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...Well, I'm hoping you guys do post feedback and all that in here now that I've made a topic for you all...Anyways, yeah...
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Comments and Feedback for Shadows of Troria
8-Bit Wren
Posts : 664
Points : 724
Join date : 2011-03-01
Age : 33
Location : Australia. Yes, I'm surprised I'm still alive as well.
Character sheet
Character 1 Name: Wren (Overlord)
Character 2 Name: Falken
Character 3 Name: Joshua Luminate
KatellaAvenue
Posts : 114
Points : 118
Join date : 2011-02-28
Character sheet
Character 1 Name: Annie
Character 2 Name: Katarina
Character 3 Name:
Alright, I suppose I'll take a stab at it. Bear in mind that I'm also a writer and I have a bias against certain styles, so that probably colored my criticisms. These also might be redundant now that you've probably made some progress since you last updated.
-Details that should be important or unusual seem to be elaborated on at the wrong point. Like the fact that Wren had a game console and an entire birdcage in his backpack that he's been using to bring tents around (and I don't think you even mention that fact until Chapter 22, which is kind of late for a detail which could well have been mentioned earlier). Especially egregious is Elizabeth and Michelle. The fact that Wren left those two behind, I feel, should at least get mention in the first few chapters. It sort of puts Wren in a negative light if he forgets things that important until later on.
-You seem to be forcing the reader to side against the 'antagonistic' humans with your narration. I personally don't think you should show too much bias in your exposition, it breaks the golden rule of 'show don't tell'. Remember that character analysis of a situation can be highly unreliable. In addition, the examples shown are all kind of small scale, in my opinion. Just a couple of characters at a largely local level. To show the corruption of Earth in a very believable way, since that seems to be a big point of your story, you might want to expand on it, like show a scene highlighting the corruption in the government or something to show just how widespread it is.
-The Wren/Sera/Hylesa triangle seems to go too fast. I mean, just a week and they're already advancing to very intimate stages. It doesn't seem so organic to me. Your story seems to be far from over, so you might want to let the relationship slow down a little and move back the advancements in closeness for later chapters.
-Thought process for the characters seems somewhat illogical. Like in Chapter 24, Wren goes from thinking about cooking to suddenly being scared by demi-humans because of a website back to the food onto the morals of humanity back to food onto his friends. Or in Chapter 26, where Michelle suddenly goes onto a diatribe about the modesty of the demi-humans in the midst of being freaked out by the fact that she's in an unfamiliar world before going back to being freaked out. It would make sense if characters fully fleshed out one thought before going on to the rest, because as nice as stream-of-consciousness is and all, it generally just really confuses readers.
-Narrator's voice. At times it becomes lemony, which is fine if there's an actual character intended to be the narrator, but I don't think that's what you're aiming for. In short, the narrator appears to have an opinion sometimes, when he says things like 'obviously [fact]'. It wouldn't be such a problem if that's always the case, but your voice tends to shift between lemony to impersonal at times. Once it even switched into 1st person in Chapter 24. It's inconsistent and thus confusing.
-Syntax. What the heck is with all the random capitalized words? Some sentences don't even finish. Misspellings abound. It's unprofessionally written, so if it's still like that you should clean it up before an editor sees it.
-Pacing. Order is a bit wonky. Things like the Detective and Michelle shouldn't be so interspersed throughout the story, since they're relatively related. You might actually want to move everything up to Michelle getting pulled in closer to the beginning. This goes hand in hand with the important details you seem to leave out in the initial exposition point I made earlier.
Overall I'm kind of unsure about the story. It seems a bit weak at times and hard to follow. You've got some good ideas, but you should explain what the hell is going on or readers would just give up. If this were a real book I probably wouldn't think highly of it. But then, this is apparently your first draft. And I'm a bit of a bitch when it comes to books. Ask if there's something you'd like me to clarify.
-Details that should be important or unusual seem to be elaborated on at the wrong point. Like the fact that Wren had a game console and an entire birdcage in his backpack that he's been using to bring tents around (and I don't think you even mention that fact until Chapter 22, which is kind of late for a detail which could well have been mentioned earlier). Especially egregious is Elizabeth and Michelle. The fact that Wren left those two behind, I feel, should at least get mention in the first few chapters. It sort of puts Wren in a negative light if he forgets things that important until later on.
-You seem to be forcing the reader to side against the 'antagonistic' humans with your narration. I personally don't think you should show too much bias in your exposition, it breaks the golden rule of 'show don't tell'. Remember that character analysis of a situation can be highly unreliable. In addition, the examples shown are all kind of small scale, in my opinion. Just a couple of characters at a largely local level. To show the corruption of Earth in a very believable way, since that seems to be a big point of your story, you might want to expand on it, like show a scene highlighting the corruption in the government or something to show just how widespread it is.
-The Wren/Sera/Hylesa triangle seems to go too fast. I mean, just a week and they're already advancing to very intimate stages. It doesn't seem so organic to me. Your story seems to be far from over, so you might want to let the relationship slow down a little and move back the advancements in closeness for later chapters.
-Thought process for the characters seems somewhat illogical. Like in Chapter 24, Wren goes from thinking about cooking to suddenly being scared by demi-humans because of a website back to the food onto the morals of humanity back to food onto his friends. Or in Chapter 26, where Michelle suddenly goes onto a diatribe about the modesty of the demi-humans in the midst of being freaked out by the fact that she's in an unfamiliar world before going back to being freaked out. It would make sense if characters fully fleshed out one thought before going on to the rest, because as nice as stream-of-consciousness is and all, it generally just really confuses readers.
-Narrator's voice. At times it becomes lemony, which is fine if there's an actual character intended to be the narrator, but I don't think that's what you're aiming for. In short, the narrator appears to have an opinion sometimes, when he says things like 'obviously [fact]'. It wouldn't be such a problem if that's always the case, but your voice tends to shift between lemony to impersonal at times. Once it even switched into 1st person in Chapter 24. It's inconsistent and thus confusing.
-Syntax. What the heck is with all the random capitalized words? Some sentences don't even finish. Misspellings abound. It's unprofessionally written, so if it's still like that you should clean it up before an editor sees it.
-Pacing. Order is a bit wonky. Things like the Detective and Michelle shouldn't be so interspersed throughout the story, since they're relatively related. You might actually want to move everything up to Michelle getting pulled in closer to the beginning. This goes hand in hand with the important details you seem to leave out in the initial exposition point I made earlier.
Overall I'm kind of unsure about the story. It seems a bit weak at times and hard to follow. You've got some good ideas, but you should explain what the hell is going on or readers would just give up. If this were a real book I probably wouldn't think highly of it. But then, this is apparently your first draft. And I'm a bit of a bitch when it comes to books. Ask if there's something you'd like me to clarify.
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