The story takes place in Salem, MA, during the Witch Trials. The scene is a 100% fictional inquisition by the non-fictional Reverend Parris of Salem Village.
As you may gather, I like to have some fun with the dialogue here and there. Link is below.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wPs0s5cTi-fqXq7Ql6jEGecHyvplj1yd/view?usp=sharing
If you share a Google doc link instead of a PDF, people can make comments in the document itself, so it’s easier to provide direct feedback to specific text.
You have some tense issues. “Behind him, sat a woman.” (past tense) then “…she stares down…” (present tense).
Some of the sentences are incomplete sentences. “Her posture, in direct contrast to that of the Good Reverend.”
“A red mark wraps around her neck, and a heavy chains secure her delicate wrists.” Wraps is odd as an active verb unless the mark is appearing in the moment. Usually an inanimate thing is wrapped around rather than wraps. I’d suggest something like “stretches around.” “Heavy” is redundant with chains. Chains are rarely light. “a heavy chains” has an agreement problem. A is singular, chains is plural.
“and the Reverend’s clearly dire distress,” It hasn’t seemed like he’s in dire distress prior to this descriptor. Earlier he was described as having a “posture proud with authority…” “full of fire and fury, but steady and deliberate.”
Some of the narration seems to be Colette’s internal monologue and should probably be in italics to distinguish it from just third person omniscient narration.
For example: “This poor girl has not a speck of magic in her – And the vegetables from Reinette’s garden aside, neither does anyone else within a thousand kilometers.”
But then the next paragraph mentions Colette in the third person again.
Cool, thank you! A question about sentence fragments. I see them used often in prose, and sometimes they just feel right, but then I get a comment about the fragment, like now. I’m just curious why. This is still an early draft, and I’m not that experienced with this form of writing, so I’m not objecting, but is there a rule?
And by heavy chain, I mean thick, not heavy weight, which i believe is a pretty common use of the word?
I do have to ask though, did you like it?
The fragments can be a stylistic choice. Ultimately all writing “rules” are arbitrary and often decided by consensus, often based on “what we’ve always done” as much as based on a specific reason for better communication or possibly a reason that is moot now. It’s good to know what your potential readers are likely to prefer and it’s good to know what an editor or agent will want if you’re hoping to get published in a traditional manner.
That being said, I’m a fan of breaking “rules” when you have a good reason to and know why you’re doing it. If the narrative is reflecting the fragmented thoughts of a character, fragments might thematically work really well.
That said there are also ways of rephrasing the fragments to make them flow better. Some readers might find them abrupt because they’re looking for the noun and the verb with some kind of active action.
For the heavy chain, some readers won’t think of it as a grade or gauge of chains. Sometimes technically accurate isn’t better than stylistically smooth. But it isn’t a significant difference, so definitely keep it if you like it. You should write for yourself first of all.
I liked it in general. It was an interesting glimpse into a world where there are implications of greater detail I’d be curious to know more about, such as how the main character’s age and knowledge of magic works. Some of the characters are necessarily one dimensional in such a short peic of writing. Scared and concerned victims of witch trials and puritanical patriarchal male authoritarians is what I’d expect because that’s what’s been depicted before, in the Crucible, in the Sleepy Hollow movie, and other fictional depictions.
Ah, but what about a witch who’s magic doesn’t mean she can just send the Reverend to Mt Everest, or wave a wand and turn the noose into licorice, but she can shift thought patterns, lower a fever, or entangle two pocket mirrors and use them like surveillance cameras? And that’s why the story won’t break history.
Ok, that last one may be pushing it a bit.
That was a fun read! I like your writing style
I very much appreciate that, thank you. I’m actually new to this fiction thing. This was the final scene I needed for an Act 1 rough draft, and it’s probably one of my favorite scenes :)
You reference kilometers in the text. The metric system was invented in 1668, meaning at the time of the Salem witch trials a kilometer would not be used as a standard measurement unless the narrator was on the cutting edge of cartography, especially in America.
So it turns out the French actually invented metric, which I had no idea, lol. Colette does have occasional correspondence back home, and she originally came as a Royal Court spy. So it’s conceivable shed learn about it and start using it because it’s objectively simpler. But I’ll fix it in the flashback scenes.
The trials are 1692. But I admit it didn’t even occur to me to check for that. But also, my main characters are French. They’re not really pilgrims, and definitely not Puritans. But they have been here since 1497, so I guess that doesn’t matter.
I’ll add that I do truly mean sci-fi/fantasy. I’m trying to take a (soft) sci-fi approach to the story’s magic, because I’m following history as closely as I can. Mostly.
