Timewaster's Guide Archive

Kill the description of the Weepers just a little bit. I like some description, but toward the end, I was going, "I don't care. I already have a mental image of the tree. I don't care how it smells. I don't need any more of this." It's good, but it seems like there's a bit too much here.

Total mood change from Weepers to Rachel frolicking in the meadows - it seemed a little abrupt. In fact, the whole scene with Rachel and Mel just seems a little out of place, almost like it was there strictly for the sake of introducing the romance. Which, granted, isn't completely bad, but it seemed very contrived.

It annoyed me when you said "Mel's reply would have made a sailor brush his teeth," but didn't tell us what he said. It felt like a cop-out on your part.

Sometimes Mel sounds like an old friend, sometimes he sounds like he's actually threatening Rachell.

As mentioned, when I read the kissing line, I went, "What did she just say?" True, it follows her thoughts, but that's not something she would say to him based on what we've seen of her so far. It seems really off.

Lots of infodumping....

She doesn't sound seventeen. That, and people don't think of someone who's one year younger than them as a child. It's too close to thinking of themselves as a child.

I had an immediate negative reaction to Elvs. Like others have said, I immediately went "Tolkien elves," then as you described them I was going, "What? They're shapeshifters, and kind of weird." I would change the name personally, but it really is up to you.

Ok, Mel and Ravke(?) just kind of disappear here. What happened to them?

The one elf is wounded, but doesn't ever get healed.....She's dying, and the other characters are like, "Let's transfer some memories! Yey!" What happened to the urgency?

"Rachel mouthed a quick prayer to the god..." So is this society polytheistic (as in more than just this god and his sister), or is he The God? This was a little unclear, though it's not really critical.

Overall, it was still quite good, but I didn't care for this scene as much as the last. I would keep reading though, and the plotline of what I think is coming up is more interesting than this chapter was.

Possibly more later, depending on if I catch anything when I reread after coming back from dinner.

Is that the proper plural form of Terry? I mean that seems more like a possessive, but Terries doesn't work with it being a name, and Terrys just looks weird. Hmmm...

Yeah, I thought the description was fine.

Vegetathalas, I'd love to beta read it over my Christmas break as well, if you're willing.

Ooohh. That should be a fun list. I look forward to it with great anticipation.

So how much critique material is it possible to get out of 15 ish lines?

No, I really don't know what else to say that hasn't already been said. So I'll just go ahead and say that I really have no opinion about this. It didn't make me push it away, but I really didn't like it that much either.

My story, over the course of my outlining in the past week, has morphed into something far larger and considerably cooler than I had ever planned in the first place. It widened in scope, becoming more epic (well, towards the end, anyway), and it developed some awesome twists that I didn't expect.

I've written the plot out all the way through for two of my viewpoint characters. They have a combined outline total of 17 pages, not double spaced. In the five chapters of one character and three of the other that I wrote for NaNo, I've covered perhaps a half page of the total outline of the two, if that. It should be interesting to see how long this ends up being. I just might have to do some trimming of plot.

Best of all, I now know how my story ends (though granted, that changed four times today. I think it's pretty settled now, though).

Does New Year's count as a major holiday?

Like "Christmas Knight" (I like Jade better) said, is Yule any different from Christmas? I'd always thought they were one and the same.