Saturday 24th December 2017
“Damon?” a voice called. “Damon?”
Damon slowly opened his eyes; a beam of light blinded his vison. “Is this heaven?”
“No,” the voice chuckled. “And if you were dead it’s too late for you to go there now.”
Damon lifted his head to see Belial laughing at him. She’s okay! He jolted up but his throbbing head forced him to lie back down.
“Easy Damon, you need to rest,” Belial consulted. She looked brighter than ever, the spell must have done more than heal her wounds but her mood as well.
“I’m so happy you’re okay,” Damon admitted. “I didn’t want to lose you.”
Belial held his hand tightly. “That means a lot Damon, especially coming from you.”
“Well I’m not usually this emotional so savour the moment.”
Belial smiled. “Seems that spell didn’t knock out your wit, eh,” Damon smirked, and then Belial went silent. Damon looked at her quizzically. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re an Infernal?”
“I’m not.” Damon heaved himself up and leaned against the couch.
Belial looked at him sceptically. “Then explain what happened last night.”
“I don’t know. When Ivy ordered me to heal you, I felt this dark energy consume me. It was painful but the power felt – good,” Damon marvelled. “The spell kept echoing in my head, forcing its way out of my mouth. Next thing I know my vision turns black.”
Belial pondered in thought. “I’ve never heard of an ordinary demon with an Infernal’s powers. Strange.”
“I know,” Damon looked at his hands, analysing them. Then he surveyed the room. “Where’s Ivy?”
“She went out. She didn’t say where.” Belial’s expression turned worried. “Damon, she went into the garden last night.”
Damon’s eyes widened. “She hasn’t done that since Matthew-” he trailed off. “How many?”
“Five.”
“Five!” Damon yelled in shock.
“And this time they went insects.” Damon covered his mouth. “They were dogs and cats.”
Damon buried his head in his hands. “This is my fault. I turned her into this.”
“You should be proud; you wanted her soul to bloom. Day by day it darkens into a black rose.” Belial said disgusted. “She didn’t even greet me this morning,” Belial sobbed. “Her eyes were full of anger and hate. I tried talking to her but-”
Damon’s eyes turned deadpan. “I knew you were getting too attached to her,” Belial refused to meet his disappointed gaze. “What did I tell you about forming attachments with humans? It will get you killed! Look at Vetis, one of the greatest demons that ever lived, was tricked by an angel and killed by Raziel.”
“She was an angel,” Belial defended.
“Pretending to be human.” Damon corrected. “Angels are more devious than they are perceived to be, you should know.”
Belial bowed her head in shame. “A mistake I regret making.” She touched her wrinkled skin. “I was so beautiful once-”
“The past is in the past Belial, talking about it won’t change anything. Your one of us now.” Belial nodded but she wasn’t fully convinced.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,805 Reviews
Hi there!
So in a way, I think this may have been your strongest chapter yet. There was a better dialogue/narration balance for the most part, even though there was a lot of dialogue. You broke it up nicely with the characters' expressions, although you could probably stand to break it up even a little more. This is especially true since we're in Damon's viewpoint, but one Damon starts explaining what happened to him last night, you kind of stop giving us his thoughts or anything, so we kind of lost his viewpoint a bit.
However, you never shifted to another character's viewpoint, so it seemed like at least you had less trouble with that sort of thing in this chapter.
Other than that, my suggestions are about names and dialogue. You used Damon and Belial's names almost every time you mentioned either of them, which got really repetitive (especially since Belial said Damon's name in her first several lines of dialogue). But! In this chapter it's actually REALLY easy to avoid that - since Belial and Damon are the only two characters in the scene and are different genders, you can substitute "he" and "she" frequently without any confusion on the part of the reader as to whom you're referring to.
With dialogue, I may have mentioned this in a prior chapter? I don't remember. But watch out for too many "said" substitutions. The one that MOST stood out to me in this chapter was "consulted," because, well, first of all, "consulted" needs an object - i.e. "she consulted him/she consulted an expert" etc - and second of all, she's not really consulting him there. She's more, like, advising him or ordering him or suggesting to him.
But the point is not that "consulting" was used somewhat incorrectly, but rather that you should avoid substitutions for "said" as much as possible. It's fine to use them now and then - especially ones like "murmured," "whispered," "shouted," etc, which tell us a lot about how a character says a line (as opposed to adverbs like "said quietly," "said softly," "said loudly"). But! The beautiful thing about "said" is that it's invisible. If you feel like you're using it TOO much and sound repetitive, it's better to cut out a bunch of the dialogue tags and replace them with narration than to go through and actually replace "said" with "corrected," "warned," "defended," etc. Readers won't notice "said" unless you're using too many tags to begin with, but we'll sure as heck notice these other words. And you don't really want us to notice the tags - they're just there so we know who's speaking.
Just as an example of a place where you used narration instead of a tag, here's this.
So that's a good thing to do instead of replacing "said" with a different tag.
Thanks for the review. It's nice to get feedback from someone who's read so of my work
I decided to not do character POVs anymore. This chapter was meant to be from the narrator's viewpoint . Was it done well?
Hmmm. Well, I think it worked all right for the first part of the chapter, but later on in the chapter when it was mostly dialogue, less narration, it kind of felt like no one was narrating at all, if that makes sense? I think it's just that if you intend to do a narrator who's not part of the story, you've got to make sure to give us insight into what characters are thinking and feeling through their actions and facial expressions as well as dialogue.
Oh okay, I'll make sure to change that. Thanks for the help
You're welcome
Hey there! I haven't read any of the other parts of the story, so I'm just popping in on this one to give a short review.
Good luck!
A few things I want to point out:
-She looked brighter than ever, the spell must have done more than heal her wounds but her mood as well.
I feel like there should definitely be a semicolon in there instead of a comma, because this is two sentences. I think it'd be better written along the lines of something like this:
She looked brighter than ever; the spell must have not only healed her wounds, but her mood as well.
-Belial smiled. “Seems that spell didn’t knock out your wit, eh,” Damon smirked, and then Belial went silent. Damon looked at her quizzically. “Why didn’t you tell me you’re an Infernal?”
This part had me confuzzled as to who was actually speaking. It seems like it's supposed to be Belial, but the first sentence has a speaker tag with Damon, and the second is just after a sentence about Damon, which would lead me to believe that it's Damon speaking. Basically, what's going here should be two separate paragraphs: Belial's action/dialogue and Damon's action/dialogue. This happens again in this paragraph:
“And this time they went insects.” Damon covered his mouth. “They were dogs and cats.”
Belial is speaking, yet it's Damon who has the interrupting action. That should make it separate actions, unless you do something like this:
"And this time they weren't insects," she said, watching as Damon covered his mouth in shock. "They were dogs and cats."
The last paragraph should also be two separate ones since there's two different people doing actions again.
You also have a lot of moments with unnecessary speaking tags. I won't point out them all since I'm sure you can figure it out yourself and I won't waste your time, but I'll point out a couple.
- “You should be proud; you wanted her soul to bloom. Day by day it darkens into a black rose.” Belial said disgusted. “She didn’t even greet me this morning,” Belial sobbed. “Her eyes were full of anger and hate. I tried talking to her but-”
Whenever using speaker tags, you want to use them only when necessary, and it's also best if you keep it as simple as possible with "said" and "asked" instead of all the variants of that with "replied, defended, marvelled, acknowledged, babbled," etc, etc. I'm not saying it's wrong to use variants of said like those, just to keep them limited and use them sparingly. So in the above paragraph, you already used one speaker tag, you didn't need the second one. If you wanted to show that Belial was getting upset, you could write something like this instead:
"You should be proud; you wanted her soul to bloom," Belial said, practically spitting out anger and disgust. "Day by day it darkens into a black rose. She didn't even greet me this morning." Her voice grows thicker and begins to waver as she goes on. "Her eyes were full of anger and hate. I tried talking to her, but-"
Other than these things, there's really nothing other than small actions and dialogue in this section. No description of surroundings, no character's thoughts, just back and forth dialogue. So yeah, I'd basically just fix the speaker tags and the paragraphs that need separating, add more description, and add some character's thoughts or something similar. Other than that, this was really good. There's a couple other things that I could point out, but I said this would be short so I should probably wrap it up.
But if you need help with anything, just want to talk, want me to go through and edit something, want me to review something else, whatever, just let me know and I'd be happy to. I hope I didn't come across as too harsh or anything, I'm just trying to point out the flaws in your writing so it can get even better. I think this is great and I hope you keep working on it!
Thanks for pointing out the dialogue tags, better soon than later
Your review really helped 
Well, I'm glad! If you ever want me to do another just let me know.
Thanks
I did part 2 of this part. Could you check it out for me. Much appreciated 
Can do.