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15 Public Reviews Given
15 Total Reviews Given
Public Reviews
1
1
Review by jkincaid
Rated: 18+ | (4.0)
First and foremost Talicia, this piece is much more engaging as it is written now. You've got a much more effective hook to draw your readers in, and you've made them wonder what's going to happen next. A life-or-death struggle between two characters can always show aspects of a character effectively instead of just telling people about them. You do a great job of showing in this piece. You've shown that the vampires are a credible threat, you've shown that these Vicio (half-vampires?) aren't ordinary humans. You've shown that Vicio's have special abilities or powers, and some of the nature of those powers. You've shown me something of Villahr's character traits by how he fought and how he reacted afterward. And you did it all through action. It's always so much more effective to show a wizard casting spells than it is to tell a reader that this character is a wizard and then never have him do anything. So great job. You have an instinct for description and story-telling, that's not something easily learned.

As for what can be improved, keep in mind there's always room for improvement and even professional writers go through multiple drafts. The main question I have is: what is the significance of the prologue? Some things are still a bit vague, but that may be intentional. If it is fine, but make sure you answer that question somewhere later in the story. You're posing questions, what is the memory he's trying to suppress. If you need to answer that later in some kind of important revelation, you'll want to make a few more references to it throughout the story to keep it fresh in your reader's minds. You'll want them to be interested in the answers.

You may want to clarify some of this now, but remember, make some sort of inference at the very least that this attack is significant somehow and foreshadows your story conflict. Make Villahr as sympathetic as possible. Make the reader care that he achieves whatever it is? Will he be the protagonist later or will that baby that I remember from the past reading be the protagonist. Something you may consider as a way to make this a bit more effective and make me want Villahr to defeat the vampire would be for him to be defending the baby. Just a thought.

There were a few instances of awkward sentences that could use some revising as well. For instance this sentence : "He made a claw-like shape with his hand, forcing savage talons into the squashy left cavity of the vampire’s chest, and producing a fist with the other, Villahr quickly directed it to the side of his face." The wording here is awkward and less effective for a fight scene. Remember the fighting should be dramatic and probably even a little brutal, not that you don't have that in abundance here. But use shorter more emotional wording to be more effective. Something along the lines of "Villahr made a claw of his hand. Thrusting down, forcing savage talons into the vampire's squishy chest. Forming a fist with his free hand, he slammed it into the vampires face." Now that could still use some work, but hopefully you see what I mean. Check out some online resources on writing effective fight scenes for other ideas for how to improve.

Overall, this was great, and I'm definitely interested to see where you'll go from here.
2
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Review by jkincaid
Rated: 18+ | (2.5)
Ok Talicia, first of all it's clear you've spent a lot of time writing this, you've got a lot of vivid description and varied sentence structure and what you've written has a very polished feel. You've got a talent for painting a scene with words. Good job with that.

Now what you need to work on is giving your story a direction. What you have here so far is a somewhat meandering story of a guy holding an infant and staring out a window. There's a lot of vague and somewhat confusing introspection and, put simply that's about it. It's beautifully written but not really going anywhere yet.

What's interesting is that this is the prologue. Generally a prologue contains some momentous event long before the start of the story that sets up or foreshadows the main conflict of the narrative. Personally I feel they can be cut unless absolutely essential. What you really want to do is draw your readers in immediately. Introduce your protagonist as soon as possible and get your readers involved in their conflict. You need a hook to get your readers drawn in, otherwise they're going to get bored pretty fast and move onto the next story.

With so little actually going on, you may need to ask yourself if this prologue is really essential to the story. There's quite a bit of exposition here, and while you need to clue your reader in, it's best to weave it into the narrative and action as much as possible. Avoid info dumps at all costs. I suggest you bring another character into the scene, use dialogue and action to tell your story. I almost wonder if the event this guy is remembering would work better as a prologue. If it gives some mystery away then you may consider cutting a prologue entirely and just getting on with the story.

Remember without a hook no one will stick around to read the rest.

I hope this is helpful advice.
3
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Review by jkincaid
Rated: E | (4.5)
This was over all, very very good. I can honestly say I was pretty well riveted, waiting to see what would happen next. You have a great instinct for story telling, and this piece is very polished and to me, as an amateur writer and fantasy fan, I'd say this is publishable material. There's a good amount of tension and suspense, and the action is very well written. You have good description throughout, and it's not over done, and all handled very well. You reveal Kat's character in bits and pieces and I like how you've done that.

There is a large chunk of summary near the beginning, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing, as you get through it quick in trying to establish the characters and situation. One question I had while reading, and maybe this is something intended to be explained more later, is where Kat has learned the skills she's apparently developed. She was taken in a raid, but how recent was the taking, was she new to being a slave before Sulk bought her? She appeared to be nine or ten, but there was some ambiguity there, she could have still been a little older, though the way you wrote her I found her age to be fairly accurate. Did she learn these skills from her people? Making a hemp vest, carving a walking stick, building her sleeping nest. She also seems to do fairly well against the dragon, despite him nearly killing her, her initial attacks are very successful. Is this her first time with any kind of combat or did she learn any of that from her people as well? You may be explaining this later, but these were just thoughts I had while reading.

One other thing, what happened to Mayrah? Where was she in the attack that killed her husband?

Overall, I thought this was great, and I definitely want to read more.
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Review of Smile  
Review by jkincaid
Rated: 13+ | (3.5)
Well Danny, this is certainly a chilling story, which was obviously your intention. So good job because you have a knack for that kind of story telling. It's hard to say specifically what I'd change were I you because what I think may need changing could possibly be a stylistic choice on your part. My biggest issue with the story is that if feels to me as if it's 90% summary of events instead of the story unfolding through a narrative. I personally think you could rework the story a bit to include more action and keep the surreal and creepy tone you've set. Use less summary and more action. Create scenes with the summaries you've got, the story will be more engaging that way. What it all boils down to is show don't tell. Keep in mind that you can show, and also use suggestion to keep the tone you're going for.

Take for instance this sentence: " School was a monotonous blur and the faceless students meant nothing to me there, I didn’t need friends, I didn’t need anyone." This is a good base, but build upon it. Use action to tell the story. Create a scene of him at school, just a quick one, suggest how to him its all a blur. Describe how the students give him a wide berth. Use action, like the reactions he gets from other students. Then give insight into his thoughts about how he doesn't care about what the others think of him.

I'd say go back though and do this throughout, with all the large chunks of summary you have. Rework them into scenes. That way your story will be more effective. Overall I like what you've got so far. Like I said before, chilling and creepy.
5
5
Review by jkincaid
Rated: 18+ | (3.0)
Ok Guardian, what you have here are some really cool concepts, and I can tell that you've spent a lot of time envisioning this world you've created and how everything works in it. Something important to remember when writing a story is to create a good hook, and something I find myself saying a lot lately is that of show versus tell. You definitely do have quite a bit of telling in this story but lets look at the beginning. There is quite a bit of action going on, but as a reader, it's very confusing, without a good hook to get me interested in the characters, I care little for what's going on. Why does this guy want to kill the dragon? Why is the dragon fighting back? Why do I care? Do I want this Dragoon guy to win? Why? At this point I have nothing telling me one way or the other how I should feel about either character in the conflict. You need a hook to bring readers in, and make your protagonists sympathetic.

You might find a creative way to ease the readers in without jumping right into a fight scene and still create tension. You may have the dragon attack the village and have the Dragoon attempt to defend it, and ultimately fail. Thus your Dragoon is sympathetic because he's trying to defend innocents from this dragon's attack, and you've shown through action that the dragon is evil through his actions at the same time. You may also want to consider the motivations of your dragon. Why is he attacking this village? Evil for evil's sake, even for a dragon, is a little boring. You also should consider the avoidance of cliche in your story. The actions of the dragon seem a little cartoony, almost like a japanese anime. I'd consider cutting the "Hehehes" and that kind of stuff. Make your dragon more menacing and less cheesy, so that I'll take him seriously as a threat.

With that in mind, this is totally a style choice, but the fights in general felt like the kind of thing I'd see on Bleach or Naruto. Something I've noticed in anime is that the tension of fight scenes is often broken with a lot of silly taunting, awkward exposition, and posturing. Keep your fight tense, keep the readers in the moment. Treat your fights like mini stories within the story, with their own beginning middle and end. It's unrealistic for there to be much in the way of talking in a fight scene. It should be fast, furious, and in a story like this, brutal. If these dragons and dragoons had to spend so much time preparing and calling out their attack spells, it seems like it'd take too long and one or the other would get squashed pretty quick.

All things to consider. I'd also wonder if a 16-year-old kid without years of Dragoon training would have any success against a dragon the first day he picked up his dragon-slaying sword. You might want to give him some smaller foes to combat before he works his way up to that. But this is a short story and not a longer novel, and it's your world. If this kid can kill a dragon his first day on the job, great. As long as it's believable.

One other thing that struck me. This is a fantasy world you've invented, so keeping that in mind, having a Moby Dick reference right at the beginning took me right out of the world. It needs to be internally consistent.

Now I hope that this isn't discouraging to you. I just want to give you my honest take on what you've got so far. I was struck by the emotion you created between Clovis and his sister. There was definitely a feeling of heartfelt tragedy there. It was well done. In fact as Clovis is your protagonist, I'd strongly recommend you focus the story on him from the get go and get me caring about him right away. He's going to be your strongest and most sympathetic link to the readers.
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