When I send out my chapter to be read over by my beta readers, I always include a set of questions typed out at the bottom, grouped into different categories such as: plot, pacing, character, setting, etc.
You might want to tailor the questions depending on the genre or which chapter it is. For example, if it’s the first chapter you’ll want to ask them about how well your story managed to hook them, or if they managed to easily get an idea of the world you’ve introduced them to. If it’s the climax you might want to ask if the action scenes are fluid, and if the plot twist/s were predictable or surprising.
Here’s some example questions that you could use:
Opening Chapter:
What is your first impression of the main character? Do you find them likable? Annoying? Boring?
After reading it for the first time, what is your first impression? Was it cohesive and compelling? Boring and confusing?
Did the first sentence/paragraph/page efficiently grab your attention and hook you in?
If you were to read this chapter in a bookstore/library would you be convinced to buy it? Or would you need to read further before deciding? Why or why not?
Did you get oriented fairly quickly at the beginning as to whose story it is, what’s going on, and where and when it’s taking place? If not, what were you confused about at the beginning?
Does the first chapter establish the main character efficiently? Do they feel believable?
Characters:
Could you clearly imagine what the characters looked like? If not, who?
Who was your favourite character and why? Has your favourite character changed? (if this hasn’t changed feel free to skip this question)
Are there any characters that you do not like? Why do you not like them? (Boring, annoying, problematic, etc.)
Was there ever a moment when you found yourself annoyed or frustrated by a character?
Could you relate to the main character? Did you empathise with their motivation or find yourself indifferent?
Were the characters goals/motivations clear and understandable?
Did you get confused about who’s who? Are there too many characters to keep track of? Are any of the names or characters too similar?
Do the characters feel three-dimensional or like cardboard cutouts?
How familiar have you become with the main characters? Without cheating could you name the four main characters? Can you remember their appearance? Can you remember their goal or motivation?
Dialogue:
Did the dialogue seem natural to you?
Was there ever a moment where you didn’t know who was talking?
Setting/world-building:
Were you able to visualize where and when the story is taking place?
Is the setting realistic and believable?
How well do you remember the setting? Without cheating, can you name four important settings?
Genre:
Did anything about the story seem cliche or tired to you? How so?
Did anything you read (character, setting, etc.) remind you of any others works? (Books, movies, etc.)
Plot/pacing/scenes:
Do you feel there were any unnecessary scenes/moments that deserved to be deleted or cut back?
Do the scenes flow naturally and comprehensively at an appropriate pace? Did you ever feel like they were jumping around the place?
Was there ever a moment where you attention started to lag, or the chapter begun to drag? Particular paragraph numbers would be very helpful.
Did you ever come across a sentence that took you out of the moment, or you had to reread to understand fully?
Was the writing style fluid and easy to read? Stilted? Purple prose-y? Awkward?
Did you notice any discrepancies or inconsistencies in facts, places, character details, plot, etc.?
Additional questions:
What three things did you like? What three things did you not like?
Can you try predicting any upcoming plot twists or outcomes?
Was there ever a moment when your suspension of disbelief was tested?
Is there anything you’d personally change about the story?
Was the twist expected or surprising? Do you feel that the foreshadowing was almost nonexistent, or heavy handed?
Feel free to tailor these to your needs or ignore some of them if you don’t think they’re useful. Basically, your questions are about finding out the information about how others perceive your own writing and how you can improve your story.
I rewatched ANH, and now I have Leia feels. Also, I decided to experiment with writing stiles again.
It’s not real.
That’s all you can think when they lead
you away, Vader’s iron grip still on your shoulder. You hardly feel
it, all you feel is numbness. You can’t feel your legs moving,
either.
It’s not real.
Even though you felt it, somehow, even
though your whole soul contracted and screamed. Even though you could
swear you heard them scream.
It’s not real.
They throw you into your little cell,
dark and cold and hard, and you don’t get up again. Why would you?
There is nothing left. Nothing left that’s worth getting up for,
nothing left that matters anymore.
It’s not real.
The tears won’t come. There’s only
numbness, as though you are floating somewhere, and you can’t reach
the safe ground anymore.
It’s not real.
Eventually, a boy comes to save you. He
seems so… alive, so full of energy, that you can’t help but be
pulled along. For the first time since… that, you feel
something again, anger, hatred, a desire to do your duty, and you
hold onto it, you refuse to let it go, because it’s all that’s left,
all that you have.
It’s not real.
Stupid boys, men, whatever. They have
no plan. You want to shake them, you want to scream at them, you want
to hug them, because they give you something. Because you
don’t feel numb anymore.
(You scream at them)
It’s not real.
The old man, the one your father called
your last hope, dies. You can’t feel anything. All you feel is anger,
and a hint of compassion, and you grab that, too, because it’s not
numbness.
It’s not real.
The boy… Luke, the one who saved you,
the one you saved, he is grieving for the old man. You sit down next
to him, give him a blanket. You can’t grieve yourself, but you can
help him.
It’s not real.
You win. Luke shoots down the death
star, and Han comes back, and you celebrate. You laugh, and you
shout, and you sing, and you feel alive, somehow, fire in your veins
and tears in your eyes.
It’s not real.
You wake up. Everything hurts, every
single muscle in your body feels torn and battered. You remember
everything with frightening clarity. Suddenly, you face is wet.
Aegon I Targaryen conquered most of Westeros, aided by his sisters Visenya and Rhaenys, their dragons, and a small army. They subdued six of the Seven Kingdoms, successfully resisted only by Dorne.
You often see armies in medieval fantasy settings all charging at each other out of formation with swords and it makes me cringe. Nobody did that–they all used polearms–and there’s reasons why.
1.Polearms are cheap: A spear is just a long stick with a knife on the end. It doesn’t take very much steel to make one and if the shaft breaks you can just reuse the spear tip easily by attaching it to another shaft. Nearly every every other polearm in existence is some variation of the simple spear and they all pretty much work this way. You could arm an army with spears cheaper and more quickly than with swords.
2. Polearms are effective in combat: Whether in a tight formation or not, having a longer weapon(to a certain upper limit of course) than your enemy is an advantage. He’s in your ‘danger zone’ before you’re in his ‘danger zone’. You can stab him before you yourself are even threatened, so usually armies sprang for the longest weapons available: Polearms.
3. Polearms are easy: Anyone can pick up a spear and learn to use it with some effectiveness within a few days; all you do is hold it in front of you and move it back and forth. An army training to use spears are going to be combat-ready months before an army training to use anything else, and you really don’t want your enemy’s army to be ready before you are, so most armies will go with the fastest, easiest possible thing. Also, there’s no shame in using an “easy” weapon. If a single mistake could literally get you killed, wouldn’t you want to be carrying the weapon that gives you the largest possible margin for error? In real warfare, easier is better, which is why militarizes switched to muskets even when the longbow was better in every way except for the time it took to master.
This isn’t to say that shorter weapons weren’t used or weren’t effective, because they were, but they were often carried as backup weapons in case your spear broke or you lost it or something, or if you wanted to travel alone through a dangerous area and didn’t want to carry around a cumbersome spear or something.
If we’re to use a modern analogy, a spear is your assault rifle and a sword/handaxe/mace is your pistol.
@sirobvious makes a lot of (inevitable pun)
good points
about using spears in fantasy and historical-fiction battle scenes: cheapness if kept simple, definitely; effectiveness in combat, certainly; relative ease of use in certain periods and circumstances, yes indeed. You can hold ‘em, you can throw them, you can poke them like a stick.
Here are a few more details…
Polearms
are what TVTropes calls a “Blade on a Stick” – sometimes they were easy to
use, at other times they needed as much training as anything else. I’m going to
ignore halberds, bills, partizans, voulges, glaives, ranseurs, corseques, ox-tongues, Bohemian earspoons and all the other
complicated conglomerations of blades, spikes, hammers and hooks.
Let’s just
look at the basic pointy stick, AKA, the spear.
On the
good side, as Fred Colon of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is well aware, a really long
spear means all the unpleasantness happens far away. On the bad side, if the
other guy has a similar long spear, his unpleasantness is equally far away from him,
but uncomfortably close to you.
Greek
hoplites and Saxons/Vikings used their spears (about 8 feet long) in the
hoplite phalanx and shield-wall, along with large shields. The first
and second row spears could reach the enemy, the rest were in reserve.
This is one of the more famous shield-walls, Harold’s housecarls at Hastings:
They’re shown with long Norman shields even though Saxon shields were usually round with a pronounced boss; there are a couple in the battle scenes…
…but I suspect the ladies doing the needlework had easiest access to Norman military kit for reference. These re-enactors mostly carry round shields; the scattering of Norman ones may be there to represent what’s shown in the tapestry or perhaps a re-enactor with kit for both sides.
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