Published February 28, 2008
The glow of the early morning sun streamed through the small openings of the bushy trees that lined the clouded skies. Small shadows of spiked leaves where cast over the mossy forest floor, and the signs of animal life could be detected through the small rustle of leaves, or the sharp call of a lonely bird.
A small hole opened into the greened earth, yips and pants erupted from the hole and the beginnings of a darkened damp nose slowly and cautiously inched its way into the light.
A sharp bark broke the short silence and a small black body darted up the hole and jumped into the sunlight. The pup pushed its fuzzy chest out and held its delicate head up in great pride for being the first one out of the den. It howled in joy and then leaped back towards the den. It poked its head in and let its fluffy black tail wag excitedly.
It yipped and snorted summoning its siblings to join him. Cautiously the other wolves stepped out of the den, shook the dirt from their pelts, and stretched; widening their pink jaws and stretching their small untouched tongues over their sharp white teeth.
The black pup had already discovered a young woman asleep in the mosses a little bit away from the den. He yipped and nipped at her muddied hair. She moaned stretching. Her face was bloodied, the wolf was already clearing that up, and with a few swift licks it was gone. This time in its place there lay a dark purple bruise just beneath her nose.
The wolf yipped pawing at her arm impatiently. Its eyes shone with curious excitement unlike the other wolves that cowered by the den anxiously, their thin tails tucked between their shivering legs.
The girl blinked her eyes once before opening them fully, only to look the puppy right in the face. She yipped in fear; quickly getting up and running into the trees.
The wolfs eyes followed her every movement curiously as she disappeared into the forest. It took a few steps forwards scenting the air cautiously at every step. The other two wolves growled and warned there brother to come back, he didn't care, he wanted to know who this was and what she was doing here.
Meanwhile in the forest the girl had found a tree and collapsed under it, she panted hard, as for she had been running as fast as she could away from those strange creatures.
Her fear began to weir off and she began to think things through, okay... What was that? It didn't look like the man. It had a longer nose and perky ears, its entire body was covered in hair and it had a long arm attached to its back end. Instead of walking on two legs it walked on all fours and it just didn't look right. [i] She sighed and let her head fall back against the trunk of the tree, her eyes studied her strange surroundings for a minute, [i]Where am I? Think, you where with the man now you are here.[i] She looked down the trees trunk and it all came to her, [i]I am out of the glass wall, I am where those people where, I am happy! She rose to her feet and dusted the moss out of her hair before sprinting back in the direction she had first come.
(more coming soon)
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And page two!
I. DESCRIPTIONS
You have all these adjectives but they don't really contribute to the writing in any way. They're just kind of annoying to read and they disrupt the flow. I mean, there's these sentences with like six adjectives/adverbs but they don't help the reader to visualize anything. Take the first sentence, for example. There's so many adjectives and all the imagery is visual -- why not show us things from the other five senses as well?
You might want to try metaphors and similes, too. I use them a lot (it's just my style) and I've noticed that you have a "style" too: adjectives! I'm not saying that you should pack your writing with metaphors & similes; what I mean is that adding some for a more vivid and sensual mental image might be beneficial.
II. WRITING STYLE
I mentioned that you might want to try a more unique style for writing in an animal's POV, remember? Well, you know how Michelle Paver (author of Wolf Brother, Spirit Walker, Soul Eater and Outcast) has an interesting way of writing when it's from Wolf's POV? You might want to try something like that, which leads me to my next point ------ >
III. CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT
This is where you have the most problems, I think. What you have now is action > consequence > next action. Nothing in between to even hint at the wolf's personality. We need thoughts, motives! Think of it this way: remember at Sutton when we were going to sleep outside in the woods, but then you didn't want to because you had a bad feeling about it? You were curious, you wanted to; but something held you back. You must have been thinking that over as we lay by the fire, right? Characters are like real people. They need to think and be uncertain and all that. Think about it, k?
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/// Sorry for such a hasty, rushed crit, but my parents could be home at any minute. >.< And sorry for being so harsh! ///
I'll come back to this one day, when I'm not grounded, and continue it.
Happy Editing!
- Camille xox
I'm in a tearing hurry -- parents could be home any minute -- but I'll post page 2 ASAP.
Hello!
Other than that I like your story idea. Just make sure not to make your sentences too long or over the top and you'll be good to go.
Okay, I think that you used a lot of descritption, and good job as far as imagery is concerned, but some of your sentences are just far too long and it's suffocating. You don't want to add too many adjectives in one place. You described things well until it went on to that point. Also, you used the words "yipped", "nipped", and "paw/pawing" a tad too much. It really took away from the story with all of the sounds you were referring too. Just a personal opinion, I may just be being picky.
Happy editing!
~Rieda
'were'
'greened'? or 'green'
If this is referring to all the wolves together, then it should be 'wolves' ' If it's just the puppy, then wolf's, I think...I'm not sure.
their
I think there was a little problem with the italics formatting in this paragraph...and I couldn't distinguish the thoughts from what was going on. So I think you need to fix that.
I'm not a good critiquer, really...I never notice anything except spelling and grammar mistakes, ^^ is good evidence.
I think this was quite good, it seems interesting, and your description, especially in the first paragraph, was really well-done.
points for a wolf story! *cracks knuckles* here i go
very nice! im off to read the rest! *salutes*
Thanks
I am actually starting it again.
There is a prologue.
Some spaces between paragraphs in the beginning. It doesn't bother me personally, but I know a lot of people on here don't like to comment unless there's double spaces between paragraphs.
) paragraphs.
Small shadows of spiked leaves where..."where" should be were...
Not sure what you mean by greened earth. But maybe that's just me.
Maybe in the beginning tell us what exactly the "pup" is?
stretching their small untouched tongues over their sharp white teeth...Not sure what you mean by untouched tongue.
Her face was bloodied, the wolf was already clearing that up, and with a few swift licks it was gone
This needs to be broken up into two (doss
Okay, so yeah there's some little small things like that throughout it, but as far as the writing goes, it's very well-written. Just some typo-like stuff. No biggie.
She yipped in fear...
Oh, and I'm not entirely sure PEOPLE yip with fear...unless she's been living with some other kind of animal?
Just a thought, too...maybe you could use like some stronger words throughout this? (Dictionary.com is my best friends...there's thesaurus.com too. I think I need to get out more, eh??) Otherwise, let us know the characters more. I don't feel like I know them that much. I know this is only the first chapter so you can't exactly dump everything into our laps, but I'd like a little more and even though this has the potentially to be a very hooking first chapter, I don't think it's developed as much as it could be...
All in all, though, this is definitely a very, verry promising start!!