Halcyon

I agree with Syme and Mandamon. Your prose is well done and the story has very nice flow but I was a bit disappointed in the ending. I was expecting more conflict, but it ended abruptly, there was no consequence to anyone for bringing Rick back. I was also expecting to find out more about the murderer, why Rick was captured, tortured and murdered, and why he was placed in front of the mirror. It would have been nice to see more from the murderer or maybe Rick's POV when his parent's try to bring him back. In terms of dialogue, this seems like a modern day setting, but at the graveyard Sarah keeps referring Rick as 'my son', which seems kind of awkward and I never really hear anyone call there kids that. I really liked the use of description at the beginning, it set the story up nicely. But that seemed to fade as the story went along and it made the story seemed rushed. Also, when Rick was referring to himself as a monster, I thought for a while something had happened to him or been done to him to make him into a monster. Maybe because I was reading it has urban fantasy. I was a bit disappointed when I realized he was just being vain and that wasn't the case. Also why wasn't Rick scared? I'd be pretty terrified if I had been beaten and tortured and had a gun to my head. Was he expecting this or was he accustomed to having his life threatened? Even answering those questions could give us some nice clues to Rick's backstory. I do think this has the potential to be great with some rework and by increasing the conflict. Hope that helped. Cheers!

Wow! Thanks for the great encouragement and critiques everyone. @Syme -I'm not quite sure why Maia argues against attacking Hokata Nomura implies it's because her family and her home tree are there. If it's not obvious I'll rework the scene a bit more. -In that same scene, Hirundo's anger seems to me to be a bit unbelievable Unbelievable as in "that seems contrived" or as in "that seems really out of character"? I'm aiming for the latter, it should be really out of character for him. -Why the weird capitalization for "GearMan"? lol Because originally I had only the first letter capitalized and every time I wrote Gearman, I saw German when skimming it. But you're right, it does look weird so I'm just going to get rid of the capitalization altogether. @Esperzoa Thanks for the great reaction. You make some very good points and considering it's already over 7000 words I'm tempted to add a bit more to flesh out Maia and Hirundo's relationship and her effect on him and turn the whole thing into a novella. @Mandamon I was also a little confused by Hirundo's sudden anger, but thought it might be something Maia was doing to him? Yes, and I think that's not quite as obvious as it needs to be so I think that will have to be fleshed out more. You took out the umbrella from the first time around, which was a giveaway, but now when Maia poisons Hirundo, I'm not sure how it happens. He feels a sting, but no explanation for whether she pricked him with something or if it's her newfound magic gained from losing her wings. It's actually her touch. She's sending small electrical shocks through him which are messing with his heart, the last of which gives him a heart attack. Hirundo actually notes this a few times but chalks it up to his desire for her. I think I just need to make that more obvious. Thanks again everyone for the wonderful encouragement. The rewriting is certainly harder than the original writing but it's nice to see it pay off. Now onto draft 3.

This is my attempt to take your critiques and factor them into a rewrite. This is the second draft of my short story "All's Fair". I kept about 50% of the original story so some of it will be familiar to you and some will be new. I'm interested to hear what you think. Cheers!

It's looking like the short story I want to submit is going to be closer to 7000 words than 5000. Is that a problem? Should I split it up?

If there's room by the time Monday rolls around, I'd like to submit.

This is an interesting chapter. I had difficulty engaging with Filistra because I couldn't understand why she wouldn't be thinking about or emotional reacting still to the death of her family and that she is following Hyginos so readily. I'd really like to see her mental and emotional reasoning for following. Also I was curious how much time had passed since Hyginos had found her. The action scene was good. It made sense and gives us a feel for what we can expect in future battles. I liked the insight into the Yacatu's methodology around poisoning their darts. 'She heard Phokas moving to one of the other corpses, in accordance to what her magical sense told her.' - I think you meant Hyginos here. I feel like you could sell this scene more if there was more emotional involvement in Filistra's thoughts. For example, if she uses the magic as a way to distract her from thoughts of her family, or if aspects of the magic or Hyginos' training remind her of her family. There's a great book called 'Wired for Story' by Lisa Cron that I would highly recommend. It talks about using brain science to hook readers. Chapter 3 deals exclusively with emotion, the cognitive secret being that "emotion determines the meaning of everything - if we're not feeling, we're not conscious". This translates in the the story secret in that "all story is emotion based - if we're not feeling, we're reading." I hope this doesn't feel like a lecture, I just think this can be a helpful resource. I think you have good prose and the potential for a really good story, I just feel it needs to be a bit more emotive.

Hi Syme, This is a hard review for me to write, I think because I would have put the book down upon reading this chapter. Leontas does have a distinct voice and the prose is well written, but I can't help but wonder why we're being shown Leontas' leaving instead of Leontas' already having left. It just feels like it could use a good dose of "in late, out early". I'm not particularly interested in Leontas' personal life and would probably skip forward to find out what's happening to Filista. I was a little confused with the information conveyed about the traitor and the man caught crossing the lines. Was the man who was killed supposed to be delivering the message to the traitor in Thereos? I liked that Leontas questioned the the encryption and the letter, they were the same questions I was thinking about the letter and having him ask them seems to assure me I'll get those questions answered later on. The feast seemed a bit info-dumpy and I couldn't understand why the information about the mines was important but perhaps you'll explain that later on.

Thanks for your critique Mandamon, I'm glad you liked it. You're description of Arrick as something between an Ent and an Elf is interesting because he is actually a troll but I had Ents in my head when I was designing him. You make a very good point about size. I hadn't considered the door aspect but I'll need to fix that. I'll also add some more to the worldbuilding and character description as you suggest, I think it will help to make things clearer. All good questions and I'm glad this is what your speculating. It will be addressed later but I'm glad you're thinking about it now.

@Syme While this is more of a personal preference, I'm glad you mentioned it because it was never my intent for it to be seen as an 'in harmony with nature' piece. Rather Arrick is as much 'nature' as anything else, trees, storms, etc. So I'll just have to make that more apparent. This is a good point and I struggled with this as I was writing. As I mentioned to cjhuitt, I'm going to cut the first scene and save it for later on, so the scene at the woodcutter's house becomes the first scene. Thanks for your comments!

Thanks for the comments cjhuitt. It never occured to me that you'd see Arrick as non-corporeal but I'm glad you mentioned it. It's an easy fix. After reading your and Syme's comments, I think the easiest fix is to cut the first scene and add a bit to the second scene. This will, I think, help reducing the jarring effect of switching POV's and also address the lack of conflict the Syme mentions right off the bat. I'm going to keep the scene on hand as I might use it later in the story. I'll also see if I can make the passage of time more apparent without being too obvious. Thanks again!

Thanks Syme, I sent it about 3 hours ago. Maybe I'll resend just in case.

Hi all, Here is something that started out as a short story in my head, but it decided it wanted to be something more like a novella as I was outlining and I didn't want to argue, so I'll be splitting it into 3 parts. Here is part 1. I wish you all the best on this last day of the year and all the best in the one to come. Cheers!

I'd like to submit tomorrow if it's not too late.

2:40 pm - @Trizee and @cjhuitt I apologize for not responding sooner. Between travelingfor the holidays and the wireless being down, I havn’t had much chance to geton here. … 2:55 pm – Arrggh!Apparently we’re still having wireless issues and the nice, long, detailedresponses I made to your critiques got deleted when I tried to post them.<sigh> Ah well. Thank you bothfor your insightful comments. They were great questions and points that havemade me rethink a few elements of the story (for the better). Trizee, I agreethat it would be better fleshed out as a novel and I think I may do just that.I’m actually writing a novella about a different character in the same world,just for kicks. Cjhuitt, I think the plots holes you mention will be betteranswered in a longer form (though I still want to try and make this stand-aloneas best it can for now.) So, again, thank youboth!