Reporting for duty. <3
Let's jump straight to it shall we? Since you've already had some powerhouse reviews I'm not sure what else I can say, I'll try not to repeat any of the points people have already mentioned. This is quite different from most of the stories I've reviewed, quite a nice break if you ask me. I really like Mason, I really do. She's a very unique character, and frankly reminds me a bit of you. I won't dwell much on her because I think there's a lot of room for potential character development and I don't want to make any quick judgements due to the fact that this novel is probably not a novel that can go by normal logic.
I'm guessing that by the language, this isn't set in our modern world. Now you don't have to tell us exactly where this is set, but like Skins said. It'd be good to provide us with some more sensory information about the city they're in, just by talking about the buildings, the streets or even the smell after rain can tell us a lot about a city. It doesn't have to be massive paragraphs of description detailing every little thing, it can succinct and short as long as you give the readers the most important aspects. So instead of giving you a link to how you should write descriptions (because everyone writes these differently) for example, Camus's descriptive style and Dickens's descriptive are very different; Camus prefers succinct, simple sentences and Dickens is infamous for its descriptions that could bore a classroom. That doesn't mean one is less effective than the other. Rather, arm yourself with what you shouldn't do.
Mason wasn't totally insane. Sometimes she thought she was while scrubbing the tiles of her stepmother's bedchamber.
To be honest, because of Mason's character I think these thoughts that are disconnected to each other aren't so bad because they are what defines Mason (and you somehow has managed to make these not annoying too). But if you wanted to give us a more solid feel of her environment, I would nix the bedchamber part because right here it throws the reader off. What has scrubbing the tiles of her stepmother's bedchamber got to do with anything? So her stepmum is probably mean to her and ....how is that related to her being insane? Or looking for a shoe in a puddle for that matter.
Your dialogue is stepping to the land of talking heads, just take care when you write your dialogue and be mindful with where you're headed with it.
Geor's appearance was kind of sudden, but we can overlook that for now. The faerie also confused me, but we can also overlook that
“She's missing her left shoe.” Geor said.
I mean I know they aren't exactly the most normal of characters, so I'll ignore my current voice that is nagging me that their interaction accelerated too quickly and there is no background to their relationship. But the jump from sleep to the left shoe, well. Actually, regarding the matter about left shoe I want more of an explanation before you cut us off. Apparently the left shoe means something as seen by the stolen comment, so what exactly is this left shoe? You don't have to explain it to us, just drop enough hints so we understand what is going on. You see, readers can be annoying creatures we want to know what's going on but we don't want you to spell it out for us. So what you can do is leave clues for us, and if we don't get it that's our fault not yours.
For me overall, this chapter had a nice, disjointed feel to it but it's not an unpleasant disjointed feel. I look forward to reading more of this. c: If you've got any questions, you know where to find me.
-Hir
Points: 461
Reviews: 475
Donate