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139,486 Literary Works • 672,577 Reviews
Hey there, I saw you requested a review in my review thread, so I thought I'd drop by and take care of that today! I can see that you've already gotten a couple of good reviews on this, so hopefully I won't repeat too much of what's already been said.
First off, it would be helpful if you split up your chapter into multiple chapters. 9k words is really, really long for a chapter of any novel, and especially here on this site, it's much easier to read and review chapters that are 2k-3k words in length. You already have a lot of scenes separated by numbers - just make those your chapters.
When it comes to the actual story, there's a lot you do right here. I really like your opening scene and your opening line - both work very well as "hooks," setting the stage for the conflict and enticing me to read more. We have this mysterious, charismatic figure and you do a good job of revealing just enough to keep us interested without telling us everything. I particularly want to know why he chose Jaime - what's so special about him that made Lansky single him out?
The other thing I enjoyed was your eye for detail. You do a really good job of telling us the details of what people look like and what they are doing in a way that conveys their status and personality. Same with the places Jaime goes - you establish the atmosphere well. However, do be careful of repeating the same description and of giving too much description. There are a few places where you repeated information you'd given in just the last paragraph.
Also, although your eye for detail is good, I'll echo fraey when I say that your narration feels stilted. A lot of it is because you're "telling" us where people are and what they're doing rather than "showing" us. I think this is mostly caused by your overuse of the verb "to be" - you keep telling us the way things are, rather than just showing what happens. To see what I mean, search for all the instances of "was", "is", "were", and "are" in your story. You'll find that you use them in nearly every sentence, and that's what's making the narration stilted. Try to use different verbs, especially vibrant verbs that draw attention to the details you want to emphasize. It'll also help you be more concise.
For example:
The deco style and the navy blue curtains are good details delivered in a boring package. Let's repackage them to something like this:
"The large, long navy blue curtains dominated the interior of the otherwise modest art deco restaurant."
As you can see, you don't even need to say the navy blue curtains are attracting Jaime's attention; the fact that he is telling us they dominate the room *shows* that they are the first thing he's noticed.
The last bit of critique I'll leave you with has to do with Jaime; I feel like I don't know him that well, even after being inside his head. He seems to just follow everyone around and be awestruck at everything. Maybe that makes sense considering his background, but I want there to be something deeper. What does he want? Why did he agree to any of this? The most important thing for a character to have in a novel is a motivation, but I don't know what Jaime's is.
And I think that's all I've got for you for tonight! Hopefully this was helpful, and let me know if you have any feedback or questions. Good luck with this story, and keep writing!
Hiya umbrella!
Hope you're doing well today or tonight, depending on what side of the world you're on, obviously. I'm here to give you a review just like you requested and for RevMo! Let's get started, now, shall we?
Alright! But before I start, I'm going to let you know that I only read until chapter 5. Your story is quite long, and I honestly suggest breaking it up into different posts per chapter.
I love that this is waaay back in the 1900s. Very nice, and historical. I'm not much of the history nerd type of person, so I'm not sure that you got all the bits an pieces right, but it seems perfectly fine to me! The descriptions of the streets, the beautiful girl's house, etc. It's all pretty impressive, if I must say so myself. Keep it up!
Let's start with chapter one, now.
That last part threw me off a bit. I said, excitedly, but trying to hide my excitement. You've got some very obvious extra words here, so if I were you, I'd write it out like this: I said, trying to hide my excitement. It's short and to the point.
Lighted a cigarette doesn't seem like the best word choice. I'm pretty sure lit a cigarette would work just fine.
Onto chapter two.
laughing out loudly --> laughing out loud
Now look. (I'm so glad this appeared, because I love telling people about this)
You've written Cuban young man. But, It's actually supposed to be young Cuban man. When we use a number of adjectives together, we need to place them in order based on the function of each of the adjectives. The usual order is this: value, size, age, shape, color, origin, material.
Value - none
Size - none
Age - young
Shape - none
Color - none
Origin - Cuban
Material - none
So here, you can see that this would be young Cuban man. I didn’t mention man because that’s not a value, size, shape, color, or material. So, it’s obviously just going to be at the end.
Over here, your words sorta mix up here. I’d probably make this The time passed very quickly, without me realizing. You have used extra words and words that won’t really make sense in the context.
I’m pretty sure people don’t have multiple mustaches like you mentioned here. You’ve given us an s at the end of mustaches, making it seem like the thin man has more than one mustache.
I don’t suggest using shortned words, so probably just turn mid to middle, instead.
…At first you told us Stassi’s got a Spanish accent. How did his accent change over time?
Third chapter now…
Again, if I were you, I’d avoid using shortened words. So I recommend turning mid to middle.
Huh, you wrote every here day, but that doesn’t quite make sense. Unless you mean to write here every day?
Last but not least… Chapter five!
The correct word to use over here would be distance instead of distant. They’ve both got two different meanings.
Spoiler
/ˈdistəns/
noun
noun: distance; plural noun: distances
1. an amount of space between two things or people.
dis·tant
/ˈdistənt/
adjective
adjective: distant
1. far away in space or time.
Okay. Well, I hope all that critiquing made sense and helped you in some sort of way. Again, this was a lovely story (as much as I have read so far, but I’m sure the rest is fantastic too). If you want me to explain anything else, please ask me. And, if you’ve got any questions, you know what to do! Ask. I hope to see much more from you in the future, umbrella.
OH! And welcome to YWS.
Keep on writing!
~Liberty
(812 words not including these)
Hey there! Welcome to the website, and I'm happy to see you're already contributing to this lovely writing society! This is quite a long chapter even though it's the first section, so I think I will try to go over more general notes here with a little specificity since it's a little difficult to truly analyze 9k words in one sitting.
To start, Jaime seems like an understated character in this current form. Since the reader is being told of this story from only his view, the narration feels stilted at times and a little confusing because the constant location shifts and time skips muddle this overall idea of what's really going on in 1957 between the US and Cuba. His mannerisms come across as more of someone who seems to go along with just about everything anyone ever tells him to do - going from saying that he was satisfied with his current job, but then agreeing to a stranger's job offer. Not to mention that he seems pretty blasé about the guns and the expensive cars. It just seems like an ordinary person would react with a little more of some kind of emotion. That can definitely be improved upon with practice though.
This kind of reads as a typical gangster movie, even set in the precarious times of the '50s, and I do find myself wanting to see something unique on this to set it afar from a lot of the crime-based stuff that exist not only in book form but also movie form. I do like the different scenery as this is mostly set in Cuba, but in this story, I think it would be interesting to dive more into the culture, and how different this crime could be different than the American-typical ones. An example would be to maybe include another character based in Cuba that maybe can bring a different flavor to this overall story, as even the boss man depicts the typical big bad gangster, which along with the cheating, brings an almost too familiar image to the playing ground, I think.
I have a few specific pieces of advice for this novel. First, I do think this amount of words is pretty awesome, but limiting this number and modifying chapters into shorter pieces would really help get the reader to want to read this instead of being put off because of the sheer size. Next, I would really try to work on these characters to develop them further and make them unique, such as giving different personalities that might not fit at first, at giving different roles or sides to typically "strong/quiet/uncaring" characters. Lastly, add some inner conflicts, add some external conflicts, tie in the weather, who knows! Just pick something that's going to rock everyone's world especially Jaime and get him to react at least with his thoughts whirling around instead of just "Okay" or something short like that.
Overall, not a bad start! But I do think there are some things you can expand on to really make this story your own.