A Vampire's Tears ~ Chapter 1

If you clicked on this it has been a waste of your time.
This story is currently in editing and will be re-posted soon so try and bare with me!
Sorry for the inconveniece.

Oh me, i actually love this an awful lot.
it's amazing. i love your work, you always leave it on cliffhangers and make it necessary to read on, i admire you greatly !
excellent work again Rachel, i can see you going far
i love you loads xxx laura xx

Hey. Tex here, and I’m going to give you a review today. Just as a warning, I give my opinion, and my opinion can be a little (or a lot) harsh. There’s your warning, now let’s get down to business.

First of all, before I even look at the piece, I think you’d get more reviews if you broke those huge paragraphs at the beginning up a little bit. It’s hard to swallow such a bit bite, and daunting to see so many words together in one clump. Personally, I try to keep my paragraphs around six or seven lines long. Whether you like the visual look of short or long paragraphs, what you have right now is scary.

Second of all, be sure to proofread your works. There are little things here that I know are typos, and there are quite a few of them.

Moving on.

Okay. This was not what I was expecting.

Your first sentences have to be hooks, unless you’re a famous author who people know to have simple beginnings and come strong later. It’s that part people, or at least I, read to figure out how exciting the story will be and what the story will be about. This doesn’t tell the reader any of those things. It works once you read on, but it’s not a very good hook.

Sure, I slay these guys all the time but five against one? Well, I guess we learn from new experiences. Right, I guess I should probably explain how I got in this situation.

What exactly is her situation? All we know here is there’s five guys against a single guy and our speaker kills one of the groups on a regular basis.

Most of your first paragraph is a bit of an info dump. When you just give us a truckload of details like this, our eyes start to flutter asleep and our minds start to wander. It’s too much to take in all at once. Also, these are the questions I’d be asking after I got to know the character, not before I knew there was a character. I’m sorry if I’m being rude here.

I can handle this by myself… Almost.

When I first read this, I thought she would have to struggle to defeat her opponent. She didn’t. She took them out in under fifteen seconds. You kind of contradict yourself this way. If you had made it seem like she knew that her skill level was higher than her opponent, I would have let this pass. However, this makes it seem like she doesn’t know that she can take out that many, and makes her seem a little less strong than she actually is.

The rest is fine. Actually, once I got into it, I couldn’t change links to work on this review! I had to finish reading.


Overall, this is pretty good. Some things you could work on improving is reducing information dumps, proofreading for typos, and description. Keep it up! Hope I helped,

-Tex

Woo! Go AVT!
I agree with Laura, this is definitely your best work.
Post more, pronto!

x Mikayla x

Hi VL,

Just adding a few more comments to Tex's excellent review.

The opening paragraph where Leiya speaks directly to the audience feels kind of patronising to me. I'm not sure if this is necessary - fantasy readers won't have a problem accepting that vampires exist in the context of the story, and so telling us to "try and keep up" is slightly condescending. I also wonder who Leiya is speaking to exactly. Is this story supposed to be told to a certain person? When she says "try to keep up", who is the person she's addressing?

I'm also getting an overwhelming Buffy feeling from this. The protagonist is a vampire slayer, just like Buffy, and she stakes vampires who then fall in a pile of dust, just like Buffy. The scene where Leiya rescues a helpless girl from the vampires who are about to kill her reads like it's been taken blow for blow from a Buffy episode. Have you thought about what elements make your story unique and different? You might want to play these elements up a little, because it's feeling a little familiar to me at the moment.

In addition, Leiya is coming across to me as a Mary Sue. The story repeatedly emphasises how amazing and brilliant and wonderful she is, to the point where I'm finding it unrealistic. It reads like a wish-fulfilment fantasy more than anything else.

- She's a vampire slayer.
- She's "very good" at her job.
- She's second in command at her agency.
- She doesn't need any backup because she can "handle herself".
- She's "basically unbeatable" because she has a special power that lets her foresee moves before they're made.
- She has the classic purple eyes of the Mary Sue.
- She's the "best slayer".

By the end of the story, I was starting to grit my teeth a little at just how wonderful Leiya is. I wish she had more flaws, more weaknesses, more problems. I wonder if you might find Limyaael's Rant on Flawed Characters helpful?

In addition, all her specialness is stuff she's been given by other people - stuff they never had to fight for. The author gave her special magic powers, her mother put her in charge, and so on. I admire characters for their strength, determination and willingness to fight for their goals, not because of powers and privileges they were born with.

PS: Really struggling to believe that a mother would promote her two children to second and third-in-command of her own agency. That's favouritism, nepotism and a whole bunch of other words ending in -ism. Doesn't she have any vampire slayers on staff who are not related to her?

I like your choice of a fight scene as opening scene. That could be very dramatic and compelling. But I think you perhaps spoiled some of the tension by making it so easy. Leiya seems to handle every problem she comes across with a snap of her fingers - she never feels fear, she never makes any mistakes, she never comes close to losing. It's not particularly interesting to read because I have no doubt that Leiya will win without taking a scratch. I suspect the reader would sympathise more with Leiya if she suffered and struggled like a normal person.

The fight scene also needs more tactile details, I think. The speed and impact and fury of a fight are best captured with tastes, feelings, sounds and so on - the copper taste of blood when she bites her lip, the bone-rattling impact when she's slammed into a wall, the sting of sweat in her eyes, the shocking ice coldness of the vampire's skin. At the moment it reads a little bit like a play-by-play, with each action being listed, but none of them particularly convincing or exciting.

PPS: Striking Amber hard enough to knock her out is incredibly dangerous and irresponsible. Somebody is knocked out when they're hit hard enough for their brain to slam violently into the inside of their skull. That causes concussion, possibly haemorrhage, with potential for permanent brain injury and even death. Just a little realism note.

Hope this helps, VL, and stick at it!

Cheers,
Karsten