Young Writers Society

removed

oo. Seems too good to be true! I'm a little scared.


Nitty Pickies

I know I am privileged to be in imperial palace of the king and enjoying a feast with ninety-nine others, including my best friend.

Between 'in' and 'imperial' should be an or the.

and when that it a case, one of the knight-adepts will take control of the throne.

The underlined part goes not make sense to me. I am sorry I cannot make any suggestions because I am unclear on what you are trying to say here.

I shook the king’s hand and take a seat in the golden chair beside him,

'Shook' is in the past tense here. It should be: "I shake the king's hand..."

Characters
Can't say much. I look at the main character as a child, and not someone who could lead a realm. You might want to liven her up, and make her seem older.

Setting
What is it? Where is it? Is it in the stump of a tree surrounded by glowing mushrooms? You really need to explain the setting to us soon. It is important, after all.

Plot
Like I said before, this seems too good to be true. I am usually turned off by stories that start so perfectly.
On the other hand, you have created an exciting world and I am stoked to find out what happens!

I liked this! Thanks for telling me to read it! haha

Classy

So I read this once, then twice, then three times, and the only thing that came to my mind was this: slow down! It's okay, breathe, and slow down a little bit. Not everything has to happen all at once.

You start off very fast, with a very large info dump. Within the first three sentences I know that your main character has been chosen with 99 others, including her best friend, to be in the palace. I don't need to know that much that fast.

Also, you're running into the problem of telly, telly, telly. You're telling me that you're in a palace, and that your best friend is next to you. Show me. "My fingers are trembling as I stare around the room, the countless other faces staring around just as I am. The room is vast and glorious and (etc. etc. etc.) I glance to my right, where my best friend stands, it is amazing that we are here together."

I mean, obviously don't use exactly that... but slow it down, and never start with an info dump! Everything is happening far too quickly, as a reader I am being thrust into this world and expected to know what is going on without really having anything to go off of.

Try going through again, transform every sentence where you are telling me what is happening and show me by adding more description. What is the crowd doing? Is there anyone jumping from foot to foot? How are their faces? Are they sweating?

What is the room like that they are standing in? I mean, this is a Palace! There has got to be some interesting stuff to see. What does it smell like? What do you see?! I am left with a lot of questions after this, because right now there isn't much to go off of. Try building the suspense. Tell us exactly how your MC is feeling, exactly what sort of questions are going through her mind? Is she nervous? Excited? Is her mind rambling with all of the possibilities?

Basically, I just need more. If I were you, I would go through and try to add more description, and try very much to avoid the feel of telling. When someone is reading your story, they want to be brought into the world that you are seeing. I know that you see it, I bet if you close your eyes you can picture everything that is happening right now. Try to get down every detail of what you see, so that when we read it, we can see and feel it too.

The base story here is really interesting, you just need to work on bringing us in more

Hope this helps,

--OverEasy

Hey there, Elinor! Tis WD, as requested! Anyways, first, I'd like to say that I like the name Dinah. It's pretty, and you have some good ideas flowing here. You have the beginnings of something interesting and I am already extremely interested in why you named this The Descent when it begins in this fashion. Very interesting.

Like OverEasy mentioned, this seemed really fast. You have some good ideas, but I feel like you are trying to tell the story too quickly. You open with an image, a scene and it is a scene that should be very intense emotionally! But right now it really isn't coming across very strong of emotional, due to the 'telling' nature and the fast pace here. I think OverEasy covered pacing well, but one way in which you can slow this down and draw us in is by thinking about your narrator. So, I'm just going to cover a few hints on first person narration for your beginning okay?

1. When you you have a narrator

When you have a narrator, it is important not to let your narrator get separated from the narration. If the narrator is put at distance from what he/she is saying, you get the same effect as unnatural dialogue has! And you don't want that. You seem to have a good beginning with this; you have established your narrator, but I think it's time for you to dig into Dinah's character and infuse the narration with a touch of her. The most surefire way to draw readers into your story with a narrator is to give your narrator a distinct, present voice. Distinct in that you can tell them apart from other characters, like how dialogue works. Present in that we get some window or feeling into the narrator. The narrator reveals some part of him/herself through narration voice. Or the narrator relays her own feelings as she watches.

How does Dinah feel during this? Does her heart race? Is she dizzy? How does she talk? What details will she focus in on because she is Dinah? These are things to consider when you're writing for her that will improve this piece greatly!


2. Outlook

Another question you should ask yourself when writing for a narrator is 'from which point is my narrator telling this story and what is his/her attitude towards the events at hand?' Basically, from what point is Dinah telling this? Is she years older? Is she just a few years removed from the action? Is she dying and writing this piece as her last living memory on earth?

And how does she feel about this day? Your title suggests that dark times are coming, so does she view this time, lamenting that she was so happy then and hinting at ominous times ahead? Or does she simply rejoice in this moment? Does she regret anything? Think about how she is viewing this and how she wants to present it to the reader, and it will take your narrator and your piece to entirely new levels.

Basically, I think this piece can benefit from more character and less 'story', if you will. The two are intertwined, of course, but, as OverEasy mentioned, avoid the infodumps! There is nothing wrong with telling us some stuff, but we need to get a good feel of your narrator and the narration has to capture our hearts before we care about what your narrator has to say? Make sense?

Also, your tenses are confusing me here. It seems to switch between first and third a little bit, but thinking about your outlook will improve that! Just try to be consistent on whether she is narrating in the moment or looking back and telling the story.

You have a good start here! I can't wait to see what you do with this and where this goes. I am extremely fascinated between this piece and the title you've given it, so you can definitely caught my eye with that, darling. Good job and keep writing! Feel free to PM me if you have any questions!

Sorry for the wait! But I'm here now and ready to review. This sounds like the story you were talking about in chat, and I think you said this would be some sort of novel/novella/longer-than-this story. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course!

I love fantasy. And I love faeries. And I love kings and queens and knights and palaces and banquets and celebrations and--point being, I like the world you chose! From what I got of it anyway! Definitely keep it where it's at, but do describe it a bit more. Make your world more unique to the generic high fantasy world. Why did you choose this world, and how does it support your characters?

I dunno if it's on purpose that you made the king so blah of a character. xD He just seems like some random announcer. A page or squire could be put in the king's place, and it would still be the same story (which isn't really weird, seriously).

I think what's happening here is we're focusing a lot on Dinah and her friend. From the beginning (without knowing the characters' names, of course), I knew that the two the king would pick would be Dinah and Elisabeth. That's probably fine since no matter what you do, the MC is going to be chosen. However, I think you could help the reader along by describing the process. OH! I know! Give some flashbacks to the training they went through and such to get them to this place. The king or someone will probably give a long speech before announcing the winners, so to speak. You can easily show Dinah's nerves just through her thoughts--flashbacks and memories, nervous twitches (or lack thereof if she's supposed to keep proper posture as possibly future royalty), and other tiny characteristics that really do a lot to make a character real. It'll also slow this piece down, as others have mentioned, and make sense of what's happening.

Also, at the end, they're in front of royalty, so is it okay for Dinah to run up to her friend and hug?

Before I close up this review, I want to say that I did get goosebumps when she got called. The "wings flapping" and the frozen body are great starts in describing her relief. That won't be a problem editing at all! From what you provided, you did all right in building up some tensity, but I know it can be so much better and even more suspenseful.

I hope you continue this and let me know when the next part comes out. I love reading about this kind of fantasy. It's a guilty pleasure of mine. ;D

Keep writing!

Jabber, the One and Only!

Hey Elinor! Sorry this is a little late.

My problem here is the way that you've rushed this, really. I can't get my head around it properly, because you've thrown me head-first into this story without any support. It just rushes on swiftly, and skips out things that would make the story really interesting. I don't really know anything about the two fairies who are chosen. As Jabber said, maybe some more background information on them would be a very good thing!

Also, I feel like you should add some more emotion into this, and have some more showing instead of telling. For example:

However, I can barely breathe anymore.

Could easily become something much more interesting. You could use body language, thoughts and emotions to convey things like this (not necessarily this sentence) into something much better.

However, I do like what you have here so far. I just think it needs more before it's ready.

Nice one!

~Amy

bump-
edited main post with revised version.