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139,347 Literary Works • 672,539 Reviews
Flame here! Not to late to welcome you to YWS?
Excuse me as I gush over your style. Limited use of prepositions and speaker's tags, successful fusion of active voice and passive voice, and a well-maintained balance of action, narration, and dialogue.
I'm going to have to disagree with Buggiedude; no need to cut back on the adverbs. Although I usually encourage YWS members to ("The road to hell is paved with adverbs."), yours contributed to the piece, as in, they were essential and helped establish an image. On the subject of images, fantastic imagery. I could really step into the narrator's shoes, and you still, by some miraculous means, left room open for interpretation. Particularly this line:
Thus the meager nitpicks...
That second sentence seems like a second thought, just thrown in there to slow down the pace, to briefly allow the reader to stew in the situation. In other words, I'm struggling to see how it's relevant to the rest of the paragraph.
Okay, let me double back on the adverb thing. If they're planted right next to each other, one should be clipped. "Obligingly" is also implied in the fact that the narrator accepted the class, so it can clipped and not affect the meaning.
That's all I have. I love that you wrote this in present tense; it suited the light ambience, and it's a daring thing to do. Keep up the good work! Looking forward to more!
Hello there! I haven't read the rest of the story (I probably just missed it) but I suppose it can't hurt, no?
So, I didn't find any grammatical errors, so awesome job there!
As for technique.... I'll get this one off my chest first: adverbs are not always your friend. Yes, I like them for lots of things, but we don't need them everywhere. Try using different verbs, especially ones with strong connotations. (Instead of saying 'smiles smugly', try 'smirks'.)
And another thing: vary your sentence structure. So many of the sentences start with the subject, namely 'I', and it gets kind of old when that happens so many times in one paragraph.
Also, I think the sentences during the fight scene could use some length variation. Add some really short ones just to accentuate the excitement that's going on.
I'd also like to see more scenic detail. I'm sure you already did that in the previous chapters, but just a little as a refresher to your regular readers would be nice.
BUT... I do like all of your turn of phrase! The 'heart clenches with bloodlust' line was just perfect! And using the verb 'bait' was so awesome!
As for story line... like I said, I haven't read the rest of it, so I'm not sure how much of this is relevant, but it's odd how everything happens so quickly. The interactions between Daniel and Blathen seem strange, and just a teeny bit rushed. I feel like it would be more fun to have them be mad at each other for a long period of time. (But don't listen to me. I'm just rambling now...)
Anyways, that's it!
Ciao!