Hi, my name is Max. I found your story in the review request page. I enjoyed reading it and wanted to share some thoughts with you about it.
David -- I apologize for my earlier truncated review! Here's the complete version!
Item Reviewed: "Blind Seer: Prologue"
Author David-Michael Christopher
Reviewer: Max Griffin 🏳️🌈
As always, these are just one person's opinions. Only you know what is best for your story! I've read and commented on your work as I would try to read my own. I hope you find something here useful , and that you will discard the rest with good cheer. My reviews always have suggestions for improvement. Please know that they are offered in the spirit of making this fine piece even better.
General Impressions
I love stories like this one, that combine ancient secrets and science! You've woven an intriguing web that combines human origins, archeology, and the metaphysical. I'm hooked and want to read more.
Plot
Diane is tracking down a mystery. Her father thought he'd discovered ancient human remains in the San Francisco Mountains north of Flagstaff, but he died (or was murdered) before he could investigate. Now she's following the trail of a young psychic/archeology graduate student Stephen Myers, who's digging near her father's site.
Evidently they are successful, as the chapter ends with a Princeton archeology arriving in Phoenix, lured there by news of the discovery of human remains over 100,000 years old in Arizona.
Style and Voice
Your narrative is third person omniscient, although it feels at many places like third person limited, alternating in various character's points of view.
Just to be sure we're operating with the same terms, bear with me for a moment. By "third person limited," I mean that the narration follows the point of view of one character, reporting what he or she can sense, know, and think, but not what anyone else senses or knows or thinks. It's "limited" because you are limited to what goes on in this one character's head. (This isn't universal terminology -- if you report the POV character's thoughts, some will say this is "third person UNlimited.") This is by far the most common voice for modern fiction. The idea is that, by immersing the reader in single character's point of view, the experience is more immediate and intimate for readers.
Third person omniscient removes the restriction that the narrator is in one character's point of view. While much great literature has used an omniscient narrator, this is very out of fashion today. In fact, it is SO out of fashion that this narrative choice will make it very hard to get this work published, no matter how interesting the story and characters.
So...my first suggestion for you is to pick a point-of-view character for each scene and, within that scene, stay in that character's head. The basic rule is, "one scene, one point of view." You also won't want to have too many POV characters in your novel. Romance novels, for example, rarely have more than two POV characters (the romantic leads). Science fiction and adventure novels often have more.
Referencing
This appears to be modern day. Lots of good references to the geographic area.
Scene/Setting
Sufficient for staging purposes. I usually prefer a bit more than you provide, but this is purely a matter of taste and personal style.
Characters
Diane, young, a coed, driven to vindicate her father. Stephen, a brilliant scholar, a bit flaky (as are many good scholars!), and a psychic. Pedro, an intriguing Native American restaurateur. Bernhardt, hidebound chair of Archeology and nemesis of Stephen. And Wescott, Prince Archeologist. That's a lot of characters to introduce in one chapter!
Dialog. This is a great way to move the plot forward and to add depth to characters. I thought you did a great job with the dialog, especially between Diane and Stephen. I liked the parts with Pedro, too.
Adverbs. My usual comment here is "you don't over-use adverbs." In this case, I have to say you DO over-use adverbs. There's over 140 in this chapter. You know what Stephen King says about adverbs
The road to hell is paved with adverbs. |
. I think he is correct. Adverbs are often a shorthand in which the author falls into "telling" rather than "showing." I try to use zero adverbs, since otherwise I'd sprinkle them all over the place like fairy dust.
Adverbs fall into three categories. The first are unneeded adverbs that add nothing to the image and are just little speed bumps in the narration. I'd say most of your adverbs fall into that category. Then there's adverbs that "pep up" tepid verbs, where either a more precise verb choice or a touch more description gives a more vivid image. Then there's good adverbs. They're so rare that I won't comment on them.
I'll illustrate with a couple of examples from your text.
Your text:
several stone tools which had looked to be extremely old.
My Comment: So, what does "extremely old" mean? From the 1800's? That's extremely old. Or from 10,000 years ago. That's even MORE extremely old. I think "ancient" or "pre-historic" gives a clearer sense here.
Your text:
For over an hour she watched, enraptured by the man's intensely focused concentration
My Comment: This one is telling us he's "intensely focused." What nonverbal clues tell her that he's "intensely" focused? I guess that he doesn't notice her is one, but what else? Describe what he's doing, maybe muttering to himself, or turning over artifacts and peering at them, to let the reader infer he's intent. That little step of inference is one way to draw readers into your story.
I also noticed quite a bit of passive voice in this story. More on that below.
Just my personal opinion
One way to think of telling a story is that it is a guided dream in which the author leads the readers through the events. In doing this, the author needs to engage the readers as active participants in the story, so that they imagine events along with the author. I've written in more detail on this topic in "Long Musings on Short Stories"
While the above essay is about short stories, it applies equally well to chapters in a novel. For example, passive voice tends to make your readers passive, when you want them to be your active partners in imagining your fictional world. Thus it's better to us active verb forms. "Showing" instead of "telling" is another critical point. You reveal some of the most intriguing aspects of this story through narrative summary rather than dramatic action.
I'll try to find explicit places where I think some stylistic choices interfere with the reader's fictive dream in the line-by-line comments below.
Another point is that this is pretty long for a first chapter. In fact, it is four scenes: the first, when they meet at the campsite, the second with Pedro, the third at the seance, and the fourth at the airport. I wonder if this would work better as four chapters? In any case, you'll get more and better reviews if you POST it 2-4 separate files. At over 6000 words, it's a bit long to critique -- my reviewing mind hits overload at about 3000 words and my concentration falls off.
To repeat -- I REALLY like the idea for this story, and ALL of your characters are interesting and realistic. So, while it may sound like I'm only finding fault, I think this is a strong start that needs some tweaking rather than major restructuring.
Line-by-line Comments
Some line-by-line comments follow, some trivial and some with more substance.
Your text:
"Hello!" A pause. "I said - hey! Isn't anybody here?" Diane Harrison stepped from her rented van and surveyed the campsite.
My Comment: You start in Diane's POV. To help orient the reader in time and space, I'd reverse the order of these sentences and start with her stepping from the van rather than with her disembodied voice. Also, I wish you could sneak some bit of description of her into these few couple of sentences.
Your text:
/Damn!/ she swore to herself. /I thought I'd lost him in those trees a few miles back. Well, he's not going to haunt me any longer!/
My Comment: The editorial standard is to italicize internal thoughts. In WDC, you do that like so:
{i}Damn!{/i} she swore to herself.
which comes out as
Damn! she swore to herself.
Your text:
The way his professor at the University had spoken
My Comment: Here, the story stops while the narrator intrudes and tells us stuff. This interrupts the fictive dream and pulls the reader out of the story. I know you need this background, but it should arrive like WalMart inventory: just in time for the consumer. It's also much stronger to reveal this material in some kind of dramatic form, even if it's dialog, rather than as narrative summary.
Your text:
She had first heard of Stephen Myers through the collegiate grapevine.
My Comment: ...another long paragraph of narrative summary.
Your text:
She stood as she came out of the tent, brushing her long, auburn hair out of her eyes,
My Comment: nice way to sneak in some description...I'd move it to the first paragraph.
Your text:
Dried mud caked his legs below his cutoffs, and his t-shirt, drenched with perspiration, cling to his heaving torso.
My Comment: typo: "clung"
Your text:
"Naw," he rejoined dejectedly without looking up.
My Comment: ...telling us he's dejected...how does she infer that? Also, it's shocking that he'd react this way, being accosted in the woods by a stranger he's not noticed. You explain it later, but she should wonder about it now.
Your text:
I'm suspicious of strangers
My Comment: ...makes his reaction even more puzzling..you need to acknowledge the mystery now, or readers (and editors) will think it's a mistake and get annoyed.
Your text:
but I don't mind telling you that's one of the worst pick-up lines
My Comment: Truthfully, their interactions here didn't make sense to me. Nothing in what he said suggested he's hitting on her, and both of them laugh uproariously over things that seemed minor to me.
Your text:
He regarded her thoughtfully
My Comment: another adverb...how does she know he's being "thoughtful"
Your text:
Diane peered anxiously at the boarded-up windows.
My Comment: this puts us in Diane's POV
Your text:
Stephen watched him go with a mixture of sadness and amusement,
My Comment: This puts us in Stephen's POV
Your text:
he same baleful glare she had seen at the campsite.
My Comment: Now we're in Diane's POV. I'm pointing these shifts out because they can be confusing to readers, they pull readers out of the story, and edtiors hate this kind of thing, calling it "head-hopping."
Your text:
But as they entered the van and drove off, they were completely unaware that Taco Pete, with vibrant, wide-awake eyes, had watched their departure from his kitchen. He had heard the entire conversation and now seemed to be chuckling and talking to himself. But had someone been standing next to him, they would have discovered that he was actually carrying on a lively conversation...
My Comment: and here we have an omniscient narrator...
Your text:
You and Stephen have been directed
My Comment: passive voice...
Your text:
the dean of the University of Arizona's Anthropology Department
My Comment: Colleges have Deans. Departments have chairs or directors. (I'm a dean)
Your text:
Bernhardt turned and led the way to the baggage claim area but was quickly overtaken
My Comment: passive voice and adverb...maybe "the older man raced by him?"
I only review things I like, and I really liked this story. I'm a professor by day, and find awarding grades the least satisfying part of my job. Since I'm reviewing for my own edification, I decided long ago to give a rating of "4" to everything I review, thus avoiding the necessity of "grading" things on WDC. So please don't assign any weight to my "grade" -- but know that I selected this story for review because I liked it and thought I could learn from studying it.
Again, these are just one person's opinions. Only you know what is best for your story! The surest path to success is to keep writing and to be true to your muse!
Thanks for sharing this item! I only review things that I enjoy reading and I truly did enjoy this piece. Please keep on writing more things just like this!!!
Max Griffin
http://members.cox.net/maxgriffin/
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