Timmy here!
I am always late, and I am super sorry, but I lost my way. There were X-men on the road, and their conversations were too stimulating to ignore... So I talked to them for a while. Got some compliments on my cape there, too!
I love how you are continuing with this story. Its always fun to have a certain person who you have grown attached to and continue to write from their perspective. After a while, its not just a person anymore. It seems like that person is part of you. You know this person so well. All of their secrets, their inner self--you know them all. And its the knowledge of that, which some of those you created yourself, that brings the character closer to your heart, and makes them yours. Sorry. Got on a typing spree there. I love characters, and watching them develop over, gosh, over one hundred pages of writing is a thrill.
In this chapter, you seem to show even another side of Kitty. Confidence. She has now found her niche, the place in the world where she actually belongs. Through the other novellas, where I was beginning to know Kitty and then throughout the development of her character and circumstances, I never had the feeling that she had confidence in herself. Confidence in her abilities. This is the first chapter where she doesn't seem to have as much doubt. She seems to know what she can do, what her limitations are, and how much power she holds. The timid girl is gone, and replaced by a woman. I find that I like the development you have brought me through. Watching her change has been such a thrill!
I understood the part that you bolded, but only because I read the other chapters of the other novellas you wrote on this character. Perhaps, for new reader's sakes, you could put inside your author's note why it is bolded? And, I think, since there is a little bit of a disconnect between the bolded section and the new chapter, I think there should be a break. Something to separate the two.
"Hey," I told her, "He'll be okay."
"Can you promise that?"
"No. But I can promise that Hank will do his best."
I would have to agree with Biscuits on some sections of your dialogue. When writing conversations, it is sometimes okay to stray away from tagging the name and putting in an action of the character, but here... Here, we have an emotional scene--emotional for her sister. So you need to show her pain, show her emotions. And what better way to do it than little actions after dialogue? Little things--wiping tears away, folding her arms, making her "own space". Whatever you want. But without those little actions thrown in, the dialogue seems somewhat empty. The words your characters say aren't empty, but the section of the piece seems too void of action.
The others took the man down below, I'll check on him later
Technically, those are two sentences.
All the new recruits were just a tad to immature to stand me
Okay, so two nitpicks on that one sentence. The bolded part comes first!
You have a powerful sentence here, not only because of her narration but because it shows what the other recruits think of her. With your sentences, you want your message inside to come across as direct as possible, without straying from the picture or inserting superfluous words inside them. Just a tad brings your sentence down by its emptiness. Its loose meaning. Its mell--well, you can do better than that. I think just take it out, and your sentence will be the better for it.
Second nitpick, the one in italics, is pretty simple. "to" should be "too"
Being the nice guy that he is, he lifted one of the more comfortable ones off of the top shelf in the large supply closet for me.
Being the nice girl that I am, I thanked him with a quick kiss before ditching my guy for the timid girl in my bedroom.
To me, these two sentences should have been put together to make their own paragraph. I love the repetition you used there sooo much!
So, what is this place anyway."
Its a question, and you wrote it without a question mark. May want to insert one.
I couldn't help myself, I outright laughed at her descriptions of Scott and Storm.
Written as one sentence, but should be two because of how you word it. If you want to keep it as one sentence, you could switch the wording around a little bit to make it flow properly.
"Soo,"she continued
space needed in-between the quotation mark and "she"
Kitty, our guest has found himself trapped in the Danger Room, which has locked itself down. Kurt doesn't dare teleport into there with the defense mechanism on, so would you be so kind as to help our guest out?
I sighed again, more heavily this time.
Sure thing Professor. You might want to send somebody up to watch the girl while I'm busy. Finding out that we are all mutants seems to have given her a bit of a shock.
How big of a shock?
She hasn't spoken since I told her a few minutes ago.
He paused. I see. Well, you handle her companion and I will send Storm upstairs to take care of her.
Will do.
Usually I don't pull out sections of text this big, but I think it was necessary.
I have gone through this deal before. I just finished writing a chapter for my book where the character has some "mind talk" with other characters. Its really hard to give your reader the feeling and the knowledge that, Hey, this isn't a normal conversation! With yours, the dialogue alternated between being italicized and normal all the time--not seeming to have a pattern of any kind. I will just tell you what I did, or rather, just write out your dialogue over for you the way that I think it would look better, and make more sense as.
Thankfully, thanks to the structure
Two "thanks" right after each other install redundancy. I would suggest just taking out the first.
Now, the Danger Room, the Medbay, the Jet Hanger, and all of the X-Men paraphernalia are kept in the lower levels away from the rest of the school. It's all kept a secret from the majority of the students.
Okay, so I will not pull out another huge chunk of your writing, but there is more directly after and a little before that I am going to be talking about as well.
For a short period in your writing, you had what many people call an info dump. Its like you took a map of the rooms and just started explaining it to us. Normally, that might not be a problem. You have a slow scene, where not much is happening and Kitty is talking to someone--perhaps telling Rogue about the layout of the school or something. That would work fine. But you have a high action scene here, where the reader's mind and focus should be on the imminent action approaching. You have pumped us up, making this scene intense in they way that only you know how, and then you start giving us the layout.
This is what I would do. Give us what we need to see a picture--nothing more. Only describe what the reader needs to see.
That's how it was when I first came here anyway.
Comma after "here"
But, replacing all of the stuff constantly
Comma after "but" isn't really necessary.
petite
He is calling her petite not like she is small, but using it as a name. So would that make it a proper noun? Capitalize it, perhaps?
Donee with the nitpicks. This piece is too good for nitpicks, anyway. I loved this first installment of your, wow... Your third book on Kitty! I love that you continue to use her as the main character, even though you keep introducing all of these neat characters into your story. Keep using Kitty. I love her too much to let her viewpoint go.
Now, I remember you telling me that these stories were fan-fiction, but not from the movies. So you are writing this from the magazines? I haven't watched the movies of X-men, nor read the comics. But the front cover of the movies look cool, and Wolverine has cool knives sticking out of his hands. For some reason, I fantasized having those coming out of my hands...
So I loved this chapter, love your style. And your character's voice is so... big. You can really see her personality from they way that she handles things and how she describes things to people. With third person, you can have floral descriptions, but never know the character deep down as much as you can with first person. And you are a genius with first person writing, so you do an amazing job giving us these stories from her perspective.
Thank you for writing this. Pryde has been a very enjoyable book so far, and I can't wait for the next one.
Tag me? Pleeease?
I hope that this longer review made up for the delay.
~Darth Timmyjake, signing out.
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