For reasons still unclear to them all, Novara failed to regain consciousness, even after the sun made one complete turn round the world. It was beginning to worry everyone, especially Nidara. But she could not sit by her dear sister all day, no matter how much she wanted to. The reason; Xelop’s comeback.
She was confused. What had he done to her? None of the healers could tell what was wrong. It was maddening. The fact that she could not tend to Novara herself was even more disconcerting.
Nidara walked the hall to the courtroom, hardly aware of her surroundings. As she entered her eyes fell on the seats on either side of the throne. She felt a lump rising in her throat.
No. she had to be strong. She had to make Xelop pay back. She stood straighter and walked with more dignity. She stepped onto the platform and took her seat.
“Are we to start, Nidara?” Markoph asked.
“Yes, father.” Nidara replied icily. “We must haste. Xelop cannot be allowed to win.”
“Let the court begin!”
~~~~~~~~~~
Nidara looked distressed, he noticed. More distressed than Keed ever thought possible. He had known Nidara to be strong. Perhaps Novara’s situation was more complicated than he thought it was. He could not know, without asking.
“Princess, is everything alright?” he asked.
Her head jerked up from the book she was very closely studying. The book Xelop had somehow left behind.
“Of course everything is alright, Keed! Xelop hasn’t returned, and Novara hasn’t been unconscious for the past two days. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with that!” she replied with vehemence.
He was taken aback. He had not expected her to be so vicious.
“Novara will recover,” he said trying to comfort her. “She has to.”
Nidara released a shuddering breath. “I know that too, Keed. But, I need her to be okay.”
His eyes found their way back to the book in his hands. He could only wait, like everyone else, to see the outcome of whatever Xelop had done to Novara. How he wished he could do something more.
He tried to focus a bit more on the task at hand. They had to find a way to stop Xelop. Fast.
~~~~~~~~~~
To be continued…
~~~~~~~~~~
AN: I know that this is an incredibly short chapter, many will consider this as not anything worth posting at all. But I had to put it up, to satisfy my own whims. Please bear with me. I am having a bit off a hard time coming up with something. Hoping that something will come together soon.
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Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,008 Literary Works • 672,832 Reviews
Hi there!
It's been a while since I've read any of this so please excuse any ignorance in my review :3
Your writing is wonderful. Seriously. I haven't read this in a while, but when I started reading this chapter, I felt like I had just come from reading the previous chapters. It felt right to read it. It flows very well and there is just the right amount of information given to us. Sometimes it's hard to find the right balance between dialogue and description. Most people want to write conversation after conversation so the readers can get to know the characters better and understand what's going on in the story. You seem to have it down pact here, though. There's not too much dialogue and the time you spend writing description really moves the plot forward. Bottom line is, when I read through the first three paragraphs, all I could think was, "Wow. This is great!" Keep up writing so awesomely! ^_^
Sorry to pull out such a chunk here, but it's all relevant I promise. It's always tricky trying to decide whether to use pronouns or the character's names. There are always thoughts of Amd I confusing the reader? Do they really know who I'm talking about? Have I mentioned their name in a while? It's something I struggle with as well. That being said, the place where you mention Nidara's name in the second paragraph here is unnecessary. This might just be a personal preference, but you should use 'she' instead of Nidara there. This chapter is short to begin with, so there isn't much room for you to bounce back and forth between her name and the pronoun. In seven paragraphs in the first half of the chapter, you mention Nidara's name three times. It gets a bit repetitive at that point, especially here. Just because you mention Novara's name doesn't mean you have to mention Nidara's. With the pronoun 'she' at the beginning of that paragraph, it's still apparent as to who you're talking about. Mainly because of this sentence:
The 'she' here obviously refers to Nidara. And since we know that, the next time we see a 'she' we will think that it's Nidara you're talking about, which you are. Just be careful with how you balance out names and pronouns.
She said this icily? That's a pretty strong word that describes an action full of hate. Am I forgetting something? Are Nidara and her father not on good terms? Otherwise I feel like this isn't a way that she would ever talk to her father.
These two sentences can stand on their own, but I think they'd flow better if they were connected with a semi-colon.
These two sentences should be made one as well, but this time with a comma to hold them together.
Staying with this quoted sentence real quick. I'm 99.9% sure that this is personal preference, but the word 'somehow' doesn't seem to fit here. Xelop left the book behind. How would Keed know that he wasn't planning on leaving the book behind? The word 'somehow' there makes me think that he wasn't planning on leaving the book behind and it was all an accident. But no one would know that but Xelop. That word there just bothers me.
stop making me feel dumb by using big words I don't know^_^Yes this chapter is short, but that's fine! A novel doesn't have to have each chapter be the same length. It's always seem as an advantage to do so, but in reality it never happens. Despite this being short, we learn a lot! One thing I noticed is that this subject is very touchy to Nidara. She's lashing out at people, saying things icily and vehemencely (yea I actually had to look that word up...). Why else would she do that unless she was very stressed out about it all? That's very sneaky character development there. I like it!
Overall you have another great chapter here. Whenever I read another chapter of this novel, I seem to be reading them in succession. And that's great! Sometimes chapter transitions are choppy and hard to get through. But yours are great. The chapters flow well together and the reader can follow it effortlessly. And like I said earlier, your writing is great. There are just a few grammar mistakes here and there, but who doesn't make grammar mistakes? Even the grammar master makes mistakes. Who the grammar master is, I don't know, but you get my point xD
I'll check out the next chapters soon!
Keep writing!
**Noelle**
Thanks for finally making it to this chapter, Noelle. *feeling giddy*
And that was some very good advice there. I'll try to keep that in mind when I fix things up. I'll be waiting for your review on the next chapter.
Hey Glasses!
Small edit. I'd say 'round is something you could totally throw into dialogue, as it's more of a speaking term, rather then writing. Still though, this line reads a bit off anyway, seeing as the Earth orbits the sun, not the other way around. You could easily change this to either 'a night had passed' or 'a day had passed' etc.Whoa, you suddenly have a whole slew of chapters out and I'm really late at getting to them! I'm sorry about that. My schedule is tricky sometimes.
Well, it's a fairly short chapter, but I guess I should give it a quick overview before moving onto the following ones.
I do like that you devoted an entire chapter to the aftermath of them finding out that Xelop is still around. You could elaborate a lot on this though, there's even a court scene in there where they discuss it? Why not include any of that? We could find out more about their stance of Xelop, some backstory on him, why they were so sure he was gone in the first place etc. Oh, I also like your title. It's good.
What I did notice were several instances where you could use a bit more show, instead of tell. I'm not really feeling these characters and what they do, and it's very much like someone just narrates what is going on. I'll get back to this.
Alright, overall there isn't much more to bring up, so I'll just write as I go along:
Edit
Edit
Good. You are using more semicolons, they are really underrated. To use one though, the second line needs to be able to stand on its own. This one doesn't. Just swap it out with a colon.
Suggestion
I'd put this in italics and make it her thoughts.
Edit
Added a comma.
Another thing I noticed in this piece, is that a lot of your sentences are really short and fragmented. It reads choppy. You could totally combine a lot of these sentences, utilizing some more commas and punctuation. Your paragraphs are also a bit short, but writing paragraphs long can be haaard. O.o
This is also an instance of 'show, don't tell'. Try to avoid continously writing stuff like 'she did this', 'she did that' etc. Tell us more about what is going on; make us feel like we're there.
Edit
Forgot capitalization after a period.
Not too fond on this line. Maybe 'she had to make Xelop pay for what he had done', or something to that effect? 'Pay back' just sounds off in this instance.
As I said, I would like some more on this. This small dialogue line is the only thing we know about this meeting they apparently had about Xelop. What happened? In the following scene, we follow Keed and Nidara talking to each other while she studies this book. I'm not sure whether this is happening during the meeting or not.
So while this chapter is very short at the moment, there are a lot of things you could add whenever you return to it.
Suggestion
I'd swap those two around, to make it apparent right away that we are now in Keed's POV.
This comma is unnecessary.
Hah, I'm liking Nidara's sarcastic reply to Keed. Some more dialogue like this is good. Now it has gone by two days though? I'm guessing this scene doesn't take place during the meeting then.
What book? Wasn't Nidara reading the book? Did he have his own? Fill us in! xD
Alright, that's pretty much all I've got for this chapter. Small and easy to read, but with lots of room for additions.
I'll move on to the remaining chapters soon. I'm liking how you are sticking to the story and keep the chapters coming. In my slow pace, I can barely keep up.
Keep it up, Glasses!
Cheers
Birkhoff
Thanks for taking your time to review this chapter Birkhoff. Honestly, this isn't one of my greatest chapters. I will do my best to fix it. I appreciate that you thought this piece was necessary though. I myself kept feeling like it was sort of a filler...
Hello ConfusedGlasses!
I do agree with you that it is a relatively short chapter, but it does seem necessary. Sorry I'm late, I just figured that review day was the day to catch up. I kind of like the ferocity, just what I needed to read at the time. I could find no flaw in here, except that, as you said, it's kind of short. Can't wait to get to the next chapters so I shall bid you adiou.
For now...
~Kelpies.
Thanks for coming back to read it Kelpies. That's enough for me really.
Hi! Cricket here for a review!
Well, it's been a while since I've reviewed this, and I'd almost forgotten the storyline, but I dug it up from the bottom of my memory, and I think I got everything mostly in order. Hopefully I do though. I'ts been a while!
Jazzy already pointed out a nitpick in this sentence, but I had a slight nitpick as well. This seems like a bit of a run on, if only just a super long sentence for what it contains. I'd suggest starting a new sentence after you tell us that she refuses to regain consciousness. Maybe say something like: Even after the sun made one complete turn around the world, her eyes still stayed sealed shut. Or something like that. Not the best example, but I hope that was clear.
Hmm, semi-colon's are cool, but often misused in my opinion. I'd suggest just getting rid of it completely and replacing it with the word "was".
OK, I'm confused here. Is she talking about herself or her sister? I'd assume her sister, but a little clarification would be handy.
Just being slightly nitpicky today... OK, so you mention the word "on" twice in this sentence. Usually I wouldn't complain about that, as you could typically get away with it, but in this case it was too prominent. Maybe change the second "on" to of? It might help with the flow more, if you did. Just my opinion is all. xD
Are you meaning, We must hasten? Or, We must make haste?
Now this I just don't understand. Court is what exactly? It's like a gathering of courtiers or whoever, right? (Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm totally not a geek with this stuff at the moment) I always saw it as a gathering or a place, so maybe some other word. Like do you have a certain word that they use for such meetings? I mean, they're gathering to discuss or decide what to do with Xelop, right? Umm, maybe trial instead? (Please, don't feel upset if I'm wrong. It's been a loooooooooonng time, since I've read this!
Alright, I know that this is from Keed's POV which makes me kinda happy since I can see what's going on from somebody else's perspective, and I can see what Nidara seems like to other people, than herself for this situation.
My main problem here is that, the sentences don't relate enough to each other. They have no true flow! I mean, what they imply is totally awesome. This stuff is necessary, I think! And you can't take it out in my opinion. But I also kept getting this feeling that he was jumping around and wasn't that generally sure of himself right now or something. I think it was just the way the sentences were structured. I read through the sentences over and over again trying to see if it was something that was said, and I don't think it was. Just try and make sure that each sentence relates to the other and flows directly into the preceding, and next sentence. Hope that made sense!
This is a wee example of showing and not telling. Instead of just telling us that he was taken aback by her reaction to his question, try and show us through some thought, description of face, body language, ect.., It will also keep a steady feeling of his character throughout if you do this.
Comma after "said"
My only nitpick here would be to change "fast" to something else. Maybe, And quickly? Up to you. It didn't seem like your style when I read it, is all.
Well that's all for technical really. What I'd like to comment on mainly would be your description.
Now obviously since this is a shorter chapter, there really wouldn't be that much. I get that. But still... I kept getting the feeling like something was missing. Like I wasn't getting something. And it was because I couldn't get that picture in my mind.
For instance, she walks into the court room (or whatever it's called. xD) and she see's the seats beside the throne. That's basically the only description there, that I can remember. There wasn't really anything else. Try and describe people in the room, smells, sounds, maybe something doesn't feel right to her? Try and create a hugely vivid picture for us. Your characters are pretty awesome right now, but in order to relate to them, I've always found that it's easier to do so, when we have a good picture of their world. So paint that world for us.
Alright, one last thing. And it's not really involving the story... well it does sorta. Are you having a hard time just writing in general or writing this story? Because if it's just this story, then I'd highly suggest trying to write short stories, or maybe working out another plot for a story. Also, you can try and draw out this plot on paper or something, if you're having trouble coming up with more story for us.
Alright! That's it from me. Hope this helped you out!
Keep writing!
~Cricket
Oh, it helped alright. Thank you so much for your patience, Therese! I think you know how much it means. And, yeah, I'm sorta having a problem with only this story. And about all the Show-not-tell and descriptions and everything, I'll be working on those soon, just want to get some decent amount written before I move on to editing it. It's just that I didn't know what to write for this chapter, I was so confused. But I think I got control of it now. Pray for me!
Hello! I haven't read your other chapters so I'm sorry if I pick on something which would make sense if I had read them!
Round needs to become around. It's explained more here:
Spoiler
I feel your pain though, I like the sound of round more than around. Adding an apostrophe could work... 'round.
Payback is more of a thing. pay back is what you're wanting.
[quote]They had o find a way to stop Xelop.[quote]
There's a little typo there.
Those are all the nitpicks I can find, so great work! I really love the way your characters talk; it's so sophisticated and reminds me of a fairytale.
Thanks for the review Jaz! (if you will allow me to call you that) I'm working on the mistakes. Meanwhile, do take a look at the previous chapters.