Hiiiya, Querencia. I'm back again. I'm shooting to get up to date with this novel by the end of the month. Realistically, that probably won't happen, but I'm going to at least try.
Finnley didn’t want to burden her with what Mr. Vaughn had told him, about magic.
No need for the comma.
Not that he was entirely sure he would learn magic- he hadn’t technically accepted Mr. Vaughn’s offer yet.
Ha! Imagine being given the offer to study magic and being like 'nah, thanks'. Obviously it's not going to happen because plot progression is A Thing, but there'd be something hilarious about a teenager being offered a magical apprenticeship and being like 'you what?? On top of school exams? Get lost.'
A brisk wind was blowing, and a few dry leaves scraped along the sidewalk, skittering underneath Finnley’s shoes.
Nice description. I especially like the use of 'scraped'.
He needed Monica.
Oh yeah, this made me remember where the last chapter left off. It's kind of weird that Finnley doesn't mention Monica sooner, to be honest, given that her spookiness has now been confirmed. He's bound to be a bit unsettled by it. Did Mr Vaughn actually talk to him about what the blackness in the silver plate meant? I feel like if you're going to open the chapter with him ruminating over what he's going to tell Mia about, the focus should be less on him learning magic and more on what happened with Monica. That was the last development in the story, after all.
“Look. I know some things, alright? Not much, so don’t get your hopes up. Sometimes when people hit their heads or sometimes alters their vision, they can see a different world. The spirit world, if you will. You already believe in demons- may as well believe in this too, right?”
This is interesting. I wonder what other ways there are to see the spirit world? What does she have in mind when she talks about 'altering their vision'?
“Finnley.” Monica put her hand on his shoulder and looked straight into his eyes. “I don’t know anything about this. I promise you. I just know a bit about some supernatural stuff, and I don’t even understand all that. This magic? That’s beyond me. I don’t know why I wouldn’t be seen, and I’m sorry if that makes you trust me less.”
This is very interesting. I'm really not sure whether to believe her, which is excellent. Either she genuinely doesn't know, which raises a lot of questions, or she's deliberately lying, which raises even more questions. I like the mysteriousness of Monica. She's about the only character who I'm never sure whether to trust or not.
“Finnley.”
“But I don’t think you’re telling me everything, Monica.”
“And now? What do you want to be, Monica?”
Something I notice about your dialogue is that your characters tend to use each other's names a lot. It's not a massive issue, but it does always stand out to me as odd, because in real life we actually use names way less than we think we do. Mostly, we'll just use them to get someone's attention - once a conversation is established and it's obvious who we're addressing, it's pretty unnatural to use names.
Pay attention to your own conversations throughout the day. See how often you call people by name. I guarantee it's less than you expect.
“Something that’s not possible any longer,” she muttered. Finnley didn’t press the issue, and they fell into an uneasy silence.
Hmm, interesting. I really am intrigued to know Monica's backstory. She seems like she's normal in a lot of ways, but there's definitely a big streak of strangeness somewhere. I still have a hunch that she's lying about a lot of things, but we'll see.
This is definitely one of the best chapter segments for a while. Despite my point about overusing names, I think the dialogue in this section is really good; it flows well and it has a lot of personality. I loved getting a little more insight into Monica's life and personality - she's probably my favourite character overall. You do probably need to make a few changes to the opening as well and centre Finnley's thoughts more pointedly on her and what happened with the silver dish, but that's fairly easily fixed.
It's interesting to see you've abandoned the blog entries. I don't know if that's a permanent thing, but I do think it's a good decision to not stick to it so rigidly. I think that format restricted the kind of transitions you could have between chapters, always forcing you to set them a day or a few days apart. Dropping that formula means that chapters can start pretty much where they left off - or just a few hours later, as appears to be the case here.
That's all for now. Keep writing!
~Pan
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