On the topic of Eragon, I know a site with a really good review of it
http://members.aol.com/swankivy/eragon.html
A quote from the article:
Word choice seemed as though it was the author's attempt to use all his SAT words; it was verbose and flowery as if on purpose, trying to impress with vocabulary that would have been better used sparingly.
This made me laugh because that is exactly what my writing suffered from in high school. I thought the thesarus was my best friend, but I think it was actually my worst enemy.
I still have to struggle to keep myself in check. Adverbs are one of my weaknesses. When I'm editing, I often go through and highlight all the adverbs and cut most if not all of them, often by asking myself if I can't "show" instead of "tell," like with a good strong verb or more clarifying dialogue instead.
Anyways, I liked this article because it reminded me of all the things I did as a juvenile writer--which I'm still trying to mature out of.
