Thanks for taking part in this feedback experiment, William! I think your deep knowledge of historical mythology is going to serve you well in your future stories, but it might have prevented some of the better elements from shining through in The Swordsmen.
For this feedback I’m going to stay focused on your characters and the overarching story structure. The first thing I would do is tell the story from human Abram’s point of view. It’s extremely difficult to tell a story as an inanimate object because it serves only as an observer. It has no autonomy. I don’t see anything fundamentally wrong with it, but it can rarely be pulled off successfully. Most editors advise against it.
The question then becomes what is Abram’s primary struggle? I gather that he, just like his father, is a pacifist and struggles between living a life of peace and being forced into war. There’s a fundamental issue though, in that his father is a blacksmith that makes swords. This is problematic because it speaks to contrary motivations. What I believe should happen is his father should be a man of war, but Abram is the pacifist. The two are juxtaposed. It’s possible his dad is killed, but his sister or mother is captured. He must now contend with being forced to become a man of war to rescue her, and using his dad’s sword to do it.
However, he isn’t capable yet. He must overcome, and in the case of the hero’s journey, the witch becomes his mentor. She must teach him that sometimes we have to act despite our misgivings. Your example of the tree and the wolves would facilitate that. But remember the rule of threes. He should perform three tasks that finally teach him how to wield the sword and harness his strength below the surface. This gives you two layers, the first is saving someone he loves, which is at the surface, but the second layer, underneath, is his ability to wield power under control.
The end is his recognition as he goes to battle and now finds he is capable of wielding the sword, and you might even introduce an element where he shows he can control it. It’s not complete brutality.
I hope that helps you think through some elements related to character development and story structure. It’s certainly a lot to digest, but let me know if you have questions.
Jul 17, 2023·edited Jul 17, 2023Liked by William F. Edwards
Hi William,
I actually thought the content of your conversations were interesting and you have a clear grasp of what the world you're building as well as the philosophy. However, I feel this is where you invested much of your energy and didn't give the reader experience a proper amount of thought.
As a reader, I personally want to feel immersed in the story by sights, sounds, etc. There were times you did it quite well, i.e. "Our path was cut off by a wide river, one that screamed endlessly as it raged against the rocks". There just wasn't enough of this in the writing, in my opinion.
As mentioned by another commenter, I think the sword as your POV character causes a lot of issues. For me, it was a detriment to the immersion I'm looking for. There were times you had a fine sensual description and a few lines later you reminded me that I'm reading the POV of a sword and it broke me from the story. That's not to say you can't write from the POV of an object, but I don't want to be reminded of it constantly. Trust that your readers are smart enough to figure out who there reading.
I really thought the dialogue was the strongest part of this story. Except you had trouble letting your characters speak freely. Every interesting bit of dialogue was cut-off by some physical action or exposition or dialogue tag. I'm usually a fan of writing that knows when to let their characters talk and when to use beats effectively.
All-in-all, I think this is a fine story. It was clearly passionate and I can never knock that. There were even some nice lines that struck me emotionally:
"We did not have a chance to hold a funeral for our creator, to make a gravestone for him. The fire would have left nothing to bury, his ashes indistinguishable from that of our home"
"We felt the pain of each strike as our skin dented from the ceaseless onslaught"
"Perhaps it is our nature to fight to the death- swords, humans, and us. We do not blame the wolves for hunting. I suppose we were all fools thinking ourselves different, and the time to accept reality has come"
You should know that I don't ever critique an author's vision (story, characters, themes, etc). I'm more focused on the technical aspect on a line-by-line level that I feel could improve what you have in my mind. I hope this helps, keep on writing my friend.
Thank you. So your issue was more that reminders of the sword POV felt aggressive, too in your face, rather than the POV itself? For me part of the appeal is having lines that make you go 'oh this is a sword's way of thinking,' though maybe it could be more subtle. The note on dialogue is interesting because I recall feedback prior to posting encouraging more mix of dialogue and action, goes to show there's a range with these things.
Really appreciate you highlighting those lines, I'll be sure to keep them. Could you perhaps tell me which scenes you felt needed more description? Wouldn't want to concentrate my description adding efforts on scenes that don't need it. Description of place does not come naturally to me so the amount in the story already felt like an accomplishment, which makes me glad to know those stood out in a good way.
Also, did you notice the evolution of how Abram the sword referred to Abram the human? It's a part of the story I personally care a lot for, but am unsure if it's even noticed by readers. That's the follow up question I mentioned in the workshop thread comment.
In my instance, yes. I think having inanimate object as your POV is a fine decision, but only when done right. For me, it should be established initially and then humanized throughout the story only sparsely reminding the reader that this is a sword. Trusting your readers to figure out 'oh this is a sword's way of thinking' on their own is much better than telling them, in my opinion. Not to say that you couldn't successfully write as the sword, there were a few times in your story that you did. It was when I felt the sword wasn't a sword and that it was a human. Those to me were the best parts. When you, as the writer, reminded me on the page that it was a sword is when it disengaged me.
As for the dialogue, my thoughts are probably not the status quo. Dialogue, as you may know, is a tricky thing. There are plenty of published authors who use a lot of beats between their dialogue rather than let the characters talk. I personally love it when the characters speak freely, interspersed with beats just enough so that the dialogue isn't exhausting. It can be a delicate balance.
The scenes that need more description is something I honestly couldn't tell you. You're the author, only you know what you want in a scene (also I'm no editor).
I did notice the shifting relationship between the Abrams. However, it wasn't something that struck me emotionally. That doesn't mean it was done unsuccessfully, there were just other things in the story that I connected to more. In the end, if it's something you're really proud of then it shouldn't be changed for the reader's sake. Reader feedback is great but I personally feel the author always has the final say and writing that strikes the author should remain unchanged. It may not have hit for me but for someone else it might.
That's a good mentality with feedback, and you're good at giving it, very detailed and letting me know your perspectives on things. For me what I prefer is non-human perspectives being clearly non-human, so my goal isn't what you're looking for, but I still think it's worth looking into more subtlety or changes of phrasing.
Same with dialogue, though in that case I'm not sure how to define my preferred style of dialogue. But my takeaway from your comments are still that I should consider tweaks to dialogue tags and sentence/paragraph structure around them, even just to affirm that I want to commit to that style over alternatives. I do care about the final dialogue far more than the prose around it, but also worry about scenes becoming empty voids with dialogue, I'll likely end up rebalancing those scales.
There is a scene I can think of that might need more sense of place without even reviewing the draft, so I'll likely try to add a few lines there as well.
I'm just glad the changing in address was observed. Like you said it might resonate with other readers, but it's possible for something to be too subtle, in which case those odds are even lower. As the author detecting that is very hard, identifying issues like that or confirming there is none is one of the most important parts of feedback to me.
Thanks to Winston Malone of the Storyletter (https://storyletter.substack.com/) and others not on Substack for helping review this piece.
Glad I could help!
Thanks for taking part in this feedback experiment, William! I think your deep knowledge of historical mythology is going to serve you well in your future stories, but it might have prevented some of the better elements from shining through in The Swordsmen.
For this feedback I’m going to stay focused on your characters and the overarching story structure. The first thing I would do is tell the story from human Abram’s point of view. It’s extremely difficult to tell a story as an inanimate object because it serves only as an observer. It has no autonomy. I don’t see anything fundamentally wrong with it, but it can rarely be pulled off successfully. Most editors advise against it.
The question then becomes what is Abram’s primary struggle? I gather that he, just like his father, is a pacifist and struggles between living a life of peace and being forced into war. There’s a fundamental issue though, in that his father is a blacksmith that makes swords. This is problematic because it speaks to contrary motivations. What I believe should happen is his father should be a man of war, but Abram is the pacifist. The two are juxtaposed. It’s possible his dad is killed, but his sister or mother is captured. He must now contend with being forced to become a man of war to rescue her, and using his dad’s sword to do it.
However, he isn’t capable yet. He must overcome, and in the case of the hero’s journey, the witch becomes his mentor. She must teach him that sometimes we have to act despite our misgivings. Your example of the tree and the wolves would facilitate that. But remember the rule of threes. He should perform three tasks that finally teach him how to wield the sword and harness his strength below the surface. This gives you two layers, the first is saving someone he loves, which is at the surface, but the second layer, underneath, is his ability to wield power under control.
The end is his recognition as he goes to battle and now finds he is capable of wielding the sword, and you might even introduce an element where he shows he can control it. It’s not complete brutality.
I hope that helps you think through some elements related to character development and story structure. It’s certainly a lot to digest, but let me know if you have questions.
Thank you for your feedback.
Hi William,
I actually thought the content of your conversations were interesting and you have a clear grasp of what the world you're building as well as the philosophy. However, I feel this is where you invested much of your energy and didn't give the reader experience a proper amount of thought.
As a reader, I personally want to feel immersed in the story by sights, sounds, etc. There were times you did it quite well, i.e. "Our path was cut off by a wide river, one that screamed endlessly as it raged against the rocks". There just wasn't enough of this in the writing, in my opinion.
As mentioned by another commenter, I think the sword as your POV character causes a lot of issues. For me, it was a detriment to the immersion I'm looking for. There were times you had a fine sensual description and a few lines later you reminded me that I'm reading the POV of a sword and it broke me from the story. That's not to say you can't write from the POV of an object, but I don't want to be reminded of it constantly. Trust that your readers are smart enough to figure out who there reading.
I really thought the dialogue was the strongest part of this story. Except you had trouble letting your characters speak freely. Every interesting bit of dialogue was cut-off by some physical action or exposition or dialogue tag. I'm usually a fan of writing that knows when to let their characters talk and when to use beats effectively.
All-in-all, I think this is a fine story. It was clearly passionate and I can never knock that. There were even some nice lines that struck me emotionally:
"We did not have a chance to hold a funeral for our creator, to make a gravestone for him. The fire would have left nothing to bury, his ashes indistinguishable from that of our home"
"We felt the pain of each strike as our skin dented from the ceaseless onslaught"
"Perhaps it is our nature to fight to the death- swords, humans, and us. We do not blame the wolves for hunting. I suppose we were all fools thinking ourselves different, and the time to accept reality has come"
You should know that I don't ever critique an author's vision (story, characters, themes, etc). I'm more focused on the technical aspect on a line-by-line level that I feel could improve what you have in my mind. I hope this helps, keep on writing my friend.
Thank you. So your issue was more that reminders of the sword POV felt aggressive, too in your face, rather than the POV itself? For me part of the appeal is having lines that make you go 'oh this is a sword's way of thinking,' though maybe it could be more subtle. The note on dialogue is interesting because I recall feedback prior to posting encouraging more mix of dialogue and action, goes to show there's a range with these things.
Really appreciate you highlighting those lines, I'll be sure to keep them. Could you perhaps tell me which scenes you felt needed more description? Wouldn't want to concentrate my description adding efforts on scenes that don't need it. Description of place does not come naturally to me so the amount in the story already felt like an accomplishment, which makes me glad to know those stood out in a good way.
Also, did you notice the evolution of how Abram the sword referred to Abram the human? It's a part of the story I personally care a lot for, but am unsure if it's even noticed by readers. That's the follow up question I mentioned in the workshop thread comment.
In my instance, yes. I think having inanimate object as your POV is a fine decision, but only when done right. For me, it should be established initially and then humanized throughout the story only sparsely reminding the reader that this is a sword. Trusting your readers to figure out 'oh this is a sword's way of thinking' on their own is much better than telling them, in my opinion. Not to say that you couldn't successfully write as the sword, there were a few times in your story that you did. It was when I felt the sword wasn't a sword and that it was a human. Those to me were the best parts. When you, as the writer, reminded me on the page that it was a sword is when it disengaged me.
As for the dialogue, my thoughts are probably not the status quo. Dialogue, as you may know, is a tricky thing. There are plenty of published authors who use a lot of beats between their dialogue rather than let the characters talk. I personally love it when the characters speak freely, interspersed with beats just enough so that the dialogue isn't exhausting. It can be a delicate balance.
The scenes that need more description is something I honestly couldn't tell you. You're the author, only you know what you want in a scene (also I'm no editor).
I did notice the shifting relationship between the Abrams. However, it wasn't something that struck me emotionally. That doesn't mean it was done unsuccessfully, there were just other things in the story that I connected to more. In the end, if it's something you're really proud of then it shouldn't be changed for the reader's sake. Reader feedback is great but I personally feel the author always has the final say and writing that strikes the author should remain unchanged. It may not have hit for me but for someone else it might.
That's a good mentality with feedback, and you're good at giving it, very detailed and letting me know your perspectives on things. For me what I prefer is non-human perspectives being clearly non-human, so my goal isn't what you're looking for, but I still think it's worth looking into more subtlety or changes of phrasing.
Same with dialogue, though in that case I'm not sure how to define my preferred style of dialogue. But my takeaway from your comments are still that I should consider tweaks to dialogue tags and sentence/paragraph structure around them, even just to affirm that I want to commit to that style over alternatives. I do care about the final dialogue far more than the prose around it, but also worry about scenes becoming empty voids with dialogue, I'll likely end up rebalancing those scales.
There is a scene I can think of that might need more sense of place without even reviewing the draft, so I'll likely try to add a few lines there as well.
I'm just glad the changing in address was observed. Like you said it might resonate with other readers, but it's possible for something to be too subtle, in which case those odds are even lower. As the author detecting that is very hard, identifying issues like that or confirming there is none is one of the most important parts of feedback to me.
Thanks! I really enjoyed exchanging thoughts with another writer as well. I look forward to your next piece!