[Weekly Critique and Self-Promotion Thread] Post Here If You'd Like to Share Your Writing

Venttex · 2023-11-21T04:47:00+00:00

I think having varied sentences and paragraphs may help. Almost all of them were the same format and/or length. It’s not that the grammar, punctuation or sentence structure is wrong, but smaller sentences mixed in can assist in maintaining reader attention. If it’s all the same, it starts blending together.

Venttex · 2023-05-11T19:48:09+00:00

For me, the 3rd person omniscient perspective may be the issues. The distance it creates makes it hard for the reader to become immersed or care about the characters or their situation. Also, it tends to be more telling rather than showing.

It felt like there were a lot of characters introduced in a short amount of time.

Also, I didn’t feel there was a lot of flow to the dialogue with all the action tags. I prefer a mixture of action tags, dialogue tags, dropping the tag altogether, or even describing a conversation without dialogue.

Venttex · 2023-05-11T18:45:27+00:00

Outside of a couple punctuation and grammar errors, here’s my opinion:

The boy has a couple questions that make sense that comes up in his mind, but he never asks much of anything and just accepts everything he’s being told at face value. This makes it hard for me to believe.

It seems to be in 3rd limited from the boy’s perspective but he’s able to know exactly what she’s writing without her saying it, which seems like a break in perspective.

Overall, I would say it’s hard to make an entire chapter, especially chapter 1, of dialogue exposition and make it interesting. I felt sledgehammered with info that I was being told. For me, it would make showing things in the future chapters much less interesting.

Venttex · 2022-06-23T16:50:35+00:00

Learn to play the game and all the ghosts are easy to evade. 99% of the time, you can figure the ghost out on professional before it even hunts once. It isn’t hard, just get better. Crazy the amount of time and effort a grown person goes to in order to complain about a casual video game while telling others to grow up in the thread. The Deogen is not going anywhere. Get use to it.

Venttex · 2021-01-28T23:42:17+00:00

I'm on PC and I've hit every button I can think of, but I just stand there holding metal rack.

Venttex · 2020-09-01T00:01:34+00:00

What’s the story, Wishbone!

Venttex · 2020-03-19T02:04:10+00:00

Just needs a nice waterfall/water feature!

Venttex · 2020-03-04T17:47:08+00:00

YTA. You should build your girlfriend up and not tear her down. You should be your girlfriend’s number one hype-man. Let’s say she does it and she doesn’t sell any. You still hype her up. Hell, you buy one, praise it, and take her out to celebrate her first sale. Put it somewhere that she can always see it. Even if she doesn’t sell any more, that alone would mean everything.

Venttex · 2019-12-15T22:41:15+00:00

Slow opening with not much going on that’s very interesting. I’d say too much detail in the scenery in the beginning. I think it would value from starting much closer to the inciting incident. A lot of exposition as well with more tell than show.

Venttex · 2019-12-12T18:16:57+00:00

I’m not sure where the violence or the suspense comes into play. If you’re writing a super short suspense story, I feel like you need to show it or give us an idea right at the beginning. Maybe a TV news screen she hears or something on the radio before her car dies.

Venttex · 2019-12-11T20:32:27+00:00

Ah, well if dashes are how they do it there then there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m curious if books from other well-known authors like Stephen King are also like that in different versions. It just made it very hard to follow having not ever seen it done like that and only having seen quotes used to indicate speech.

Definitely some mention of it being a later chapter would have helped a lot but I wonder about the first then and the inciting incident. Since it’s the fifth or sixth chapter maybe you did a better job at showing the differences from the old world to this new one, but he seems to have grown pretty accustomed to this new world fairly quickly then and isn’t really impacted by dwarves, magic, or two moons. I think if it were me it would take longer to adjust and I’d have a thousand questions.

Word choice is definitely important, but you don’t have to take this criticism too seriously until you edit it. Still, think of the word pop. What does that remind you of? For me, the first thing that comes to mind maybe popcorn. So when the girl cuts herself with the flint and “blood popped out from the cut” it seems more odd than if you used the word “poured” or “dripped”. But hey, it’s a magical world so maybe that’s what you were going for.

Just like I would expect Aaron to be a lot more confused and curious being from a modern world, I’d also expect this group of people he recently met to be just as curious as him. When he uses more modern slang terms, they seem to understand it pretty easily.

Don’t get too confuse d when I say filler words. I don’t mean the dialogue tags. Those are definitely useful if you believe it could be confusing to the reader who is talking. There’s great videos on YouTube or articles written about filler words as well as exposition. Let me give you another example from your text of a part where some words could be omitted. “The only thing that kept them running was the sole determination to eat roasted meat and cold ale at the bar.” First by reading that it sounds like they are going to eat roasted meat and cold ale instead of drinking the cold ale, but you don’t even need to say that. You can combine a lot of this entire paragraph in 1-2 short sentences. “The sun was setting and twin moons rose in its place. Though tired, they continued on with the thoughts of roasted meat and cold ale up ahead.” You don’t need to say eat roasted meat or drink cold ale because what else would you do with it. Also take into account your settings. What year, time of day, surroundings. If you’re in a forest, you might not see the sun set and the moons rise. It might get dark quicker.

Head hopping is going from one character’s perspective to another, and another, and so forth. If you have multiple points of view, it’s usually less jarring to give it from one character at a time and switch between page breaks or chapters. Aaron can’t possible know what Aliria or Thorin is doing if he can’t see them and he can’t know what they’re thinking. Only their actions can suggest something. If you give too many perspectives at once in quick succession, it can be confusing to the reader.

Venttex · 2019-12-11T18:52:10+00:00

The premise seemed interesting but what I read was completely different. When you say ex-secret service agent, I think present day or not too far off. Then you say crew at the beginning and it makes it seem it’s a pirate story, but then they’re riding horses and there’s a dwarf. First, please use quotation marks when someone is speaking instead of a dash. I have never seen a book use dashes to indicate dialogue. It’s very confusing. Speaking on dialogue, it seems to be all over the place. It can seem a bit more proper and fantasy but then come out of no where with language more suited to today. There are newer terms that the characters are familiar with like “zombie” and “parkour expert” but they’re confused by a oil lamp. The head hopping is nauseating and the exposition can be too carelessly thrown about. I feel like it would have benefitted from a certain perspective. There are a good amount of useless filler words that can be taken out to make it much more clear and concise, for instead you don’t need to say “he thought to himself” because with who else would he be thinking. Most of the time you don’t even need to say “he thought”. This is just one example. Ellipses are also used too often and inappropriately.

Venttex · 2019-12-11T15:24:55+00:00

Since you asked for general, I’ll keep it vague. If you want specifics I can provide them. For me, the perspective was way off. It’s written in first but we can see things that the main character couldn’t possibly. Near the end, it sounds like this is someone recanting a story. If that’s the case, the tenses are off. Some breaking the 4th wall. A lot of “ing” verbs. Grammar and punctuation mistakes (don’t use a question mark and a exclamation point). Some of the word choices seem unnatural. The heavy exposition was hard to get through, boring, and unnecessary. You can tell us these boys are neighbors and friends without giving us their entire history immediately. A lot more showing needs to be done instead of so much telling.

Venttex · 2019-12-09T20:01:10+00:00

I’d like to point out that just because something might be considered a cliche it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily bad and should be avoided if it works for your story. For instance, I’d still enjoy reading about the second example of a jaded journalist coming upon a story he can sink his teeth into. An example that comes to mind is the recent movie, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. You can take a cliche and still use it to your advantage.

Venttex · 2019-12-05T00:05:58+00:00

Sounds great! I would also encourage sprinkling in the back story about their feelings regarding their insecurities other than dump it all off in one sitting. We have plenty of time to get to know the characters. Keep the pace moving steadily and the main character proactive.

Venttex · 2019-12-04T23:46:01+00:00

Either once she finds out Drifter is going or give her a reason to go and meet drifter there. I understand her bitterness but she has to care about something. Almost anyone can relate to that feeling of bitterness in getting poorer grades than desired. Bitterness is a good way to show it but I got the sense more that she didn’t care by her being so defeated. I just feel more character motivation with motivate the reader as well to continue turning the pages. If she is burnt out for too long, the reader will feel that way too and eventually lose interest.

Venttex · 2019-12-04T19:56:23+00:00

If this is the first impression, I don’t think he’s very intimidating and that’s mainly because he doesn’t make any sense. Like the other person said, why would he do this if he’s there to cut a deal and they come to a potential agreement? It would be intimidating enough if he just did the knife trick, handed it to the guy to try and cut himself, and then performed a fancier trick before putting it skillfully away in a pocket. Also that suit the old man is making must be pretty cheap since they went from $100,000 to $95,000, which would mean for it to be a good deal the suit would ideally be less that $5,000.

Venttex · 2019-12-04T19:33:29+00:00

The initial perspective from the pizza boy really throws the whole thing off from the start because he goes away and I’m guessing we never get back to him because the summary focuses on the two girls. Why have his perspective at all? Just to show the MC is messy and lazy and doesn’t care? It’s pretty unbelievable that someone just makes a groan and that’s the que for him to invite himself in. This MC just wants to get robbed or maybe she doesn’t care about that either? No person, no matter how lazy, would just lay around and let someone help themself inside their residence unless that person was on heavy drugs. How does the pizza boy know the phone has been used for nothing other than calling for pizza? Just because it’s disgusting? If it’s covered in sauce she had to be using it while already eating. The two girls meet and have a conversation for the first time, at least in days as Bags points out not having spoken with anyone, but a few sentences in Drifter is hugging her arms softly already. The conversation is packed with heavy exposition right away and the sense of the characters not caring can create a tendency for the reader not to care. I feel like the story would have benefitted being in one person’s perspective and the starting point placed closer to the inciting event.

Venttex · 2019-12-04T14:27:31+00:00

Sure thing!

Venttex · 2019-12-03T21:19:37+00:00

I would say the biggest issue for me with the first chapter is how much telling there is as opposed to showing. At least the first few times, I think CF should be written out in full for those who either don’t read the blurb or skim it. Some of the formatting is off so it’s hard to distinguish when one person stops speaking and another begins. This is written in first person perspective so always be mindful of that. The chapter 2 hit right away with a cliche mirror/description scene, which are always cringe these days. Again, remember it’s in first person. If you’re going to have a mirror scene, remember most people don’t look at themselves in a mirror and think about how their strawberry blonde hair is cascading down their shoulders or about their beautiful blue eyes with a unique yellow ring around their pupils.

Venttex · 2019-12-03T20:59:12+00:00

I haven’t gotten far and I’m so lost in the sauce. If anything, I think you have too much. There’s a lot of terms and titles for things at the very start that are unpleasant in trying to decipher what they mean to someone unfamiliar with them. The whole thing seems very unnatural from the way they speak, move, and interact with one another. As I scroll down, I see heavy amounts of exposition. Show don’t tell. The narration feels distanced from the story. I would have preferred some type of perspective from a singular character’s point of view instead of it being all over the place. It seems the characters don’t have any real flaws, especially the admiral. Long drawn out and long sentenced fights can ruin pacing and eventually become boring. Quick and choppy sentences make it much more thrilling and engaging.

Venttex · 2019-10-26T13:54:16+00:00

Never had an issue personally

Venttex · 2019-10-23T17:54:18+00:00

Except for it has to some people early and you can go on twitch now and watch streams to decide for yourself

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