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02/11/13 - AubreyWrites - MoonStruck - Chapter 3


AubreyWrites

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Here is Chapter 3 of Moonstruck.

Previously:

Prologue: Elizabeth and her family escape as children from the Lunar Colony. Their parents die during the attempt.:

Chapter 1: 15 years later Introduced to Elizabeth as an adult living with her family in hiding in Red River. Elizabeth and Bleys are an item. Elizabeth is a ski instructor.

Chapter 3: Looking forward to feedback. Let me know if you catch any grammar/punctuation issues. I've been working to try and get better at that.

Thanks!

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I liked the flashback scene with Alex at the start. I think this is a very good way of letting us catch a glimpse of Alex's powers without spelling everything out. My only issue here is that I think it should be moved earlier in the story. I think this scene would be more effective if it comes before the backstory infodump of the last chapter. Particularly the mystery of what the grandmother is hiding from is just no longer interesting at this point because we already learned the reason in the last chapter.

As for the main chapter, I liked Liza's reaction to her situation and to New Guy (sorry, I keep forgetting his name). I also liked the atmosphere in the coffee shop.

Since you asked for advice on grammar and punctuation issues, here's some nitpicking:

When you want to italicise a word for emphasis but it's within an italicised passage, you don't put it in bold, you simply put it as normal text. That way it will stick out from the italicised passage in the same way an italicised word sticks out in a normal passage. Thus the sentence on page 82 should be like this:

Did I really just think about his delicious mouth?

Another thing is the way you handle thoughts. Apart from the italics and lack of quotation marks, thoughts should be handled just like speech. So if you have a dialogue-tag (or in this case thought-tag), it is separated from the preceding sentence of thought by a comma (if the sentence usually would end in a full stop), question mark or exclamation mark. The thought tag then starts with a lower case letter (unless the first word is a word that's already capitalised on its own). Thus the paragraph following the sentence mentioned above should read as follows (changes highlighted in bold):

She stared at the slushy road moving past beneath the car. Get a grip, she thought sternly to herself. If his behavior is any example of his personality then he has probably kissed every female at the Lodge by now! Stupid jerk! she branded him uncharitably. Don’t think about someone like that. He isn’t worth the brainpower.

The chapter was a bit slow in some parts, especially the scene with Liza and Row seemed a bit superfluous, but for the most part things flowed along nicely, making this a very solid chapter.

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I agree with Syme on the timing of Alex's powers. Glad to see this development, but you're past the secret now.

I liked this chapter more than others, as you got some things done here. It still felt a little long, though. I was sort of expecting Alex to use his powers since you started the chapter with it. I'm still waiting for something to happen that forces one of the siblings into revealing themselves!

I also liked seeing the "nice" side of New Guy (we really need to stop calling him that...) in comparison with the last chapter. Interested to see where that goes.

Overall, it's a solid chapter, and we see more hints of future tech. It's sort of a buildup chapter, and I can sense some things coming. It's good to have these, but I wouldn't want to see too many of these in a row. I'm hoping to see some more explanation soon of what the secret powers are for, or why they are so secret.

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thanks for the feedback on this one.

I should probably put it out there that I have completely redone chapter two (the infodump chapter) and that it is now gone. That should flow better with the Alex Interlude. It also hopefully will make the snippets of backstory and hints of abilities not redundant anymore.

The interludes are going to be a regular feature of the chapters but main POV is going to stay with Elizabeth during Part 1 of this series.

Thank you Syme for some of the grammer/punctuation corrections. I shall keep them in mind when i start editing. As for the Elizabeth/Rowana interaction - I am trying to further develop a little bit of their relationship so the reader can get start to get a good handle for their dynamic.

Mandamon- please don't expect some sudden "talent" battles or anything. The whole reason that Elizabeth and her family have been able to stay in one place so long is that they have gotten really good at hiding their abilities. It's going to take some careful maneuvering for them to just "slip up" without it being an obvious plot ploy. While I want interest in their talents what I am really striving for is to create a sense of mystery/suspense around keeping them hidden.

Suggestions on how I might do that more efficiently?

I am trying to pick up the pacing a little bit but as I said before - It's YA with some scifi elements and Part 1 is mostly character-driven. This isn't going to be a short story. I've only got about 10 chapters written so far (about half of part one) and I'm already at 58k.

Thanks for all the feedback! I really do appreciate it and take it in to consideration!

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Mandamon- please don't expect some sudden "talent" battles or anything. The whole reason that Elizabeth and her family have been able to stay in one place so long is that they have gotten really good at hiding their abilities. It's going to take some careful maneuvering for them to just "slip up" without it being an obvious plot ploy. While I want interest in their talents what I am really striving for is to create a sense of mystery/suspense around keeping them hidden.

Suggestions on how I might do that more efficiently?

Hmm...so this might be one of the underlying issues I've been sensing with this story. I don't expect any sort of battles, as I know that's not what this story is about. It's a character driven Sci-Fi/Romance, from what I can tell. That said, you've laid the foundation for the interesting perks of your characters to be some hidden abilities. Now if you write the story as "And they kept their powers hidden and never used them and there was a big mystery about them," you've just lost my interest. They're there for a reason, and I assume it will be forced out whether the characters want it to or not. That's where the conflict comes from. Of course they're good at keeping their talents hidden. But despite their best efforts, the combination of several unconnected and small events will force them in the open. At least I assume that's what's going to happen, otherwise you've just chopped off about half the opportunity for your story.

Again, I'm not the intended readership, but I think even a teenage girl (who's probably read Twilight, Ulgies/Pretties, Leviathon, and other similar stories), will start to get annoyed if you don't have the hidden secret slip out to someone, whether it's Bleys, or New Guy, or whomever. Then we get the conflict of the villain (sorry--forget his name) who we've been warned is looking for them.

Okay...rambled on longer than I thought, but I think that was what has been bothering me about the pace/setting of the story.

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ok i think i see where you are coming from. And no, my intention is not for them to have abilities that they never use.

I think i'm approaching this story from more of a 3-act play" aspect. the first "act" - this story, while having a minor story arc of it's own is part of a much larger arc. This book is more setting up plot and developing characters and will retain a small town conflicts story feel. We won't really even see the main "villian-Cain" until the second book. The next book will take a much broader scale with larger concerns. While the Resolution book will be on a global scale as far as conflict is concerned.

So while things ARE going to happen in this book, the conflict is going to be on a much smaller scale as I get ready for the real conflict to come in the next couple books.

If you wanna use Twilight as an example of scale (although my story itself is absolutely nothing resembling Twilight-hopefully) The first book, Twilight spends most of the book with not much happening outside of spurts of action. Instead we get to know they world through Bella's eyes as she spends a good portion of the book finding out and coming to terms with the paranormal world she didn't know existed in the shape of Edward.

It isn't really until the last part of New Moon and getting into Ecplise that the conflict starts becoming grander in scale.

As far as scale is concerned, that's what I'm hoping to do with this story. That being said- I have been taking in to consideration the comments I've been getting here and have started shifting some things around and editing in/out content to help my pacing.

I hope this doesn't scare you off! The feedback has been great!

thanks :)

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So while things ARE going to happen in this book, the conflict is going to be on a much smaller scale as I get ready for the real conflict to come in the next couple books.

If you haven't, go listen to Writing Excuses 5.13, Writing the Second Book. This one really helped me out when I was getting serious into writing.

Looks like you have a good plan for the books. I would only caution that you don't leave too much for the second and third book. This one has to get published first, after all!

Sorry for the Twilight comparisons--that's just the easiest teen girl book to pick on. Not saying yours is similar at all!

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Thanks for the suggestions. I will definitely listen to it. I have just started season 1 of WE and am keeping up with the current season. I just haven't made Otto season 5 yet. As far as the twilight thing. I wasn't offended or anything. Considering how wildly successful those books have been it would almost be an honor to be compared with them. I just don't want my story to be a mere reflection or copy of something someone else has created. Lol and there are definitely no vampires or werewolves in my story :)

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