Young Writers Society

Hey Sacred! Back again for more~

As always, I really dig the details you choose for your descriptions. Your language is always really specific and interesting which does a lot to make story unique. It's always a pleasure to read one of these chapters!

Unlike some of the other chapters, though, I found myself confused at a lot of moments here. I'm going to break this confusion down as a symptom of two different problems:

Overall Story Continuity
Alright, so we're only 4 chapters in so this is not a HUGE DEAL right now, but it's something I thought about while reading this chapter. It seems like we're working with a two-storyline novel, which is not uncommon. Odd chapters are Mr. Nelly and his story about his connection with God. Even chapters are something else that I'm not quite sure about yet. Are they one secondary storyline? Or a mixture of vignettes of things happening elsewhere? It doesn't appear to me, yet, that there's a connection between this chapter and chapter two (which, there very well could be! It's been a few weeks since I read chapter two, so I could be forgetting something though I did go back and skim through it for familiar names). I think an easy way to rectify this would be to give us just a little more to connect these two chapters into one storyline. OR to make it more clear that they are two different storylines, if that's what we're working with. Basically, I just want to feel THESE sections building on each other the way I feel Mr. Nelly's sections building, and I don't quite feel that right now.

A Host of Similar Characters
So, while your descriptions and details are often a huge success, I feel like here they let things get a little muddled. I had a hard time telling characters apart in this chapter. For example, at first I misunderstood the scene with the zombies emerging from their graves as two zombies PLUS another woman. This could just be me, but I wanted to note that it confused me for about half the chapter. THEN there's a host of other "humanoids" who are hard to tell apart from one another. What's something, even just one strong detail, that can help us differentiate one from the other?

I also had a lot of other questions, like what are the humanoids doing here? What do they want with the zombies? Who is this woman? Why are the humanoids serving her, and to what purpose? Does she regularly take zombie servants? What is the advantage to a zombie servant over anyone else? Do these guys make a habit of digging up zombies? Or did the zombies come about on their own and these humanoids just happened to find them?

Obviously, not all these questions can or should be answered NOW. But I felt a bit lost as to the purpose, similarly to what I mentioned earlier about not feeling this secondary plot build as well as Mr. Nelly's plot. I'm not sure what any of these characters want, or what their endgoal is. So while it's lovely and fun to read, it isn't satisfying my craving for story in quite the same way as Mr. Nelly's story does.

Otherwise, another great read! Watch your tenses, there was a bit of swapping from present to past in this chapter, but that was the only grammar issue I noticed. Now I'm off to read the next chapter!

Keep writing!

--Lauren

Dear Ellstar,
The suggestion board suggested that I come and review again. That is unfortunately not possible because well I already reviewed it. I would try and write another but that isn't possible. Instead, here's another comment to compliment your story.
Great job!
Lizzy
Queen of the Book Clubs

Spoiler! :

Hey there Ellstar. It's just lizzy dropping by once more, so without a further ado, let the reviewing begin.

I haven't done any title/description/presentation critiques in awhile. Congratulations user because I have chosen this review to do so.

Divine Intervention: Chapter Four

Spoiler! :

Two zombies are inexplicitly introduced into the picture.

It was a dark and stormy night—

The two clawed their way out of their graves, utterly tarnished by dirt, slower than tortoises but relentless in their pursuit of (after)life.

1. The two clawed their way out of their graves, utterly tarnished by dirt, slower than tortoises but relentless in their pursuit of afterlife.

2. The two clawed their way out of their graves, utterly tarnished by dirt, slower than tortoises but relentless in their pursuit of (after)life.

The woman—a homely forty year old in life, now a bag of skin and bones, with strips of red hair clinging onto her scalp and a torn white gown flowing under her knees—looked around her, her black, bloodshot eyes studying the scene.

The woman was a homely forty year old in life but was now a simple bag of skin and bones. Strips of red clinging onto her scalp and a torn white gown flowing under her knees, she looked around her. The black, bloodshots eyes, once resting calmly in her undead skull, flashed as they studied the scene.

Spoiler! :

The house seemed to hum under them, with every step, singing its own little tune as they went by. It seemed to John it was singing Queen.

He tapped a beat in his step, from the floorboards to the staircase, mumbling the lyrics to Another One Bites the Dust.

Spoiler! :

...Mason continued, shoving a gun into Johns back.

Hello! I've just made an account and you are my favorite author that I've come across yet. I am interested in your story so far, though I do have a a few notes.

"The two of them exchanged dumbfounded looks,[...]The woman grunts and groans, almost in an attempt to communicate."

You've switched from past tense to present tense. This happens multiple times throughout the story. Try to keep it all uniform, i.e. "the woman grunted and groaned"

"A man—no, too pale to be a man, but it was something—looked at the two of them, his eyes a glistening crimson and his teeth eerily sharp."

I would suggest splitting this into two sentences. It would help to keep the sentence from running on.

"Mason didn’t seem to take notice of the zombies’ odd behavior"

Zombies' is plural. It should be zombie's.

"she slipped her mouth open slightly, displaying her fangs. Dipped in red. Tomato, maybe?"

This doesn't make sense. If her mouth were closed any blood would have washed off. I suggest either "displaying a threatening pair of fangs" or "displaying fangs, stained red"

I'm really excited to continue reading this story! Kale is a very interesting character so far. I should warn you against introducing too many characters too fast. Maybe try building on some existing characters first? Just a thought.