molah

I imagined her leaning with her back against the inn. That's why Basically, I imagined her hitting the wall behind her back.

Hello Mark, Sorry for the delay, I'm struggling to keep up with writing, critiquing and my everyday's life. Here's my feedback without having read the comments of the others: I thought these chapters read nicely. The reading flow was mostly smooth. I really liked the image you painted of the Equos - especially the red splinters in their eyes. Here are some thoughts and some things I thought were a bit off: - Aldo is just so incredible unlikable.. I think that if this was a sample on Amazon Kindle, I would not buy the book. If you have an unlikable main character, you need something else that strongly draws the audience to your book. I haven't felt that yet - I thought it weird that Julia was leaning against the Inn and broke the skin on her knuckles when slamming her fist against the building. At that angle, I would have expected her to hit the wall with the side/lower part of her fist, not the knuckles - I felt it was slightly odd that the Equos were crammed into a small room int he Inn, without being disturbed by anyone - I just couldn't imagine how Ranus could draw his huge broadsword in a small room - especially without getting stuck and/or hurting his companions - The image of Aldo sticking his finger to Ranus' chin was odd to me. I would have expected Ranus to slap the hand away, or to beat Aldo for this insolence - Mya's remark about the "tantrum" that Julia threw didn't sound to me like something she would say / complain about, for several reasons: They know Julia only lost because Aldo cheated, so her anger is understandable and Mya and Ranus aren't examples of calmness either... Cheers, Helge

Thanks for your feedback. Glad you liked it

Thanks everyone for your feedback. Asmademon, Mandamon: I see your points. This is very helpful, thank you! Mandamon: Elyse has appeared two times before, when opening the fan: When James picks up the fan the first time and marvels at it and the second time when his parents were arguing and his mother looked at the painting. (For that she had to open the fan as well) I'm was surprised when you said that it surprised you I will look into that. About the revelation regarding his mother: I wanted to put in some foreshadowing but I forgot when I submitted the first part.. :/ Tal Spektor: Which questions still need answering? I think Elyse would be pronounced similar to Alice.

Hello everyone, Here is the 2nd part, which concludes my short story “Elyse”. A quick reminder of what happened in the first part: Elyse is a new maid in the household of James’ parents. James is enchanted by her eyes and they seem to hit it off from the very beginning. After a weekend trip with James’ father, Elyse started to act weird. One moment she’s warm and amiable and the other she’s cold and distant. James is confused by her behavior and the first part concluded when his mother anounced that Elyse is suffering from a memory loss. I hope you enjoy my story.

Hello Ash, Let me start off with the things I liked. As usual, I try to focus on the bigger things - not on details like grammar/wording etc. Things I liked: + I got a good feeling of the setting and the surrounding + Also of the action + It was smooth to read for most parts (a bit convoluted in the beginning) Things that did not work for me: - The story is based on very strong stereotypes: Swordsman = only muscle, no brain; Mage = no muscle, only brain. Nobody is only one thing. That made Laven look like a caricature to me - There were no revelations. I never felt any tension when reading this and did not get emotionally involved. I never got the feeling that anything was at stake, really - It feels like a slice out of a bigger piece of work to me. For a short story, in my opinion, there is too little action/revelation/tension - Laven drawing the sword stroke me as odd. From what I know, domestic violence often involves passionate/uncontrolled emotions or some kind of power-play. To see him calm his rage and then plan to kill her felt weird to me - I guess usually people in such relationships take the abuse for various reasons, like maintaining face in the public, not believing that the other means ill, saving the children etc. To me it seems like Gianna is already past this state, having recognized that her husband means her harm. That means that there's no real internal struggle - no inner fight for freedom - If she knows that he'll kill her, why is she running alone in the woods, instead of having gone somewhere populated? I thought that was odd... - Pushing away her feelings seemed very easy for her when she started casting her spell. I would have expected more struggle if she was really affected by what's happening to her - "She lovingly caressed the energy" - I didn't expect her capable of such an emotion at this point - "Unexpectedly Laven stepped out from the brush" - I very much expected this, actually. - Laven saying "Here in this place, let us make things again right between us." doesn't match "You and your kind are an evil pox upon the world. The disease must be removed. I shall begin, loving wife, with you." I would have expected him to threaten her again, or maybe to say that he was going to right things in the world (=killing mages), but not to make things right between the two again - Gianna screaming "No, no, no, no, noooooo." threw me off. There was no inner struggle and I never got a feeling of real remorse before, so it didn't seem to fit I can see how this worked for you as a release of emotions, but for me it did not work as a short story. As I mentioned, there was no struggle, not a lot of conflict there. Almost from the get go I expected how this story was going to end. No surprise there. There was no tension, so there was also no emotional reward for the solution. It pretty much came down to: A wants to kill B. B runs away till B finds a good spot. B defends and kills A. The characters felt very flat, because we did not get to know a lot about their past. We don't know anything about their struggles, about what made Daven change etc. We only get a few glimpses into past conversations of Gianna with her father. This is why I feel this piece could fit into a bigger work - where you have more time to elaborate on this and work to the big finale. I think that if you want to turn this into something more than an "emotion vent" you've got a nice starting point - I just think it needs more work. Cheers, Helge

Thanks for the insightful feedback, Lord Juugastu!

You forgot about me

Thanks for reading my story, Ash! I'm actually really happy that you liked the flow and the dialog. One of my big concerns is the dialog feeling stilted / unnatural - I guess mainly because it's the hardest part to write. (But also the most fun part ) I imagine James to be around 16-17 years old, and therefore he doesn't really care much for what's proper and what's not. I didn't expect this to be such a big concern. That's definitely something I will spend some thought on. Now that I got some unbiased feedback, let me voice a couple of my concerns: (apart from the dialog, which I already mentioned) I feel like the opening isn't strong enough, like there is not enough conflict to pull readers in. However, I'm not sure how far that is my paranoia.. Mandamon's comment kind of seems to point into that direction, but the rest did not mention it. What do you think? I have absolutely no idea whether the balance between description and dialog is right. When revising, I made an effort to put more of the description into James' thoughts. The other concerns will have to wait till you read the whole story. Cheers, Helge

Thanks for taking the time to read it, Mandamon! Interesting, I do like anime, but I did not write it with anime in mind. I wonder if something happened there automatically..

Maybe it's early, but I'd like to sign up for next week as well. I'd like to submit the second part of my short story as close to the first part as possible. (There's not going to come anything after that from me for a while anyway...)

Thanks, Tal, I appreciate your detailed feedback! Btw. the numbers were supposed to represent discontinuity in time - when I made a jump forward. Chapters, so to say.

Thanks for your feedback! I'm glad you're engaged and want to know how it continues. I'm not a native speaker, so I appreciate all feedback on spelling and grammar.

Hello everyone, This is the first half of a short story I recently finished. This is my first draft, after having done some revising already. I have some specific concerns, but I’d like to get unbiased feedback. I will probably ask you later about them.

As you give Google "(and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content." when you upload anything, personally, I am never going to upload any creative work of mine to any of their services and I hope this does not become a requirement for participating in this writing group. (You may have heard of the stories where photographers uploaded their work to Google Drive and one day they found their photos used in some advertisement.. Luckily, Google is not in the book-writing-business, but for me it's a matter of principles) http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/25/2973849/google-drive-terms-privacy-data-skydrive-dropbox-icloud

I agree with Robinski. I think it is important to thank people for taking the time to read our stories and for giving feedback. Rather, I meant not to talk back, justifying yourself and explaining things. (For the reasons I mentioned)

Hello Mark, Sorry for taking so long. It's quite hard for me to find time to read & critique lately. I focused on bigger things and I tried not to be prescriptive. Here are my thought before reading the other's comments: Things that worked for me: * The final fight scene * The final part of the chase, when the hunters talked, flowed really nicely * The image of Jorva's blood in the stream was very vivid * The conversation in the inn flowed nicely * In general, I thought the writing to be clean and polished * I'd like to know more about the monter hunting and the conflict between humans and minotaurs Things that did not work for me: * The beginning. A chase is very stereotypical and my thought process was like: "Is Liorel a centaur? Oh, not a centaur after all. Were the hooves from the hunter's horses? Centaurs after all? Oh, I see, minotaurs!" * Similarly, the beginning of chapter 1: Who are we dealing with? I found it very distracting to worry about that. I also wasn't sure whether he was a minotaur or a human.. * You got me invested first in Liorel and her children and then in Diego and then just killed them off. If I hadn't been reading this for critiquing, I would probably have put down the book after Diego's death * The first part of the scene in the inn felt like a huge info dump. I would have preferred if you had worked it into the story in a more engaging way * I don't like the protagonist nor do I feel identified with him. He's a rich, overbearing jerk and I'm not emotionally invested into him. I hoped the girl would beat him silly * A bit nit-picky, but when you suddenly mentioned centimetres and in the next phrase inches again, that really made me stop General comments: * Julia seemed a lot more mature and suggestive in her approach to Aldo than I would expect from someone her age. However, that didn't bother me while reading. I only thought of this when going over the other's reviews * I was surprised the Imp jumped against Diego's shield. I imagined it to be rather small and it would only make sense to jump against a raised shield if you can push your opponent over - which it achieved in the end. Still, the line made me stop After reading the other's comments: * I wasn't perturbed by the magic - but Aldo felt like a cheater I assumed you would give us more details on that later on * I agree that Julia was riled rather easily, especially after appearing so persistent in the inn * In my case, Diego's death did not set me up to expect sudden deaths of main characters. I started to get invested, but he didn't seem important yet - so I don't expect the same thing to happen to Aldo A personal recommendation: Your first reply in this thread felt very defensive. The "golden rule" of writing groups: Don't respond. Don't try to explain what your intention was. Instead, take the reactions and draw conclusions from them. If you did not get the reaction you wanted, maybe there is something you should revise. If you explain your intention you won't get the chance to see if you get the reaction you were looking for next time, because everyone already knows what you wanted to achieve. Of course, you need to find a balance between taking every criticism to heart and knowing what to stick with. I strongly recommend you check out the Writing Excuses podcasts about Writing Groups Looking forward to reading more and see how this develops. Cheers, Helge

Okay. I meant Monday the 6th, btw.

Hello Ash, Let me start with the things that worked for me: The conversation seemed really natural to me Especially in the second half, the reading flowed nicely I was able to imagine easily what was going on I really liked your easy-going / lighthearted style of telling the story Now to what did not work for me. I'm trying to concentrate on the mayor things: I did not really connect with the story. I did not feel identified by any of the characters and I was not invested in them. There was no twist or surprise revelation in the story, so it was pretty clear what was going to happen when the story got to the food stealing. To be honest, I was a bit bored. To me, it felt like you wrote the story in one go. Especially in the first half, overly long sentences and (for me; not a native speaker) unnecessarily complex words made me "stumble" a lot. The reading did not really "flow". It seemed to me that you needed warming up and in the second half the flow was a lot better - even though the sentences were still quite long. Cheers, Helge

I completed writing my short story and just finished the first editing pass. I would like to submit next Monday. I'm currently at 8600 words, which is probably a bit long for our way of working. How long should each chunk be if I split it up?

I'm still not ready. I'm struggling to find time to write and I partly reworked my short story because it did not work the way it was before. I hope to have something for next week.

First of all, I just joined the day before yesterday, so I did not get to read your first submission. Overall, I really enjoyed the read and I am thrilled to know what happens next. I liked the writing style and the interesting setting. I also liked the Nirvana joke a lot. I also thought that you depicted the chat quite well. I only thought that people were writing too well. In my experience, it's rather rare to find people in chats who write more than one sentence and also care about punctuation. There not really many things that stuck me as odd. However, there were a few (minor) things that broke the reading flow and the immersion a bit for me - and I'm being a bit nit-picky here: * I thought that Praxedes' reaction after closing the notebook was too comic-book like. (When she was slapping the couch) It felt too forced and I rather felt reminded of Donald Duck comics * I thought it was weird that Adah should start gossiping about Jonah and then immediately stop. It didn't feel natural to me for her to stop before really having said anything * When Anna said "I don't live in the storming dorms – and what the storm is a dorm-mother? You must have me mixed up with someone else – I'm sure I just crashed here to sleep off the booze. I'm really, really sorry, I...”" I thought her reaction was very sudden and very vehement. (She was very sleepy/hungover just a heartbeat ago) Maybe it's her nature to be so aggressive, but it made me dislike her a bit * I thought it was odd that Praxedes would say "I assure you that if you came here to party, you're at the wrong school." From what I read before, I didn't expect her to be the type that cared about people partying. I'd rather have expected her to berate Anna for her foul mood/language Btw.: I read the story the first time on my mobile this morning and I didn't see the footnotes. I got the context anyway. When I reread it just now I read them for the first time. I think they are not a bad idea, but, personally, I like them better if they're in an indirect "encyclopaedia style". E.g. this sounded rather like a note to yourself, because of the first person perspective: "Selk'nam in my timeline were not given surnames"

Hello everyone, Silk just added me to the email list, so I guess it's my turn to present myself. My name is Helge and I spend my working hours digging in the guts of Windows, telling customers why their machines crashed. I studied computer science, so - as others have stated before - I may be a bit pedantic at times. I hope you'll forgive me. I appear to have a more or less fixed set of hobbies (writing, drawing, computer games and recently photography), which I cycle through. Usually, I'm totally hot for one of them and have no interest for the others, until I'm not any more. Then it's the turn of the next hobby. So really, I joined Reading Excuses for two main reasons: To help me stay focused and to improve my writing. Of course, it is also great to get to know fellow (hobby) writers who I can share my passion with. I'm German, but I live in Madrid, Spain, so it's not so easy to find people writing in English around here. I first got in contact with writing in primary school. We used to get small comic strips, of 4 vignettes or so, and we had to invent a story that fit the pictures. I loved it. Later, when I was around 17, writing became more of a way to escape the real world. Having grown up reading lots of fantasy and playing computer games, I found the real world quite boring. I used to daydream a lot and eventually decided to create my own world, full of exciting adventures. I wrote a couple of what I'd call "story fragments" during that time, but also started plotting a full novel. I never got to write it, though. I did a lot of world building and I knew how I wanted the story to start and to end, but I did not know how to fill the middle. I guess I was lacking the tools. (And I guess this is the typical writing project that everyone has, that you will never finish until you're better at writing ) During university and in the years after, writing was not a priority. When I came to Madrid, I first had to learn Spanish and that plus working kept my neurons pretty busy. With writing, I always felt like I have a certain amount of "creative energy" and when I get home after a though day of work I feel like I already burnt through my "fuel" and don't feel very inspired. And I never really got into the habit of writing regularly. I wish to change that now. Well, sorry for the wall of text. Let me wrap up quickly with my favourite writers/books. It's a tough call, because I always seem to favour writers whose books I have read recently... I have only read a couple of books so far, but I really like Brandon's works. I only got to know about him when Patrick Rothfuss said that he was jealous at Brandon's throughput. I really loved the "Mistborn" books (have only gotten to read the first 2 yet) and "Steelheart". "Warbreaker" was also nice. I loved what the Writing Excuses crew did with the "Shadows Beneath", but not so much for the storied but for the insights. I absolutely love Patrick Rothfuss's "The Kingkiller Chronicle"! "A Song of Ice and Fire" by George R R Martin "Harry Potter" (Around the time that the 4th movie was released I got interested in the series and started reading the books. I was pleasantly surprised by how well-written they were) I loved the "Furies of Calderon" by Jim Butcher "Stardust" and "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman Last Christmas I learned about John Green's "Looking for Alaska". It was heartbreaking and got me on a "John Green trip". I read all of his books except "The fault in our stars". The one I liked best was "Paper Towns". That also got me reading "Thirteen Reasons Why" by Jay Asher, which was really emotional and heart-wrenching. "The Magicians" by Lev Grossman "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card Yeah, I have a hard time deciding... Cheers, Helge

Hello everyone, In Episode 9.1 Brandon mentions that the most common path for writers to break into the market is by first publishing shorter works and garnering attention before publishing their first novel. I was wondering whether there was any episode where they talked in more detail about publishing short fiction. (Maybe in one of the Microcastings?) I have listened to the publishing episodes, but they focused on full novels and I imagine that you wouldn't try to contact publishers with just a couple of short stories. Added difficulty: I don't live in the US and I'm not familiar with any regular fiction publications. Thanks in advance for any help / pointers. Cheers, Helge