The Forum
“Quiet please, everybody, Julius is ready to make his speech, and if you would kind Julius be quick boy, there are a lot of important matters which must be discussed today.” Julius took center stage, but first gave a bow to his friend Quintus, a senior holding not more power than himself, but respect, which was the real currency of the senate. “Thank you dear Quintus, we are mere dogs squabbling over the consul’s scraps without you.” Quintus returned the bow to Julius, and took a seat next to his friends Gaius and Septimius. Gaius was a stern optimate when it came to political matters, and was not afraid to make his voice heard, whereas Septimius took pity on the common folk, much to the dismay of Gaius, in fact they would not be caught dead together if Quintus did not force them to see eye to eye on occasion.
Critique Thread
Requesting some more critique on this scene, which is a part of my autistic novel I posted some of above as well. Basically the main city is under siege and losing the war, and the cities around it are falling one by one. So the main character decides they should launch an attack on the enemy's capital since they are doomed anyway. I am curious; does this move too fast? Should I add more interludes? This story is very long, this is only a tiny fraction of it, and I am trying to cover as much material as I can in as few words as possible. I just am curious if I am going too far. And any opinions on my writing in general. This is a raw first draft I just finished minutes ago. Please try to ignore the autistic parts. Thanks in advance, I will try to critique your stuff if you post your own pastebin with your critique. If not I will post my critique of you in the next thread, or leave an email and I'll email you your critique. I try to be nice to people who help me.
Will critique OP in just a minute
Stilted and robotic. Just awkward af.
after reading both of these i really don't think we have any right to laugh at reddit anymore
i've never seen so many cliches concentrated into so little prose
you both need to stop writing a pulpy novelization of a movie you have in your head, and try and write a story instead
I don't think this is bad as the other poster suggested. It's written well, but I won't comment on the plot I know nothing of.
I think critique implies some sort of advice given
/crit/, I need to make huge edits to my novelette to change major plot points, but if I do that not only will I need to change a huge portion, I'll have to make it several times longer as well. I'm amazed that I managed to get this far at all, I don't think I can change so much of it
I saw the wall of direct speech and noped out immediately, sorry
What do you mean by that? Too much dialogue?
>I think critique implies some sort of advice given
here, you are right so I'll try to be more specific.
>“We can't keep giving ground like this,” piped up Myron from the end of the table, two fingers pressed against his temple and a concerned expression on his face
Sure, it's a meme, but "show, don't tell" is always worth considering. If the character is conveying his concern via a gesture there is no need to record the "concerned expression on his face". Incidentally "piped up" is also inappropriate here, I think. You don't "pipe up" with a sombre comment.
In this instance you need to strengthen the description of Myron's concern to the point where you no longer need to directly signpost it
>"We can't keep giving ground away like this." Myron's voice came solemn and grave from the far end of the table.