Thread: Lily - Part One

Note: Ok so this is my first posting of anything I've written and it is very scary! Well, posting something not the beginning of this piece I'm working on. Feedback would be great. Please say if you do not understand anything but at the same time I have no intention of giving anything away because I strongly believe the read needs to work out things for themselve. I have not edited it yet so if there are any mistakes please point them out because I haven't looked for any myself yet. The way the people speak is done the way it is because of where they live but the MC does learn to speak better. So here it is!

Lily - Part One

The city of Quilas was one of the largest on the planet apparently. It was called the Golden City although the only golden part if you asked me was the very centre. In the centre was the Guide with its tall towers and huge ball thing that was stuck into the ground. That was my favour part as the light bounced off it and made it dance with many colours. On the other side of the Guild's wall was the Residents. I did not like that part at all. The houses stood five floors tall with fancy windows and sheltered yards to keep their White Leopard drawn carriages in. The people who lived there strolled around in fur and silk. Once one struck me with his cane just for getting too close – the evil troll. The final part of the Inner City were smaller buildings that were were shops and more housing; but now for the traders and anyone else who could afford to live there. Then there was a very high wall separating the Inner City and the Slums. Dweller's were not allowed inside the City but not even their fancy wall or laws stopped us.

The slums were clearly a disorganized placed with the buildings made out of anything and everything. They were not built it neat lines like the Inner city buildings but space near the road and wall was literally fought for. Going through the slums was the only road out – we Dwellers deliberately built next to it to get trade from anyone who travelled to the city and from it. The road lead north as Quilas was on the edge of the southern ice plains so there was hardly any need to go that way other than for hunting, fishing and mining. North however the road lead to other cities and such, I’m not sure exactly sure what however because I’ve never seen a map. Yet it also went past Quilas Marina and rubbish pits.

I was on the crow’s nest on one of the big ships. Thanks to my brother giving me a ride on his shoulders up the mast. I could see the whole city from up here. I was only interested in the Guild thought. Everyone in the Slums had to work, man or woman. I couldn’t because I was born during a plague of the Sickness. Naturally being a new born I got it very quickly but managed to survive. Unfortunately I was now too fragile to work properly. As a result the Slums were a bad place for me as fragile things got broken very easily. I had to get into the Guild and study. That was not only extremely against Dweller ways but a very expensive choice. It took ten Gon coins to get in. They were fat golden coins. We also had slim silver ones called Sal and tiny rough bronze coins called Riv. So ever since I got ill my family has been secretly saving up.

Father had fought his way up the mining industry and was now inside one of the building next to mines breaking up the metals found and sorting them. Mother went to the frosts up north every week and wasn’t seen for days but when she came back she brought special herbs to sell. My eldest brother, Samuel, had taken up the duty of my guardian and refused to let me out of my sight unless I was with mother. I was on the crow’s nest but he was balancing on one of the sails. Together we salvaged what we could find in the rubbish pits – it is amazing what Residence throws out! Last week we found a ring with a gem in it. My second brother, Edward, had wormed his way into the city somehow, not that anyone expect us knew that, and spent his days cleaning chimneys in the summer and road sweeping in the winter. My third and final brother, Fredrick, was a machine cleaner in a factory that made linin for the Residence.

“Hai! Lily, com', need to hunt traders” said Sam giving my foot a poke. I tore my eyes from the Guild and gave a nod. He carefully helped me down despite my protests he was making it harder. Climbing down was much easier than going upwards. Once we had worked our way through the busy docks without getting caught, it was illegal to be here without the correct papers, he allowed me to take a small bag of our findings.

We took a drain pipe through the wall to get through to the traders and kept to the back alleys. We had just sold a rather nice pair of shoes, we would have kept them if they were sensible ones, we headed home because dusk was starting to arrive. Dusk meant the streets had more Guards on them to stop Dwellers trying anything. It was a completely stupid idea considering we did our deeds in the day. It’s amazingly simple to steal from a place in daylight;without anyone noticing for hours and by then you’ve already resold the stuff. Of course you could only sell to certain people and not steal from them because otherwise they wouldn’t keep your backs.

“Hai!” said Fred the second we had entered our family shack. At the moment it was made out of odd bits of rock Father had nicked rom work and old slates Ed had taken from the Resident roofs. I frowned as the family was gathered around a make shift table – a plank of wood balanced on bricks.
“Wha’ wron’?” snapped Sam instantly, wrapping an arm around me. I frowned as they were sitting as if something was exteremly wrong but Fred had not exactly been negative his greeting.
“Nothin’! Everthin’ is perf-ect, as the Residence say” mother said dabbing her eyes with a sock.
“We have enough money for the Guild” father said patting mother’s shoulders. His speech was not as hard as most Dwellers as he had once lived on the other side of the wall. I stared at them all as my brain struggled to process it. I struggled to say anything as mouths kissed me and arms wrapped around me. I was going to school. I was partly aware of mother waving everyone away and telling them to be careful.
"I have to go get George to send a note to Guild" Father said rushing out of the house. George was a Slum Inn Keeper and was one of the only people we knew who could write even if it take him a while and his script was bad enough for even me to notice. Although I only had the signs in the City to compair his writing with.

I'll start off by saying that I have a lot of things to critique here, but in now way is it bad. You have the right idea, but getting it down on paper needs a good bit of work. Just remember that as I tell you what I think you can fix

Originally Posted by Sunshine

The city of Quilas was one of the largest on the planet apparently. It was called the Golden City although the only golden part if you asked me was the very centre. In the centre was the Guide with its tall towers and huge ball thing that was stuck into the ground.

Huge Ball thing stuck to the ground doesn't tell me anything. I can't even place it to another kind of statue or architecture that I know of. Try and be more descriptive.

That was my favour part as the light bounced off it and made it dance with many colours. Around the edge of the Guild which had its own wall were the Residents. I did not like that part at all. The people who lived there strolled around in fur and silk. Once one struck me with his cane just for getting too close – the evil troll. Then around that place were shops and more housing but now for the traders and anyone else who could afford to live there. Then there was a very high wall separating the Inner City and the Slums.

Again, not very descriptive. I can't get a very good idea of what the area is supposed to look like without coming up with the good majority myself. As a reader I don't mind filling in intricacies where I see fit, but I shouldn't have to draw out the entire area in my head.

The slums were clearly a disorganized placed with the buildings made out of anything and everything. They were not built it neat lines like the Inner city buildings but space was literally fought for.

Where space was literally fought for? Not sure what this is supposed to mean.

And these are just in the first 2 paragraphs! It's ok though, don't be discouraged. The thing that sucks most about writing is learning the formatting as you go. As much as we'd all love to just day dream and write down what we think of on paper, it doesn't work that way. Keep working on your formatting! Once you get that down, I can see this being a very intriguing story.

I'll try not to be too scary, but I will not promise to go "easy on you", because that way does not help you improve your text.

Overall, I think you've got something promising - clearly, you've mastered your setting, and I get the sense that you've also got a good idea of your plot. The trouble is in the details, the wording. I note that the descriptive language point has already been made, so so I won't say more than has already been about it, but I have a few other things to make note of.

• The main character is supposed to be "weak" but is apparently still able enough to climb up to a lookout post? I suspect you've got a good idea of the ailments your narrator suffers from, but we don't, so this should be addressed as it's clear this is a plot point that will come up later. Not describing it before describing the character doing things like that merely risks confusion.
• At the point where coins are mentioned, your language is rather awkward. I know you're trying to get a tidbit of setting information in, and that can be done, but you should go about it differently. My personal preference is to simply refer to the coins by their name and describe the coins the first time they are physically present in a scene rather than making the narrator explain something that they would think nothing of - it would be like telling a story set in modern Massachusets and describing that people paid with pieces of cotton-paper with a face printed on them called dollars. To a lesser extent, this issue happens in other places with other things, but this is the most major so it's where I am making my advice clear.
• This might be a nitpicky point, but most of the time one exclaims "hey!" and bales "hay". I thought you might be attempting to capture something about the local dialect with that, but I couldn't figure out what. This suspicion was reinforced by other word modifications: perf-ect, dropping Gs on -ing words, etc. It's very possible to communicate a cockney accent in text, but you shouldn't do so if it means making the readers wonder about what things mean. Oftentimes people take the cop-out and describe the accent rather than modify speech text, you may consider doing so. If the default means of speaking in this piece is to be that dialect, I would advise you go the describe route, but if most characters will be speaking "normally" for most of the text then doing it the way you have it here will work, as a means of setting the poor slum-dwellers apart from their wealthier neighbors.
• The last sentence seems as if it is meant to be followed by more. Yes, this is acknowledged to be only the first part of a larger piece, but usually you break chapters or parts on something at least semi-final, to make a logical stopping point.
• There are a lot of small typos in there. Minor stuff, mostly, but the sorts of things that make it difficult to be immersed in the story rather than the words on a page or a screen.
  
  • It took ten gold coins call[ed] Gon to get in... (though see my previous point about that bit)
  • we Dweller's deliberately...
  • without the paper work... -> without paperwork...
  • in day light -> in daylight
  • “Nothin’! Everthin’ is [as] perf-ect as the Residents say[.]” (The "as" addition supposes that that produces the intended meaning, if that is not the case then more drastic sentence surgery may be necessary.)
  • etc.
  
  
• There are some other places where your wording is grammatically correct but doesn't do what I expect was the intended job. Most of these, too, are minor, but there are a lot of them, and they are working against what is otherwise a good piece. If you would like help with some of these let me know, I'd be happy to help with a few (obviously I can't pick your wording for you everywhere, it's your piece).
  
  • ...like the Inner city buildings but space was literally fought for...
  • We had just sold a rather nice pair of shoes we would have kept if they were sensible ones we headed home because dusk was starting to arrive...
  • It was a completely stupid idea considering we did our deeds in the day.
  • ...without anyone noticing for hours and by then you’ve already resold the stuff...

Hey Diogenes!

I did the "giant ball" like that because the MC has no idea what it is. So I do not want the reader to understand yet even thought it is an important "thing". I will edit the other bits because, as I said, I haven't even edited any of it before putting it up! I was just too exited that I could finally do so. As for this part it is how the story starts off and I was not sure how much to put up so just grabbed around the first 1000 words.

Hey Jaded!

You're not scary!

I will edit so you can see how the Lily actually got up the mast.

With the coins should I say about all three when I first mention money?

With the "hay" bit I will change the Y to an I so it's not too horsey but it can not be a "hey" because the sounding of it is important to the way the dwellers speak. The hai is considered positive but the people also greet with haia/haya for negative. Actually, will think over that one because now I have a word with three offial vowels in a row.

Originally Posted by Sunshine

With the coins should I say about all three when I first mention money?

That would probably aggravate the problem. As is, the "gold coins called Gon" language is trying too hard to give the reader information that's not really needed - I would just call them by their name, and when the coins are physically present in a scene or are a specific plot point then point out that they are made of gold, and perhaps their weight and the design on them. That's my way of doing it, though - there are others, and you certainly aren't bound to it. At bare minimum you should use a dash delimited phrase or a parenthetical phrase if you are convinced that this is the time to bring it up.

The other alternative is waiting to mention money at all until you have something in the text to work with - say, when the narrator describes selling things, one could say the value of the item in the smallest denomination of currency, which allows her to segue in her narration to saying that there are sixteen Pennies in a Chit, and eight Chits sum to one Gon, and that the objective was saving up ten Gon (Obviously I am making up denominations here for the sake of making a point).

Originally Posted by Sunshine

With the "hay" bit I will change the Y to an I so it's not too horsey but it can not be a "hey" because the sounding of it is important to the way the dwellers speak. The hai is considered positive but the people also greet with haia/haya for negative. Actually, will think over that one because now I have a word with three offial vowels in a row.

If I am getting a sense of the onomatopoeia being used here, may I suggest "hai" and "hia"? I think that is the same sound as you're aiming for, and doesn't have the 3 vowel problem.

Ok, so like I said the post was before I had even read over it myself. However now that I have finished writing this novel (it's the first of a series) I have started my "editing". I should therefore warn you my editing does turn into rewriting. Anyway, this is the same as up top but only now revamped!

Lily part/chapter/bit one



The City of Quilas was one of the largest on the planet apparently. It was called the Golden City although if you asked me the only golden part was at the very centre. That was where the Guild was with its sky high towers and huge ball thing that was stuck in the ground. It was roughly the same size as twenty manors plus their gardens; and that was only how much ground it covered but its height was the second tallest thing in the entire city. This ball was my favourite thing because its surface always danced with many beautiful colours. On the other side of the Guild’s Wall were the Residents. I did not like that part of the city at all. The houses stood five floors tall with fancy windows and sheltered yards to keep their Snow Leopard drawn carriages in. The people who lived there strolled around in fur and silk. The final part of the Inner City was the Trader’s Quarters. Here where all the shops and where the Trader’s lived. Not that my kind were allowed there but that never stopped us. Despite the fact there was a giant wall separating the Inner City and the Slums we Dwellers still managed to get into almost all parts of the Kingdom. The only thing that was Dweller save was the Guild.

The slums have always been a disorganized place with the buildings made out of anything and everything. They were not built in neat lines like the Inner City buildings but space near the road and wall were literally fought for. The wall offered shelter and the road money. There was only one main road in Quilas and it headed towards the north. It did head south of the city but only to the mines because that was all that was down there unless you include vast ice plains. North however were other Kingdoms and their Cities. Not that I was exactly sure what they were called or where they were because I’d never seen a map. Yet the road also went past Quilas Rubbish Pits and Marina most importantly.

My brother had given me a lift, using his shoulders, up to the crow’s nest of one of the bigger ships. I could see the whole city from up here but also the Palace which sat in the mountains just north of the City. I was only ever interested in the Guild thought. Everyone in the Slums had to work to some extent to stay alive. Dead bodies often lined the streets having died from cold, starvation or illness. We had nowhere to bury our dead let alone the time to do it. I was lucky to have reached fourteen. When I was born the city was under lock down due to an epidemic of the Sickness. I somehow survived it yet it has left me so fragile I only had one choice in life. I had to disgrace my own kind and go completely against Dweller ways. I had to get into the Guild and get an education.

Ever since it was clear the Sickness was not going to kill me but I was forever physically cursed my family have been saving up the ten Gon entrance fee. Father struggled his way up the mining industry. Mother spent most of her time up in the forest looking for rare herbs to sell. My eldest brother Samuel was my carer and together we salvaged what was in the Rubbish Pits and sold it on. It is amazing what Residences throw out! My second brother, Edward, had wormed his way into the city and was a chimney cleaner. My final brother was Fredrick and he was a machine cleaner in a factory that made linen for those who could afford such things. He was the only one I wished would have a career change as he’s only sixteen but already missing two fingers.

“Hai! Lily, come, need see traders” said Sam giving my foot a poke. He was perched on a sail. I tore my eyes from the Guild and gave a nod. I carefully got onto his shoulders for my lift back down the mast. Once we had worked our way through the docks and back onto the road he allowed me to carry the money bag which only had a few Riv in it.

“Hai!” Fred cried out the second Sam and I entered the family shack. At the moment it was made out of bits of rock and had a leaky slate roof. All materials were naturally stolen.
“Wha’ wron’?” snapped Sam instantly, wrapping an arm around me. The family was sat around a make shift table consisting of a plank of wood balanced on bricks. Sam was only seeing how they sat as if something was wrong but I noticed Fred gave the positive greeting.
“Nothin’ is wron’ – everythin’ is per-fect – as Residence would say” mother said dabbing her eyes with a sock.
“We have the ten Gon” father said patting mother’s shoulder. His speech was not as hard as most Dwellers as he had once lived in the Trader’s Quarters. I stared at them as Ed and Fred came up to hug me. Mother yelped that they were going to hurt me but all I could think of was the Guild. I was partly away father saying he was going to see George. George was the only person in the Slums, which we knew of, who could read and write; even if he wasn’t too amazing at it and had to sound out everything. It was him who was going to contact the Guild for us. I looked up at Sam whose eyes were fixed on the wall.

All right, there's still a lot of little things here, little grammar things that individually won't destroy a piece but overall will begin to annoy most readers when compounded. I'll go sentence by sentence on the first paragraph, so you can see what I mean, and hopefully you can pick up the pattern through my explanations and take a similar look at the rest of the piece. Each thing might seem little, but added up a lot of little problems in the written word can torpedo its ability to have the desired effect, in this case to set a scene and draw in a reader for what's to come.

• The City of Quilas was one of the largest on the planet apparently.
  
  • Technically the phraseology requires a comma after "planet", but that's not what's off here. This structure might work in any sentence besides the one at the beginning of the piece - you need to do something to grab the reader. The subject matter is good - starting with the city itself, but may I suggest something along the lines of "They say that Quilas is the biggest city on the planet." That's going to grab more attention.
  • Also, for what appears to be a fantasy setting you probably want to use the phrase "in the world" or even just the word "anywhere" rather than "on the planet" unless the fact that the setting is a planet is going to be a plot point. Poor people in a fantasy setting usually don't even know that their world is a planet even when academia acknowledges it.
  
  
• It was called the Golden City although if you asked me the only golden part was at the very centre.
  
  • Unless the city is going to be destroyed during the course of the plot you can refer to its existence in the present tense (the past tense here seems to foreshadow its destruction). Similarly, unless the narrator has changed her mind since the events being described you need not and probably shouldn't refer to her thoughts in the past tense.
  • You're missing a little bit of punctuation: "City, although"
  
  
• That was where the Guild was with its sky high towers and huge ball thing that was stuck in the ground.
  
  • Punctuation missing: "Guild was, with"
  • "huge ball thing" can be improved even if she doesn't know what it is. If by the end of the story the MC knows what that is you can say something about it now appended with "though I didn't know that at the time" or something, alternately you may describe it as a "huge dome structure" or something like that. There are a myriad of word choices far more engaging than "ball thing", and in this case the suspension of disbelief is harmed less if you use them than if you deviate from the MC's vocabulary.
  
  
• It was roughly the same size as twenty manors plus their gardens; and that was only how much ground it covered but its height was the second tallest thing in the entire city.
  
  • The use of the semicolon is incorrect in this case, you don't need the and or but (you need no conjunctions at all, actually) if you want to use a semicolon. See how it reads when you take out "and" and replace "but" with a comma, if you don't like that you should consider removing the semicolon and using conjunctions (like and and but) instead.
  • "its height was the second tallest thing" - you should probably stick with "it was the second tallest thing" or "it was also the second tallest thing" here.
  • This is a good point to mention that first tallest thing, via another sentence "The tallest building in the city, of course, was..." or by a "...entire city, second only to..." if you want to make your sentence that long and it reads better.
  
  
• This ball was my favourite thing because its surface always danced with many beautiful colours.
  
  • See above about describing the "ball" - I would advise "dome".
  • The center with the dome is "golden" and dances with many colors? Perhaps clarifying that this happens when the sun hits the structure might help, or perhaps the dome was truly meant to have a many colored surface whose patterns shift.
  • "favorite thing" (Ignore my American spellings, you are not wrong using the British versions) is a... nonideal phrase, but to change it seems to require totally scrapping a sentence that besides it isn't too bad. Perhaps "I always loved watching the colors dance across the surface of the ball" (though see above about descriptive wording.)
  
  
• On the other side of the Guild’s Wall were the Residents. I did not like that part of the city at all.
  
  • Okay, this is two sentences. Sorry, they're short, and I'm going to have too many bullet points as it is.
  • "residents" are people, "residences" are houses. If you are referring to people (see me mentioning castes a ways below) you probably want to clarify that that is the "Residents' estates" or something like that.
  • Perhaps "Beyond the Guild's wall"? I am reasonably certain you're trying to describe a ring layout, with the Guild in the middle, the Residences beyond that, and so on, but the wording in the sentence doesn't do that justice.
  
  
• The houses stood five floors tall with fancy windows and sheltered yards to keep their Snow Leopard drawn carriages in.
  
  • I will refrain from describing the difficulties of using felines as pack animals ("herding cats" isn't a common aphorism for nothing), as this is a fantasy setting.
  • You don't need to restrain a carriage, and you almost never leave it out in the elements when it's not in use - you store it in a barn, a shed, or another outbuilding. Now, keeping the animals themselves in is valid, but animals trained to pull carriages are usually stabled as well.
  • The capitalization of "snow leapord" is unnecessary, a type of animal is rarely a proper noun.
  • This might not be a time to bring up the carriages at all, you could end the sentence with "sheltered yards" and fix everything wrong with it (in point of fact up until that point it's a very good sentence I can't really find fault with). If you think that's too abrupt you can add another detail, or just do a "sheltered yards, and" and then go right into the stuff the next sentence has without missing a beat.
  
  
• The people who lived there strolled around in fur and silk.
  
  • Given the fact that this sentence is as short as it is I will go ahead and solidly recommend that you do what I proposed in that last bullet point on the previous sentence - use this in place of the bit about carriages and find that another home.
  • Also, if they all have carriages they won't very well be strolling, they'll be riding. So you might be able to make both points, but I would make them part of the same sentence or clause describing rich people riding around pompously on carriages in gaudy clothes.
  
  
• The final part of the Inner City was the Trader’s Quarters. Here where all the shops and where the Trader’s lived.
  
  • I'm doing two sentences at once again.
  • "Here" implies physical presence of the writer, which previous tense has suggested isn't the case. "That is where" will do what you need without confusing implications. In any case, "Here where" is not valid grammar and doesn't really mean anything.
  • "Trader's" is possessive of one Trader (as if it is the last name of a bigwig who controls that area of the city). You probably want to call it the "Trader Quarter" or the "Traders' Quarter", and I would advise the latter.
  • "Quarters" are assigned living space, a "Quarter" is a section of a city (not necessarily a fourth of it).
  • "Trader's" is possessive, "Traders" is plural (and thus correct for what you meant).
  • Given that you already referred to it as the Traders' Quarter, saying that traders live there is... probably below your intended reading level. Saying that "merchants and shopkeepers" live there would give more information and give that clause a reason to exist besides stating the obvious.
  • If "Traders" is a named caste (I am sensing that you may mean the city to have a structured caste system: Residents, Traders, and Dwellers), then its capitalization is fine. If not, it isn't. I think you're okay, I just wanted to make sure this is the implication you wanted.
  
  
• Not that my kind were allowed there but that never stopped us.
  
  • You should consider putting a paragraph break here. You've shifted gears from describing places to something else.
  • "Not that" isn't helping anything, "My kind weren't allowed there" is probably better, it flows into "but..." in a more ideal fashion.
  • "There" is ambiguous, did you mean the Traders' Quarter or the inner city? This should probably be explicitly stated.
  
  
• Despite the fact there was a giant wall separating the Inner City and the Slums we Dwellers still managed to get into almost all parts of the Kingdom.
  
  • "fact that there was a" conveys nothing. It can be safely removed, leaving the sentence starting with "Despite the giant wall..."
  • You're missing a comma after "Slums".
  • We've shifted from Quilas to the Kingdom now? I would probably stick with the city in this part. The Kingdom can come later, we don't know about any other walls keeping the Dwellers out of other places yet. Thus, replacing "the Kingdom" with "Quilas" would probably work better.