Ephemera 02: How the Arrogant are Rewarded

[Scribbler]

Chapter 2 has been posted!

Ephemera: How the Arrogant are Rewarded

As before, I love to hear what people think. Seriously; just off of the comments I got last time, I've been working hard to improve my writing. Comments make me happy, motivated, and determined to improve. So if you have something to say, please share!



This chapter was definitely an interesting one, and the events that were in it are probably some of the most important to date. I think that I was able to cut out a lot of the unnecessary exposition that I had in the first chapter, and focus this one mostly on what was happening; there's a bit at the start, but far less than in "How the Arrogant are Met".

I mostly like this one for the scene inside and outside of Rowan Manor; I've been itching to write those out for a long time (I've had this storyline in my head probably four years or something), and I think that they carried out fairly well. So, strong toward the middle and end, probably weakest at the beginning, are my feelings.

[jaysb]

So I had the blissful opportunity to finish the chapter this morning and it certainly created a pleasant and inspiring experience to my day.

I have to agree that I felt this chapter was a bit more intriguing. ALthough not as rich with some of the inner thoughts of Azrael as explored in the first chapter, this installment wads richly detailed when it came to Mark Boulevard and the land around the river. I have to say that the detail regarding the Cityscape is probably the most fascinating to me. Ever since I was a youngster (Great, now I sound like Gramps!), I created these elaborate Cityscapes and various maps. I thought your superb usage of visual detail worked quite well as I could imagine the City come to life around me. Very well done on this.

I also loved the suspense with the River predicament, as well as almost being spotted prior. You did a wonderful job at capturing the suspense and I was certainly on the edge of my seat.

I think one of the strongest passages in the chapter was:

A few careless bubbles broke out of his mouth, precious breath that might still have had bits of oxygen to feed his starving lungs. Damn it! he swore as he struggled against the insane urge to try recapturing the lost air. He couldn't afford this kind of error! Twenty, twenty-two, twenty-four feet – had he estimated his hiding spot at twenty-four, or twenty-six feet? The memory was gone....

His chest was shrieking wildly, wracking him with pain. Panic struck him, harder than ever before, telling him go up, go up now! Jittery and indecisive, he fought to remember, but his hysterical mind was being little help, jabbering on about how he was going to drown drown drown, or he was going to get c-caught, and then -- THEN, he was going to get killed!

Good way to keep your readers in suspense.

I also loved the line, 'gracefully falling onto his backside.'
HAHA story of my life!

Now, with all my praises stated, I must say that I felt like I started to drift off towards the end of the episode. Directly after he gets out of the water all the way until he meets the old villager. I just felt you got a bit too wordy and restated a lot of the same things- just didn't keep my attention as well, and this specific area of the chapter, seemed a bit daunting to get through.

All in all, a wonderful read. I cannot wait to read what you have in store for us next:)

-Jay

[Scribbler]

Thanks so much for the feedback, Jay! It sounds like you're talking about Chapter 3 and not Chapter 2, though.

I definitely know what you're talking about on the wordiness. I think I killed about 2,000 words in the week leading up to the release of that chapter, and still probably should have done more. Aggh, oh well!

I'm glad that you enjoyed the river scene, though! It was one of the first scenes that I'd started writing, and one of the last to be finished. I was surprised by how much research and number-crunching I ended up having to do for that! But, I was as happy with it as I had to be by the time I released it, and I'm glad to hear that someone enjoyed it!