hawkedup

That's cool, though I honestly believe that having beta readers throughout the book is going to help a lot more in the long run because you'll get one type of feedback. Then, once your whole book has been beta read, that's when you should alpha. JMHO, and I honestly don't think that it's unfair for you to submit as many times as possible. It would be different if all 5 slots filled up regularly, but we are here to help your book be better and if that means submitting 30 individual chapters in a row, you shouldn't keep yourself back. Do what you feel is right for you. I mean, if that's only submitting 3 more chapters, then so be it, but don't do it out of consideration for us. Just my $0.02. Now on to the critique: Laid it low? The first pages feel like they can be condensed or cut. There is a couple pages of pure infodump, and the description feels too spread out and sparse. I'm not getting a good picture in my head of what he's seeing or why what he's seeing is important. This could also be caused by the fact that Damiel is stopping and proceeding more than once so the description feels disjointed. Page 7 - Ah, here is were your chapter hits its stride. I'd cut everything before it and just start here. From here forward your descriptions are much tighter, but remember to use all five senses! Page 10 - Why does he need confidence to think of the prisoner as Tekis? Okay, I need to comment on the names. Yes, fantasy names are fantasy names and sometimes it's okay to throw in names that can have multiple pronunciations, but sometimes the names you use are distracting. Pyrshavan is still driving me mad. Per-shave-an? Pyr-sha-von? I don't really know what's bothering me about them so much. It could be that only proper nouns seem to have made up names. Or maybe it's that there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to your names, but something about them is taking me out of the story. Sorry, I can't be more specific. 13 - For some reason I feel this soldier would lose respect for a leader who he could give the command, "Command it," and not be chastised for overstepping his bounds. 14 - The king feeling rebellious for not calling his steward? Absolutely brilliant! 15 - By now I'm getting a bit tired of the way you block your chapters. It feels like something happens, or someone says something, and then every single time we get an infodump explaining. Okay, not literally every time, but it feels that way. As a reader, I want to be able to follow their conversation and not feel like they are lecturing. I think Brandon calls this maid and butler dialogue, where it feels like the characters are only saying something to inform the reader. 16 - I'm at odds with them talking about how strong they are as a people, yet they don't really seem to judge Kaltor for being old, which (purely based on what I know of these people in this chapter) I feel they would do, even in train of thought. Strong ending. Why the italics? Because it's in the past? All in all this was a big step up from the last chapter. There are still some points where your writing could be a bit tighter (e.g. "knocking sound" should just be "knocking") but overall this was a much more refined piece of work, I feel. I'm interested to see how it grows from here.

I haven't gotten a chance to critique yet, but I have to ask... Why only 3 more chapters?

Second section: This first paragraph back feels off. Like, why doesn't she open her eyes? Is she trying not to give herself away? If so, why can she keep her eyes closes voluntarily but forgets to breath (which would just as soon give her away). Also, she notices the wrinkled skin on his back, so I have to assume this man is naked. How can a stomach rumble louder if it has not yet rumbled to begin with? How can someone standing tuck their feet up under them? Why can't she wear long sleeves? Something is wrong with the soup scene. Maybe the words pathetic excuse? I get that you're trying to say, hey this soup isn't very good, but it's still the best thing she's ever eaten, but she goes on about how bad it is just a little too long, I think. Sleeping with a scarf on doesn't seem overly safe. And why was she being so sneaky earlier if she lets her guard down so easily? Where has she gotten food from before? Why do your characters use each other's names so much? Or at all? I can understand once for the reader's benefit, but after that it makes the dialogue feel stilted. Who is the ground familiar to? Certainly not her. Your characters go from sitting in a small hut to battling outside by the dock without actually going outside. Also, I don't understand your action scenes. Why is she running around at all, considering her power, except to run away? Who is this smuggler girl and what betrayal? Seems kinda random. Third section: Why is she surprised that they lift her so easily? Was she a fat or something? Fourth section: Not sure why this one is separate from the third section... The elephant threw me, but I didn't know why at first. Then that one detail made me realize that up to now your setting has been so vague that this detail feels jarring. Okay, you gotta step back and actually explain this bell sounder. By now the present tense is starting to weigh on me. Fifth Section: Strong ending, but the impact is lost on me for a few reasons. Everything that comes before it feels too generic. Evil world government. Random magic that I still don't actually understand. This can be fixed pretty easily with some more eye catching detail early on. Like how I never really get the sense of who this character is. What was she like before running away? Why should I care about her? What if she really is a villain and there's no way to tell? With a short story, you have to make every word count, but for most of this story I have no idea what's going on and no direction. The title kinda helps, but not really since it makes the stuff that comes between the final scene and it seem like filler. Your skill as a writer definitely shows, but this can be much much tighter. Tighter action, more direction thematically (you don't even have to change anything that happens to give the sense of direction), and a little bit more information about your world and characters and why I should care about them. Also, the redundancy issue comes into play in these sections. I think you could probably cut it back a few pages, throw in some exposition, and have a solid short.

Here are my thoughts on the opening section of your story (I haven't read the previous comments so that I could go into your story fresh) so pardon me if I repeat something someone else has already said. I will critique the rest later today. Opening sentence: Take out the word "will" and it becomes much stronger. Such a tiny change, but it is so much more immediate. I feel the beginning 3 paragraphs are a bit redundant, especially considering this is a short. I think you could probably get everything. I think you could probably get all that info into one really good paragraph. I notice this throughout the piece, where you say something, and then say the same thing with different words and better in the very next sentence. You perfect your ideas from sentence to sentence, but by the time you get to the good sentence, you've heard that little bit of info before so it takes away some of the impact. So early into a short story you are going for impact over everything else, I'd think. The 5th paragraph might be better if it came right after the first sentence, then explain Jorani's reluctance and regrets, that way you hook the reader with action, then explain why the action is even more than just words. I assume we're dealing with third person limited here so the sentence "Her shoulders shake but she does not think of them." feels a bit out of place. The paragraph beginning "She has known it for so long..." has some awkward train of thought problems. By this point I feel she has too much reverie considering how little has actually happened. Why is she moving so slow? I can't imagine the difference between moving carefully and "slow as she can and still be moving" can be that big of a difference. Not to mention she keeps pointing out that nobody is following. Why doesn't she have supplies? Up until this point I felt like, even though she wasn't completely in control of the situation, she at least knew what she was doing. Perhaps this is explained later?

I don't know if Odium spreads hate either. It means hate, but does Death (HELLO, ALBERT) spread death or is he just a part of it? That doesn't mean he doesn't spread hate, but you get what I mean. *car breaks after reading Brandon's comment*

Right off the bat it's a strong start. Having not read the first five chapters I don't feel lost and the first paragraph really shows me who Cadmia and her father are with just enough hinting at the past to let me know things have changed recently. I think you should cut this: It's an interesting little thing for her character, but it feels very out of place here since her appearance wasn't provoking anything at the moment and it makes her feel shallow (not shallow as a character, but shallow as a person). However, this may have been what you were going for. Plus, I think the sentence preceding it says everything we need to know. I don't know how to feel about Nurya or her dynamic with Cadmia. My first time reading through everything felt alright, but the more I look at it, the more I feel like something is off. She reminds me of one of those old ladies who is just around because the story needs an old lady to counterpoint a young protagonist. I found it strange that they seemed to be having what I would consider “day one” discussions, too, even though they acted like this was not the first lecture/teaching. I feel like you may have been going for a Shalan/Yasna dynamic but it doesn't come across that way. Cadmia comes across as petty, impatient, and later when communicating with the god, inept. And, just like Mandamon said, Nurya comes across as weak since she gives into Cadmia so easily, who obviously isn't nearly ready to be doing what she is doing, so easily. I'm no philosopher, but I recognize Socratic method when I read it. I find it a bit off that Nurya would be using one of Plato's primary tools to prove to Cadmia to think beyond Plato. This ties in to what I was saying before. By this point I seriously doubt how wise Nurya is. Maybe you're going for someone who is so stupid they are wise (like Luffy) but that's not what it feels like. I want more description during the entire god sequence. You have this fantastic thing happening, but the details aren't there. I'm not drawn in; I don't feel like I'm living. What does this god look like? When Cadmia is talking to the god, she comes across as inept. Surely anyone who can communicate with gods would at the very least know about that god, and how they operated. She would know that Janus would make offers that she'd have to refuse first. In fact, I think she should go into the exchange planning on bartering with the god. You'd get to the same place, and it wouldn't seem like Cadmia was on the verge of making war twice. I think maybe you're trying to give Nurya an important role by having her warn Cadmia, but... I don't know. It all comes back to active vs reactive protagonist. Having Cadmia almost agree to bad terms without even thinking about them is reactionary to its greatest degree. Why does Cadmia get pity from men? I thought she was hot? Why is her father only mentioned by name once and during a part of the chapter he doesn't appear? The scene where she sits at his foot will feel much much stronger if Cadmia doesn't seem quite so childish throughout the chapter. Just tweaking a few things, like her bad bartering during the god scene, will make her feel more powerful, so when she sits down at her father's feet, it's that much bigger of a deal.

Hey guys, thanks for all the great critiques! Already I've been able to go back and make the story much stronger, and since I'm applying ya'll's advice while I'm writing the current chapters, I feel like my submissions will only be getting stronger from here on out. I have a few comments and specific questions for ya'll but right now I'm focusing on critiquing everyone else's piece. One thing I want to point out, though, is that I must not have been very clear about what I want to have a stand alone feel. You see, each of my books is separated into four individual parts of about 80 pages or so. Every four of my submissions equals one part. Those four submissions combined is the story I want to "stand alone" and not the individual chapters you read during each submission. Does that clear things up? Does putting the names of the characters who will have POVs at the beginning of each part help? *edit* Yes, I would really like to see all your comments! Is it easy to do? It sounds very useful for my own critiques.

Here is (2 of 4) of Part 1 - "The Crazy Cat Lady" My book Dark Matter Memories is separated into 5 parts. While each part ties directly to the ones that come before it, I also want each part to be its own unique, though interconnected, story. Part 1, as you guys can see, focuses primarily on setting up the story, world, characters. I know it's a little infodumpy, but my hope is that it is still interesting enough, and poses enough mysteries, to keep you reading so that, starting with Part 2, which is the actual extraction of Kara, I can start delivering all killer no filler from then on out. What bored you? What excited you? What confused you? The story so far: A group of interdimensional travelers known as Team Magenta try their best to save people like them from a group of human-shaped monsters known as the Sapphires. Meanwhile, the Sapphires gather, each with different plans concerning the apocalypse. *PS - Sorry about the early submission, but not sure if I'll get a chance to submit tomorrow.*

I see what youre saying! Do you guys have any suggestions on this? I tried really hard to give the illusion of peril while saying, as crazy and weird as this scenario is, it's actually a pretty boring day on the job for these people.

I better change that sentence. I was meant to be metaphorical but major fail. Thank you for your comments! I originally started the book with the Jester chapter, but when Team Magenta showed up later to extract Kara it felt a bit rushed so I thought showing them going about an unrelated extraction would help solidify the characters later. Hopefully this worked!

I think that that's just our default now when we think of YA. Love triangle. But you're right. The article I read implied heavily that Rowling wanted to pair Hermione but no actual quote. It's a bit of a relief, but I'm with McMillion. I don't like it when authors go back and put their own doubts about their work into the minds of the readers. On the same token, I didn't like when she said Dumbledore was gay or that she would have killed Mr. Weasly but chickened out and the only reason is because she said so after the books were finished and read. Shrug.

Thank you both for your comments! A few things. Some of the things you mention I specifically took out of these chapters because they felt like too much information. Hopefully I deliver the explanations soon enough and well enough that their omission here won't be too distracting. I was watching the Sanderson lecture where they mention building reader trust. It's sort of what my entire mindset behind writing this book has been. Introduce early, pay off later. However, since I don't have a name for myself to let me get away with too steep a learning curve, I'm hoping to build even the smallest bit of reader trust early by omitting small things making the reader ask "Why?" about minor things only to have those answers within 10 or 20. That way the reader sort of has a sense of closure throughout the story. Does that make any sense at all? Random tangent. Sorry. Adding and adapting the other things you mention has, I can already tell, made the draft that much better. The explaining the 43 minutes thing earlier, for example, because it gives the chapter a little bit more of a ticking timebomb feel, but not too much. Also, just wanna warn everyone. For lack of a better word, Jaime is very 'meta' and spoiler alert sometime later it gets to the point of a mental breakdown. It's at the base of his character and character arc. Once he's established, I hope it's a little bit less jarring to the reader. His primary job on the team is to study and understand the cultures of different dimensions, and he does this through studying what they consider entertainment or pop culture. I'm really hoping this character pans out, but yes, please let me know which and when the references work and when they are too much. I also don't want to lean on the references as a crutch. So, give him a couple parts to warm up to, but if after so many submissions he still isn't working please please please let me know in no unscertain terms because I'll have to rework the character and I don't want to trap myself. Which part are you refering to? If I imply Jaime can see into all dimensions at once, that needs to be gone because he definitely can't do that. When they first slip into a new dimension, they don't know what is waiting for them on the other side. The tech they use to travel between dimensions makes sure it isn't depositing them in a wall or something. Maybe that's what you're talking about?

Just curious. How many slots are there every week?

Scary! I hope to see everything you gained from that experience utilized in your next submission! Talk about immediacy!

Weird! I guess I really liked that Ron and Hermione had ZERO chemistry. In some weird way that is what made me root for them so much. It was so very different and yet endearing. I always assumed the romance was bad on purpose, though. I'm also wondering if she just meant in "7 Years Later" she shouldn't have shown them together? Personally, the 7 Years Later thing was the only part of the series I didn't love.

Yeah, I can't get enough of it. I watched through the Sky arc mostly in one go but then got distracted by other things for a while. Since I got back into it, though, right before Water 7, I haven't stopped watching. The problem with it is, if I put it on I know there's nothing else I'm going to want to do for a while. They know how to end an episode, that's for sure.

I love One Piece. It's like Doctor Who meets Marvel meets the Wheel of Time meets Discworld meets a bunch of other awesome stuff! I'm coming up on the end of the Thriller Bark arc and the show never stops amazing it. How can it be so funny and dark and inspiring and epic all at the same time? It makes me want to get out and follow my dreams! I can't remember how long it took me to get into the show, but I remember the exact moment that I was HOOKED. Walk to Arlong Park. I get chills just thinking about it. Avoid English dub at all costs. Nakama fansubs if you can get em. Regular subs are okay, too, but they translate the word nakama wrong and since it's so important to the show I go for the fansubs, but that's just me. English dub is just plain bad, though.

The alpha group sounds fun! I'm really hoping to build a good group here in the next few months to a year. I'm all in when it comes to this whole writing thing, and I'm hoping this is the place to be to get going (god knows I can't find any good writers in my tiny town I'm living in, which is why I'm planning on moving soon). And I totally understand if you have to bump me, but I'll plan on submitting just in case.

Thanks for the reply Mandamon. I definitely see what you mean about the dialogue tags. As for the infodumps, thanks for pointing out the parts that you noticed most! I'll definitely mark them so I can pay special attention to them in my next run through. I have a lot of showing later and I'm trying to balance that early, but you're right. If it takes the reader out of the story, then it doesn't matter how much showing I do later because the reader will never get there! The cast in a movie thing is specific to Jaime's personality traits and that is played with more later. He's part Abed. Let me know if it stays as awkward as you felt this reference was as the story goes on? Thanks! On your final comment: What's going on there is that they have to wait a certain amount of time between slips and 43 minutes is generally considered to be safe (though I play with this a lot later). At the point when they send Mu'pe to Earth One, the team has only been in his dimension for about 10 minutes so therefore they have to wait the remaining 30 minutes before they can follow him.

My books are separated into four [mostly] distinct parts. I've noticed I can get about 1/4 of each of these parts into one submission. If you all don't mind, I'd like to submit four weeks in a row, get all of part one out there, and then take a break for a couple weeks before submitting for part 2. I'm only asking because I notice not too many submissions, but if there are others who want a spot, by all means I wouldn't want to block them, either. Just wondering!

I'm sure you have all heard the news that J.K. Rowling came out and said that, if she could go back and do it all over again, she wouldn't pair Ron and Hermione. I'm posting this here because I'm wondering if anyone else here feels as unsettled by this as I do? There are a few things about the books that I have always felt put the Harry Potter books above other fantasy series, and one of those things was Ron and Hermione, specifically the fact that both of Harry's best friends helped him *only because they were his friend* and no other reason. To hear Rowling imply that she would have paired Harry and Hermione makes me think a- suddenly the books aren't cannon anymore and b- that they aren't the same books. Hermione is a different character entirely if she loves Harry. The books are completely different. Anyway, how do you feel about authors retrofitting their novels later like this?

Thank you for your comments, Andy! One of my biggest obstacles as a writer has always been overcoming the info dump. Was it so much that it took you out of the story? Believe it or not, most of the work on the working draft stage of this story has been trying to find a good balance between show and tell, which consists of me cutting a lot of just pure exposition. I shudder to think of my earlier drafts. Sometimes I have to put information early so the payoff later is better, I understand that, but it's really hard for me to find where that line is. Maybe because I'm too close to it. So if you, and everyone, could look out for any points in my stories where the info dump becomes distracting, point it out? Like which paragraph, yadda yadda yadda? You have no idea how helpful this would be! I have to be perfectly honest, I didn't even notice the use of specific numbers but even looking forward in the stories I see I use numbers a lot (not just in action sequences, either). I need to a- fix this or b- figure out why it works in the story and do it more!

Keep in mind I haven't read the first three chapters. You address the passive voice in your comment so I'll skip that. First and foremost, I feel like you need to develop your scenes better. A huge chunk of this chapter happens between events, while the events themselves are fleeting or recounted after a sub-chapter break from a future point in time. I felt almost let down at the end of some sub-chapter because I thought something really cool was going to happen and then, not so much. I wanted to feel like I was right there in the moment with the characters, ya know? The only time that really happened was during the description paragraphs, but the scene shifted and changed so often that I felt like I was being kicked out of the story periodically. The final scene of the chapter is strong and should be what you're shooting for, but up until then I didn't feel like anything that was actually happening in the chapter (with maybe the exception of the capture and escape) actually mattered. The entire plot was being pushed forward by outside forces, the past, thoughts, which does happen, but in this case it made the characters, with the exception of the ones in the final scene, all seem very passive. The passive voice and present participles didn't help. I noticed some passages felt stronger, like you were more confident. The ending to the first sub-chapter, and the very final scene were the strongest bits. The dialogue was solid, though I didn't really get a sense of the characters personality through the dialogue, which I'd look out for.

Hey everybody. I'm writing a series of interconnected stories (or parts) that make up a larger epic (if I'm allowed to use that word). This is the first 1/4 or so of the first part. Please hold nothing back in your criticism. Thanks! Some of these stories will have mild L,V,S, and/or D, but nothing too bad.

I know exactly how you feel, LambentTyto. I don't really know exactly how to respond, so I'm just gonna talk about it. I feel like sometimes amateur writers hear something over and over and they fixate on it to the point where it becomes limiting. The whole "Show Don't Tell" thing is a good rule of thumb when you're first starting out, but once you've honed your craft to a certain point, it stops applying. The Dune series comes to mind. Talk about books that tell way more than they show, and yet that's part of what makes the books such fascinating page turners. If I had to watch Muad'dib do some of the things that are only referenced through "telling" (if you've read the books, you know which things I'm talking about) it would be a completely different reading experience and, I believe, something crucial would be lost. Which brings me to myself and how I balance Show/Tell. A lot of it has to do with narrative flow. For instance, sometimes a dialogue heavy scene starts getting bogged down with incidental dialogue that, for the sake of realism needs to exist, but let's face it isn't that interesting. Like when directions are being given, or events are being recounted for characters that weren't present during that scene. In cases like these, instead of doing five, ten lines of dialogue that would be redundant or boring, I just "tell" the reader in one line of narrative the important bits of what was said. This not only eliminates words (sometimes) but makes the actual dialogue around it feel stronger even if it isn't any different. There's also the problem of pacing. If you're showing and not telling right from the beginning, when you get to the parts of your book that are supposed to be more exciting, it is much harder to portray the rise in action and pace. You're almost forced into a thriller pacing instead of having internal build. Not only that, but unless you're telling sometimes, foreshadowing is much much harder, and therefore your climaxes don't pay off quite as much as they should because you're forced to drop telling into those climaxes when, if you had just told the reader this information sooner, you wouldn't have to be explaining now. Sometimes it's a lot like robbing Peter to pay Paul, but so is a lot of writing. Anyway, you're not alone!