dannnex

good idea

it doesn’t seem like they aren’t, that’s for sure. i wasn’t sure if it was literally telepathic or not, so i was using the word loosely, but if you want it to be clearer i would change it, yeah.

ok yeah lol, the exact thing you were intentionally doing is the exact thing i thought didn't work =P i think it just makes his character seem inconsistent, someone who's willing to kill exclusively for his own gain isn't the type to feel sympathy for the families of his victims. even if its just a tiny bit of sympathy. if there was an element of urging, a lack of agency, it'd make more sense. alright i'll go through it and let me start off with saying this is already some of the best prose i've seen on this site, so i feel comfortable nitpicking it this critically because it's really really great. I'll go through each of these with what i think is the issue, and then how i'd fix it. I think I'm much better at identifying problems than I am at fixing them though, so take the second half of each point with a grain of salt. The short sentence "her boots slammed into the pavement" doesn't flow well here, as it's right after another relatively short sentence. I can see what you're doing with the three parallell sentences, first talking about Gwen, then her boots, then her throat, but the third sentence is too long, it doesn't balance with the first two. I'd maybe combine it with the next one like "Her boots slammed into the pavement as she sucked in breath after raggedy breath, never daring to pause or slow down.", but that does remove the parallel sentence structure you were going for so idk. I'd either do that or cut the third sentence so it's shorter. this isn't a critique, just a warning. using overly complex dialogue tags is a trap many writers fall into. I think 'echoed' works ok here, as it's the first time we see Halo speak, and so it's important to emphasize that its telepathic, but be careful to not use special tags for them too much. (this is hinging on my assumption that hearing their voice is gonna be a recurring thing, like Reen and Vin.) These three consecutive thoughts don't flow well. They're all very similar sentences, three words each, all back to back, it just feels weird, especially with the sentence before ALSO being 3 words. Easiest fix imo would be to just remove one of them, but even then, two identical sentences like that isn't super ideal. maybe remove the middle sentence and expand the contraction in the third so it's just "It was real. They had been right." ....eh no i don't like that either. Maybe like this? "They were right...it was real!" yeah that's not terrible. combining the sentences, adding an emphasis on 'was' and an exclamtion point. Idk that might be a bit much. i don't have a great fix for this one. not having a possessive here feels weird to me. i definitely see what you were going for but it reads a bit off. maybe just "Open, please," she breathed, her voice raw and laced with desperation." also, again, careful with overcomplicated dialogue tags. expecially in this case, where you're already taking the time to describe her voice right afterwards, i really don't think you need the word "breathed". no need to describe her voice twice, in two different literary methods, in one sentence. I like the parallel sentence structure here, I just think the word "making" absolutely does not fit. Not sure how i'd fix it without restructuring that entire section though. 2 things. "miraculously terrifying" feels weird. maybe just "the ominous doorway". not everything needs two adjectives. and then i'd break the sentence at "they were almost upon her.". so it'd be "Gwendolyne whipped her head back and forth, glancing at the ominous doorway and then at the mouth of the alleyway. They were almost upon her. Her eyes were filled suddenly with terrified tears." strongly dislike the word frivolous here. "rare excursion" works well. and if you want to clarify that only the frivolous excursions are rare, try the word outing. so "rare outing". typo? it's hard for the reader to see the connection here. it might just be because we have no idea who Wreath is, but the connection between "halo had a fight" and "halo grabbed money from the cash bag" is very tenuous. Some more details here would be very helpful. I don't have much to critique because I don't know what's missing, I don't know who wreath is or why halo would fight them, but I know that something is missing, and it makes this bit rather confusing. Maybe clarify that Halo won the fight, and therefore was allowed to take money from the bag? i don't know if that's even the case, but if it is, clarifying that would help. Halo's they/them pronouns are really messing up these few paragraphs. I can see why you made each choice you did, but it still doesn't work. Referring to Halo three times in a row by name feels very clunky, but you can't really refer to them as "they" because that implies plurality, and with Gwen also being in these sentences, that messes things up. You try to fix that by saying "they themself" in the next line, but that also feels clunky. I have no solution here other than rework the entire section so that Gwen and Halo are never subjects of the same sentence. They/them pronouns are very tricky to write because of implied plurality, I don't know how i'd fix it here. \ this is redundant. it sounds nice and zingy, but you've already made it abundantly clear that gwen is uncomfortable. first half of this sentence is great, but this feels clunky. i think it's because "inevitable self-inflicted" are inanely redundant. The point of the entire sentence is how its inevitable and self-inflicted, saying it again at the very end is kinda silly imo. saying "heard" twice is unnecessary, makes the sentence feel cluttered. i can tell it's intentional, but it clashes strangely imo. i think this would read better as one sentence, trimming the second one a bit to make it fit. "She choked out a desperate prayer to a god who didn’t exist, then sat down on the ledge at the bottom of the doorway, legs dangling into the abyss, and pushed off into nowhere." (in fact I did just naturally read it as once sentence the first time through, didn't notice the break until now) my final nitpick is that you have a severe case of adjective abundance. many many things have two or more adjectives describing them when they really don't need it. not gonna go through them all, but remember that its okay to leave some things up to the readers imagination. you don't need to add adjectives for the sake of adjectives.

I really really like the first one except for the very last line. That last paragraph makes it seem like the Ancient Shadow is forced to consume the children, like it’s an urge he can’t suppress. The last line then switches that vibe and says he’s choosing to. I think either way works, but if he’s forced to do it, the last line should change, and if he’s choosing to do it, the last paragraph should be reworked a bit. Depends on how villainous you want him to be perceived by the reader. (personally i like the “forced to do it” angle better, opens the possibility for a tortured sympathetic antagonist, which i find more appealing than a selfish murderer antagonist, but either one could work.) as for the second one, I also really like it. I have a few notes on prose, points where i’d reword a sentence or change the ordering or whatever. Small things like that. I’ll share them if you want but i’m on mobile atm and don’t wanna type anymore =P but in general both seem very cool, very well written. much applause.

AYE!