A question on style

you have my consent.

this is the opener I posted last night on here. I welcome critiques but please more specific than above""It is returning." the merchant stated forcefully, but in a voice much more ominous than he had intended, as the words themselves and the subject matter at hand seemed to have that property inherently.
"The Ancient One?" his customer, the young Marcus Omniomo, said in reply.
"Yes."
"When?"
"Soon. During the Festival of the Spheres."
"How do you know this?"
"It is what I have been told."
"Do you believe what the legends say about the Ancient One?"
"I am inclined to think that there is some truth in those legends."
"Some truth? But not total truth?"
"Well, the legends themselves do not agree. So it is impossible that every story told about the Ancient One is true.""
would this opening make you want to read more?

sounds robotic and like a questionaire, try to either expand the dialogue so as to show characterization or have the narrator describe the expressions of the characters outside of it.

the dialogue obviously goes on after this and the characters are fleshed out more as it goes on but i was wondering how this functions as a sort of quickly paced introduction to the central mystery behind the story.

It sounds bad in my opinion because they're just one liners. I would make the replies longer and as I said, put more effort into explaining in what mood things are said.

But maybe that's because it fits in better with the rest of the story, but in itself it isn't good.

here's some later dialogue, tell me what you think of this
A knock at his office door broke the Chief Magistrate's pensive silence. He had ordered his most senior ministers to meet him to discuss the situation facing them. "Come in" he said and they did so.
The cabinet members stopped a few paces in front of their Chief Magistrate, who still was staring out his window and had his back turned to them. The War Minister spoke up first "Sir, you requested our presence, I assume to discuss the uh the Ancient One?"
After an extended pause the Chief Magistrate finally turned and answered "Yes, the Ancient One. I'm sure you are all aware of the rumblings among our People."
The Foreign Minister spoke up at that moment quite sharply, addressing all his gathered colleagues in general and the Chief Magistrate in particular "You can't be telling me that you actually believe that street gossip. If you will excuse my tone I must say I never thought of you as a superstitious man. I do believe it is unbecoming of our offices for us to buy into the sort of baseless paranoia that the average citizen does."
The Chief Magistrate retorted "I suppose you have no respect for the People we are sworn to protect and that you entertain no possibility that any of the competing interpretations of the Ancient One are at all correct?"
"We are sworn not only to protect them, but also to rule them, sir. For their own good of course."
"I prefer to govern them."
"An artificial distinction I think. But in any event I should expect an educated man such as yourself to know that a lie, such as those our People tell their children of the Ancient One, is no less a lie because of it."
"It is not a lie, but a myth. And I should expect an educated man such as yourself to know the difference."
The Foreign Minister looked briefly at his fellow magistrates with a look of defeat in his eyes. Realizing that he was largely alone in his scepticism, he said, with a strong tinge of contempt "You've all become infected with the superstitions of the People."
"You've become infected with the impiety of foreign sophists." The Finance Minister sharply interjected.
The two colleagues turned to each other, intending to do the other violence. But the Justice Minister kept them physically separated, while other magistrates struggled to restrain them. They exchanged a volley of verbal insults as they were just out of the reach of the other's fists, then the Chief Magistrate shouted above them "Silence!" The Chief Magistrate was standing closer to the Foreign Minister and so he violently grabbed him and continued "I will not tolerate having my cabinet officers acting like imbeciles."

Your first sentence really is too long, not necessarily for grammatical reasons though. Your prose does not have enough aesthetic value to justify sentences that break the rules like that. I also dislike the way you've employed adverbs (in particular, l'm looking at "forcefully" and "inherently"); they're cluttersome and should be removed in favor of more precise verbs.

is this a dr. strange fanfic?

i appreciate your input thank you

No the name is pure coincidence. wasn't even aware of that character when i started writing this.

I like it much more. I'd start it with this kind of writing style, it really doesn't have the problems I mentioned at all compared to the first fragment you showed.

ur just mad rupi has more readers than you fgt

I got a 5.5/6 on the writing section of the GRE yet only got a 155 on the verbal section kek.

So, I'm not sure. I enjoy writing complex works mostly because I'm autistic about what I want to say for my papers in grad school. But I absolutely hate reading the intellectual drivel of others.

thank you user. would you consider buying this book if you were going based only on that passage you liked?

>rupi
who? i'm new here

Probably not. It sounds fun to read but I really only either read classics or non-fiction (or hentai mangas)

Peak patrician

A common mistake of beginning writers is using a lot of latinate words and/or overly descriptive prose. It's a bad habit that has to be grown out of in order to make stylistic progress.

Op isn't a faggot.

Would depend on intention and setting.
Charles Dickens wrote on the land of the Real so his story might seem more basic, tho' he was really crafty at it. Similar also to Tolkien; but his came from the need to speak to a bigger range of people.

Then there are poets who use there great vocabulary; from the old languages of Latin and Greek, and use them for aesthetic reasons.

I think, if you were planning on it, that 'technical' jargon is left for precise field of professional (philosophic, political) discourse; as it aims are to display a view consequential to its own existence.

thank you

your thoughts?

bump

How do you know that the people who didn't like it had even higher IQs and were even more well-read? It's up to you to disconcert whether the criticism is valid or not since only you know your intentions, and up to each single reader to decide whether your writing is good or not.

>the merchant stated forcefully
Uhh oh. If that shit was the first sentence of the book, I'd bail the fuck out.

>as the words themselves and the subject matter at hand seemed to have that property inherently.
Way too many words that add nothing. Doesn't flow at all. And makes me want to cringe, specially "subject matter at hand" is so painfully overwrought.

> said in reply
Why? It's obvious from the context. Don't treat your readers as idiots. Pick said or replied. Or do something more fancy.

>"Some truth? But not total truth?"
Was the character supposed to sound like an idiot?

>"Well, the legends themselves do not agree. So it is impossible that every story told about the Ancient One is true."
Alright idea, horrible execution that reads so stilted and clunky.

>would this opening make you want to read more?
I am a sucker for dialogue, of any kind, and your writing does have the "so bad, it's almost good" charm actually, so yeah, at least for a little while.

Let's do this!

>to discuss the situation facing them.
Ehhh. Kinda weak.
>I assume to discuss the uh the Ancient One?
The "uh" doesn't fit well into the sentence IMO.
>quite sharply
What is quite sharply? How is it different compared to sharply?
>baseless paranoia
That's like a "young child" or an "old grandpa". Also sounds too modern, for something that felt like a fantasy setting.
>the competing interpretations of the Ancient One are at all correct
Sounds very unnatural in speech.
>"We are sworn not only to protect them, but also to rule them, sir.
Actually like this sentence. My post is focused on all the negatives and is overly critical (and probably sounds pretty harsh) so that's an opportunity to say something positive for a change.
>with a look of defeat in his eyes.
Very cliche, not a fan of it but it's not overly horrible.
>with a strong tinge of contempt
Shit like that shouldn't be necessary. You should be confident enough in your writing, that it gets the point across based on the content on what is said.
>sharply interjected.
Even more pointless. Breaks the flow and pulls the reader out of it.
>intending to do the other violence.
I chuckled. The next two sentences are not funny anymore and read like a police report.

That's about the writing, the content itself had maybe two bits where I was interested before it went back to banality. It's all written after reading it once by a disinterested user, who'd find things to complain about everywhere, so take it with a grain of salt or two. Take what you can out of it and ignore the rest.

Nothing wrong with one liners, just it's wasteful at start when one wants to get the reader invested.