Timewaster's Guide Archive

Well, I have several projects some permanently shelved because they suck, others floating around in my head as a series of scenes or in the case of Granite Sunrise a few chapters in the work simultaneously and an ever evolving outline. I don't keep word-counts because I never know how many words a story that changes multiple times will be.

I appreciate everyone's input. It's all helpful this time around as I knew it would be. The typos and sentence fragments are typical of my first three drafts so I'm sorry if they put anyone off. I think writing is in the revision. A few phrases shouldn't have been there at all though.  I changed a few things around as I was writing without necessarily deleting everything I should have.
To Deckacards: yeah, I put as much info into short stories as a habit. I'm a newspaper journalism major, I can't help it but I promise to try.
To Jib: Yes, Dahael planned the kidnapping. He's been hired to get hired on by Larraus (as a spy). More on that in future chapters.

To Reaves: You're points about the beginning are quite helpful. I was originally going to write the chapter through Moren's eyes as for and a few of the other sentences just didn't flow well either. I'm VERY glad you pointed out the sentences about keeping Moren out of the villages to me. They aren't supposed to be there at all, that was idea I had already killed off.
The reason he paniced when the servant didn't find him was because the first servant he talked to should have already sent the boy to see him. I guess that needs to be reworked. As for the cider thing. Larraus isn't supposed to be thinking of the man as a genius, just someone a little brighter than many of his other workers. They're all unskilled laborers except for a few. I'll be sure and work on explaining that in other drafts and chapters too. Your imput is very helpful thanks.
Oh and if you had figured out what Dahael is up to I would probably shoot myself.

Well, the use of the term Fakhir is certainly clever. They're an interesting bunch of people (whether hindu or Muslim) in reality and they appear to be at least as interesting in your story.

My biggest compliant is the lack of continuity for the point of view. What Dalin's son is doing just sitting there bored at the beginning of the prolouge isn't explained by the end when Dalin's land is apparently plundered.  This is a common problem with 3rd person omniscient narration. The other major problem I saw was a bit of inconsistence in your punctuation with  certain titles and phrases in the first few paragraphs.

As a final word of caution you throw an awful lot of difficult new words and phrases at at the reader in the first three sentences. While inventing new words is certainly not wr0ng, if you use them all at once right away you are going to scare your reader and possibly cause them to put your book down. Spacing them out a bit more should help quite a bit.

I'm not known for giving long critiques. It's mostly because I've been trained to write things in as few words as possible (also there are others here  who are smarter than me). Anyway

well, my luck has been everything but good lately. At least I can still use it as it is, the other stuff that was stolen is gone and insurance will only give me about $30 dollars for the lot of it after deductions which is just not worth it.

Welcome to the mad-house darkcards. For the nominal fee of your eternal soul we can have one of our lovely mods sign you up for the full package. Now, normally we require a blood sacrifice as tribute to The Lord Ruler, but since you already know members we can skip to straight to the Test of a Thousand Pains
Oh and remember there is no way out...

Well a lot of people have already stated many of the major points to consider for revision or elaboration  like passive sentences and what have you so I'll keep this brief.
Military's rely on formality and discipline so sloppy dress would be inexcusable regardless of the  amount of time at sea. In fact British colonials would intentionally dress up to go to dinner (even if they were eating by themselves) precisely to keep up morale.
On that note Why would Aric even think that he wouldn't want "even the admiral" to see him dressed casually rather than especially him? He is supposed to be the leader while they are at sea I assume and you don't want your superior (even a temporary one) or your underlings to see you at anything less than your best.
Beyond that little sticking point this is shaping up quite well.

I too am expecting a character driven plot. I think that the machinations of the noble houses along with the kidnapping could give it a bit of familiarity a la WoT and Mistborn while the birth rights and the unique personalities of your characters could give the originality.
I would need to read a bit further for a more developed idea of what to expect, but it's certainly a good start.