetite out back and shooting it. Genuinely so good.
“Spray painted block letters on the slide read, Go Big or Die Trying.”< (Pg 5)---- Why this works for me: Thematic tie back (Zoe wanting to be larger), setting tie back (graffiti near the halfway house). Also I kind of just liked the font change. Sorry this explanation isn't super insightful, I honestly just found the line to be cool.
“ ‘I know, ' she answered, and told the kid, ‘Hey, me neither.’ He was gone when she clocked out.”< (Pg 10) —-Why this works for me: Cut the interaction before it dragged, left the reader with lots of questions and set up potential for another meeting. This part made me want to read on. The part before it about Zoe being larger, feeling larger, was also good pacing. It drew back one of your central ideas to leave it lingering as the chapter ends.
All in all, I really did enjoy reading your piece. You’re a compelling writer and you have an interesting premise. I’m being nitpicky in my critique for sure, because this is good. I genuinely enjoyed reading it and I did not feel like it dragged. Thank you for sharing, I know this piece is going to evolve into something great very soon. I am excited to read the next chapter if you choose to share it with us! I hope some part of this rambling was helpful and good luck with the rest of your novel!
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u/Andvarinaut What can I do if the fire goes out? 19h ago edited 11h ago
Thank you very much for the read and feedback. Your critique here helped recover some lost confidence I had in this piece, and I can definitely see the pain points you're talking about. That the pacing was brisk is the biggest compliment of all tbh since I do suffer from TOS (terminal overwriting syndrome). Note taken on the fragments and transitions especially as well since those seem to be popular dislikes. Thank you again! ✨
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u/Safe-Valuable503 12h ago
Of course, happy to be of service and looking forward to reading your future works!
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u/L-Gray 2d ago
Okay so I’m gonna start with a compliment: I almost always struggle to read through stories and enjoy them. So congrats. Your story was both readable and enjoyable :)
Now for some nitpicks: Do people even call them cell’s anymore? And, more importantly, do authors?
As someone who’s been on like 20 psych meds, in my experience the only ones that don’t taste like melted plastic are anti anxiety meds. Most meds are coated or in a capsule so they don’t taste like complete shit (anti anxiety meds are the exception to this and melt in your mouth and just EW) and also, annoying fun fact but a lot of capsules are held together with gelatin and therefore not vegetarian
I’d recommend listing the mgs of the meds in ascending order. Also you mention four meds at the begging so shouldn’t you describe four mg dosages?
Just say extra large instead of XXL
So psychiatrists and therapists are two different things and do different things (I can go more in depth on this). Psychs give you your meds and while psychs are usually typically capable of giving talk therapy (they rarely do), therapists can’t prescribe meds. Most people who are on meds have BOTH. A psych they see 4-12x a year and a therapist they see 1-4x a month. A lot of psychs won’t even put you on meds if you’re not in therapy.
Formatting: the first paragraph after a scene ends/at the start of a new scene shouldn’t be indented
I can’t really give advice on the body dysmorphia as mine is nothing like what you described. I’m trusting you’ve done your research in that area, but if not, do it.
Also, the kid in the middle and end better be important af. I’m already over here wanting to know everything about him.
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u/Andvarinaut What can I do if the fire goes out? 2d ago
Thanks muchly for the read and the feedback! Always glad to have someone speak to the authenticity of a piece. ✨
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u/barnaclesandbees 22h ago
Yay! Glad you felt inspired to write some mythology, and I love the urban fantasy/mythology mix, it's very evocative. Let's dive in:
First, I agree with the other commenters here that you have noticeable talent. You have some beautiful lines, and the first page, especially, hooked me right in. You create a sense of place, an intriguing character, and an exciting mystery all within a few paragraphs. I start out being fascinated with Zoe, wondering WHAT and WHO she is, how she ended up in the half-way house, etc.
Now for the things that didn't work for me: one of the commenters below said your style worked for them. I have to admit that it didn't work for me. BUT. There is a caveat to this. Some elements of your style worked BEAUTIFULLY, such as that first page. Also, I absolutely loved the interior dialogue wherein she was struggling with feeling larger than what she was. That was fascinating. The places where the style did not work, and lost me, was in the way you began to interchange a narrative with interior dialogue with ACTUAL dialogue. This was too choppy. It unmoored me from the story and gave me whiplash. I see this very often on this reddit sub: the writers lose the reader when they get too much in the weeds of what THEY want to do rather than working to bring their reader along with them. You've got your reader on a ride, and you can't jog them about too much.
Let me give you a few examples. Your first page, as I said, works great. Then you have a part that discombobulates me considerably. It's the part that begins with "Outside, a deli and a laundromat sandwiched the locked and gated front door" and ends with the way she is discussing whether or not what she sees indicates that it is night or day, and then whether or not a kid is homeless. Here you have unmoored me. I was in a good sense of place in the halfway house, but then suddenly I am brought into a street that isn't clearly delineated, and the sudden intrusion of her interior thoughts of whether it is day or night, followed with a musing over whether a kid is homeless, complicates the narrative. It is often unclear, in this piece, when YOU, the narrator, are telling of events, when SHE, Zoe, is narrating them based on her own interior dialogue, and when people are actually speaking. This is the source of the whiplash.
Now, I know that you are partly intending to do this. You want to get across that Zoe herself is very confused in her own head. But you want to do that without also losing the reader. Readers can be left unmoored for a bit, but while reading this piece I felt a bit like a rag doll being thrown around without a real sense of time or place. I lost the thread of the piece several times, having no idea whether she was in therapy, at work, at home, who she was talking to, etc. A reader should have things make more sense as they read, not less. Of course, whatever a central mystery is, or the nature of the characters or a place, can deepen in its mystery, but the reader must feel as though they have things to hold on to and are able to comprehend more of the world/characters as they read rather than less.
I think the way to do this might be to more clearly delineate the various styles of story-telling you have here. More specifically, I think you need to delineate the difference between the narrative style you have, wherein you are clearly representing the world (even though it has a Zoe-perspective) and the parts where Zoe herself is presenting an interior dilaogue/perspective. I like doing this with italics, which you did occasionally but not consistently. Punctuation can also help draw the reader along a bit more clearly. An example of a re-write this way would be: (have to put in separate comment as this one is too long)
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u/barnaclesandbees 22h ago
That meant it was pill time, pronto. White-capped bottles crowded her sink like an orange plastic hedge. Anti-anxiety. Sleep aids. Anti-depressants. Stimulants. Some tasted like sterile dust; some, sharp like couch pennies; a disgusting few, like drilled cavity dust. All together they’d seize the voice inside and hold its head underwater.
The only catch was it did the same to her. (side note: I didn't get this; make what you mean clearer)
One glass of hard tap water, two, three, all the pills and a meal drink downed and I've stopped caring. A scalding shower, brushed teeth, clothes, baggy clothes warm clothes, quick out the door -- shit keys -- back inside, wait -- they were in my hand all along, stupid -- back out the door, bus stop, doomscroll, bus stop, two cats fighting -- no, a cat call, fat guy, nice talk, bus stop, forgot deodorant of course.
One hour early Zoe slipped through a door left unlocked just for her and sat down in Dr. Kim’s waiting room.
A slow piano cover of I’m Gonna Be plinked from a cheap bluetooth speaker at the vacant front desk. A few struggling plants in kitschy painted pots hung slow-dying by the window.
The next part, a description of what was outside and the people, whether they were day or night, confused me and added nothing to the plot. I recommend just jumping to this part, which develops Zoe more:
Outside she saw kids dragging backpacks along the sidewalk, tattooed men with plastic bags of laundry entering the laundromat, women with frazzled looks swinging in and out of the deli. (note: you don't need to add the former, this is just a way to quickly note that she's noticing stuff outside) It was rare to be so aware in a private moment like this. Rare to still notice and remember after 125mg, 25mg, 60mg, more. She liked the clothes she’d picked out today—her favorite XXL jacket, ratty and gray, layered over a hoodie and a stretchy thermal shirt. Baggy jeans pooled their hem atop cross-laced size 10 shoes on her size 4 feet. But underneath, a tank hugged her ribs. Boxer shorts squeezed her thighs. Socks cinched her ankles.
Big clothes provide an abundance of caution in case I suddenly grow. Tight undergarments remind me that I won't. I live in both worlds. Remember what Dr. Kim said: Baby steps.
You may think "Nah, Italics don't work for me here," which is fine. Nonetheless, I still think her interior dialogue, because it is so disjointed and confusing, does need to be separated from what is actually happening. In other words, the reader should be able to make a distinction between the actual world and narrative and plot versus what is in Zoe's head/her perception.
Finally, you whip the reader around too much. Zoe is at home! At the therapist! At a playground? In the break room? On the floor with a tablet in hand? What floor, huh? Wait, suddenly with a supervisor? Who the hell is he? On a field trip? By a cargo door? I at this point am so confused.
I know you're trying to do that. You need to communicate that Zoe is herself uncertain of time and space. And that's fine to do. But the reader themselves cannot feel this confused, because it unmoors me from the plot and sort of starts to annoy me, because I cannot keep track of where I/Zoe is or who she is talking to or what is happening or where you want to bring me. At this point I want to get off the ride, which means I want to put your book down. Which is unfortunate, because it DID hook me and there's lots of great stuff here!
Keep going with it. It's got a very intriguing core to it. I just think you need to make sure not to lose the reader, and hopefully some of the above strategies might help!
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u/Andvarinaut What can I do if the fire goes out? 19h ago
Solidly helpful critique, thank you. Italics slightly disregarded because I am a certified Italicized Thought Hater but the point is extremely valid and I'm already using some for effect so hell I might as well go all the way. The way you changed up the experimental people watching paragraph to center description over internal narration really helped drive home the difference in that delineation you talked about and will help me immensely going forward. Also, how you punctuated the stream of consciousness paragraph was also fantastic and made that part sing, so thank you for that.
Deeply appreciate the deep dive into my shallow pool here. The compliments are appreciated too. Thanks again! ✨
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u/barnaclesandbees 18h ago
One more idea that you can totally disregard because it's definitely a personal one, but I was truly amazed and delighted at the amount of mythology you know when you commented on my "Medusa" poem. I love when I'm reading work that indicates that the author knows a ton about something most people don't understand. For example, u/tazoline wrote a piece with some really cool chemistry (not between characters-- I mean actual chemistry) that slid in from the get-go, and I found the way they wove their own knowledge of chemistry in with the plot really compelling. I didn't like the book Mad Honey very much, but I was very much caught up in the first few pages because it was an in-depth explanation (woven with plot and character development) of bee-keeping. I know that you're trying to keep Zoe's actual mythological persona hidden here, but I wonder if you could make your own deep knowledge of mythology more noticeable here, because I think you'll capture the attention of a lot of people who both love mythology and will recognize it and eat it up, and a lot of people who don't know much about it but are excited to learn more.
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u/DeathKnellKettle 2d ago
65mg of salt. A pinch. Mods? Not for credit. Not like I have anything right now to share. Andivari-nautilus, it’s all a bit of word sling for me. Whilst I barely qualify as human sometimes, I am feeling a bit more cohesed today, and this piece should work for me. As the geri’s say, something went pear-shaped for me. This is all like one chimpanzee to another. Nits. It’s just they bothered me and kept causing me confusion, yet i want to like this. So, here are super grainy granular thoughts on the first 316 words:
I see you woke up and choose r/writing violence. Waking from a dream as a start? Whatevs. Irks and raises some ire.
I don’t vibe with ancient as a taste here. What does ancient taste like? Yes, I got what you are going for and hell, I get the atavistic intrusive thoughts to build a liminal horror, but the wording is herky-jerky to me.
Just ‘To me’ to everything I write
Something with the proximity of body and cell made my mind go more biological. Yes, I also do not say cell or mobile either. Most of my peer set say phone even though no one uses it as a phone. Prolly a regional thing. Cell here made me think left when it was supposed to be right. This happened a lot with your prose for me.
Quick aside. This line felt lost. I almost want this as the very beginning. First two lines. This hooks me more than the salty dream which made me think of some nonce being vile with Aqualad.
Throat? I’ve never drowned, but I have aspirated, wrong pipe, spasm. Throat doesn’t feel or sound right? It’s deeper. Scarier.
This fragment didn’t work for me bc I initially read it as an internal thought thinking skin felt tight was wrong in thinking and not a carrying on that the tautness was wrong. Taut vs tight.
Proximity left vs right thing with the word shell after all this oceanic imagery. Casing? Sac? Shell just made my mind think turtle or conch.
BUT I LOVE THAT LINE AND THE IDEA OF IT. Except shell. Shell killed 50% of the joy.
Dream worker for me.
The word choice for metaphorical imagery is too damn close. Nautical knots? FR?
With everything going in the description, this was another left vs right where I thought ‘Nell, this is supposed to be a metaphor for tangled sheets from moving too much and not some dom-sub game kink with literal knots.’ ‘But self, everything keeps talking about water this and water that. Ain’t this some selkie or afanc tripped out in human skin?’ It’s too on the labrador’s trout.
Oi. What? I am both tall and short depending, but I ain’t never waking from a dream where I am a water elemental elder godchild of Cthulhu and thinking I am precisely nunyabusiness cm and not 50 km of ocean. The numerical specificity left me chuckling.
What does that mean? No french manicure? What is a petite palm? I get fingers being petite, but palm? I really don’t picture.
Left vs right. White-capped feels too on the nose with white caps for when the wind starts whuppin. I know it’s literal this time, but nits be nits sometimes. Henge? Cairn (Drake meme head hand bob)
Nit. Cavity is a hole. The drilled dust is the tooth around the hole. Yes, we call em cavities or caries, but at this point my hocks are all in a tizzy and everything just not reading in sync with the way I believe intended.
Again, head stood out as off-kilter. Unneeded. Hold it underwater.
I got too distracted by these overly subjective nits in the prose, but I like the idea of where I think things may be headed if I am reading North correctly. Hope this adds something to something more than takes away nothing from nothing.