Sarah B

Thank you. Yes, I will probably be needing a lot of input on how any technical parts read. I actually demoted D down from Engineer to Mechanic when I realized that I wouldn't be able to write an engineer with any authority (Especially compared to you and @Mandamon) :-) For the technical parts, my thought was to go into some detail to start, and then not mess with it again. I have some experience with installing copper water pipes and a pre-charged freezer plate so I was leaning on that pretty hard for the intro. It was actually much longer in the first draft but it looks like I have more cutting to do! The first chapter definitely needs more work. I can see where D needs clearer motivation and a better introduction to their character. Its funny because D was not my first choice for the Main character, but every time I tried to write it from someone else's viewpoint and the story stalled out by chapter 5. Then I started again with D's perspective and everything broke loose. My first two choices were much more likable, but just couldn't get the job done I guess. :-) Thank again!

I'm getting a lot of D not being likable, which is fair. D has good qualities, I think I need to push them harder. That's an interesting point about D being Speciesist, I hadn't considered that. I generally try write D as being annoyed by everyone, equal opportunity grumpy, but since a Sa is the first character D interacts with I can see how that would look. I think, if anything, D prefers Sa to his own species because Sa aren't telepaths. D just isn't very good at showing it :-) Thank you for the input!

Thank you! Yes, I definitely will continue to work on my exposition. I'm afraid of putting too much in so I've gone the other way :-)

Thank you! Yes, much more about PS coming later. It's hard to explain why PS is dangerous without going way deeper into the world building so my plan was to hold off until later. The font change is courtesy of me struggling with scrivner :-) but it is growing on me. Good thing, because that's how every scene showed up when I copied them over.

I'd also like a slot of the 2nd if there's room.

Only three stars? I had assumed their atmosphere was really thick and that was why he couldn't see more. If their star is that far out, can they see the galaxy their star is a part of? Like we see the milky way because we are relatively far out on one arm? Maybe my scifi is showing, but what if they aren't in a galaxy at all? I found this really intriguing, here's a link my googling spit out: https://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question29.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.space.com/amp/27682-rogue-stars-between-galaxies.html In case it's useful, here's my thoughts on your question: Stars 'twinkle' more than planets to the naked eye... usually. I think gas giants are an exception. I'm sure you know this, but on Earth at least, both stars and planets have phases of visiblility and movement from our perspective. So we lose sight of both planets and constellations, depending on the constellation, during different times of year. Ie when Lio is high and center in the northern hemisphere, Orion lays low over the horizon. So it seems like it would depend on how well they understand astronomy. Do they know about other planets in their solar system? If they do, the MC could comment on this or that being out, like we might say, "oh look, Mars is out tonight." If not, it might be worth considering how people viewed constellations in terms of navigation in the past. Stars that move very little are "reliable" like Polaris/north star, and others showing up and leaving are like marks on a calender, indicating a specific time of year. Anyway, that's my info dump and a very amateur star gazer's perspective :-)

Editing is hard. I know that should not be a shock, but I had ignored the warnings and continued to beleive that writing the first draft was the hard part. Sort of like thinking that riding the ski lift up the mountain would be the scary part, I guess. :-) Does anyone have a favorite book, podcast, blog, YouTube channel, etc about editing that they would like to recomend? Any and all appreciated!

@Robinski Thanks! That is awesome, you are a real Nano veteran! This will be my second year. I capped out at 30,000 words last year, and so I'm hoping for my first win this year. I think Nanowromo was exactly what I needed last year to go from plot bunny farming to having something finnished. Or at least drafted. Editing.... is going to take me some more practice. :-) Btw, I'm betting movie night at your house is epic!

These chapters read very solid to me too. Nice work! Ch 4: "Or am I just getting better at noticing them." This line is a bit confusing, I think because so much is going on in the sentence before it. The family name list was hard to sort out. I'm not sure whose three daughters they are. The goat story came off a little awkward. The point was clear but it might need a little polishing. Ch 5: The ending was anticlimatic for me. With the reminders that A has a rifle and S is telekinetic, I was expecting them to fight or bluff their way out. Letting themselves be arrested without any explaination or attempt to get away felt a bit empty. Really nice exposition in chapter five. And your description of their dinner has me deeply regretting bringing cold lunch :-) Thanks for sharing!

I'm going to take an extra week to hopefully do some revisions and redrafting :-) next week for sure though!

No worries at all! Thanks for going over this. It's a good idea to skip ahead, the second sub is the same again but hopefully better :-) Also, the word count difference is because I shoved a second POV to later in the book, not because of a slash and burn edit. Although I'm not ruling that out for later sections. :-)

I'm not a fantasy reader, so I'm not overly familiar with the tropes and norms. Not complaining, just fair waring :-) As I read: "V was..." This repeated sentence structure makes some parts feel like a meditation. Or like V will speak in the third person. It gets a little repetitive by the end of page 1. "Eyes akin to a stormy..." this is some pretty word play, but it feels jarring after so many short factual sentences. From reading it, I'm not sure what color that would be. 4th paragraph "As he began..." Needs a comma after "began". The next sentence is a fragment with no verb. Maybe it could be added to the previous sentence? "Once you show tallent for anything, the monks will..." tense shift here. "She had an awful lot of questions about you, lad." I like the personality in this voice, I don't think you need the comma though. "It left him with few options though." Being a soldier? Or the recruiter coming? "O and M were lounging in the usual place, him with..." I don't immediately know which is 'him' reading this based on their names so this part was a little confusing. "He was telling another of his histories again." 'Another' and 'again' feels redundant. From this phrase I was assuming he was the town's chatty drunk but from V's reaction it seems like this isn't the case. "I can't even with you guys." "Deary me." V's dialogue all over the place. He switches from hyper formal to modern slang. Most of the other characters have a distinct voice but his voice doesn't seem settled yet. "All it really did was make him look like he had to s..." is this a perspective shift, or does V know that's how he looks? Not sure on this, but if the sword was in the dirt for any length of time without a cover, wouldn't it tarnish and rust? Unless it has some kind of protection from the elements. My favorite part for tone and pure story telling was the old man's legend at the bar. That's where the story really started to appeal to me. You've also build some interesting characters with very distinct personalities. The character I feel the least drawn to so far is V. I'm starting to warm up to him by the end though. Thanks for sharing!

I agree that chapters 1 and 2 seem to belong together, maybe with just a page break for time passage? A couple things about the dove chasing bothered me plot wise. 1. Since it seems like the dove either is or is controled by something intelligent that is trying to help them, why did it have them travel in the middle of the day instead of leaving in the morning? 2. I understand that they need to leave together for the plot's sake, but since the dove leaves in the middle of the day, wouldn't it have made more sense for A and maybe one more person to chase it and come back for the rest if it led somewhere useful? Some explaination of why they stay together would help a lot. As I go: Chapter 2: "F brought up a good point though..." this feels like a new thought, maybe a new paragraph? Next paragraph: repetition of "behind them" and the word "hill" used heavily. A saying "neat" seems odd given the situation. Second to last paragraph of 2: "He sometimes regretted..." this second feels poignant and give some good back story but the phrasing is a little tangled. Chapter 3: "Curtains were pulled before the doorway." This is a pretty phrase, but it took be a couple reads to understand what was meant. Roofs stained white: yup, I live on the shore and this is a thing :-) I love the town description, especially the smells and little flags on the spires. With all those doves, I'm imagining there would be a fair amount of cooing and squabbling bird sounds too. I'm used to urban pigeons though, which I'm told are louder than wild doves. F seems like his phrasing has shifted from the last chapter. "Why had he reacted so loudly..." Odd phrase. Next sentence: "It felt like a battle..." might work better as "He felt like a battle..." "Be horrified of it." By it? Horrified seems like a strong word for the situation. I don't know the back story yet, but A is acting more terrified than horrified. "It was the old orphanage..." Starting a new paragraph with 'it" is a bit confusing. The first meeting with A's mom does feel like a let down after all that dread. I like the closing line for chapter 3 a lot. I really enjoyed chapter 3, great setting and some nice character development. Thanks for sharing, looking forward to more next week!

Thanks! Yes Indefinetly need to do some work here on clarifying. This is going to be a hard balance to strike because the situation is serious, but D's nature is to be flippant about risk. Something to work on for sure. Fair, D is pretty abrasive on average. They will be surrounded by more likable characters later on so hopefully that helps :-) Good catch! Yes, this is going to be a tough one for me to catch. D and all the Al's were he/him in the first and second drafts and are now they/them. Unfortunetly he/him and she/her are pretty invisible to read so I keep missing them. Thanks for catching that! I'm shortening up the first bit to hopefully solve this. Sort of all three. The Al's form is customized to purpose for the individual. I've got more of this later but I definetly take you point that I am hinting at a lot, but not actually saying much. My World Builder's disease was showing pretty badly in this chapter, I'm going to try to clarify and clean up a lot of these issues in the next draft. Thank you for reading!

Good point. I think I was rushing through to get to the parts I wanted to write. This story died on the vine a few times in the first five chapters so I was just powering through. Now's the time to clean it up and dig deeper though. Good advice. It will take some pretty big restructuring to get around it, but I'm going to simmer on this. Well, I am now terrified :-) In all seriousness though, would this line bother you if it was "ethically" instead of "morally"? Or another term? I was trying to show that K is a very conscientious and In-the-lines sort of person since most of the characters around him aren't. This makes him a bit naive but also drives much of his actions. Thanks for reading!

Good points! Yeah, there are some issues with introducing PS. I meant to toss in that detail as a hint for later, but it didn't work out. Oh well, next time :-) I think I need to write this on an index card as a reminder! This is a recurring issue for me in multiple stories. Yup! Mission accepted. This critique is a huge help, thanks!

Thanks for reading dispite this not being your genre! I have a similar situation critiquing fantasy Glad you like them! You make a good point, I can see where I need to dial down the ranting. D is fun to write, but their voice tends to run away without the plot. I'm going to focus on clarifying and reducing terms going forward. Yup! This is definetly a recurring theme in the critiques. I'm adding some exposition and a heaping dose of grammer to the next draft! Thanks for reading!

This is something I need to work on for sure. I've added some exposition and stripped out some of the more garbled prose for the next draft :-) Yes and yes. Instead of exposition, I added confusion! This is cleared up in the next draft I hope. Not intentionally, no. D is an unreliable narrator and a bit if a fatalist. I think I need to bring this out better because it's a core part of their character, and has a lot to do with the arc for this character. Definetly some work to do going forward. I re subbed the first scene as a revised Chapter one after some extensive editing. Now that I see some of the problems, going forward I hope to clear them up before I send them out. Drama and emotion is not my strong suit, but something I am trying to improve on. Great feedback, Thanks for reading!

All very accurate! I'm afraid I was trying to rush to the 'good parts' and wasn't laying the ground work to get there. I was trying to avoid the dreaded scifi first chapter info dump, but instead ended up leaving all the important parts out. Thank you!

After some heavy revisions, here is Chapter 1 again. I've cut it down to one scene and hopefully cleared up most of the issues from the last sub. All of the Alard characters are suposed to be they/them but were he/him in a previous draft. I think I've caught all the slips this time, but if I missed any please call them out. Thanks for reading and critiquing!

If there's room, I would like a slot for the 19th as well.

@sniperfrog Welcome! I think the depth and breadth of different knowlege bases and experiences in this writing group is awesome! It sounds like you have a lot to add. I'm new as well compared to most here. I look forward to reading your work!

It goes off and on. I haven't been around too long but it seems like when someone has something they want read people jump in if they can. It's a big time commitment but it's nice to see a whole work at once, I think it gives a different perspective than a chapter at a time.

Awesome!

I tried it last year for the first time. I didn't 'win' but it did get me a great start on a book I had been trying to write for a long time. You don't have to try for the whole 50,000 if that feels like too much, resetting the goal for a different amount is pretty easy.