Critiquing Ivye

Great news! I just heard a few minutes ago from Richard Mabry, one of my former mentees, that he’s sold his novel to a publisher! Richard was in a mentoring clinic that I taught a few years ago at the Mount Hermon Christian Writers Conference.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: Conferences are a great place to help advance your career. I don’t think I’ve talked much about the mentoring clinics here in the past, but those are wonderful “finishing schools” for writers who are getting close to publication. I can immediately think of five writers who I’ve mentored in these clinics in the past few years who’ve gotten their novels published: Debbie Fuller Thomas, Julie Carobini, Katie Cushman, Shawn Grady, and now Richard Mabry. There may be one or two others, but my memory is fallible. I had a very good crew in the clinic I ran last April, and I expect to see books published by several of them in coming years.

It’s been about a week since I last blogged, thanks to those pesky holidays. We’ve been discussing Motivations and Reactions for some time, and I’ve been critiquing samples put forward by my loyal blog readers.

Today, I’d like to move forward to critique the next submission posted here by Ivye, who provided this context for the passage: “In 1453 Edirne, young Sultan Mehmed is watching as his Hungarian renegade caster supervises the casting of “the biggest cannon ever”.”

With that preamble, let’s look at the six paragraphs:

From the liquid iron came a glare that caught the eye. It was pleasant to look at, and Mehmed liked to gaze until he saw nothing but light.

“Don’t stare at the iron, my Sultan,” Urban had been instructed how to address the sovereign, but his rough Turkish betrayed him now and then into forbidden imperatives. “It is beautiful, but it makes you blind.”

Mehmed blinked just once, and lowered his gaze on a drawing of the gun’s breech. Urban had been right, as was to be expected from a man of his calling: after staring at the white-hot iron, the brown lines of the drawing seemed to blur. Lest the Hungarian, the dragoman and the officers of the retinue should notice, Mehmed shoved the drawing off the table, and it fell to the ground in a roll.

“What I want to know is whether this gun of yours will pull down the walls of Qostantiniya,” he said, and he suppressed a smile thinking how far the pretextous question was from being either idle or false.

Urban thoughtfully drew the back of his hand across a hairy cheek, where the scar of an old burn ran from chin to ear. “You must not expect, my Sultan, they will go down at once,” he slowly explained. “This one,” and he nodded towards the huge empty cast, “is fit to crush the walls of Babylon themselves, but it will take its time. This is no culverin. You can shoot three, may be four times each day and no more. May be the Greeks will repair the breaks between a shot and the next. And then, on the land side, the walls are old stuff, but sturdy…”

“What is the place like?” cut in Mehmed, hoping that both the question’s urgency and his voice’s trembling would be lost in the din. He had suddenly realised that the man had been in Qostantiniya, once at least, to offer his skills to an Emperor too poor to buy them. Urban had seen the city. He had known it all the time and never thought of questioning him.

Let’s look at each of these in turn to see if we can make them better.

Paragraph 1: From the liquid iron came a glare that caught the eye. It was pleasant to look at, and Mehmed liked to gaze until he saw nothing but light.

Randy sez: As written, this is one and a half sentences of Motivation plus half a sentence of Reaction. I have two recommendations:

* I’d like to see the description of the molten iron be a little more memorable. I gather that it’s beautiful, but I’d like to SEE that it’s beautiful. That might take two or three sentences to really get across.

* The phrase “Mehmed liked to gaze until he saw nothing but light” makes it sound to me like this is a habit that he’s developed over time. It feels like he’s been gazing at molten iron often enough that he knows that he likes it. But in the context, I’m not sure that’s what is intended. I suspect this is his first time to look at it. I’m not sure that we need Mehmed in this paragraph at all. The reader will know that Mehmed is the POV character, so it’s not necessary to inject him here. So I’d suggest just showing us the iron in a truly memorable way. Then the whole paragraph would be a single Motivation.

Paragraph 2: “Don’t stare at the iron, my Sultan,” Urban had been instructed how to address the sovereign, but his rough Turkish betrayed him now and then into forbidden imperatives. “It is beautiful, but it makes you blind.”

Randy sez: This is more Motivation, this time as dialogue from the Hungarian cannon-maker Urban. I think it should be trimmed down just a bit. The comment about using forbidden imperatives is interesting, but it slows things down. Might it not work better to have Urban actually avoid those forbidden imperatives? I’m not exactly sure how this should be done in Turkish, but I’ll bet Ivye does. Showing us with a suitable bit of dialogue would immerse the reader more deeply in the Storyworld.

Paragraph 3: Mehmed blinked just once, and lowered his gaze on a drawing of the gun’s breech. Urban had been right, as was to be expected from a man of his calling: after staring at the white-hot iron, the brown lines of the drawing seemed to blur. Lest the Hungarian, the dragoman and the officers of the retinue should notice, Mehmed shoved the drawing off the table, and it fell to the ground in a roll.

Randy sez: I think this could be tightened a bit with no loss. Also, I’m not certain how the others would notice that Mehmed’s vision is blurred, since they can’t see what he sees. So I’d recommend slimming this paragraph down considerably. Note that the middle sentence is arguably a Motivation in the middle of a Reaction paragraph, although there are ways to revise it to make it more of a Reaction. But I don’t think it’s particularly important here. It might be good to insert some sort of emotive response here, if he’s worried about his eyesight being permanently damaged. That, a reader can identify with!

Mehmed blinked and lowered his gaze to a drawing of the gun’s breech. The brown lines of the drawing seemed to blur. He shoved the drawing off the table.

Paragraph 4: “What I want to know is whether this gun of yours will pull down the walls of Qostantiniya,” he said, and he suppressed a smile thinking how far the pretextous question was from being either idle or false.

Randy sez: I don’t have enough context to understand the final clause here, so I’m not really understanding what’s going through Mehmed’s head right now. I’m assuming the reader will understand. So my only comment is that I don’t think “pretextous” is a word. Also, I’m going to assume that Qostantiniya is the Turkish spelling of Constantinople. I rather like this spelling. It’s fun to learn the names of places in the language of origin.

Paragraph 5: Urban thoughtfully drew the back of his hand across a hairy cheek, where the scar of an old burn ran from chin to ear. “You must not expect, my Sultan, they will go down at once,” he slowly explained. “This one,” and he nodded towards the huge empty cast, “is fit to crush the walls of Babylon themselves, but it will take its time. This is no culverin. You can shoot three, may be four times each day and no more. May be the Greeks will repair the breaks between a shot and the next. And then, on the land side, the walls are old stuff, but sturdy…”

Randy sez: I would eliminate the adverbs here: “thoughtfully” and “slowly”. I like the description of Urban’s face, which shows me that he’s been in the cannon-making business for a while. I would substitute the action tag you already have for “explained”. I think the paragraph is too long. The easiest way to break it up would be to insert the unasked question that he answers. So maybe something like this:

Urban drew the back of his hand across a hairy cheek, where the scar of an old burn ran from chin to ear. “You must not expect, my Sultan, they will go down at once.” He nodded towards the huge empty cast “This one is fit to crush the walls of Babylon themselves, but it will take its time.”

Mehmed leaned forward. “Yes, but how fast–”

“This is no culverin,” Urban said. “You can shoot three, may be four times each day and no more. Maybe the Greeks will repair the breaks between a shot and the next. And then, on the land side, the walls are old stuff, but sturdy…”

Paragraph 6: “What is the place like?” cut in Mehmed, hoping that both the question’s urgency and his voice’s trembling would be lost in the din. He had suddenly realised that the man had been in Qostantiniya, once at least, to offer his skills to an Emperor too poor to buy them. Urban had seen the city. He had known it all the time and never thought of questioning him.

Randy sez: The key word here is the word “had” in the phrase “he had suddenly realised.” Whenever you see the word “had,” you should ask whether you’ve got something out of order. In this case, I think you have. Show us that realization first, then show us the dialogue that it prompts. So it might read better to reorder things like this:

Mehmed suddenly realised that the man had been in Qostantiniya, once at least, to offer his skills to an Emperor too poor to buy them. Urban had seen the city. Mehmed fought to keep his voice from trembling. “What is the place like?”