Young Writers Society

Hi there! Back for the last time for now!

Okay, tips:

1.) The first person mode is very personal -- use it. When writing in first person, the reader can sense all the narrator's emotions, because the narrator seems to be talking to them, telling them his story. Unfortunately, you are not sending us a single emotion from Arad. Half the dwarf city is killed and he walks around, wondering casually what the evil one is, looking at people dying. That is not a very nice guy! He should be devastated by the wreckage, angry at the goblins and maybe even crying with frustration and hatred. What is going on with him that there is not a single twitch of the eyelid? You have to write this sort of thing in, so that readers can see -- your characters are emotional human beings with flesh and real blood. Isn't he glad when Ariadne flies to him? He should give a weak smile at least! Let him whisper something to her, as much to comfort himself as the griffin.

2.) Don't place modern objects into an ancient context. There were no refrigerators in those days. No force fields. In an old, fantasy-world story, don't compare objects to modern concepts or things. What that is telling me is that you are making your own voice the voice of the narrator. But Arad is not you, he's a guy with his own personality and imperfections, his own mannerisms, his own experiences. You can help distinguish yourself from your character by making a character profile as mentioned before. What would Arad know about refrigerators? He'd know about smoky fires, though, or the condensation of one's breath in the cold winter air. Rather use such concepts to explain another.

Okay, so that's the end of my reviews for you! Keep writing this piece! And don't take everything I say too seriously -- some of the stuff I recommend is pretty advanced. (I secretly don't follow my own rules and later, when I've finished the whole novel, I edit it for months, taking one problem at a time and teasing it out. Pretty exhausting stuff!)

Good job and always keep writing! The more you read and write, the better you get!

barefootrunner

As Giniara Pointed out, too many "but", especially at the beginning. I like the way you describe everything, but there is a lack of details sometimes: the character don't seem to have true feelings, except at the beginning where you describe them running. I like your narrating in that part, if we put away the repetition of "but".
Your vocabulary sounds good enough, but you'll need to replace this "but" by other things, such as more ",", "however", and a few others. judjing by the quality of your writting, you'll get used to it

You tried to redeem yourself about the feelings at the end when explaning that the main character felt power with Sword and shield, and I must say this small war part was good too, but maybe a bit too short and, again, with a small lack of details. I saw some grammatical mistakes too, such as forgetting capital letters, etc.
It's really too bad, because this piece of work is really about fantasy, and the way you write it fits perfectly with what you're trying to make us read. It sound like a detailed fairy tale, a bit funny to read (or t least I found it funny and enjoyable) and with some good moments.

Overall, I like your plot so far, and the action scenes were really funny: it sounds like you want to make the Goblins seem like a ridiculous army, and that's precisely what we want from them As for the dwarfs, they were the characters you put the most feelings to, and mostly fear. That was interesting as well.


Keep up the good work! This Fantasy Land story sounds cool, I like the concept and I'm sure you can go farther with it. Looking forward to the nest part!

I like the description and how you are using multiple senses to give us a good idea of the scene (i.e. hearing and seeing). Perhaps you could play off this strength and try adding something like feeling or smelling. What smells are around them in the cavern? Can they feel anything like scratchy material of uniforms or beads of sweat rolling down their faces because the cave is so hot?

Overall nice description, I think you have potential to be good at adding more in your future writing.

Also be careful of relying on spell check. It doesn’t catch typos such as “a saw a giant horde of green goblins”. I believe you meant “I” not “a”. Just give your work a quick read through before you post.

Also when you’re reading it, try reading it out loud to help catch some awkward wording.
See the following:
“but it was a good thing that the dwarves were pretty good runners. But the goblins were catching up with us.”

Too many but’s and but doesn’t work grammatically at the start of a sentence anyway.
Perhaps it could be something like:
We all yelled and ran for the far side of the cavern which was about half a mile away so it was a good thing dwarves are pretty good runners, but even still the goblins were catching up with us.

Also, watch for consistency with things like capitals. Sometimes you capitalize dwarf or goblin and other times you don’t. It’s best that you choose whether or not it is capitalized and stick with it.

A good way of fixing this if you find yourself doing it, because it happens, is to click the “find” button under editing in the home tab of Microsoft Word (if your using 2007-2010). Just type the word and it will find them all for you and you can easily make the changes so that they are all consistent.

Nice action scenes and plot ideas!