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02/18/2013 - AubreyWrites - MoonStruck - Chapter 4 - (V)


AubreyWrites

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Hello All,

This is chapter 4 of Moonstruck.

Previously In Moonstruck:

Prologue: Elizabeth and her family escape from the Lunar Colony back to Earth when they are just children. Their parents die in the attempt.

Chapter 1: Introduced to Elizabeth and Family 15 years later as they living in hiding in a small mountain ski town. Bleys and Elizabeth are an item. Elizabeth is a ski instructor.

Chapter 2: Flashback - In the shuttle 4 year old Elizabeth freaks out and Bleys comforts. Present Day -Elizabeth teaches ski lessons and injures herself while meeting a mysterious stranger on the slopes who assaults her and then helps her down the mountain.

Chapter 3: Flashback-Alex's first use of Talent. Present Day -1 week later. Elizabeth goes to town with Alex and runs into New Guy in the coffee shop. He offers to give her a lift to the doctor which she reluctantly accepts.

So looking for all the usual stuff. Character building, world building, structure/plot issues. Apparently I have issues with pacing so if you see anything in particular that sticks out let me know.

Thanks!

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I don't have too much for this chapter. I thought it was probably the best one yet in terms of action, character tension, and pacing. There's again good character interplay between Elizabeth and Rowana in the interlude. There was also some good stuff between Elizabeth, Bleys, and David.

a few notes:

Pg 3 - It's a dark street, and an electric car almost mows them down. Didn't the electric car have lights?

Also wondering how the mysterious men put out the street lights--hoping to learn more about this later.

Comma use: there are some missing where it's not otional. This is just from scanning through. I know there were some others I missed.

-pg 7: '“Pretty isn’t she.”'

-pg 14: '“Yeah, I hurt it last Tuesday. Why is something wrong?”'

-pg 18: 'Elizabeth humphed. “Not according to the rest of town apparently.”'

Pg 18: 'I guess he takes after his father then…'

Didn't understand this. How does she know about David's father? He said both of them had trouble making friends.

last, you don't need elipses between getting out of the car and going into either the doctor's office or the coffee shop. Elipses are usually for long breaks (hours, days, POV), and this sort of scene cut can be handled effectively by a new paragraph.

I'm interested now that you've started to describe David's powers, and Elizabeth's strange healing. You've caught my attention again after some of the slow parts of the last chapters. Hope to learn more next time!

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I like the interaction between Rowana and her siblings in the interlude. As for the whole assault thing, that suffered from the prequel problem: we already know what's going to happen, so there's a lack of danger. Both Liza and Row are still alive today, aren't disfigured in any way and if they had any sort of major mental scars from that encounter we'd have seen them by now. Therefore, we know that nothing seriously bad can happen to them.

Another problem with that scene is that the conflict here is resolved through a lucky coincidence (Bleys and Alex being nearby), which is always problematic.

There was also this particular paragraph in there:

The sound of a body hitting the wall echoes close beside me. Elizabeth slides down, dazed from the force with which the man holding her has thrown her up against it. She is still for a moment and then a hand tentatively slides up to her head and she shakes it slightly as if trying to clear her sight. If possible my heart plummets even further. We’ll never escape if she’s been hurt.

This paragraph was really confusing and I still don't understand the second sentence.

As an aside, I'm very much in favour of keeping the normal font size in the preludes. It get's very hard to read in 10 pt.

I think the interaction between Elizabeth and David is very well done in this chapter. It's also good to see that the pace picks up a bit here and there's more conflict.

One thing that bugged me a bit is the formatting of the dialogue. You should strive to have gestures and other actions during dialogue in the same paragraph as that person's speech. Here's an example from pages 112f.

“Yeah, I hurt it last Tuesday. Why is something wrong?” Doc looked up again at the dread he heard in her voice and hastily assured her she was fine.

“It’s just that, honestly… you shouldn’t really be healing this fast...

Everything starting from "Doc looked" should be moved to the next paragraph.

Another thing is dashes. Consider for instance the following sentence from page 112:

She was too engrossed in watching David- discreetly of course.

If you want to use a regular en dash, it needs to have a space on both sides. Alternatively, you can use a longer em dash, which in standard manuscript format is denoted by two en dashes (--). Em dashes--which to the best of my knowledge are the preferred alternative among most writers--are typically not surrounded by any spaces.

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Thanks for the notes!

Mandamon:

Pg 3 - It's a dark street, and an electric car almost mows them down. Didn't the electric car have lights?

Also wondering how the mysterious men put out the street lights--hoping to learn more about this later.

It's actually twilight. I tried to convey that the sense of deepening darkness was accentuated by the shadows of the buildings. so it's not true dark yet. many people don't flip on their headlights until it gets really dark. maybe i should clarify this though. And I'm afraid you probably won't be learning anything else about the thugs as they aren't central to the story- but may get a passing reference but not much else. Sorry :/

Pg 18: 'I guess he takes after his father then…'

Didn't understand this. How does she know about David's father? He said both of them had trouble making friends.

This is actually a left over remnant from a previous revision that slipped my notice. So yeah...it doesn't make much sense. Thanks for catching it.

As for your other notes- I've already applied them! Thanks!

Syme:

As for the whole assault thing, that suffered from the prequel problem: we already know what's going to happen, so there's a lack of danger. Both Liza and Row are still alive today, aren't disfigured in any way and if they had any sort of major mental scars from that encounter we'd have seen them by now. Therefore, we know that nothing seriously bad can happen to them.

Another problem with that scene is that the conflict here is resolved through a lucky coincidence (Bleys and Alex being nearby), which is always problematic.

The purpose of illustrating this particular piece of back story wasn't necessarily to focus on the danger. Rather it was to illustrate the development of Rowana/Elizabeth dynamic and also to give the reader insight into the development and struggles Elizabeth has in learning to control her burgeoning Talent by seeing it through someone else's eyes. Also this particular sequence does have an effect on Rowana and in the development of her character and her motivations. The reader just hasn't really seen it yet.

Also I don't think it's too terrible a coincidence that Bleys and Alex showed up. After all, Elizabeth and Rowana WERE late in meeting them which would have prompted them to start looking and the girls were already headed to the meeting spot. It makes sense that the boys would be close and could have conceivably heard the struggle and the scream.

This paragraph was really confusing and I still don't understand the second sentence.

I confess I'm not sure why you are confused over this paragraph. Could you be a little more specific?

I'll keep the pt font preference in mind.

As for the other formatting notes. Thanks for the tips. You are absolutely right. I need to fix those. When I next do my big edit of past chapters I will keep that in mind.

Thanks for the feedback!

Edited by AubreyWrites
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I confess I'm not sure why you are confused over this paragraph. Could you be a little more specific?

Upon re-reading the paragraph, I now understand what you're trying to say.

My confusion stemmed primarily from the "it" in the second sentence. The way it's written, "it" should refer to "the force", which makes no sense. I now realize that it refers to "the wall", but that's honestly just guess work based on context and not founded in grammar. In the first sentence there are three things to which "it" might refer ("the sound", "a body" and "the wall").

Also "a hand" is confusing because it doesn't tell us if it's her own hand or her attacker's and "shakes it" is also a bit ambiguous because "to shake" is a verb that's commonly applied to both hands and heads.

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