- Joined
- Apr 17, 2010
- Messages
- 7,435
- Reaction score
- 475
My Awards feedback:
This is the beginning of a story and there is a lot of interesting potential here, but I guess part of the problem would be the story is still in its infancy and has not had time to develop yet, so I cannot possibly comment on how it may turn out or presume where it is going in these early stages.
In terms of the introductions and set up, I found a lot of stuff was quite rushed and shoved together. The introduction of most of the characters one after the other, each one's name weirder than the last and every outfit and hair colour seeming to be competing with the others, made all the characters rather blur into one so none of them really stood out. I like the concepts of the different houses and levels, that was quite a nice addition, but the description of the building layouts was rather confusing; this is the curse of the author who creates something vivid in their mind, but it proves difficult to translate onto text (I am guilty of this myself). And I can see hints of there being some bigger storyline to come, but the suggestions are too vague right now to be of much note, and things like the attack on the boat came out of nowhere and seemed to add nothing to the story - there seemed to be no discussion of it at all.
With specific attention on the latest chapter, I think it was interesting, it seems to be setting up the storyline more. Again, some details seem a bit forced in, but that does really come down to the forced exposition we have to do at the start of stories or when introducing things. The ending paragraph seems to be setting things up, but it was delivered in a way that it almost seemed like random people in the crowd were being picked for their reactions; try not to be vague for the sake of vagueness.
In terms of where to carry on from here, my advice is simple;
- Cut back the focus on all the characters. Something I recommend to Flaze last Awards was to perhaps look at Harry Potter for tips; you have Harry, Ron and Hermione as the mains, with Harry getting the main focus, and all their fellow Gryffindor's appear often enough to be known but not often enough to detract attention or to cloud things up. Unless all the characters are going to be significant, maybe cut two or three to the background and focus on the ones we are meant to focus on.
- Flesh out and slow down the descriptions. Make things clearer and perhaps read over things as an outsider to see if they make sense, or even better you could use the General Writing Questions, post the description and get tips from people - that's what the heads are for. I would also perhaps stop making the characters all to overly distinctive; when every character has a quirk or weird trait then everyone becomes less memorable, quirks only work if few people have them.
This story could have great potential and I look forward to seeing what the mysterious plot actually is, but it needs to be less crowded, slower in style but quicker in story for it to be really great.
This is the beginning of a story and there is a lot of interesting potential here, but I guess part of the problem would be the story is still in its infancy and has not had time to develop yet, so I cannot possibly comment on how it may turn out or presume where it is going in these early stages.
In terms of the introductions and set up, I found a lot of stuff was quite rushed and shoved together. The introduction of most of the characters one after the other, each one's name weirder than the last and every outfit and hair colour seeming to be competing with the others, made all the characters rather blur into one so none of them really stood out. I like the concepts of the different houses and levels, that was quite a nice addition, but the description of the building layouts was rather confusing; this is the curse of the author who creates something vivid in their mind, but it proves difficult to translate onto text (I am guilty of this myself). And I can see hints of there being some bigger storyline to come, but the suggestions are too vague right now to be of much note, and things like the attack on the boat came out of nowhere and seemed to add nothing to the story - there seemed to be no discussion of it at all.
With specific attention on the latest chapter, I think it was interesting, it seems to be setting up the storyline more. Again, some details seem a bit forced in, but that does really come down to the forced exposition we have to do at the start of stories or when introducing things. The ending paragraph seems to be setting things up, but it was delivered in a way that it almost seemed like random people in the crowd were being picked for their reactions; try not to be vague for the sake of vagueness.
In terms of where to carry on from here, my advice is simple;
- Cut back the focus on all the characters. Something I recommend to Flaze last Awards was to perhaps look at Harry Potter for tips; you have Harry, Ron and Hermione as the mains, with Harry getting the main focus, and all their fellow Gryffindor's appear often enough to be known but not often enough to detract attention or to cloud things up. Unless all the characters are going to be significant, maybe cut two or three to the background and focus on the ones we are meant to focus on.
- Flesh out and slow down the descriptions. Make things clearer and perhaps read over things as an outsider to see if they make sense, or even better you could use the General Writing Questions, post the description and get tips from people - that's what the heads are for. I would also perhaps stop making the characters all to overly distinctive; when every character has a quirk or weird trait then everyone becomes less memorable, quirks only work if few people have them.
This story could have great potential and I look forward to seeing what the mysterious plot actually is, but it needs to be less crowded, slower in style but quicker in story for it to be really great.
