Robinski

Heya. Comments. (BTW, because I'm trying to critique faster when I do critique, it's not sort of necessary to read the comments here in the forum in conjunction with my tracked comments in the LBL file that I've emailed back. Sorry! I hope these points are useful. I liked plenty about this chapter: the introduction of flying creatures, making progress in searching for the kids (although I think everyone needs to be more focused on and urgent about that throughout, mentioning it more often, even if only to try and hurry other people up). Usual loose typo stuff, but I'm still enjoying the story (p1) - "court tailors suits" - I don't understand what this phrase means, and the context doesn't help me. It sounds like the whole fae court is involved in the sewing of suits (as in business suits). "The door opened slowly" - How? Who opened it? I like the tailor's dialogue. (p2) - if 'faerie' is the name of this place, I think it should be capitalised. I dislike "could've" and "would've". Some contractions are fine, but these are kind of clumsy to read, IMO. And, I don't see any reason for them. "brushed red curls away from her face" - Whoa!! This is a very personal gesture. I get no sense the personal boundaries are any different here than on Earth, so I kind of need some kind of reference point to understand this intimate gesture. "G narrowed her eyes" - G has been referred to as they up to this point, or 'the tailor'. I G female, or is this a typo? "G shook her head" - okay this is the 3rd or 4th 'her' so I'm seeing that G is female. I think that should be made completely obvious when G first comes into the story. When G does appear, it is most 'the tailor' this and 'they' that. I think her gender needs to be clear from the get-go. (p3) - "everyone wore gowns to balls in F, regardless of gender" - excellent! "I think we should be out searching, not debating about clothing" - I tend to agree with C. A is not showing much urgency about finding the kids. Even if they have to do this dress bargain, maybe A could have some interiority showing their concern about time slipping away? If that were appropriate. I think the reader needs to feel that the pacing of the story hasn't disappeared through this scene. "did not permit me to take a company" - Huh? What is 'a company'? It sounds like a form of transport. "anxious to get the aerie" - Here, A shows some urgency, but I didn't get much sense of that before. I think we need it through the chapter a little more. Also, what "the aerie" that A wants to get? (p4) - "a stable full of one of the most magnificent beasts" - How can one beast fill a stable? Is this correct? Sounds weird. [Edit] - yeah, need a cut here. It gives the wrong impression, IMO, of one huge beast filling the whole stable. "Granted..." - This sentence is very confusing. Suggest a simplification/clarification. "A wondered if this Leaf was the same one they had ridden" - But it must be the same one, otherwise, Ae would not have said that Leaf was out, Ae would have said that Leaf was dead. [Edit] "the great grandson of the one you rode" - meh, I think Ae's first comment was misleading "almost started crying" > fought back tears. Forgive me if I've forgotten this already, but is this a YA or MG story? I think 'maturity' of phrasing is something that defines market. I think the first here sounds quite juvenile, and maybe that's the intention. But if it's adult, (or YA?) I think that sort of phrasing would stick outa bit. Maybe. (p5) - "some other important piece of information slipped away" - Really? While this maybe be true in a practical sense (after a certain age?) I tend to doubt that it would be so starkly noticeable to someone as young as Ar, as they would be able to recall all the more recent information, surely, and the stuff that they forgot would be stuff that they would necessarily be trying to recall? I'm not going to pretend I know how memory works on a physiological level, but Ar strikes me as being too young for this to be a thing for them. "But thirty-three wasn’t that old" - Ok, good. I'm glad you called this out, but now you've made a promise to the reader that we will get some kind of answer to this noticeable memory loss, which I don't think is normal (or at least noteworthy) in a 33 year-old, UNLESS there is something unusual going on. "because adults have [redacted] memories" - This is just not true, not in the way it's stated here, and a blanket statement that applies to all adults. The way memory works does of course change over time, but a general statement like this about all adults is false. This needs to be changed, IMO, or Ar needs to call out C fort trolling all adults!! LOL "looking off into the distance" - there's some confusion in the blocking here. They were going into a stables, but then Ae stalks away, now Ae's looking into the distance, but they are still inside the building, because Ae stalked "towards the steeds". Confused. (p6) - "the aerie stable" - What is this word? [Edit] just looked it up: good grief. I have not idea who one gets from eyrie to aerie. The main issue I have is that I looks exactly like faerie without the 'f', so it looks exactly like a typo to me. (I'm from the UK, BTW, for anyone who doesn't know, and is actually reading this far.) "Humans, even in F, had faulty memories" - Again, I am just not buying this, or following it as a concept because I don't believe it as a general statement, so I'm thinking there is something 'abnormal' going on with this point, but that is not how it's being presented, in this sort of 'All humans are always forgetting things all the time' sort of way. "tried to summon their stubborn memories" - Is this thing about memory supposed to relate specifically to a difficulty in humans remembering after making a transition from Earth to Faerie, or in the reverse direction, or a difficult in humans that remain in Faerie for any length of time? If that is the case, I think that needs to be stated explicitly when the memory issue is first raised, and then reminders provided of that specific qualification, maybe even every page. (p7) - "That must be like if you’re immortal and your dog lives with you for a hundred years then suddenly dies" - But this implies that the dog is immortal too, or effectively so, if it lives for 100 years. "Earth cats are people too" - No, no they are not. Like cats, maybe, but they are demonstrably not people, or they would be called people. (p8) - "summer lands" - I feel that this is the first mention of this location, and the 'opposite area', in the story. If that is the case, or even if it is not, I think this needs to be drawn out more earlier in the story, and some background given if the areas are going to play an important role going forward in the story. "be able to find where they landed" - How? I want to know what signs they expect to be able to see from the air. What are they looking for, a circle of scorched ground, a flattened area like a crop circle? I want to know what it is, specifically, that they are looking for. (p9) - "keep them at their tent" - Their what? What is the significance of tent? I want to understand this, if it some kind of nuance of the society. Do all the faerie live in tents, just the unsee, only fay that are travelling away from home? > "go searching random tents" - So, there are lots of tents. See earlier comment. "They circled through the forest" - Confused: they were above everything, but now they are down amongst the trees? If they are defending almost to ground level, that needs to be flagged for the reader. Also, flying through the trees/forest would be hazardous. By the way this is written, I think "through" is not what's intended, but rather "over" the forest? "ranging farther out with each pass" - farther out from what? It did not sound to me like they were flying in circles until they reached the forest, which implies that the centre of the circles they are now ranging farther out from is located in the forest, and the circular search pattern is new, since they were flying over a field to reach the forest. Personally, I don't think a circle is an effective search pattern for a small group, as I'd have thought they would tend to find themselves covering large areas that they were not interested in just to 'circle back to the more interesting bit. "circling further and further out" - inconsistency between further here, and earlier references using "farther". I think you need to pick one form and stick to that. "led them over to a high mountain pond" - this sounds very casual about distance. It sounds like the mountain is ten yards away across the room. I don't think this is convincing description. I think the last few chapters are insufficiently dramatic, and I've made a couple of suggestions in the emailed file.

Heya, still getting caught up (p1) - "free of charge" means without paying, usually, and so to hear it used differently is disorienting. I would say I have never heard that phrase used in this way. It would be better, clearer, to use the word 'punishment', IMO. "gifted’s" - should be 'gifteds'. I know my comments on Chp.1 came after you subbed this. This next statement is not just aimed at you, FlowerGirl, please don't take it personally, but I'll use this forum if I may to make a general statement. I would really recommend to everyone subbing here, or anywhere, check your grammar, and for typos and spelling mistakes, before subbing. (a) it's kind of unfair to expect others to read your work if you haven't made that process as easy as possible for them; (b) it makes your work look amateurish; (c) it tends to appear that you don't care enough about your work to bother checking for things should be simple to fix, even if you only switch on all available grammar and spell-checkers. Public service announcement ends. I think 'mayor W' should be capitalised, Mayor W, because this is his title, basically a part of his name. (p2) - "I mentally think back" - all thinking is mental, this is redundant. (p3) - "There's several gasps" - There are several gasps. I noted in Chp.1 there is nothing wrong with a character having bad grammar, it can add texture and chararcter to a piece, and reveal background, but in this case, the character had good 99% of the time, so this is out of place, IMO, and just looks like a mistake. "try to steal their sisters" - I mean, this is kind of painfully naive. It's cute, but really feels kind of misguided to me. Because marriage and living together (apart from family) is part of the current Western way of life. So, as the conflict that lead to the inciting incident, this still feels rather weak to me. "It feels like I should have some say in what they decide." - Eh? Why? That is not how courts work. MC sounds kinda dense with this statement. "I would still be in the city with my family" - MC feels too calm here. They are faced with a terrible fate, and they don't sounds even slightly bothered about it. "I’m definitely hoping for life in prison now". There is no sense from them that they think this is a bad thing. (p4) - "I can’t let him take me away. I can’t leave my family." This comes kind of late in the court case, such that... "I get to my feet and run." It's hard to be emotionally invested in this line, which follows directly after. Because I had not sense of MC's emotional state during the trial, until the first quoted line here, the second one is less believable. "I turn down streets" - Were they not in a building? Were there no guards? Feels like a disconnect here that they are suddenly away from the building, as if they teleported. "J won't mind if I hide there" - This is super naive. The character has really poor judgement. And no thought that they would be putting their friend in danger: selfish. Will drop in here that I do enjoy the first person present tense; it is very immediate. The narrative is sparse too, which has the advantage of making it very readable, but the disadvantage that the lack of description, physical and emotional, makes it difficult to invest in the world and the character. "Can they use it to track someone?" - Repetitive, a very similar thought about tracking is used 8 lines earlier. (p5) - "the gifted’s would never do anything bad" - (a) 'gifted' would be the most likely collective term for a group of 'gifted', but you could use gifteds as the plural; (b) How does J know this?; (c) It sounds really unlikely. "force her to want to go with him" - still can't get behind this as a character motivation. (p6) - "Living with the gifted’s might just be another adventure to her" - does the character really have no notion at all of romance? What age is she? Surely she gets that her parents used to like apart, and now they live together? "J grins and rubs her hands together" - I find the dramatic tone of the story confusing. I've spoken about the main character's naivety. Here, J displays the same sort of naivety about what the consequences might be for her parents. The concepts of life in prison and reeducation are treated very lightly. The concept of being punished so severely for one's own thoughts (amongst other things, certainly), is monstrously dystopian, but the narrative doesn't carry any real sense of threat, or weight. I think that's a pretty big issue, because I don't think this story knows what it is, and what its audience is. And sure, you can just write a story for yourself, and you absolutely must do that, but different genres and sub-genres come with rules, conventions, tropes, that guide the reader, the agent, the publisher in terms of where to place the book and how to sell it (if that's your goal). I don't think that a publisher could sell this book for the reasons that I've stated, and I'm coming to question now whether you are ready as a writer to write this story. Have you listened the Writing Excuses podcasts, or Brandon Sanderson's lecture series? There is a large amount of very valuable guidance, advice and information in both of those sources. It's a lot of material, but it is well worth going through, and anyone who hasn't and does so will, I think, gain a huge amount of knowledge about themselves as a writer, and also about the art of writing, and the publishing industry. These sources changed me as a writer, improving me immeasurably, I think, as did practice, and constant critique (through this very group, for over ten years now). I don't think I will be saying much different in future submissions beyond the headlines that I've noted in these first two chapters, and so I am going to bow out at this point. By all means keep going. I don't know if you have finished this novel, or are still writing towards the end, but finishing is the second most important thing a writer can do; the first being starting, of course! So, I urge you to complete this process, and stick at it. Maybe after doing so, try some series of the WE podcast or the lecture series then try writing something completely new. Usually, we learn a great deal from a project, even if it does not succeed in its current form, and when we start something new it is elevated by that first experience, (IF we carried it through to the end, I would add). Best of luck to you with this project, and also with the next one. I'd be happy to start reading any future projects that you bring to the group. Thanks for sharing

Yeah, same issue with the ending as others. Maybe she goes through the time machine, and she doesn't know if it's worked, and there's a short scene of her struggling through a forest or something, and then she sees the flock of pterodactyls and knows that she's succeeded. Something along those lines, to give the final reveal more drama?

Straight in: (LBL comments by email) (p1) - first line: Wow, this is a very direct statement of character aims, and what seems to be the main conflict. For me, it's almost too bold, too bald. I like the first line, but the description of the protest could be more engaging/enlightening: Why/what are they protesting? Why is it a secret project, and why is it secret, if research is permitted at the moment? Also, if it's a secret project, could they not just continue it, flouting the laws, since it's a secret from the authorities anyway? If they're protesting the new restrictions on research, then they would cheer her, wouldn't they, the mob? (p2) - If the bank is all the way across town, surely there is a way that she could go around one sqaure with some protestors in it. It seems really unlikely there is no side route. (p6) - "She'd thought one crystal--the one in the bike--would be enough" - Hang on, this was no part of the original plan. I'm sure she started out after just the one crystal from the bank, and never mentioned the bike's crystal until now. How far above the crowd is she? I struggle to believe that anyone could throw a hat that high. "She got lower and lower [...] skidding onto the roof of the bank" - I think this needs to land way better (excuse the pun). She would see the bank approaching, think she was going to make it, then not, then dramatic resolution. (p7) - "Getting the air bike down proved more challenging" - Why on Earth does she need to do that? Surely she can just remove the crystal from the bike? (p8) - "Finding the maintenance closet full of tools proved more difficult" - Than breaking into safety deposit boxes? That seems really unlikely. No one is trying to hide the maintenance closet, or trying all that hard to prevent access, surely, compared to a deposit box. (p9) - "soon, air was below her" - This is really undersold, IMO. She should be going off the edge of the roof just as the guards grab for her, making a daring getaway. Something more exciting here, near the end of the story. "connected the bike to the time apparatus" - Oh, the bike is part of the time machine? This wasn't clear from the start: we were told she needed to get to the bank to get the crystal, but we were not told she needed at the bike just as much as she needed the crystal. (p10) - "And in front of her, a flock of..." - Oh, is that the end? That's a curious last line. It doesn't feel like the end; feels like there's a page missing. SUMMARY: I like a lot about the story, but I found some of the key moments kind of underwritten and not as exciting or daring or dramatic as I would expect for this kind of adventure story. I think it will edit up nicely though, and could make a thrilling wee tale. The ending is really abrupt though, and not as satisfying as it should be, IMO.

Heya, sorry this is so late, but I hope there is still something useful in my comments. I'm aiming to get back into crits here, and want to make sure I am up to date with current projects. So, diving in... Because this is a PDF, I'm not going to do line-by-line comments, which normally I would do by tracked changes in a Word file. It's just the way I work: I like to be complete, and don't like going past things (even typos) because I know how many end up in published works (Summing up comments are at the end.) (p1) - "The gifteds truck..." - I struggled with 'gifteds' because I feel it should be possessive; either gifted's or gifteds', but I don't know which. I guess I can sort of see a way that gifteds could world, but it's hard to interpret the meaning of this sentence. The issue with that is that it's the first sentence in the whole novel, and therefore critical for engaging the reader. The last thing it should be doing is causing confusion. So, I'd strongly recommend clarifying the meaning. (Don't worry, I won't go on like this over every single word! ) "The roof is positioned" - The sounds like the roof made a choice where to position itself, but it's MC and J that made the decision, they chose the roof, therefore they are the ones who positioned themselves. Alternatively, it could be read as the roof having been positioned by someone else specifically to afford this view for MC and J, which they did not. Either way, I think this phrasing gives a misleading impression, and therefore sounds 'off'. "A carries a weekly supply box in his hands" - I like the very economical style, the fact that there is very little description makes the description that is there much more effective. I also like the present tense, which adds immediacy. I like this style of writing. However, there are actually several instances of unnecessary or redundant words. Here for example, there is a default mode for carrying a box, which is with one's hands, so this part is redundant, IMO. (p2) - (End of page 2) So, I get that this is a very litigious society, but I don't understand why; I don't understand what a gifted is, how they are gifted, what are the consequences of a trial. In short, I don't understand what the stakes are, either personal or societal, and therefore it's hard to get invested. I feel like the characters , and the author, know things that I don't know. So, there's a barrier to me getting invested, a barrier between me and the story. (p3) - "My fists are clenched" - MC clenched their fist on page 2, so this becomes repetitive around here. Then, there is a fourth mention of clenched fists in less than a page. "essentially a deity" - Okay, but how? What does this mean? What can he do? I'm just being told this and asked to accept it, but I am not being shown it. It's much less engaging to be told something like this, than to be shown it, some evidence for it. And for the record, I'm not saying always show don't tell. There are goods reasons to tell readers things, at certain points, wrt certain things. "Disliking anyone is against the law" - WOW! That's quite the premise: intriguing. I'm interested to see how a society could operate sustainably on this basis. "There's curtains made of..." - MC hasn't shown that they're grammar isn't good, so "There's curtains" clangs in my ear > There are curtains. "outside the doorstep" - Isn't it outside the door, on the doorstep? How can something be outside the doorstep when the doorstep itself is outside? (p4) - "Apparently gifted’s grow food" - gifteds: this is not possessive. "concrete house lined street" - 'house-lined' "J and I walk into her house" - walking inside the house implies they have entered already. "end up with a splinter in the palm of my hand. I work on pulling it out" - MC is very unemotional here. No reaction, no pain. Maybe that's the intention, but it seems to contradict MC's reaction to the sister thing, and the state of society. "J hands me a glass, I take it with my left hand instead of my right since my right hand still has the stupid splinter in it" - I don't care. Why would I care what hand a character uses to hold a glass? I want to know about the world, and why it's the way it is: I want to know what makes a gifted and gifted, and I'm getting pretty frustrated with these trivial details. (p5) - Here in the first few lines on this page, I get some information, but it feels like it's hard-won. Also, MC is just repeating from a couple of pages ago the stuff about not wanting family to change. I know that already. Seems early for it to be repeated. "I open the door to my house and walk inside" - Really, you don't need to described every single movement a character makes, and every small action they take. It makes the reading hard work, IMO. (p6) - "Even if they do get reported it’s not a huge deal" - This kind of undermines the importance of being reported. I get that MC goes on to explain that her family are squeaky clean, but still it tends to make principle of being reported around unimportant. Not something that other people worry about. (p7) - "Then there's footsteps" - there are footsteps. "it’s not my mothers, not my dads" - Okay, there's a problem running through the whole piece with the absence of possessive apostrophes: mother's, dad's. (p8) - "He can have my chair, he’s my boyfriend so it’s only fair." - This sounds really fake to me, unconvincing as dialogue, but perhaps it's more because I have no idea why gifted are treated the way they are. And if they are indeed like gods, and have powers (e.g. mind reading), I'd like to see them working instead of just being told about them. "as they deliver the weekly food deliveries." - Repetition of deliveries sounds awkward, kinda clumsy. Easy enough to switch one for a different word. (p9) - "reading my thought's this entire time" - Seriously, and I mean this very straightforwardly and with kindness in the spirit of helping you improve your writing, you need to learn the use of apostrophes. Apostrophe with the letter 's' is usually possessive, or a contraction of the word is. When it is just a plural like this, there is no apostrophe. The phrase "to report me" is repeated closely at the end of the page; the phrase "mundane thoughts" also is repeated a bit before that, again quite closely. There's nothing wrong with this grammatically but, to me, it reads clunky. In my opinion, it reads a bit like the author couldn't think of a different way to say it. Phrasing things differently is part of style, but everything is stated so plainly in this piece that I think it tends sounds like a sketch of a chapter or a scene, without any stylistic technique applied to the sentences. I think style is a big part of what makes fiction entertaining (and non-fiction, for that matter). It can take a writer a long time to establish their style, and usually they do that by trying different stylistic approaches, different schemes of language. For dialogue, they might give one character one style of speaking, and another character a different one, to distinguish between characters, and therefore make them more entertaining, but also make them sound like the different people they are. I'm really not getting much of that here. But, the little brother was gross, as a youth might be, which was good, convincing. I think you could work that sort of thing more to get a greater effect and make the characters more interesting. (p10) - "will you marry me?" "Yes, I will." - Wow. I've said I like the directness (up to a point), but this is kind of painful to me. There no pause at all. No shock, surprise; no actual emotion from K at all, just "Yes, I will." That seems very unlikely, not believable, to me. Then there is the family reaction, and it sounds to me rather mechanical. I can't feel any emotion in the situation and the proposal that has just happened. It's almost like it's skipped over, rushed through to get to the next bit. I'll say again that it reads, in this part especially, kind of like a sketch for a chapter that you're going to come back to and flesh out the detail, the emotion, the nuance that makes the whole thing interesting, intriguing and entertaining. Repeating the same line three times: part of me wants to saying something about this, however <cough> it's the sort of stunt that I would pull, so I'll just keep quiet about it (p11) - "to freakin marry a gifted?" - need an apostrophe here to show the missing letter, so freakin'. It's the same as isn't, or don't; any of those contractions. End of the section - I like where we end up at the end of this scene: The thing about not being about to think freely, it's a powerful theme, I'm just not sure the scene delivers that theme powerfully enough, but more on that in my summation. (p12) - "I press my ear closer to the wall, K is talking now." - punctuation: I'm certain this should be a new sentence. There have been a few instances where I think commas should have been periods. I didn't reference them before, but I wanted to note it before the end. This one is trickier than the apostrophe thing, but when two parts of a sentence are dealing with a completely different notion, or action, I think a comma feels wrong. “Really you’re sure?” - punctuation: here, there is a pause between really and you're is there not? I can't see any other way to read it, but it's written as is it's to be read straight through without a pause. Do you ever read your work out loud? This is a valuable practice, and really brings out things like punctuation. "It’s some stupid law, if an ungifted marries and gifted the ungifted has to live with the gifted" - I don't understand: Why do they need a law for this? This is what people normally do when they get married. This seems a bit bizarre to me, that anyone would think this is unusual. Summation: For me, the premise and the main conflict, the MC being reported for being rude/angry is kind of simplistic, and the chapter gives off strong YA vibes to me. At first, I thought the style was very sparse and direct, which can be really effective, but as I read on it seemed to me that things like emotions and background really are only sketched in, and not explored or explained to the reader. The world feels very light to me, to the point of being insubstantial. Some things should be withheld from the reader, if they are part of the mystery, or a longer reveal about the nature of the world, but the reader needs to know enough to become engaged by the central ideas. I feel that too much is being withheld from the reader to be become engaged with the world. The central conflicts, about K leaving home and MC being reported; the first one confuses me, because that's what people in our society do when they get married, they go and live together (generally speaking) so for it to be a huge conflict in this world is confusing, and makes MC look childish and naive. The second one, there's no explanation of the reporting thing, and going to trial. What happens to a person? What's the risk? We don't know, and so (for me anyway) it was not engaging. Character personalities: I don't think they have much in the way of personalities. If they do, they are very standard and not very nuanced, complex. Where is the story going? I don't know, and to be perfectly honest I'm not sure I'm engaged enough with the character or the world that I would read on to find out, for the reasons above. In the end, I think there is a potentially very interesting idea here, about what it's like to live in a society where being rude/angry/obnoxious is outlawed, and anyone can report a person, but I think the first chapter has to establish the gifted effectively; who they are, how they come to be and what they can do. Also, yes, I think the characters could do with being more sophisticated, and I don't mean sophisticated like F. Scott Fitzgerald (for example), I just mean nuanced and conflicted like real people. I'm sorry if this all sounds harsh, and I hope it is not too hard to hear: Don't be discouraged. I think you are onto something here with the ideas in this, but I think it needs more development. It makes me wonder if you've done anything like going through Brandon Sanderson's lecture series on Youtube, or listened through the Writing Excuses podcasts. There is a lot of good advise in these (and other) places that would help with developing this project, I think. Good luck with it, and thanks for sharing!

Okely-dokely, so I think I'm reading a slightly updated version of this chapter, having said which, I apologise for all the comments! LBL's sent by email. In summary, I like a lot about it, and an encounter with the queen at this point is a great way to establish the world and the stakes, but I do have some issues. (p1) - The opening feels disjointed to me. Where was Ae during the first half a page? I don't need to know at the start, but, at this point, something like "Ae caught up then passed them, taking the lead." (p3) - "stepped forward into the throne room" - Whoa! What? I know you said the rooms move around, but my first reaction was that this is terrible security to have the throne room right at the front door. I guess maybe I needed a reminder, or some sign that it just moved here. "depicted battles and parties and orgies, all centering the Queen" - Excellent! Nice detail. I love how it captures character in so few words. (p4) - repetition of "emerald green"; other shades of green are available "I managed to free (her) and redirect her here" - I'm confused by this, and I think maybe it's an element that did not come across from Chapter 1. I got no sense that the teen was supposed to end up somewhere else, and I didn't not detect Ar doing anything that prevented that. Also, I can't remember now what happened to the other kid. Did they go through to the unseelie place, or remain in the Mortal realm? (p5) - "Because they are violating the sacred laws that span the courts" - The queen must know this very well. This feels a bit clunky to me: classic maid-and-butler sort of stuff. "the oracles dreaming our realms [sic > realm's] destruction" - Eh? Where did this come from? I think this is new, or certainly I don't remember it. "search for the children and the thieves" - Hang on; one of the teens is here, I guess this answers my earlier question that the other teen from the incident I witnesses is somewhere else, but how do they know where are any more children? Maybe this is WRS on my part, but I'm not sure it's been established that there are (lots of) other children missing. "Every minor noble..." - Good stakes and cranking of the tension of the situation. "The contract I negotiated with the humans, to gain consent to bring them here..." - This doesn't really make sense to me. If the humans end up in the faerie, they are obliged to do what the fae tell them, surely? Why would Ae need their permission to bring them to the Queen? (p6) - "stalked back to her throne and sat" - I don't think there's anything about her getting up and walking away. "And what had Ar gotten themself into?" - I don't think this is the most compelling end to the chapter. Sure, it's pretty standard and common, and that's the problem. I think as writers, when we put down something on the page that is standard, we're obliged to try and chuck it away and come up with something new, more intriguing and more engaging.

Yeah, I almost commented on use of the phrase 'mental hospital' being problematic. It's the sort of thing one editor might call out and another might let go, maybe?

Hey, interested to read this revised version. (LBL's sent by email.) Sorry I'm a bit late getting to this version. In summary, as with the first time, I liked a lot about it, and when they action comes, it moves quickly, and is exciting. The scene setting is interesting, I just think there is too much, and it slows the opening down too much, and there is quite a bit of repetition about the hair. I definitely think this has good potential though. Specific comments. (p1) - Good first line, I think. Not spectacular, but really interesting, giving info and posing questions. I like the opening paragraph too. It gives the MC a goal, and also explains key things about the world: Ghosts are real; heroes are not. I've emailed a tracked document with line-by-line comments, which I hope are useful. Of course, they are all suggestions, but it takes too long to say "This is just a suggestion" every time! So, they come across quite direct, sorry! The more you use exclamation marks, the less effective they are, the less impactful. A search of the document shows me there are 38 instances of "!" That is an awful lot. I really got quite annoyed by them, quite quickly. Often, when you used them, the dialogue tag also said "she shouted" or something like that, so there also was a doubling up of emphasis. (p4) - I wasn't convinced that the bus driver would be so invested in the hood thing that he would 'fume', also, it really threw me that people were smoking on the bus. And the driver wasn't bothered about that, students smoking on the bus? I struggled to believe that, and it didn't seem relevant (more on that later). (p6) - I don't know what 'scratch paper' is. "Overhead, jagged scars..." - I'm finding it slow. There's a lot of description that I don't think is really serving the atmosphere. I get that it's winter, it's dark and it's cold. For me, you only need to say that a couple of time. Seems to me this is a pretty long chapter for YA, and that the forgoing scene setting stuff could be clipped fairly hard. (p9) - "she asked before taking a sip of water from an odd glass they'd bought at the thrift store" - If this water is used as a weapon to fight the monster then fine, but if it isn't important it, and a lot of the other incidental detail in the 8 pages preceding this, I think, should be cut down pretty hard. Colour and setting are important, but minor/unimportant details are deadweight that slow the reader down from getting to the drama, etc. [p.s. I didn't see the water being used so, while it's a nice detail, it doesn't really serve any purpose, for me: It doesn't add to character, or setting, and just ends up being more words, IMO.] (p11) - "white hair being marred with every color her fellow students had in their pockets and more" - I'm getting pretty bored of this; it's really being flogged. This must be the fourth separate time it's come up. Not necessary to dwell on it so much. We get, we remember what happend a few pages bach, it doesn't need to be fully repeated. Trust the reader to be able to remember stuff. (p12) - "NO!" Oliv cried" - This is where the action kicks off, the excitement, the drama, and just a bit earlier, the tension dwelling as the ghost appeared. There is good stuff in the opening 10 pages or so, but I still think it just takes too long to get here, and that the opening would be more tense, more dramatic, if much more attention was paid to pacing, and less to repeating set up. I think there might be some darlings in the opening that maybe need to be slayen, or some details that could be moved to after this first encouter. (p14) - Oliv's head bounces off the wall three of four times, to the point where it becomes noticeably repetitive. Personally, I would change it up a bit and have different parts of her being hurt. I feel like two head bashes would be plenty. Also, repeated blows to the head make concussion much, much more likely. Braille - neat, and total works in context, but does it say anything? Is it an Easter egg for readers that know Braille? The second scene... For me, it's a complete bomb site. I have no idea what is going on, and I think it's really unclear how many characters are in the scene, what they are doing, how they are releasing to each other and what the scene looks like. I got pretty frustrated at this point, to the point that I might well have stopped reading. I think it needs to be much clearer what is happening in this scene. Hope this is useful

p.s. As you'll have gathered, I'm going to try and catch up for your subs here, and they others too Sorry for being way late.

I love the introduction, I can feel the thinness just from the description, and there is good atmosphere. It seems unlikely to me there are two railroads here, but two tracks, which is not the same as a whole different railroad. There is great emotion in this opening, and it really adds to character. Okay, Ari feels a bit miserable, and difficult to engage with, but I'm confident that will change, so it is in not way putting me off. I don't think a record would be on repeat, although I think you could/can get turntables that do that, I think. This sounds like more of a digital thing, though. Would they not think of the dog by its name? I thought the scream arriving on page 4 was good timing; I was about ready for something to happen. Ten minutes felt like a long time running to me, given that they had not been walking very long. I got confused about the description of people dragging other people towards the veil, but also away from it. I think the blocking needs to be quite a bit clearer around there. The same applies when Ar arrives at the struggle: they are running then they just arrive with no blocking about their approach, slowing down, etc. There is mention of a field of purple flowers then there is no description after that. I don’t get a great sense of place after they arrive. The banishment being over exactly to the year seems very easy, and convenient for the story. I feel it almost would have been better if it had been 320 years in faerie, just not bang on the dot; OR, there had been some ofther specific sign of the end of banishment that Ari had missed. “A jumped away from A” – this sounded weird to me, like them jumping two feet in the air: quite unnatural. This is a good detail about the veil rejecting Ar, but I think we need to know it in the moment Ar is grabbing the kid, so we know Ar expects not to get dragged through, and that is the basis of their plan, then they go through unexpectedly. I think the whole portal thing would work better if that’s established beforehand, the banishment etc., then it becomes a twist. The description of blue hair and blue eyes is okay, but I had an issue when the same form is repeated soon after. That really clanged for me. There seems to be contradiction between monarchy and government. They can’t both be in ultimate charge and making the decisions, which is how it sounds. Seems to bounce between the two here. I did not buy that Ae would go against the court to save a couple of kids, even for Ar. If Ae really is going to risk being banished, I need to be much more convinced of Ae’s investment with Ar, like they owe Ar a debt, or they were due to be married, something to justify Ae risking their future for Ar/the kids. How is the ball dangerous? Okay, it’s the end of the chapter, but it comes from nowhere. I’m hoping to learn the nature of the danger early in the next chapter, otherwise I’m being asked to accept something based on telling, but I’m not being allowed to judge. It’s hard to accept a statement like that in the absence of evidence. Conclusion There’s good stuff in here, some good action, although it needs tidied up IMO. It’s a good opening, and I love a fae story (as you may recall!!), so I’m keen to read more. I’d like to be more invested in rescuing the kids. At the moment I don’t feel much for this one, and haven’t met the other one at all. (Line-by-lines emailed.) Thanks for sharing!

Interesting. My challenge would be to standardise that approach, and then to remember what the letters meant, but yeah. I don't mind long file names, and I can see at a glance, but they ain't pretty like yours!

Happy thanksgiving!

Well, we're both missing it if there is Yeah, I think what feels right is the key.

Hurray! Thanks for posting here. I love to chat about the process of writing, hence the thread! I suspect it's probably "All of the above". TBH, it never really occurred to me that a draft would have to fulfil any particular characteristics to qualify as any particular level of draft, so I would say there is no definition of First Draft, Second Draft, third Draft, etc. Except... Probably something that everyone could agree on is that first draft has to contain the whole story from beginning to end, even if the end and the beginning change later; get cut or expanded. But what is 'Draft Zero' then, which is a term I've heard now and again? I have always thought that would be a skeleton of the story, maybe even a complete outline? And yet no, because that would be an outline, surely. So, I guess Zeroth draft would be a version of the story that you know has scenes, chapters, even a character POV missing, but still goes from the start to the end? For me, the next draft is just the one after I've revised from the previous one. So, if I pick up second draft of my story and edit it, it becomes the third draft, and that then becomes the fourth, fifth, eighth, whatever. However, if I do a minor edit, I'll call that Draft 2a (or Xa, X = whatever draft number it started as), because I've maybe only edited some targeted editor clarifications, rather than changing anything particularly substantive. BUT, when I get to the end, I'll have what might be called a Final Draft (regardless of what number it is) that goes to the publisher, or gets submitted to a market, and when (if) I get that back with copyedits, or maybe even small-scale developmental edits, I've already dropped the numbering, because the story is in its final shape. At this point, file names tend to get a bit silly, like "10 The World of Juno - Gxx ox Txx Hxxxx - Robin C.M. Duncan (draft 2a)_WCT edits_RCMD" etc. (Bad example, because this one is still a numbered draft, and it's about to become "draft 3", and I'll drop all those tags. What about you, @FlowerGirl, how do you deal with these things?

Err, no thanks. Assistant inciter of mobs gets more days off

Yup. Plenty of slots available. Please go ahead. That's two filled. Any more for any more?

Please go ahead! Sorry I have not caught up on recent subs, but I'm going to have a bit more capacity soon, honest!

Bah, ha-ha-ha! That's hilarious.

Ooh, I don't think I sent that file yet. [Moments later...] Sent!

Yeah, this is a brilliant group, the first writing group I ever joined, back in 2013 (although I've been writing for decades). I've improved greatly from being in this group, to the point of being published a couple of times now, with more in the pipeline. The feedback here is direct, which is so important: the worst thing is a group that doesn't tell you (for whatever reason) what you need to hear. You can put short stories through this group, or whole novels (a bit at a time!) - it's very flexible and there are folks here at various stages of a writing career, and also with varying interests, personalities and life experience, which is valuable too in getting a range of feedback.

Hi, welcome to RE and thanks for sharing, I'll email you tracked comments in the file, but here are the headlines from me. Generally, I like a lot about this. You've got an interesting character there, and she is in an interesting setting, has plenty of conflicts and challenges, which is always good. The narrative itself flows pretty well, I think, however there are issues, and my reaction to hearing that you're going to publish this year was one of... trepidation. I found that there were a lot of instances where I was confused, where statements weren't clear, or weren't supported by enough explanation for me to know what was going on, and why someone acted in a particular way. Examples, and other comments as I read through: A) I like the first line, but it could be smoother, the first paragraph too, but both engaged me, raised my curiosity. B) I like what you did with the different types of mobile phone. C) "Hood down, miss!" - Why does the driver say that? No context and no explanation. D) The bus zig-zags off down the street, then there are various actions described from the bus, after it's already off down the street. Continuity issue there. E) "Who got you?" - There is no context for, or explanation of J's question, and the reply from O "All of them" - I don't understand it. It's not at all clear from the first page what happened to her, and it's critical I think for the reader to understand that, because the 'tagging' which I barely got when she sort of explains to her mom, underscores the whole emotional state of the main character in the first chapter. There's a tendency for inexperienced writers--and forgive me, I don't know how experienced you are, and I'm not exactly Terry Pratchett over here, but take it as a general comment, please--to hide things from the reader, thinking that it adds mystery. Of course books need some degree of mystery to permit reveals at dramatic moments, but the things that are hidden should be limited to the right things, not information that aids the reader's understanding of the character's situation, or the nature of the world, at the start of the story. I've been there myself more than once, plenty of times, hiding details thinking I was creating mystery, but all I was doing was hampering the readers' ability to gain a foothold in my story and my world. In this case, I would tell the reader exactly what has happened to O on the page 1. Not all the detail, but the basics, her hair got sprayed by a bunch of mean classmates. That really would have helped me feel I had a solid footing at the start of this story, and make I easier for me to accept other details. F) "Perhaps The Machine was human after all." - Not a clue what this means. Is the machine a robot, a computer, a TV character? I don't have any frame of reference for the statement, so I don't know how to understand it, all I can do is more on a hope it's not important. I've heard advice from various sources in relation to mystery, and the thing is that, if the character knows the information, and we're in close first person POV, the the character is deliberately not thinking about something that they are intimately familiar with, which gets frustrating quickly for me as a reader. G) Characters studying themselves in the mirror is a major cliché nowadays. I know the example here isn't a lingering, detailed description, which is the most heinous kind of example, but it did enough to make me roll my eyes. H) "If today's experiment panned out" - No idea what this refers to. I kept it in mind for the rest of the chapter, but saw no other reference to experimentation, that I noticed anyway. And if it's sitting in the diary entry, well, more on that later. I) Where does her sister go? J is O's sister, right? J just disappears from the chapter, and I don't know where she went. That bothered me for at least a page. J) I found it really odd that her mom didn't talk to her when O arrived. In fact, the mom appears from nowhere. There is something strange about the blocking when O walks into that room. I would have expected the mom to like mouth something to her daughter, like with you in a minute, or some such. I didn't get from the narrative that the mom was finishing off a line of something, or whatever. I felt to me like the two just ignored each other. Later, we find out that the mom is blind, but I absolutely needed to know that at the first point of encounter. Seems to my another example of withholding intrinsic information from the reader in a way that only cause confusion, for me, at least. K) "O set it aside with shaking hands." - Why?! We're in her head, and nothing is gained by withholding from the reader for almost a page that the letter is from the school. That's what causes O's reaction, but I'm left confused for a page not understanding why she is so affected by an envelope, when O knows it right away, but keeps it from me, even though I'm in her head. L) I live in Scotland, I know almost nothing about the US education system, so most if the stuff about the schooling I find difficult to understand. M) Prime example of how I was left confused by the narrative in various places: "They were transfer papers. Her hair was ruined, but maybe she could still salvage the day. All she had to do was ask." - First sentence, okay, I get that, it's a clear indication of what is in the envelope, and that's good. The hair, I've been struggling with that for most of the chapter, because it's not clear (IMO) at the beginning. Also, hair and transfer papers are not (directly) related, so the line from one sentence to the next is tenuous. Second sentence makes sense in itself, but then the third... ask who? Ask them what? I think there are well into double figures of instances where I can see there's an assumption made that I understand a particular statement, but I don't, so I feel I'm left behind by the narrative. N) "She tried not to think about her long white hair being marred" - If this had been on page one, instead of page nine, I would have had a crystal clear understanding of what had happened to her, which underscores her emotional state for the whole first part of the chapter (before the attack), and I would have been much less confused. O) I'm at page 10, and I'm suffering a lot of confusion by this point, but then... the action kicks off. I think the action is (generally) excellent. It has energy, and tension, and it's dynamic, not without confusion in places (for me), but really clips along at an excellent pace. I think there are places it could be improved. I thought mom's injuries were undersold, almost conversational in the way they're described, but I really was hauled through these closing pages by bright, colourful, energetic passages. P) "The rusty blade" - It seems hugely unlikely to me that a letter opener would be rusty. But my biggest problem is that the letter opener is described in great detail when it appears, how it's engraved with the lion, the witch and the wardrobe, but there is no mention at all of it being rusty. In fact, it's described as intricately engraving, but rust would quite quickly obliterate fine detail, I feel. Q) Page 12 of 14 and things are still rattling along in the action sequence. There are pieces of wording that I think are redundant or contradictory, which I've tagged in the tracked comments emailed. E.g. it's stated that the rain the roof drowns out everything, but a sentence (or two) later it's stated that O still can hear "the music and the storm", so, the music is not drowned out then: contradiction. Details like this are so important for retaining reader engagement, and reader trust. R) The mirror is described variously as cracked, shattered and fractured. To me, each of these things is completely different from the others: cracked, maybe one of two cracks; fractured, not too far different, I suppose, although it suggests to me pieces have fallen out; shattered, the whole things is a pile of shards on the floor. S) I think the diary entry reads very convincingly as a diary entry, good job with that. I would strongly recommend putting the title at the top of that section, as I had no idea what I was reading at first, and there's no need for any reader to be disoriented. The title at the top is perfectly standard. But, it's just a big old info dump. There is a lot of technical detail, but I'm barely engaged with the character and the story at this point. By the end of the chapter, having just had a pretty satisfying (once polished) action section, I want to move into the next chapter and feel that I have an understanding of the world and what the main character is dealing with. What I'm not keen to receive is big pile of technical information that I don't know what to do with. I feel that it just distances me from the world, makes me feel there is so much I don't know, and do I really want to get into all this? Overall, I liked a lot of this, but I just want it to be much clearer. There's no good reason that I can see to hide any of the things that are hidden from the reader by the main character, whether it's deliberate or not, but that aside, I think there is an exciting and satisfying (probably, early days) story here, with an interesting protagonist. When you talk about it being published soon, how many edits have you done? Who all has read it? If I'm honest, I think it needs probably another two or three edits (two plus a proofread?), based on the first chapter. Usually, the first chapter is the one that is the tightest, because folks tend to go over projects multiple times before they are finished, and therefore the first chapter gets the most edits. Just curious. It's an interesting read, and I think it deserves to be tighter and clearer before it gets out there. The whole series (I'm presuming it's series, because everything's a series nowadays) stands and falls on the first book. Thanks for subbing

Okey-dokey, let's get... something that rhymes with 'okey'. (Pokey? Possibly. But possibly not.) Line-by-line comments emailed, because that's how I roll. (Just checking you received the first lot okay?) Summary/headlines here: - The epigraphs are hard to read like that, one after another, out of context. I found them dry, and a bit confusing. Seems to me these are the main vehicles for delivering the promise of threat, and even for identifying who are the big bags in the story, and I don't think they really work for that, at the moment. I felt they were kind of anonymous and a bit hard to contextualise. - I enjoyed Chapter 3 more than the first two. I liked where Sal was in the last book, but without the foil of Yo, and in the local context of her family, and that world she's on, I didn't enjoy that stuff. Keeping all the planes straight, and in context, and getting invested in all that twisty-turny stuff right at the start of the book, I think that's a tough ask: it is for me, anyway. Soooo, cut to Fo and Be, who are brilliant together, and it really felt for me that this is where my engagement started. The landing, the devastation, encountering the surviving locals, the starving and the kids, and then... shock the MARKINGS. The whole chapter just felt like a really nicely balanced unspooling reveal, very atmospheric, and effectively described*. - Although, the description of the stone building is a bit of a car crash, IMO. I had no idea WTF was going on, if it was up, down, left, right. Very confusing, IMO. - However, the addition of Ther is excellent, I really enjoyed zir as a character. Grumpy teenagers are just the best (characters), aren't they?

I completely agree with Mandamon summation points here. I had quite a bit of disorientation with the first chapter, and found it harder to get engaged with that Sal than the second one, whose situation I remember much more clearly from the previous book. The first Sal... I didn't have much sympathy for her; all that angst over a step, jeez, just watch where you put your feet. I had issues with Yor and N thinking it was a good idea to make Sal a family. Neither of them is that emotionally naive, surely? Can they have been paying that little attention? For me, the realisation that You is her home comes too late in the chapter. Was it present in the last book? I've always felt that Sal was a bit remote in her regard for Yor, but this brings the realisation home. I think it could be pushed up. (Full comments sent by email.)

Yep, I'll read it.