forum [is this introduction too excessive? + story plot feedback, please!]

Started October 29, 2018 by @pallas-athena

tune

hello! royaltea, again.

so recently i’ve started work on a small, side writing project as an assignment in my english class. i plan to have the whole thing divided into parts, but here’s the introduction/prologue-ish part of it:

if you could read it and give me feedback on things like story flow, how interesting it is, if it makes you want to keep reading, any parts that need to be cut out, etc, that’d be great!
i’m looking for feedback on conciseness in particular. while this was intended to be a short story for an end of quarter english assignment, i’ve got around 4.5k words and i literally haven’t even gotten into the real story part yet. i’ve started my word-trimming with my prologue-ish part, because i’ve seen that a lot of people advise for writers to just axe the prologue, but to be honest, i like my prologue. the second part of the story starts right after the last line in the “THE UNMAPPED HOUSE” section, and it starts with this:

“On some day in October — most likely an unimportant date, like the 17th or the 23rd or some other overlooked number like that — Katriel Clemont, the oldest Clemont child, was scuffling around in the basement, dressed in nothing more protective than a frilly white nightgown, a candle lamp in one hand and a box of matches in the other. You would think that someone — especially someone who was the oldest sibling; weren’t they more sensible the older they were? — like Katriel would know better than to act like every idiotic horror movie protagonist ever, but if you were thinking this, then Katriel had successfully tricked you too. The whole point was to look harmless and innocent. How else would she lure the monsters out?”

which is, i guess, an okay place to start a story, but i feel like the prologue adds that bit of backstory and sets the tone that i need throughout the book, so i’m looking for opinions on whether or not it’s truly necessary.

as for story plot feedback, here’s the planned plot for the story (you can skip all this if you only wanted to give me feedback on my introduction):

• so, in the second part of the story, katriel’s roaming around her basement. her house often runs rampant with all sorts of supernatural beings, and her sister, everly, has told her recently that something’s wrong with the lamp in her room and would katriel please go down into the basement to see if some fae is screwing around with it.
• eventually, katriel meets a kitsune-like creature named ikokidros (pronounced i-co-kid-rose, but she nicknames them iko) in the basement, who can manipulate fire (iko snuffs katriel’s candle laml out several times prior to their meeting) and is definitely the source of everly’s lamp problems. the two have a short conversation that leads into the real part of the story.
• iko tells katriel that alongside fire, they can teleport people to any spatial or chronological location (so physical teleportation or literal time traveling). iko asks katriel if there’s any particular place she wants to go, and then they can take her there in return for a payment of any three items.
• katriel thinks of a chronological place she wants to go, but it comes alongside some difficulties: katriel wants to visit a specific place and person, at a specific day and hour, but iko’s powers are only strong enough to bring her to a specific month. iko tells katriel that if she wants to go so bad, then what she can do is bring them three items that relate to the specific person, place, and time, and then offer them access to her memories, which will allow them to better pinpoint where they’re going. katriel agrees.
• the problem is that she only has one of the three items needed: the item that relates to the place. so, katriel asks iko to whisk her back in time to get the other two items, which, at the current time, are lost. iko also comes with her to sort of help out.
• i actually have no idea what the third item is, but the first item she goes back in time for is her mother’s fountain pen, which was lost in a museum (so she goes back in time to the museum to find it), and the one she already has is a hatbox full of miscellaneous letters, which is a family heirloom.
• the third item i want to relate to a christmas tradition katriel’s family has (which seems absurdly random, but i promise it’ll make sense soon), but right now i’m not really sure what.
• anyhow, they return from their second time-traveling session, and katriel gives iko the three items, and then iko prods around in her memory a little bit to sort of gain a more thorough comprehension of where they need to take her. then, iko transports her there.
• the chronological location in which katriel wanted to go to was a few years back on december 24th (that’s what the item relating to christmas tradition was about), dinner time at her house. at that time, katriel’s birth mother, eleanor, was still alive. in the past two times katriel time-traveled, her past self wasn’t present at th chronological location, which means katriel went back as her current age. however, at this particular location, katriel’s past self was there at the dinner table, so katriel becomes a little girl again (except with her current conscious) during this time-traveling session.
• there’s a small bit where katriel is just enjoying the holiday spirit and the food and being able to talk with her mother. at the end of that section, eleanor stands up and announces that she needs to leave on her trip, and then the family helps eleanor get her things packed up. at the door, before eleanor leaves, katriel runs at eleanor and gives her a hug.
• eleanor tells katriel that she’ll see her again december 31st, which is when she was supposed to return from her trip, but katriel knows her mother will die of a train crash and they won’t see each other again.
• katriel nods, watches her mother go, and then her time runs out, and iko brings them back to the present.
• katriel went through the struggle for the three times solely so that she could see her mom again.
• the two items i have so far relate to the person and place because the hatbox of letters is a family heirloom (and the dinner is hosted at her own house), and the fountain pen belongs to her mother. i just need a christmas-y item to relate to the time :”D

anyhow, i hope that made sense! if you read this, then i’d like to know if you think whether or not the ending is anticlimactic/disappointing, because i’m afraid readers might expect katriel to be doing something much more important than seeing her mother (katriel’s motives are kept deliberately unclear for most of the story, so readers won’t know why she’s gathering the items she’s gathering). feedback on the plot in general would be nice!

to summarize:

1. i’m looking for feedback on the introduction to my story. please tell me whether or not you think it’s a hooking/intriguing intro, any flaws, any parts i can cut out, and if i truly need it.
2. does the plot sound interesting, and does it make sense? is the ending disappointing?

thanks!

Hi! So I've taken a look at your prologue and the rest of the story plan, and I hope that my feedback can in some way be useful. :) I took a short story writing unit at uni, so some of my advice stems from what I learned there.

I'm going to assume that your English assignment is in the wordcount realm of most English assignments and guess that your short story is supposed to be < 10,000 words. If that's the case, in all honesty, you do not need this prologue. There are a few reasons:

1. It's long, and in a short story, every word counts.
2. It introduces the house and neighbourhood as 'characters', but from your plan it feels more like Katriel and Iko will be your main characters.
3. In the last paragraph, you basically give away the ending of the story, by suggesting that Katriel's mother was killed in a train crash. Even if you keep the prologue, do not keep that bit, because it will make the ending disappointing. The reader might think, "What, the big mystery was something the narrator already guessed on the first page?"

I've fallen into the trap several times of setting out to write a short story and having it overspill its borders with the wild ambition to become a novel because I spent too much time complicating the plot and the characters. There's nothing wrong with a short story having a good plot and interesting characters, but while a novel is plot- or character-driven, a short story should be theme-driven.

In < 10,000 words, you don't have a lot of room for extra story elements, which is why many short stories have such few characters (O'Henry's Gift of the Magi has two) or such a time-short plot (Edgar Allen Poe's The Cask of Amontillado takes place over a couple of hours). Everything you write needs to tie back to the theme.

From your plan, I would guess that your theme is something along the lines of finding closure or the love/bonds of family. Now, I can't see much in the prologue that relates to that. It's focused on the negativity and prejudice of the townspeople, the horror-ish elements of the house and the wild rumours about the Clemont family. Your plan sounds like the story will be more in the fantasy/time-travelling genre than the horror story genre, which the prologue heavily alludes to. Since I haven't actually read the rest of the story, I can't make a final judgment, but those are my first impressions.

To answer your questions:

• The prologue:
  It flows well, is very interesting (these both stem from your writing style which is very engaging to read) and I did want to keep reading. I would have been a bit confused if Katriel's fun time-travelling shenanigans followed such a prologue, however, as I would be expecting a different sort of story. My advice is, as great as your writing is, nix the prologue. You can always reuse the idea of it in a later work.
• The plot:
  I found it interesting and easy enough to follow: motherless girl when investigating a strange problem gets a chance to see her lost mother again, if she can only find three key items. The ending could be satisfying or not depending on how the narrative is framed. I think of Meet the Robinsons, where the main character wants to use a time machine to go back and convince his mother not to give him up. I won't give spoilers if you haven't seen the movie, but the end doesn't go exactly as planned.
  One thing to consider is what is driving the story if Katriel's motivation is not revealed. What is the central conflict - you could say that the problem to be solved is the finding of the objects, but what is at stake? Does the reader know, "If Katriel doesn't find the fountain pen, that is a Bad Thing!"
  My advice is to work out what your theme is and try to keep your narrative tight to that.

EDIT: I forgot to share the link where I put inline feedback so here it is.

oh my god, i forgot about this thread asdfghjlkl. i’m really sorry, and thank you so much for your feedback! i’ve never written a short story, so all of your little pointers are highly appreciated! thanks again! (no need to respond to this)