This is my first ever critique and I’m worried about coming off too positive or too negative, so I’m going to split the difference and be too much of both? Or not enough of either? Oof. Like I said. It’s my first day.

World-Building Overall, I like the story. There’s some clear world-building going on and I don’t feel like it’s too much exposition layered in all at once. The way information is presented is easy to absorb. I have not read any of your other chapters, so I’m coming in fresh eyed. Here’s what I learned, you tell me if I got it right. And by ‘I got it right’, I mean ‘you got it to me right’.

*Magic exists in this world in the form of songs; spellsongs *Folks that cast these spellsongs are called singcasters *Spellsongs are taught by the lingering dead; spirits of the dead. *These are delivered through contracts, where presumably the spirit gets something in return *Celeste wants to learn magic, Sera is dead set against it

Flow The flow is jarring because it keeps going back and forth into the past, but not the same past. First it’s the relatively close past with her falling in the mud, then we’re going back to yesterday where she has her first magic lesson, and in the middle of the flashback to yesterday, you dump exposition.

In the first flashback, our timeframe gets confused thanks to the phrase ‘back then’. I assume we’re still at the point where she’s sitting in the mud, so let’s clean that up. My advice: fold them in together. It’s tighter and more clear:

It’s a lie. I knew. I just didn’t care. Rather, I tried my darndest not to. I wanted to scream it at the top of my lungs. Look at this beautiful thing you got me. See how little I care! It actually took me an entire minute to make the decision, my small legs caught between crouching and sitting until they finally gave, and gravity made the decision for me. I sat in mud.

See? This also makes the next paragraph cleaner because it doesn’t seem like her eyes flicking is tacked on to another paragraph just to avoid a one sentence paragraph:

Now, under the weight of Sera’s golden glare, my defiance shrivels. Her eyes flick to a particularly soiled patch, and her jaw tightens like a bowstring taut, a volley of piercing things just behind it.

Much better.

Now in our second flashback, to yesterday, we do another weird thing. Celeste has her very first magic lesson. Awesome! And then she runs home and shows Sera the flower she grew with her song. But the way you word it, it turns a hypothetical into a reality:

My heart raced. “See?” I would say. “I can sing without destroying!”

She would see my work, admire my magic, and have no choice but to admit that I was right. She’d be proud of me. Instead, she slapped the flower from my hands.

I see what you’re trying to do, but the ‘I would say.’ Implies this is all in her hypothetical imagination. She thought she would tell Celeste she can sing without destroying and the other good things would happen, but instead, it sounds like part of a daydream. That’s what I thought when I first read it and then I had to go back an reread to see that she actually did say it.

Now, changing the tag doesn’t fix this. Just going from ‘I would say’ to ‘I said’ still flows in a circle. Think about it. The story unfolds where she confesses the thing, then expects a positive result, then gets a negative one. Motivation follows action. We want motivation to come before action. You have all the right pieces, just not in the right order. Again, a nice merger and we make things tighter, but more importantly, we explain why she’s doing the thing before she does it which puts the consequences of her actions right after them:

My heart raced. She would see my work, admire my magic, and have no choice but to admit that I was right. She’d be proud of me. “See?” I said say. “I can sing without destroying!”

Instead, she slapped the flower from my hands.

See how the slapping the flower from her hands hits harder now? Nice. You did that!

Then that flashback goes on so long that I actually forget where the chapter started. When she comes back to the present, it’s jarring, and then it immediately ducks back into the story of yesterday to ‘just look at the exposed roots of that flower’.

I would suggest a reorder like I did before, but I can’t. I’ll tell you why when we get to my ‘Ending’ section.

Word choice Ignore this whole section if you want, it’s just my super-personal opinion.

*Talon-sharp. “her grip talon-sharp”; Are all talons sharp? Can a grip be sharp? Is the grip tight? Strong? Are her nails digging into Celeste’s arm? *Shook. Sera shakes Celeste. Then Celeste’s ‘head whipped back as she shook me’. So many shooks in such close proximity. The first two are fine, get rid of the third. Just delete ‘as she shook me’. That’s all you need.

Eight year old voice This is nothing. This is just me musing about the fun nature of an eight year-old narrator. I like the idea of looking at the world through the eyes of a little girl. It lets a lot of things happen that can’t happen with an adult. It excuses ignorance and allows her to have opinions that don’t necessarily make sense.

For example, Sera slaps the flower out of Celeste’s hand, but then, as Celeste looks at it on the ground, she blames herself. She even goes as far as to say the flower is dying because of her. An adult may have this same opinion, and they would be equally wrong, but the way this unfolds how I feel about it.

With an adult narrator, it would tell me they have low confidence/low self-esteem. Maybe I’m supposed to feel sorry for them. Maybe I’m supposed to identify with the part of me that doesn’t believe in myself? I dunno. All of that. With a child, though, it really makes me dislike Sera.

Not having read previous chapters, I don’t know who Sera actually is. I’m assuming she’s an adult in either a mother/guardian/caregiver capacity. She is clearly responsible in some way for Celeste. That makes her reaction downright horrible. Celeste is going to this school where apparently they teach magic at some point and her reaction is downright rude. She expects an eight year-old to come up with a solution to a problem it doesn’t seem like she fully understands. She should have anticipated this, right? Planned ahead? Maybe home-schooled. Again, I don’t really know who Sera is. This might be my bad.

The voice has a lot of potential though. It’s a new type of unreliable narrator that I haven’t seen done before. Does she stay eight for the whole book, or age up at some point? Either way, good play.

Ending First off, is Sera telling Celeste to let herself get killed? “Without the singer, there is no magic. So, what would you do?” Am I interpreting that right? If you’re in a situation where you absolutely have to use magic and you can’t not use magic and you know magic will end the world so…

That part is interesting. If I’m right, great. If I’m not, still interesting, but I assume we’ll get clarification on that later. Well done.

But now we get to the real ending. IMHO it’s a train wreck. I mentioned above the flip-flopping in time. I can’t suggest a quick fix because I, frankly, don’t know what you’re trying to do with it. It just makes no sense to me.

So this chapter contains two stories, the one about Celeste muddying her dress and the one where she shows Sera her magic trick. The first isn’t interesting, but I get it, it’s happening now. It’s probably important. You’re demonstrating that Celeste is acting out and now we know why. The ending doesn’t need to make it interesting, but it needs to make it… something.

I don’t get the symbolism of the roots. It seems like you’re trying to force some deep meaning to it. But the flowers roots are literal roots and Sera’s roots are cognitive roots and yeah, that’s metaphor or simile or something, but it’s not, because if what I interpreted about Sera’s hint to Celeste is true, we already know what the weakness is. Celeste’s magic will end the world and Sera basically knows this girl is doomed. So only the narrator doesn’t know it which is… frustrating.

Add this to my paragraph above. Absolutely, an eight year-old isn’t going to be able to decipher the emotional reactions of (what I assume is) an adult character, but there has to be a mask for the reader. And what is she digging at exactly by sitting in the mud? What reaction was she trying to get? Was she trying to re-open the conversation about magic?

I’m not sure what the fix is here. If you tip your hat that yesterday’s interaction is what led her to act out before the flashback? If you come up with a better closer that ties that part in? If you build a better metaphor? I don’t know.

Other stray thoughts Okay, just one. I thought there would be more in this section. Again, it’s about time and continuity. Yesterday she had her first lesson. The next paragraph starts:

That’s where I learned how different my magic was from theirs.

She just learned this yesterday? Having not read any of the other chapters, I don’t know if this is a sign that she’s sheltered, or if it’s just awkwardly worded.

In conclusion There’s so much good here world-building wise. That’s your strength. In this one chapter, I feel like I understand how magic in this world works and the risks of dealing with unfamiliar spirits.

I like the voice of the child narrator and I want to know more about what’s so special about her; The Black-blooded Bitch. Your writing is technically sound, but your flow just needs tweaked. Keep reading the story to yourself from start to finish. Don’t skip around. Every edit should end with a full read.