Eliot:
I have MANY thoughts! Swirling! Swirling!
The good:
-Setting: we go through three worlds in this story: Luci's world, the World Beyond the Gate, and Rhahara's sanctum/statue, right? Each of them has a deep feel to them--Luci's is weirdly whimsical (I'd put more focus on that in the next draft, so it contrasts with the starkness of the spire and the odd opulence of the Gods Sanctum.) so open with Luci telling Nix something. Skip the sprawling opening and get right to the conversation--the world falls in place around the characters, not vice-versa.
-Individual sentences that read like poetry: i've highlighted these in my line notes, and there are a lot of them. Good goddamn job.
-This is a part of a larger universe, and not a standalone, right? If so, the spires as ships makes sense--otherwise I read them as magical obelisks corrupted by Rahahara for funzies.
The not-so-good:
-Sentence Structure: you have a tendency, as Luci, to rely on compound sentences: depending on connectors like 'and', 'but' and commas. Intersperse some shorter sentences there--it will help with flow and focus--and maybe try to use *** for transitions a bit more frequently as some of the paragraphs can be a bit beefy.
-Setting (it feels monochrome and hard to get into--too much is being felt solely by Luci and not reflected by the environment.)
-Nix (Its unclear to the reader who he is, what he wants, why he helps Luci, how often he visits and why the audience should care about him besides him being powerful). He's a knight-like figure I know he's supposed to be mysterious, but we need in-universe reasoning and idea of context. Have Luci think about the stories she's heard about Nix around the fires, whispered in the dark--let her own assumptions color her perceptions and cut a lot of his descriptions. You mention that he's just some guy, but that's clearly not the case: while everyone else lives in tents, he is armored and stoic. He's clearly already a legend if he's being called a king.
A fun exercise i do for titles and worldbuilding is to make a list of ten: ten titles for a character, ten titles of stories about them--flesh out their reputation. I know you want this to be in the beginning of Nix's story, before he's anyone, but for this sort of planeswalking/dimensional travel story, he needs to be something. He feels like a psychopomp:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PsychopompSuggestions:
-Structure. This is a weird world, Eliot. I love it, its fucking glorious. That's the point of it, right? I think the best way to establish the world-before-the gates before taking us to another--cross-chatter, rumors, and that scouting report expanded our feeling of 'this world feels lived in and interesting'. Consider doing more of that inside Luci's. Cut a lot of the scenery and descriptors and see how this runs with just Luci and Nix walking through the Spire and Gates.
-Why does it matter what the Spire did--we need, I think, as readers, more context for why Luci freaks out at first. We find out it mutated her arm to steel, but as written it feels like a bit more of a leap than we wanted to take. Refer to 'an Event' or something before the spires show--it prepares us for them, mentally. It makes Luci's transmogrification before the story starts more poignant and foreshadowed, IMO.
-As it is writtenfeels like two stories stitched together--it's thirty double-spaced pages together--break it into two pieces could be an idea--see what that does for pace and tone. rhahara FEELS different than the rest--that could easily be its own short story or a dream sequence. It would be easier to get that feeling of terror from hints rather than a dialogue with the architecht of this misery--Rhahara built the Spires, right?
-Repetition. I've marked it in my line notes, but this story could easily be cut down to half its current size. The use of adverbs and descriptors is to be expected for a first draft--don't sweat it, but let the imagery rather than descriptions of actions carry the senses, would be my advice.
Good first draft, and happy to read it! Keep on keeping on!
Charlie
KING NIX GHOST SHIP CHARLIE EDITS.pdf (134.41 KB)