Hey, Cato. Is this your first post on this side of the boards? Welcome to our dusty little corner of NGA.

This is an interesting glimpse at this character. I do tend to like examining the difference between the "right thing to do" according to duty vs the "right thing to do" according to ethics or morality. Alek, here, seems very firmly planted in the former camp, his sense of self wrapped up seemingly completely in his status as a "knight" and the "rightful order" or things. Of course, as such, he becomes a weapon of oppression wielded, in this case apparently unwittingly, by the nobility. And that is another interesting point, that it is the narrator - not Alek himself - who calls his actions here a "noble deed." In this case, to me, the distinction is between a "deed that is noble" vs "a deed a noble would commit."

One formatting thing about this story that I am not fond of is the dialog. As a general rule, there should never be two different speakers talking in the same paragraph, as it can get a bit confusing as to who is saying what. I also wasn't really sure why the random Robert Frost reference rounded out the story. If people don't know the reference, I'm sure it's fine, but I found it more distracting than anything else. Finally, I don't personally think of "Necromancy" when I see depictions of the kind of flesh rot spell you describe here. I think of necromancy more in terms of reanimation or maybe conversing with the dead.

Anyway, thank you for posting. This was an interesting scene. Do you have any further plans for this character?

The "noble deed" part was the narrator narrating Alek's internal thoughts, more than any sort of objective judgment of his actions. The Frost bit was more there because I found the imagery fitting than because I particularly wanted to readers to connect it to that work, and you're probably right that it's more distracting than it's worth. I agree with you somewhat about the necromancy thing, and I was apprehensive at first, but I couldn't think of another word, and necromancy literally means "death magic", so I thought it was the best I could get.

I do have some plans for Alek down the line, about him and another character actually, whom I'll be introducing when I get around to it. Should I add onto this thread, or make another?

Do you have any suggestions for how to improve my dialogue? Not just in this story, but for writing in general. This can be formatting tips, when to interject descriptions between quotes, anything.

Hey, you look familiar! I take a peek in YmtC once in a while.

Let's start with the concept: Alek's character is established very well, and we quickly understand his views on justice and violence, which appear as his two main foci as a character. The initial dialogue, while not groundbreaking, quickly fleshes out the two parties and the clash of "justices", while the short sentence in which the narration casually describes the slaughter of three peasants does a neat amount of work about the violence part. It's a short and very functional piece, showing us the core of the character and the likely source of future conflict in his stories. What follows are observations on details and other smaller concerns.

@Necromancy: A spell that causes necrosis, literal flesh death, looks like necromancy to me. That may be because of my D&D experience, where necromancy includes not just interacting with dead creatures but forcing decay on soul and/or body (enforcing the effect of death) and stealing life (cheating death, though D&D doesn't have the "sangromancy" type), so I didn't have a problem there.

On the other hand, I'm not sure the narrator needs to spell out the schools of magic Alek uses, since as you say the PoV is close enough to him that it shares its values, but that means the narrator probably shouldn't take an aside to tell the reader what kind of magic is being used; I'd see that as more fitting if an external PoV addressed the scene, maybe a narrator close to a character who doesn't know Alek and gets horrified seeing him using necromancy on peasants when he could just subdue them, so the single word would have more impact, representing a revelation/realization.

About formatting: we use the paragraph tag a lot here, and dividing into paragraphs lines makes it easier for the reader to scan the text; when only two parties are speaking, you can also get away with just writing the spoken words of a character without specifying who's saying that because you establish that the speakers alternate their paragraphs, saving words when a dialogue is quick and snappy. Basically, here's what your second paragraph would look like using sad formatting:



About the quick battle: as I said, I'm not crazy about the narrator taking time to spell out Alek's schools of magic, and the necrotic bolt looks necromantic enough to me anyway. If you want to stress the hieromantic part, you could say instead that Alek's magic turned the peasant's bond of servitude into literal golden chains, or something along those lines.

[tactical nitpicking which only I care about, probably] Other than that, I assumed that the rebel crowd was pretty close to Alek to begin with, so it wouldn't be wise (or even very feasible) casting two spells (who, looking at how many words you use to describe them, take some time to cast - long sentences tend to be related to a slower action rhythm) on a peasant when either one would have took her out of the battle. It makes an example of her, granted, (albeit one than the other peasants don't see because of the rush, which defeats the point a bit) but as self-righteous as Alek is, unless he's also overconfident he should respect the fact that being surrounded by a crowd with pitchforks (read: polearms) is not a good situation for a mounted fighter: there were literal anti-cavalry tactics that involved three infantry surrounding a mounted knight, toppling him with long weapons and then slaughtering him as soon as he fell. The peasants aren't trained, true, but numbers are good advantage to have in such a scenario. All this to say, I'd rather see Alek chain the rebel spokeperson, killing another peasant and the crowd balking when he takes out a third fighter before they can even reach him, then he can trample the two immobilized targets and kill a few others as the peasants flee. If you wanted, you could also make Alek let the chained peasants live as he kills their comrades, then calmly executing them when the others have fled, making the lines about killing just enough rebels to make a point (or to enforce justice, as he'd probably say) dialogue instead of narration.[/tactical nitpicking]

*looks up* I think I may have babbled more words than the original piece has, so it's probably time to wrap this up

All in all a neat, effective piece, with a few aspects that could benefit from a bit of polish. Thanks for sharing!

Edit: I didn't know Robert Frost, but I didn't mind the ending lines.

my biggest tip for dialogue (and any kind of writing, really, but especially writing that's supposed to represent speech) is to read it out loud. it's really easy when you're putting words on paper to lose track of whether those words sound like how actual humans talk, but if you say the lines out loud you can pretty quickly feel which ones are just uncomfortable in your mouth. also, try not to write what you want to say, write what the character wants to say. that can be hard when you're first getting a feel for them, but try to inhabit their head instead of your own as much as you can. you get used to it eventually, and then you can almost just follow their lead.

Sure, that makes sense. It is a third person limited POV, and I've certainly done similar things with my various narratot personas over the years.


For me, it's just that Frost's work in general and that poem in particular conjure such pastoral, bucolic images for me that it's difficult to align those more contemplative connotations with the sort of brutal, remorseless murdering Alek does here. Of course, having said all that, for all I know that's what you are going for with this character. Considering his worldview, it is, I suppose, not hard to imagine that after this, he just sort of goes on with his life without giving these peasants any further thought.



Fair enough. I guess I don't have a better label for it, and not being a D&D player, I was unaware of the connection.


It's completely up to you. In the past, I would have said do a new thread, because it increases the likelihood of visibility, but with the level of board activity we have these days, I'm not sure that is an issue one way or the other, so whichever way you prefer is fine.


I pretty much agree with what Huey and razorborne had to say about this. One thing I will add is just a general comment, not directed at your story specifically, about the relative importance of dialog. Most of these sorts of stories are written in past tense, where the narrator is telling about something that "has happened." Dialog serves a potentially powerful narrative purpose by bringing the reader into the scene, bringing them into the moment and allowing them to experience the events as though they were happening right now. To razor's point, dialog should feel real, for the most part, and should feel appropriate to the character, and to me, it should really be the heart of a story (well, most stories. There are definitely exceptions). That is not to say that exposition, description, and action are not important; they are. But dialog to me has always been the readers' best opportunity to step into the story, as it were.

Anyway, that's my , for however much less than $0.02 it might be worth.

Huey: Thanks for the feedback on paragraphs, that was really helpful! I actually based this character on some YMTCs I did (here and here), if you're interested.

re: the intimidation factor, you are correct. re: the nonvisibility:



Raven: thank you for the feedback