Shrike76

I second the recommendation for anything Guy Gavriel Kay. Sailing to Sarantium (the combined name of a two-book series) will always be a personal favourite.

That's a tough one to answer, and literal volumes have been written on the subject. It's definitely a hard one to answer concisely. Theoretically, you need a beginning, a middle, an end, and a character who takes the story from one end to the other, with the character being the most important in my opinion. Character encounters problem or mystery to be solved, character goes about attempting to overcome said challenge while accumulating needed tools and information, character eventually overcomes (or doesn't), possibly after several failed attempts. My best advice is to try it out, because maybe you do know how and you just aren't aware that you know. Try to write the idea you have into a story, and when you're done look it over to see if it's got the right shape. Get other people's opinion on what you've done, and see if they like it. Check out the Reading Excuses forum under Related Works for a group of us that go over each other's writing on a weekly basis, if you're interested in getting feedback. It's a lot easier to look at a finished story and tell someone where they can improve, than it is to tell someone all the things that go into a good story.

I think every writer has doubts about what they're writing, but it's rare that I've heard someone complain that they're paranoid about so specific a style choice as pacing. Personally, pacing is usually something I don't worry about while writing a first draft, and think more about in the editing phase after I've let the work sit idle for a little bit and have a chance to read it through, but I don't think "ignore that feeling" is the kind of advice you're looking for. It's probably not even the kind of advice you could heed if you wanted to. You can't help what you feel. If what you need is experience, then keep writing. I would say try to write through the bad times, and try to see if there are specifics things that you can establish as a writing-time routine to relax you so you worry about it less (being in the right location, having the right person or pet around, having the right drink next to you, having the right background music, having the right candle or incense burning because there's a scent that soothes you). If you're missing confidence, have you shown your writing to others? If not, would you consider it? Having positive feedback can do wonderful things for your writerly self-esteem. Also, if your pacing is off, having experienced writing advice can help you avoid pacing errors in the first place and maybe give you more confidence in your abilities. You'd be very welcome at the Reading Excuses forum here, if you want to get some feedback on what you've created so far. We don't bite. My opinion, having not read any of your writing, is that you're probably better than you think you are. If you're conscious about a thing like pacing (or spelling, or sentence structure, etc.) then your pacing is probably better than that of people who don't think about it at all.

A very good one, if I do say so myself.

I had no idea those guys were still active! I've been listening to their first few albums in the car lately. At work today, I need to code. Shotgun Messiah's Violent New Breed is what I'm using to drown everyone else out.

I think that sometimes it does what you think it does. It's certainly something I hear often when I listen to professional storytellers tell a tale, and I think that verbally it's something that works well. My opinion is that it's less effective in text because it sometimes muddies the meanings and the added drama feels forced (which works in oral storytelling because you WANT that kind of drama), but I also realize that it's not technically a grammar error and can be defended as a style choice. Grammar I can complain about, but i don't feel it's my place to tell you your writing voice is wrong. Will it hinder you? Absolutely, because any noticeable style will have its detractors. Can you find an editor and an audience who loves it? Same answer as first, I think, because any noticeable style will have its proponents as well (read a few paragraphs on Amazon of any Chuck Wendig novel in 3rd person present, like Aftermath or Zeroes, and then read some reviews to see what I mean. People either like it or hate it.). If you decide it's something you want to do less of in your writing, I'm absolutely willing to help point out the instances. This is very much the sort of thing that will drive you up the wall, and every reader will be different with regards to what language they accept or stop cold at.

I enjoyed this quite a bit, though I feel there's room for improvement. The writing threw me off in a lot of places where I'm not sure if it needs to be tightened up or if what's happening is that I'm running headlong into your natural writing style. I'm not going to list every example, but it happens very frequently. Some examples from the first page: 1) "People lined the streets and cheered, held children on their shoulders to wave bright flags and shout insults at the defeated Theracian soldiers". - My natural instinct there would be to replace held with holding to make the entire second half of the sentence a modifier of the noun People. An alternative would be to add an "and" in front of "held" after the comma. Both those suggestions would very much change the reading of the sentence, and again I'm not sure that what you wrote was an error because held could just be the next item in a list of things the people are doing, but it reads as awkward to me. 2) "They had struggled, been forced back into the narrow streets, fighting tooth and nail for every yard, they had refused to give in." - Here I feel there's a mistake, and that "They refused to give in" should be its own sentence, because it can't be part of a list like "had struggled" and "[had] been forced back" are, and doesn't modify the third section the way the third section modifies the second. 3) "Luftmatho's soldiers stood proudly in the wagons, straight-backed, hands on their captives' chains" - This is something you do very often, which is to write the sentence, and then modify your subject from behind with additions further along in the sentence, rather than something like "Luftmatho's soldiers stood straight-backed and proud in the wagons, ...". Again, not necessarily an error but it feels off to me. And that's all I'll say for writing style. Specifics (minus many that Molah already pointed out): P5) "The Theracians had pressed the defenders to [the/their] breaking point." P6) "You've no more honour (stature) than a snivelling (caster)." I'm not if this is supposed to indicate foreign or missing words, but I don't really get what's happening. P8) "...man wearing a tall mitre appeared and held out(s) his arms" P8) Here I initially skipped over the prayer to get to the following action, and then forced myself to go back and read it. P9) Kowtow threw me off because I identify it directly as a borrowed Chinese word and it feels out of place in this story. P13) "Burn them all" should be its own sentence. P13) Also, a promise: That it's significant that the king had the bodies burned when he spoke of returning them whence they came. P14) An odd quibble here maybe, but it felt like a relatively serious fantasy until I got to the chapter heading "Flaming Slap Fight". It struck me as comedic, but the chapter itself was not. It feels out of place. P16) "grand-fatherly" shouldn't take a hyphen, I think, unless it's an in-world term. P17) I'm not sure what makes that curse illegal. A different description than illegal, or some mild exposition would help here. P24) "Careless the darkened road's uneven surface" - Missing a word here P25) "They don't want [to?] catch it for being out late." The characterization is generally good. Benam is distinct, as is Ghintor, and Covelle (though he suffers a little from so short an appearance). Ahma leaves me wondering why she's so tough in the Inn and so frightened on the road, and at the end with her mother I found her almost childlike rather than old enough to work a bar at an inn, except that you refer to the two of them as "women" so I expect that they're both adults. The mother is also distinct, as the only person so far in this story with an opinion of the Theracians that differs from the party line. One thing I'll say is that you introduce 3 POVs in a short amount of time, and it required an adjustment each time we changed, such that by Ahma's second appearance I simply assumed it was someone new and then had to go back and start over when I realized it was the barmaid from the inn. One thing you could improve is to let us know sooner whose head we're in, and give us information on how they notice what's otherwise a description in a very remote third-person. ex. In the prologue, let us know right away we're in Benam's head and show us how he's reacting to the sights and the sounds. Benam being the proudest of them all meant very little to me when you mentioned it, but Benam revelling in the cheers of the crowd later tells me a lot about him and helps brings me into the story (and especially when it's the first time we are seeing this character). Covelle I think you handled very well in this regard. I'm assuming that we'll find out what is so distasteful about being a caster (and what exactly a caster is), and you've sort of telegraphed that Ahma will be one (though you could surprise us). I expect we'll learn more about this distant emperor and why he drives his people to conquest, but one thing that's never clarified is if there's been peace since the prologue or if the invasion is an ongoing thing? This doesn't look too much like a kingdom at war at the moment. Also, religion is front and center in this submission. From the language used to the prayer to the presence of a religious official at the ceremony and the crowd turning in unison to the cathedral. I'm hoping that it is important to the story and not just window dressing, because in the prologue you've crafted it into almost a character of its own. Does all that still sound like I enjoyed it? Because I did enjoy it. I'm looking forward to more of this story. Are you planning on submitting more of this here or is this going to be on alpha readers only?

Agreed with Robinski about learning how to finish. I think most of the time writers put something aside because they don't know what happens next (true in my case, at least). That or they realize it's broken and don't want to waste any more time on a flawed work. Forcing yourself through what happens next helps you see what works and what doesn't, and is never a waste of time because you're still building skills. Also agreed about editing, and would recommend editing other people's works besides just your own. Identifying mistakes in other writers' writing helps you avoid making them yourself. We have a Reading Excuses forum here for exactly that if you're interested in seeing what others are doing and/or sharing your own work for feedback.

For when to return to an old project: 1) Never 2) Unless you really want to Or for a more concise version: 1) Write what you're most excited about I have all my old writing files away. When I first wrote them and workshopped them, people would provide me feedback and I would fix a few things and then workshop them again. And again. And again. It's hard to let go of what you think is a really good idea, and I struggled with this for a very long time. The solution for me was to shelve stories and move on to other projects. Even if I workshopped the story, I wouldn't usually do a rewrite immediately unless I'd written it for a something that had an impending submission deadline. I'd leave it for a few months and then reread/rewrite based on notes and with a fresher outlook. It was easier for me to excise portions I wouldn't have been able to when I was very close to the previous draft. Also, I write fairly slowly, so I always have more ideas than I know what to do with. There's always something else for me to work on rather than trying to fix old works. Now that I've got more writing experience, I've started going back through some of those old stories. Most of them are very deeply flawed and I know they're not worth trying to fix because there isn't enough there to work with. But some make me smile, and I think I can turn them around, and I become excited about the prospect of rewriting them. I think it's good practise to let writing cool off for a while before trying an editing pass, and I recommend it, but some people I know cannot work that way so they do what works for them. So, if you're excited about a new project more than you are about digging out an old one, then write the new thing. If you're writing the current thing while wishing you could be fixing the old thing, then fix the old thing (unless somebody's paying you for the current thing). Either way you'll be building the skills you need to be a better writer. For your second question I don't have an answer. If I have a story that's deeply flawed, I'll go back to the outline, fix that, and then start from scratch because that's faster for me. If I get to a specific scene and I know that the one I wrote before (in the previous draft) is perfectly adequate, there's nothing to stop me from pasting it in. Again, every writer is different, you'll need to do what works for you. Try both, maybe, and see which you prefer for future rewrites. For your third question, I think I have to go back to my first answer. If you have a new project you're excited to write, write it. If you know how to fix an old project and you're excited to do that, then do that instead. The skills you improve will serve you equally well for new works and rewrites, so work on what's fun. Everything gets chalked up to the learning process.

I'd love to read it.

An interesting chapter. I like most of the premise but it still leaves me confused in some places. I'm not sure how much they're archaeologists and how much they're their other jobs mentioned. Were they minoring? Why don't they want to be archaeologists and why were they doing it in the first place (as recently as the previous year in-story). These details would help the story out and would do a lot to help us distinguish them as individuals. The characterization is pretty good so far, although with so many 1st-person POVs they do tend to blend together. I'd like to see more of how Jack's justifies his Creationism in his field of work, and why others don't challenge him on it more (the carbon dating was a good start, but how does he do Archaeology this way, how exactly is he weaving his mythology into what he finds?) P7: Too much Archer for my taste. It's enough for me that there's a shirt and that Al remarked on it. He and the professor don't need to go on about it quite so much. P9: Here the banter between them started to get tiresome "You didn't just say 'highfalutin,'". It's okay that they do it but it feels like it's all they do. It's almost like a sitcom. As they uncover stranger and stranger bodies, nobody remarks on it. They go there on the heels of a fantastic discovery, and then it gets weirder and weirder and I don't get why they're all so blasé about the whole thing. "Did you watch the game last night? Yeah, there's a giant here. I need to pee. Oh hey, a tiny adult. I'm totally going to talk to the red-haired girl." They even refer to it as "playing in the dirt" when it's noted that there may be more discoveries to be made at the end. So: Interesting discoveries, and I'm a little bit curious to see where it's all leading, but in the end I'm only going to be as curious as your main characters are to see what's coming next, which is currently not very much.

This was REAAALLLLY long for a submission, but I get why you would want to send them all, as it's mostly the same scene and the aftermath. That being said, realize that you've sent us a total of 12 chapters where lots of things have happened, and 3 of those chapters happened over the course of maybe thirty seconds of a fight. I feel like it's far too long to spend on a single fight scene. Some of the action is very good, and some of it drags on. As a single chapter from just one point of view, with a lot of the excess words cut out it would have a lot more impact. As it is, it was a decent read, but as a single tightened chapter I'm sure it'd be the best thing I've read of yours so far. For starters, everything about the hoodie can go - you refer to it far too often and unless it's a child's hoodie or a lead hoodie or a soaking wet hoodie there's no reason it should do any of the things Renfield sees it do, aside from keep her warm. I think the three combat chapters (made into one) could all be told from Renfield's POV without losing anything. I'd be much more interested in FEELING Renfield react to the blood that in Stephanie watching him react. I'd also much prefer having Renfield know she's doing it on purpose and finding himself powerless to resist it. Anyways, that's my preference, but it's your story. I also dislike that Irving and his buyer are still talking and thinking around what they're actually doing. It's frustrating that we know that Irving knows something and isn't showing it to us as a narrator of his chapter. I did like the interaction between Renfield and Stephanie (aside from what I've mentioned) and I like that the actions feels like it's moving the story forward. I'm curious to know what he's going to do with her now. The action was also generally well-done, but I'd avoid throwing backstory into the middle of it (Renfield's marine days, etc.) because it takes away from the tension. I do like the way the fight is approached analytically, since it shows that they know what they're doing, but you don't need much of that for it to be effective. Would you be able to number the pages next time? I scribbled it in myself, but it'll help both us and you locate what we're reading. CH09: P1: - "when you slit your throat" - his? - Irving has the presence of mind to make sure he's not in a No Parking Zone, but never checks if anyone's close enough to overhear him outright talking about a committed murder. He threatens to slit someone's throat, with a rising voice, even. P2: - Pause what you're doing. Open your whole novel in Word. Edit | Find and Replace | Find What: "Westerna" | Replace With: "Westenra" | Click Replace All - That's several submissions in a row now with the same repeated error. P4: - If "Her safe are our safe houses", why can't he guess where she might have gone? P5: - "with the approaching nice, only a few hours awake" - This sentence needs a lot of love CH10: P6: - Remember after your last submission, when I said that you don't get that close to someone when you have a gun (link here)? This is why. This is exactly why! Except that she's a Hunter. She knows how to fight (we get to see exactly how good she is). She knows better than this. The entire fight starts because she does something incredibly stupid and incompetent, and it really, really irked me. From a random person who found a gun and doesn't know what they're doing, sure. But not from her. P7: - What happens to the gun? How did she lose it and why don't either of these people try to claim it for the advantage? This needs to be addressed. P8: - "nearly eclipsed the room with her long, slender leg." - Either eclipse doesn't mean what you think it means or her leg is HUGE. CH11: P12: - "mandatory tendinitis shots" - I'm sorry but I LOLed here. You want Tetanus. You don't catch tendinitis from a puncture by rusty metal. P13: - By this point I'm again wondering "Where the hell is the damned gun?" CH12: P16: - I don't buy the opening. He would have felt her fall or move away or at least let him go. They were in direct physical contact, and she didn't just disappear. P21: - "the same gibberish-sounded ancient tongue." - It's not gibberish. Renfield knows exactly what it is. P23: - I was already skeptical when he was carrying her on the street (they both obviously look like they've been in a fight), but on a street filled with commuters nobody notices a man dropping a body into the trunk of a car? I don't see how that could happen. If you need him to make a clean getaway, it needs to be a cleaner getaway than this.

I can't think of any off-hand, but my memory is terrible so I don't think that that means anything. And even if nobody has ever done this before, that's not a reason for you to not do it. It's even a good reason for you to try it. The closest I can think of is Tad Willams' Otherland, but it doesn't cut from game to reality mid-scene. You can read the beginning free on Amazon to see what I mean. (As an aside, phenomenal series. I highly recommend it. Also, it just launched as a licensed MMO) Regardless of any of that, I think that the more important question is this: "Does the fake-out serve a purpose in the story?" If the story, long-term, is a contrast between these people's in-game lives and their out of game lives, then the fake-out might have a purpose. If the fake-out exists only as a "Haha, fooled you!" then I'll take a pass on it but again that's just my personal preference. (Returning to the example of Otherland: There the game is ESSENTIAL to the story. The game IS the story) EDIT: Just remembered "Only You Can Save Mankind" by Terry Pratchett. Although, rereading the opening, it seemed clear to me off the bat that I was reading a game in progress, so I'm still not sure it counts as a fake-out.

I try to avoid telling people what to do with their writing, but I don't want you to quit because you got some bad feedback, especially if some of it was mine. 1) Don't quit! 2) I rewrote the same short story 9 times, so I know where you're coming from. I don't know that it's necessarily polishing a turd, but if you don't know what's wrong or what you're trying to fix in rewrites, then I do think that it's wasted effort. You're throwing darts blindfolded and hoping for a bullseye. In my case I got feedback but I wasn't sure how to fix it so I tried something in a rewrite which failed. Then I did it again, and again... If you don't feel this one story is working out and you don't have a fix in mind, put it down and try something else. Maybe you have a good story to tell but your skills aren't up to it yet, and it's okay to admit that and move on to something else for now. Short fiction is great for honing skills, if you have some ideas. 3) If you think you have some idea of what is going wrong with the structure, take a step back. Reduce it to a detailed outline and see if you can get feedback on that (I'm up for it if you want help, you can message me directly if you don't want to submit an outline to the group). Then start back on the novel. It's a lot easier to get advice on fixing the structure in a 500-1,000 word detailed outline than it is in a 50-80,000+ word novel. 4) If you KNOW you have something that needs work (you said grammar), then you owe it to yourself to work on that, but realize that it is work and that it sucks and it can take a very long time. I spent 3 years reading and rereading a grammar reference and it was worse than eating my vegetables, and I still get some of it wrong but I keep working at it. Pick one grammar book up and commit to reading a chapter or two a month so you make fewer of those mistakes, and so that it doesn't take up too much of your time. 5) General Feedback for Improving this particular Novel: A.) Theavis is a boring character. Take some time on a separate paper to describe him to yourself and focus on what makes his personality different or interesting, then make sure he always acts in character (and I don't mean an accent or a limp or an eyepatch, I mean personality). Make sure he's got a stake in the story as well, rather than just being a passenger on a train of events. B.) The story is very much plot-driven rather than character-driven. Sometimes you can get away with this if you're very good, but I'd say most people prefer books where the characters make choices and have to live with them, rather than only ever having the world throw junk at them and watching how well they dodge. C.) What would help with both of the previous points is Theavis having a clear goal. It's okay if those goalposts get moved mid-novel, but he should be working towards something. D.) If the answer to any of these points lies in chapter six or ten or twelve, consider cutting out everything before that point and dropping us into the thick of the interesting action. If that's impossible, consider reducing the front matter to a single chapter, by the end of which we should have an idea what the goal might be. 5) Don't quit!

Okay, I see a good language flow, interesting characterization, and potential for an interesting story here, but it fell kind of short by my having no idea what I was actually reading. The writing is nice and clean which allows me to focus on what the story is doing rather than worry about the language as I go. Where you mostly lost me: 1) Starting with "Obligatory Prologue" and rushing headlong into a sequence with obvious fantasy parody characters raiding a dungeon made me think I was reading a fantasy spoof. The switch to a modern day telling strained my brain, but I mostly got over it. That being said, if this isn't a humorous fantasy, I don't see why it's a self-referential and funny "Obligatory Prologue" and not simply a "Chapter One". 2) Switching to multiple first-person viewpoints within the chapter was VERY jarring. Even when I had the names. I had to do a lot of mental gymnastics to keep everyone straight and it wasn't an easy read. I don't see why all of these scenes can't all be from the same viewpoint, as I don't find that skipping back and forth adds much. We could learn the same things even if we weren't head-hopping. 3) The Science: You led with a comedic fantasy intro, then someone in Germany makes what would be, hands-down, the most significant anthropological discovery in at least decades and everyone just takes it in stride, which is so strange. It would completely shift everything we know about the evolution of the genus homo, and it's so revolutionary that I can't help but call BS. Later in the chapter, one of the characters also remarks that it's probably a hoax, but the anthropologist who's right there, aside from being excited, never questions its authenticity. This find feels almost as implausible as finding a velociraptor, with soft tissue, frozen in a glacier and wearing pantaloons and a neck ruff. So now I don't know if I'm reading a serious modern story where the guys are gamers and there's a mystery to be solved, or a modern fantasy where some ancient species of homo either survived for tens of thousands of years beyond what both the fossil and historical record would indicate or were transported there through time (and if so, if it was by magic or science). Like I said, it feels like it has potential but I have no clue, based solely on the prologue, exactly what it is that I'm reading. I'm not willing to go as far as to say that it's an error, but it's something that I greatly dislike in a book. YMMV with other readers. Where I'm at is that I'm curious to read the next chapter not because I want to know where the story goes (though I admit I do) but more because I'm hoping to find out what kind of book it is. Grammar and Spelling: P1: - "creatures bent [on] our very undoing" P2: - Drizzk is written once as Drissk P3: - "I have access to your toothbrushes and a full bladder". Unclear this way. He doesn't have access to both. Better if you say he has a full bladder and access to toothbrushes. - I also think it could be improved if Jack's reaction of "Ugh, that's just wrong" came before the description of him from the previous paragraph P4: - There's a Gorelock to kill but I don't know when the fight started.

Apologies, I'm slow to get to the readings this week. I thought this chapter was quite good. I joined after the earlier submissions so I wasn't aware of the background, but I decided to read it cold anyways to see how lost I got, and it turns out the answer was "not very". The information presented was clear enough that I got the gist of what was going on. And then I read the summary you provided, and the bit of the previous chapter, and I think you've done a good job of telling us what we need to know when we need to know it, without it feeling too much like an info-dump or leaving us lost and confused. The character interaction was a bit off (I'll get to that) but I found the individual characterization quite good. Each person feels distinct enough in how they speak and act. The few exceptions: - Elenor & Ambrose: This is the one thing I feel you got really off. Their relationship is extremely strange. She just shows up like it's normal and starts to make dinner after having dismissed his maid, but they haven't seen each other in 3 years? Who does that? Their whole interaction, from when she shows up until she leaves the second time in the streets feels extraordinarily odd. When did she even dismiss the maid in the first place? - The Song: Going into the cave and drinking the vials, I'd have like to know that he was doing it with a purpose, and achieved it. I'd like to have seen him a little more excited that things were happening, rather than just following the song. One punch you pulled: - Ambrose's feelings for Thomas. He comes close to saying it outright, and I don't know how up front he's been about it earlier in the story, but when the "strange tension filled the room" I would have liked to see more of what Ambrose actually felt since we're in his point of view for this chapter. What's the strange tension? Is he hiding his feelings and he's afraid Thomas caught on? Are his feelings obvious and the tension comes from a sort of rejection? This is such a great opportunity for character development (both for Ambrose and Thomas), don't hold back on this one. The Small Stuff: P1: - "It was his little sister" - Should be the first thing mentioned, not the "familiar-looking young woman". He knows who it is, don't hide it. P2: - "cargo on the kitchen table.'" has an ' at the end that needs to go. -'"I didn't get your letters!" She froze' - This lost me completely. I thought Elenor said this, but it was Ambrose, and the next several lines of dialogue were very difficult to attribute because of it. P3: - "Thomas' grinning face moved from Ambrose to Ele..." - No it didn't. His face stayed where it was. You need to rephrase this. - "He did not laugh," - More attribution confusion. I don't know who "he" is here. P4: - Ambrose is spending a lot of time thinking about his sister's exposed flesh and her curves. He's getting creepy. Also, this would be a good place for Ambrose to feel some jealousy. P7: - "Ambrose could feel is his sister's eyes..." - Unneeded "is". P11: - "feeling some sense [of] guilt or wrongness" P12: - "to reach [the] wall of black stone" - "but all [he] could here was distant a distant rushing sound" - Missing a "he", there's a misspelled "hear", and an extra "distant" All in all, pretty good stuff. I'm looking forward to more.

I think it was intentional. It was one of those quirks of phrasing that really gave it a UK sound for me.

You posted, I still see it Welcome back, at any rate. I'd missed Rdpulfer's post, though. Sorry to hear about your loss.

Overall, an interesting chapter, though it could have been much more interesting with fewer errors. There are spelling and grammatical errors in just about every sentence, and it makes it hard to read with any fluidity. I get a feel for the events as they happen, but the mistakes constantly throw me out of the story. A good editing pass before submitting would do a lot to allow us to focus on the story. In general I'm getting a better sense of what everything means, but some of the action feels off. Sometimes you spend too much time describing things, and other times too little and it throws off the pacing. ex. Example: "My world becomes pain. My screams drown out all noise of battle. My vision blurs as tears fill my eyes. The pain recedes and my senses return." Here you spend time telling us how much pain he's in, and then all of a sudden it vanishes. There are lots of similar sequences in the chapter where a bit of additional description would help the flow, or where less description up front would make the transition less jarring. Also, the whole scene with Kang sneaking in felt wrong. He's sneaking in and then when he gets close and needs fire he starts clanging knives together. That should have drawn some attention. I also didn't buy that there wouldn't have been some sort of guard left near the prisoners, or that they all had their weapons (I know there was an explanation but it wasn't enough for me to believe leaving prisoners unbound and armed). It's a snowstorm, obviously the fire had to have been started by someone relatively nearby but everyone just scatters like idiots. And where did all these satyrs come from? I don't remember Kang tracking them but they're everywhere, and he never remarks on it. Despite those flaws, I'm curious to see what happens next. I'm glad to see Kang taking initiative and making things happen, even (or maybe especially) if things don't always turn out the way he wants.

I hadn't read through the entire thread and didn't realize when I wrote my comment that you'd come to more or less the same conclusion as me just above. If you're genuinely interested in improving the story itself, maybe you could take it back to an outline and get suggestions for improving that before either attempting a rewrite or abandoning the idea for something else?

Thanks very much for the kind words, Robinski. If you have any edits you'd like to send back I'd happily take them. I have not submitted this anywhere. I had started writing it with the intention of submitting for a themed anthology last fall but I was overly slow about writing it, and when the deadline passed I put the story down for several months before deciding to try and finish it. If I can get it satisfactorily cleaned up I'll try to find it a home.

I see a lot of the same things in this chapter which bothered me earlier. Out of curiosity, are you writing these as you go, or have you already finished this novel? You added a lot of action, which is nice, but it's still all happening around Theavis without him doing much about anything. On page 6, your writing was very unclear and I thought Theavis was the first to shout "Ehadiem" and I thought, "Finally, the main character is doing something!" but I was proven wrong, and it was McTuggart who was making things happen with his water-thingies. And then at the very end, it seems like Theavis does actually do something but you gloss over it and we don't get to see the results. I found it very frustrating. Another thing I'll note: We are now at chapter 5 and I can not think of a single thing that distinguishes Theavis from everyone around him. Aside from being a human (I think?) with no strange features (because everyone else has extra arms or legs or an annoying accent or can merge into stone or can cast spells...). Theavis is by far the most boring character in this story. Whatever other advice you choose to heed or ignore when you continue or when you rewrite this, your main character cannot be this uninteresting and that really needs to change. I'm completely lost as to who/what/where everybody is. We've had a huge press of characters with strange names and of different races, and all the place names. There's been so much exposition in these chapters that I can't keep everything straight. The week-to-week delay isn't helping, but I don't think I'd have grasped it all even if I'd done a straight read-through. I think this story could benefit greatly from cutting down the number of secondary characters, and I say secondary only because Theavis is your point of view character, everybody else has been doing the bulk of moving the story along. General Language: - When you pluralize a word, you never need to put an apostrophe (crack's, torso's, etc.) I was hoping to provide some positive feedback but I'm finding it very hard to be drawn into this story and I don't have much to offer. What it feels like is that you've done a lot of worldbuilding and you want to show it all to us, but there's not enough of a story going on for the world and its history to shine through. Even the action sequences seem geared towards showing us more of the world, because it shows us the monsters and how the characters fight them. This is okay to an extent, but it gets to be transparent. Try to make the action sequences more relevant to the characters by having them get in the way of those character goals. I'd love to see what the risks and rewards are for the characters (and especially Theavis) in failing or succeeding in those instances.

It was those few words that I only ever hear from my British/Irish/Scottish-accented friends that cemented the voice. In third person it could probably be gotten away with but in first-person, in the head of a teenager I assume was born and raised in Michigan, it felt out of place. It's definitely an easy tweak with an editor who's knowledgeable in the differences. Both are female. If the writing is first-person and I know the sex of the author (Robinski had specified it was his daughter's submission, so the name was less important to me), then I tend to assume the POV character is the same unless I have information otherwise. I said it wasn't critical because I wasn't sure if it was just a quirk of the way my own reading brain was (possibly faultily) wired. But it stood out so I figured it was worth a mention.

I got one email, no file. I got no second email.

I got your original email sans attachment, and nothing else. I even cleaned out my spam to be sure, but I didn't find anything. I assumed it got filtered out somewhere upstream.