mrwizard70

Feels like you’re either going to bait and switch with the foreshadowing, or you’re a bit heavy handed. I’m not connecting much to the character, but that’s a common problem for me. This person needs motivations. What are your promises? I’m really not sure where this is going and fantasy readers don’t particularly like that feeling.

I’m not the type to read this sort of thing normally; I like to put things in terms of when I would stop reading in a bookshop, and for me it’s as soon as I figure out the book is about gender identity. That said, it is written well enough and deals with some really challenging ideas, so I’m sure there’s an audience. It’s just not me. I’m not going to be much help. Character arcs are something I’m gawdawful at myself, so I’m not a ton of help. Seems fine, though as an ordinary person I find it difficult to empathize with this person who apparently can’t deal with society. Age seems fine. When does guilding normally happen?

Shared a google doc with comments with you. Mainly, I really enjoy Q’s character and your lack of general world building and good specific world building. Foreshadowing throughout the whole thing was a little heavy handed. I really didn’t get the same feeling from M’s section of chapter 1. Could really use some work imo. That also sent in a google doc.

Grimderp, easier to link then copy paste: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=8pxpjezko87a3carsbkepm2h This is a trope much more in the land of web fiction and fanfiction than in the world of real books, but it applies. I am a very wordy person, glad to have helped you. As to the Forsythe thing; Good Guys don't use scythes. For (preknowledge etc) combined with the most evil weapon in the history of mankind.

It does show up in search, so I’ll get to work on those this weekend. Thanks so much!

This is a great idea! I'm running completely dry on ideas, especially in the character department. other than that and some personal stuff, great week. You guys have processes for creating characters? When I get free time I'm going to go back and re-listen to the WE podcasts on it. Also I should stop playing Empire:TW, no matter how much inspiration for worldbuilding I'm left with.

If you could email me chapter 1 so I can catch up, that would be optimal; Here’s my thoughts without that. This is grimderp. I am being hit over the head with “things are bad, world is evil” if that’s the intention, and you aren’t planning to subvert it later, you could either tone it down, or show it. Show don’t tell is cliche, but it would help a lot here. This might have something to do with the individual character being a pessimist, and if so it might be best to show that the pessimism extends beyond just the state of the world. Exposition on dump is exposition dump, but I like the way you’ve couched it in both romance and potential danger, really well done there. I’m used to a main character, but in a story like this not having one makes it more fun. Other then the token “deploying the army to stay in power sounds bad” I have no idea whose side I’m supposed to be on. If that is intentional, well done. If not, maybe make the morals a bit clearer. My mental list says only Glenda is moderately not evil, but moral corruption and sexual escapades are hard to justify right off the bat. Trademarks in the middle of the writing are annoying and serve no purpose. Chacter conflict is well developed and interesting, but I’ve yet to find the primary conflict because I can’t decided whose side I’m on. Morton’s line “wouldn’t want to schedule that now would we” is missing we. Forsythe is a strange and concerning name, but again, if he’s evil, it’s a bit on the nose. That’s all I got.

New here: I haven’t read the preceding chapters, but I definitely could if you email me them. [email protected] This story has all kinds of pet peeves in its world building and setting, so please don’t take it personally if I seem overly critical. You have the bad fortune to be writing my least kind of epic fantasy. Without more context; The largest and most easily fixable problem here is a lack of character conflict. You have it at the very end where the MC is acused of being involved, but it feels like an addition to the chapter, which is entirely taken up by a fight scene and lots of running. I would recommend moving the order around, with a visit to the master guy and then saving Kraithila. Your story feels like steampunk Stormlight. So much. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I’m not exactly the target audience. I like magic to be intuitive for the reader, your system is convoluted, which is one of the major problems I had with Sanderson. If there’s a prior explanation that could be lessened, but from what I can tell there are at least two systems operating on top of each other in this chapter, and to make matters worse, it’s the systems I don’t understand that are being subverted to create the tension. If the reader doesn’t understand why this is unusual they won’t understand why the characters are afraid. This could relate to the above point; maybe I have missed the tension due to a lack of story knowledge. Your style is interesting, but again, I would like to read more of your writing before making any suggestions. Characters names/pronouns are confusing because I haven’t gotten to know them yet. The writing itself is dramatic and tense, which exaggerates the lack of character conflict. I’m going to hold off making suggestions for improvement until I understand what’s going on; therefore I just pointed out issues I saw.

Thanks so much!

If there's room I might have a short bit of something, but I'm between projects at the moment so it's not urgent at all.

My name's Jack. I used to write Worm Fanfiction and am still a little active on spacebattles, but the difficulty of developing new plots and characters drove me to original content, which thus far has been a bundle of fun. Wasn't a fan of Sanderson's after reading his Robert Jordan stuff, my buddy recommended Steelheart and from there I somehow found writing excuses, which is awesome. You'll all have the pleasure of watching me work through each and every one of Sanderson's epics as time goes on and seeing how that changes my writing. I write stream of conciseness and then generally tend to revise my work into a pile of mush, so after listening to some of the writing excuses stuff I decided to try and find a writing group instead of doing my own revising first. You'll probably be getting first drafts from me since I promised I wouldn't be revising. I have a fair bit of editing experience, both as a beta for fanfiction and editing writing for my work. If I like your writing, I can read a hundred pages an hour with 95% reading comprehension and recall. I can and have edited a million word manuscript, so if people want to contact me privately about that I'm open to it. Happy to be here. P.S. If I'm not supposed to post until after the PM thing gets done, sorry.