Shrike76

Typos and specific things not mentioned above: P4 - When Kimerak reveals itself as a dragon, I'd have liked a bit of details as to its size. "Dragon" brings to mind a massive beast, but Naiyu, a small child, doesn't balk at it, so it made me think maybe it was a rather small creature. P5 - Same as above, when Kimerak spews flames from her mouth. How big is this gout of flames? P5 - Near the bottom with the paragraph starting "Naiyu hesitated." you use the word "seem" four times in two rather short paragraphs. Maybe try to trim some. P6 - "There a various reasons;" - There are P6 - "I need an answer, child, will you help me..." - Comma splice, should read "an answer, child. Will you..." There are a few paragraphs where you hit us with several lines of dialogue, interspersed with described action or thoughts, but the actions and thoughts don't belong to the character who is speaking. I personally dislike it, and I think it's generally better to avoid it since is can lead to misattribution of the dialogue, but sometimes it can be defended as a matter of style if you're really clean with it. YMMV with other readers. - Examples: - P1, Paragraph starting with: "I don't need to be invisible to fool..." - P3, Paragraph starting with: "No! I... I do not need any help." - P5, Paragraph starting with: Kimerak smiled, baring her sparkling white fangs. - A mixed one. On P6, Paragraph starting with "Patience child. Do not interrupt." - The following line with Kimerak licking her lips and Naiyu seeing it is fine. But the part later where Naiyu nods feels to me like it should start its own paragraph. And in spite of those notes I feel the need to say that your writing is very clean and easy to read. I enjoyed reading this submission very much. I like the character of Naiyu. I think she comes across as being a child, and being curious and in some ways naive, but not as being stupid. You handled this quite well here. Inah we don't see much but it appears to be a playful, mischievous spirit. Kimerak seems to be more of a trickster archetype, but I'd need to see what the result is of the encounter (what consequences come about from the blood, the witch, and the tearful woman) before I know anything about that spirit. At this point she could be pure evil or willing to make sacrifices to further some greater good. For your questions: 1) I don't think I received the prologue, so I can't compare this scene with that one. If you're hopping back and forth between scenes, you could add markers such as including the date and year, or being blunt and sayng "The present day" or "Twelve years ago" or whatever. Personally, I think if you're as good at conveying Naiyu's age in other scenes as you are doing it here, it should be fine for most readers if you don't put anything at all, and just trust your readers to realize that "Ah, this must be from when Naiyu was a child". This approach probably works best if you have only one POV character and we consistently see a shift every time we change to a new chapter. 2) Again, I can't compare, but I did enjoy the tone of this scene and thought it fit the character's age very well. 3) See notes above 4) Again, above. Naiyu is very well represented, and it's too early for the other two. 5) Most of your promises are broadly telegraphed: the crying woman, the blood of Kimerak and the witch Gorgo. The other question would be what happened to Inah that she never returned? It's not quite a promise, but the thing I'm most curious about going forward, since Naiyu interacted with two spirits here, is whether spirits (and communicating with them) are a commonplace occurrence or if Naiyu is exceptional, and if she's exceptional what is it that makes her so.

I'm late to the party, being WAY behind on submissions, so I'm finding that a lot of the thoughts I had on the prologue have been extensively covered above, but I'll note a few briefly anyways. Some things were both jarring, and at the same time intriguing because they raised questions: - The attacking fallen angels being referred to as farmers and craftsmen. I hadn't expected that there would be a need for this sort of trade. All of it makes this city of angels seem like it works very much like a city on Earth which isn't what I would have expected. I'm curious to know what the social structure is like in this version you're portraying, as in what role different angels play and what jobs they have, rather than just being bland angels. So, jarring at first, but as I think about it I kind of want to know more, and I'm thinking a little more of that information up front could be useful. - With regards to their roles, I had some issues with their personalities as well. I wasn't expecting strong personalities, but many of them have them, and they act just like people, which makes me wonder what it is that makes them angels, besides the magic and the physical differences. I wonder what their hierarchy is like and who's allowed to talk back to who (the way Hellas is kind of rude to Michael, for instance). - I don't know if you were aiming for 3rd person omniscient, but the change of POV between Hellas and lucifer threw me out of the story a little. - The interaction between Lucifer and Hellas felt off to me. Hellas seems to know a lot he isn't supposed to, as far as Lucifer is concerned, and it feels a little too convenient. And I found Lucifer's surprised reaction a little excessive. Overall I did find it enjoyable, and well-written. I will read on.

I think at some point the ham became bacon and I got lost in my own draft. I'll have to re-read the pipe section so see, it might have been missing a beat. I don't think you're dense. There are a lot of things I glossed over for various reasons, mostly for pacing and occasionally where I attempted to give it a dreamy quality. It's important for me to know if it goes over the head of some people, and it's inevitable that I'll get things wrong or aim for subtlety and go too far. Thanks for your feedback

I very much enjoyed this, although it was obviously all set-up for the second act. The characters are interesting, and so is the world. You've built the premise well enough and I like the players involved. You definitely have me interested enough that I want to see this story through. P2 - "His voice and the richness and strength" - His voice had the... P5 - "There were many stone fallen" - stones P5 - "and neither can I?" - I don't see why this sentence would take a ? as it stands P6 - ".. a deaf man hear? ... I’ll not have him hear.” - here, both times. P7 - "with Gerri to back me" - without? P8 - "one you know what I am hunting" - once P10 - "She.? " - Double punctuation here. P10 - "Emer MacSvith is a warrior, what swings between her legs, but it’s not her blade I want" - I don't understand this sentence at all, particularly the middle. P11 - "She was as fair as Connor remembered" - This feels misattributed to Connor's mother rather than Emer, since she's the last "she" we see. P12 - "Will here be blood?" - there General stuff: - I think the long conversation on pages 2-3 could use some beats to break it up. At least one of the two is a bard, and the other is cleverer than he lets on, I'd like to see here him taking his measure of the other man through things both said and left unsaid. - Connor's mother is bedridden. Is he abandoning her to die while he's on his quest or is there someone to look after her? - I'm less sold on the interactions between Connor and Donn than anything else. Donn may be haughty but he needs Connor and he knows it, so I wonder why they seem to be constantly butting heads here over what appear to be trivial matters of pride. Especially since Donn doesn't win a single verbal battle of any size (starting at noon for the tracking, allowing the deaf Gerri to attend, mentioning the stolen horn, having a woman on the team, starting tracking the following day). It all makes Bonn seem almost socially incompetent, though that's obviously not the case if he's a bard.

Robinski: Thanks for the comments! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'll definitely keep your line-specific notes in mind for the next draft. The italics vs. scene break is still what I feel is the clumsiest part of this story. Scene breaks give the impression that the scene has changed (even without separators), but not so much that the context has changed (dream vs. reality). I find them jarring here in a way that the italics weren't, and in a way I was hoping to avoid. Ideally I'd have put the dreams in italics and the real world in normal font, but then 90% or my story would have been italicized. I definitely am not sold on the different verb tenses between scenes. I'll need to think on it more, and hopefully settle on something I like. Yes, the main character is an adult in the last scene. I don't know what age he is exactly but in my mind it was mid-to-late thirties or so. And I don't think I deliberately left out the names, but I never felt they were necessary or that the story would fail without them, aside from Dianna. I had toyed with adding another scene at the end, with the main character as an old man, but it felt like denouement I didn't need in a story this short, especially as I felt the loop had closed fairly cleanly ("In late, out early").

Nice! but I've got nothing in mind to follow with. Does someone else have one ready to go?

Hook?

I was already more excited for this movie than I am for Star Wars, and this trailer sealed it. CAN. NOT. WAIT!

You're biased There are no evil plant-under-the-hat aliens in this one

For your first point, The first sequence isn't identified at all as a dream, and I kind of wanted the second one to be a transition where we find out concretely that it's a dream, and by the last one the dream would be expected before it even starts as by then the story format would be firmly established. You're right that I was a bit blunt about it, but I was worried that if I'd left it subtle it might be missed completely, so I decided to hang a lantern on it, as it were. I'll see if I can find a better way to communicate it. For your second point, I mentioned that he hasn't seen Dianna in 15 years so what's meant to be implied is that his son is by someone else, but it might not be obvious enough. I'd also considered putting in another scene where we see the main character as an adult, but I thought it would water down the meat of the story, and cause it to feel like it was dragging on. When I was outlining it I felt that three dream sequences was about right, less is more and all that jazz. Thank you for your time and comments. Food for thought as always

You are correct, it's mostly chronological with and the "present" is the final scene, along with all the non-dream descriptive scenes before it. The structure is where I got hung up the most on this one. In my first draft, the "real" scenes were italicized, and the dreams weren't, but then I didn't want the entire last, longest scene to be italicized. This attempt separates the scenes with asterisks and uses a different verb tense, but I'm not keen on that either as I think it just makes it even more confusing. I'm not really sure what the fix for that is, although I'd toyed with taking those little "real" scenes out completely, aside from the last one. not sure that's effective either. Thanks for your feedback! I think I need my mental hamster to run around on his wheel for a bit longer on this one before I try another draft.

I mentioned it last time, but the banter between Renfield, Stephanie, Bannister, Rewer, and Evelyn strikes me as a bit excessive. What's bothering me more now is that since all we seem to get are sarcastic quips they all sort of come across as having exactly the same personality. I wasn't fond of Irving's scene. We know the hunter's name now, and he licks his lips a lot (possibly too much), but it still doesn't tell me a whole lot about why Irving is so worried about what this guy will do when he finds Stephanie. As a result, I'm not particularly worried either about what this guy will do when he finds Stephanie. The tension of the chase was cool, especially the confrontation between Stephanie and the other Westenra agents (or not Westenra, I guess we'll find out). I'm not entirely convinced that Stephanie would kill a Westenra agent, or even a normal human, without having it be a last resort because it's not something I remember having seen her do, but I guess we'll see how she spins or rationalizes it. I think I would have liked more description of the tunnels to understand what was going on. I get that it's dark, but dark tunnels still have sounds, smells, and textures. I am curious to see how the rest of this combat plays out, and a little bit to see what happens when Kyle Mason comes onto the scene.

A short story. Let me know what does or doesn't work for you, if the characters and the story are believable, and if the overall shape of the story is a problem or not.

Well, it doesn't sound like Super Mario Bros, Tetris, or Duck Hunt, so I think I'm out of this round

A game is the medium in question?

Doesn't quite fit but, Amazing Spider-Man?

It has been very quiet lately, I'm wondering if everyone is drowning in NaNoWriMo? I'd like to submit next week, if only so rdpulfer doesn't feel too lonely.

Book? Movie?

At least he knows we came to the same conclusions independently

In the first chapter there's no way the log lights so easily. Any decent-sized log can't properly be lit with a lighter, certainly not in so short a time, and anything small enough to actually catch fire quickly would be a thin dry branch which wouldn't be particularly useful as a weapon. This scene just doesn't work as it is. You'll need to find another way to achieve what Stephanie's doing (Maybe she can light the dress on fire instead or something). The best part of this scene is that Renfield is faced with the first girl he fed Dracula, someone he's attracted to. Play that up more, but with less of the banter because it really takes away from what should be a very tense scene. I'd been wondering when Bannister and Evelyn would show up. I wonder why they waited so long because I didn't get the impression that they were far behind Stephanie and Renfield. (I'd forgotten that Rewer was there too). Where did the Wisdom of Solomon come from? Renfield went to a statue and it appeared? Was it magic or did he have to reach into something? This scene confuses me. I feel like this scene was too easy. It went from hopeless for Stephanie and friends to hopeless for the Chosen in a second, and I feel like it would have taken a more powerful display of power from Evelyn to turn the tide. Also, if the Chosen were so willing to let the others take the scroll because their "boss" (that seems like a cheap word for Sophie to be using) doesn't need it, then why the hell were they guarding it so heavily in the first place? The last chapter is interesting, but again I wish there wasn't as much playful banter. A group of people who've been alive for centuries in some cases are deciding whether or not to destroy a priceless artifact, and the best they seem to be able to do is trade jibes (Really? Bannister's going to kick a mummy lord in the nuts if he doesn't give him what he wants?). It's all very anti-climactic, and I think you can do better here. I like that Renfield's relationship with Stephanie is changing here (She's fixing his neck up, he lets go some of his isolation), but it comes on the heels of his guilt over Sophie and almost wishing she'd killed him. You have a good opportunity here to go full creepy (Renfield is clinging to Stephanie on the heels of a relationship, and a woman, he helped destroy, in order to somehow do it again) or something closer to redemption (Renfield wants back something of what he lost and he sees it in Stephanie). As it is, aside from his not being alone, there's not much here and I think it's a wasted opportunity. Some good chapters here, but they could be great with the right focus in revision.

Discovery writing it the way you did explains what I read pretty well. From what I've read so far, I think the information is unnecessary, but you can keep it in if it becomes useful information later in the story, or in another daft. The information on how they escaped was necessary because otherwise we'd have no idea how they managed it, but it felt a little long. What would have been better, in my opinion, would have been to show the scene happening. Although you're writing in Kang's point of view and he was unconscious at the time so maybe that's not feasible. Unless you want to add another POV to the story.

Kang's state of mind at the beginning was confusing and hard to read, and it didn't work for me as a way of communicating his confusion. I liked the twist, but I think there was too much exposition as people talked their way through what had already happened and what the motivations of the warlocks was. It felt like they were focused on the wrong thing. They were running for their lives, but talking ancient and family history rather than plausible ways to avoid death or capture. I'm also unclear on what sort of village this is, but I don't know how much safety they would have found there. Does this place have walls or are they bringing warlocks, satyrs, and neetuts down around the heads of a few dozen unarmed farmers?

The Stephanie chapter was good for the most part, but it seems like we’ve had a lot of chapters lately where the only thing that happens is the main characters happen to be present while information is presented. Some of that information is interesting, but it doesn’t make for very compelling reading. I find myself wanting to skim to where the information is presented because the lead-up to it doesn’t interest me much. The Irving chapter was weaker than the first in this submission, and typically, he comes up with a great idea for something to do with Jason and Stephanie and we don’t get to know what it is. The mystery here is finding out what exactly Irving has planned rather than knowing what his plan is and seeing if it succeeds, and as a consequence I’m not terribly invested because it’s pretty obvious we’ll find out what it is in a later chapter. I am a little bit curious what it is, because given Jason's state, and the lack of Irving's hired goons ability to track down Stephanie already, I'm not sure what possible use Jason will be at this point, so I don't see at all what Irving sees. The last Stephanie chapter was okay, though the banter with Renfield felt overdone, and the action at the end, with her being knocked down by the Chosen, wasn’t very clear at all. I thought her approaching the dragon had released some sort of energy that knocked her flat. I'm also not sure what drew her to the park. Were these dragons mentioned earlier in the book because I don't remember them, so it kind of came out of nowhere. I’m curious to see what happens next, particularly in the park with the Chosen, but I’m not especially worried for anyone’s safety

This. I have a 2nd Gen Nexus 7 which I love for just about everything because of its portability (fits nicely into my pants pocket) and resolution (reading, surfing, email, games), but when I'm reading comics I sometimes find myself wishing I had just a bit more screen real estate. If you care less about portability then a bigger tablet is nice. If you're going to watch movies you'll want to consider the aspect ratios as well. I don't know how the HTC Nexus 9 holds up against the Asus Nexus 7 hardware-wise, but I haven't seen a huge number of complaints.

I see the same thing on my end. No attachment.