Hi thebigeasy66

I found your item on the read and review list on the WDC main page. I liked the title and decided to check it out.

First, I will commend you for your efforts, creative writing is not for the weak, it requires a certain bravado for a person to put their ideas on paper and then post them in the open for the world to see and then share their opinions. I like reading works by a new artist it is fun to see their different twists, and nuances as they learn to bring their characters to life.

I am always candid in my reviews, my comments are meant to be helpful… to provide feedback about what I saw and understood, and my impressions of the scenes a writer creates. I am not judging the work, I simply share my thoughts and where they originate from. I am one of the lucky writers who happen to have some very good mentors who try to teach me to write. A few lessons have gotten through my thick engineering skull, but alas I ‘m no expert don’t take anything I offer to harshly. I tell folks all the time there are no rules to writing… only rules for getting published.

Your chapter was original though, I found it a bit disconnected. Perhaps if I had started reading from chapter one, it would not be so? But, a dragon wearing clothes and having books and a backpack suggests he is in school. Yet in this chapter, he is in what seems to be a huge park-like area but building a nest shelter which didn't make much sense to me in this single chapter.

The beginning scenes where Connor is looking for someone to show himself too and then the confrontation with the Jogger, again, while fun and added conflict, it didn’t provide much for me to develop a storyline. Nor did it provide much insight into the characters. Perhaps that’s my main issue is that there is no clear point to the chapter unless it is in the last sentence where the unnamed voice tells Connor that “they need to talk.”

What I am told by the many of our fellow writers who critique my writing… is that every chapter needs a beginning, middle and an end or transition into the next scene and must have a perceivable flow. That doesn’t mean everything must be in chronological order or in geographical sequence, but every scene must provide something important to the story progression.

I saw a number of SPAG issues, (Spelling, Punctuation, And Grammar) I would list them, but don’t think this is the time. It is much more important to get the story down on paper first. Besides, if we don’t leave a few things for the Copy-editors then their children go shoeless. When you get closer to the finish line misplaced commas are of importance.

These first comments may seem negative, but they are not all that important as everything I felt could easily be explained or made relevant in the preceding or following chapters, which I have not yet read.

I must offer these next comments with care and assure you that they are sent with hard-won personal experience. Every comment has been sent and shared with me about my work. Even after, now years, of practice. so please don't feel singled out.

Your chapter contained a number of issues that editors call beginners mistakes….(I hate that phrase as it implies there is something wrong with the writing when in fact it is a preference dictated by the publishing editors of today’s markets. Each genre has its own guidelines, and it seems only those who are bestselling authors are allowed to deviate from those guides.

Your chapter was very telling, "I know what a freaking cop-out to say that", it is what everyone says no matter what we write. But in this case, I think you have a ton of room to use more “Show.”

You have a lot of redundancy in the writing, repeated words some as many as five times in a single paragraph. Most editors today, say we shouldn’t repeat a word more than 3 times per page and never in the same paragraph. I know it’s a lot easier for them to say it than for us to write it that way. As one example: look at the word “Hill” in your story.

Redundancy is more than repeated words, telling the reader things that they already know is redundant, as is repeating a concept. Here is just one example (out of many)

“It occurred to me I might need shelter from any snowstorms in the future,”

Connor doesn’t need to tell the reader he had a thought, and the word “might” is vague as is snowstorms in the future. The best editors tell us to be concise and direct, never as a matter of fact, never vague. They want us to build scenes that provide the reader with new information in as few words as possible.

What if instead of the sentence above, we want the scene to reflect that Connor felt a chill, looked to the sky and saw gray clouds on the near horizon? What if you wrote it more like this:

…. My legs shivered, there to the west, angry, gray clouds hung low. I better see about a shelter….

Doing it more like the sentence above, the read understands Connor felt the cold, which triggered the idea that a snowstorm was coming and that he needed shelter and was going to build something.

That brings up another issue, editors tell me never to explain how to perform a normal or usual action, unless the act is important to upcoming events. So explaining how Connor builds the shelter is not germane to the story, in fact, it is just filler and becomes something that can be skipped over. and we never want to give our readers anything to skip over!

Publishers today, believe that anyone capable of reading our stories already knows how to do things. As an example: build a fire. Providing the details of gathering wood, stacking it, in the proper order, and then lighting the kindling first is a waste of the reader’s time. We are supposed to simply say there is or will be a fire. Maybe instead of telling the reader of the fire, we show the fire by having a character move near, uphold out his hands and rub them together over the flames. The reader knows there is a fire without saying so. A scene is set, and unless the person who built it is later on in the story, going to die from an infected burn, no one care who built the fire or how they did it.

I saw a number of style issues that normally get a manuscript tossed into the rejected pile by the interns that pre-screen new submissions before they get anywhere close to a publisher’s desk. This review is already getting too long, and I don’t want to discourage you from continuing this story. First drafts are allowed to have every manner of errors, SPAG, style issues, and even giant holes in the plot and storyline. Every best-selling author I know and have heard speak says the same thing, “Get it down on paper first... then worry about making it publishable.

If you would like to talk more about this review, or where my observations come from please drop me a line.

My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .