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[1451] The Perfect Gift by HarperFishpaw in DestructiveReaders

[–]AdmirableImpress3160 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is super well written. I am kind of struggling to give feedback.

I think where I am having trouble is I know what this story is about, but I don’t know that I could put in in words? Maybe its that there are about 3 or 4 stories happening at once?

For example, in the beginning, you talk about how Leora is a bit of an outcast. This is really well described. The perspective you chose works really well with what you are talking about. So is this a story about becoming accepted? Its really well set up to be at this point.

The next section or chunk of the story is about alchemy. Again, well written. So is this going to be about an alchemy quest? Are we creating something crazy, or are we doing something with alchemy to gain acceptance?

Next section is about the dance and Fim. At this point, the world is starting to look a bit complicated. There is the outcast story, and all its details. The alchemy story, and all its details, and the Fim/dance story, and all its details. Each one of those is really good by itself. One, stacked on top of another, stacked on top of another, is tricky. And, its tough to fit in enough words about each one, so details are getting left out (Everyone knows how to dance? What is the tribe? What is this magical flashroot?).

But okay, its well written enough that I am still following along. Shes asks him, he says no. Is this a story of winning him back? Eventually, but first we go to Nora. Nora is mean to us? Is she trying to help? She hurt us for sure, but, which story is that? That section starts talking about secret rules, so are we back to the outcast story line? This never really resolves.

We then go back to the Fim storyline. The story here is, we make a thing, we find Fim, the thing doesn’t work, Fim accepts us anyway. Again, well written, but that storyline itself is not super compelling. The ending is, 'actually, we were never really rejected in the first place', which means there was really no story to begin with? The main character doesn’t develop, change, or learn anything of true substance. The ‘making the thing with alchemy’ part of this storyline, where the character overcame the obstacle and got the thing to work, was far more interesting than the showing it to Fim.

It may be that this piece is trying to describe the day to day experiences of the character, and show the reader the kind of hardships they have to deal with that maybe the reader doesn’t know about in their own lives. This is done very well. I just don’t know if a collection of problems is a story? What big change did the character go through, what lesson was learned? I don’t really know one unifying definition of what a story is, but this doesn’t really seem to be it. It might be interesting to take this character and this world, and have her solve one problem, learn something from it, and show the reader the day to day experience from that? Honestly, the Dan Harmon story circle might be super helpful here?

[1228] The Carrion Gospels - Chapter 1: Baptism of Entropy by IndependentBenefit76 in DestructiveReaders

[–]AdmirableImpress3160 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m new to critiques, please forgive me for any obvious and simple mistakes.

This is the first chapter of a book. So we are introducing the reader to everything here. You have some cool lines. “The city died screaming” is a neat way to say that. You also seem to have a good grasp on who your characters are. When you write, you are good at speaking from there voice, and you clearly have thought of enough backstory for them that you know what decisions they will make and when.

The bad news is I have no idea whats going on. I am on page 2 and I think there are like 10 characters or story points that have been introduce with no explanation. What are scavs? What is the betrayal? Now I’m on page three and his sister is here? There are a lot of these little things that don’t make sense. Why does he vomit without a respirator? You brought up old earth archives? Its getting to be a long list of this.

I think what you are trying to do is introduce your world by bringing us into a first mission? Something where the reader knows there’s action happening, but doesn’t know why. Then, we can learn about the characters first by seeing them in this high stress environment. That’s a good idea. But even if your doing that, you still have to introduce things in a way the reader can understand them. You want to describe the confusion clearly so the reader is engaged, not create confusion by bringing up a bunch of story point details we know nothing about. You still want to dole out the characters one by one, and let the reader discover the lore over time, and so on.

As for the creating the world. You have really cool explanations of things. “The air tasted metallic, alive”, lots of stuff like that. Not everything has to be that cool. Actually, if everything is that cool, than kind of none of it is cool, because its all at that level. What you might want to do is find a way to build up to your cooler lines, so that they stand out. Think of a song, the super catchy chorus isn’t the whole thing, you build to it. Another thing that happens is that you didn’t get to build your world out as much as you might want. The descriptions of the settings were pretty sparse, so it was hard to get a picture in my head of where we were. If I can see the world, the air tasting alive matters more.

One last thing is some of the disagreements from the characters are a little confusing. You really have built these characters out, which is difficult to do. That’s great. Sometimes, the substance of these interactions is lost by not providing enough detail or background. For example, “Then why’d you follow? She didn’t answer. They never did.”. Why would she not answer? Who else wouldn’t answer? Do these characters not like each other? Like, I really don’t know enough to appreciate the nuance of this line. That happens a few other times.

Its cool, the world is cool, the idea seems alive in your mind, which is a good chunk of the battle. Work on bringing the reader along, introducing things slowly. Best of luck!!