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« on: July 15, 2011, 01:26:02 AM »
My only beef with this chapter is it seems a little to narrow. There's a sort of inevitablity about the whole thing where I don't think there's a chance the troodon's could lose. You upset it at the end, of course, but since there isn't much of a struggle for the first 4/5th of the chapter, I'm not to involved – there's no real tension. You could fix it by creating more problems early on, or by putting in a lot of side references to the rest of the comings and going of the world. That way, it will still show off how powerful the troodons are, without running the danger of boring the reader.
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At this point, I can only see two possible outcomes for Darkclaw's story. (1) He leads the Troodons without question until his eventual defeat. In other words, He's the bad guy. (2) he change sides sometime in the middle or early last act, because he's discovered some new information that puts the conflict in a different light or because he's betrayed by his own side.
I say this because he's a villanous POV, and those seem to be the main two styles of handling that sort of character. If there's a third option, awesome. You've tricked most readers. But right now I'm guessing #2, just because he's had so many viewpoints up to this point, that readers will start to emphasize with him. If so, you're doing a good job up to this point.
If you're going with option #1 – that is, darkclaw stays evil the whole time – then I think you need make sure readers don't emphasize with him too much. You can reduce his screentime, which makes it easier to hate him if you see the results of his actions from another POV, or you can make him more evil. If you really want him to be the bad guy, you haven't pushed him hard enough yet. He isn't creative or cruel, he's just intelligent and passionless. In a way, I feel sorry for him, because he's an emotionless tool of the High Lord that's forced to fight for another's ambitions.
Anyways, the main reason I'm saying all this is because you've given Darkclaw the most of any POV chapters so far, which makes me think he shouldn't be a standard "villain" character.