Fantasy Story (First 5 paragraphs) II

Hey there! I love this, but be forewarned that my comments may come off as harsher than I intended. Because you seemed to want in-depth criticism and it is already so good that the problems I found I really ripped apart.

Nitpicks and Suggestions:
(I bold what needs to be changed)

All seemed well in the world, at a glance, from the eyes of a young farmer.

Ok, so although grammatically correct your use of the interrupting phrase or description throughout your story kinda messes with the flow. Especially once they get longer I have forgotten the first half of the sentence and have to go back. Used more sparingly it would be 100% ok, but right now its there so much I just had to comment on it.

Everest, whose tale we follow, is this young farmer.

This introduction feels stiff, slightly redundant, and didn't really pull me in. The bolded part is probably my biggest problem with this sentence because a reader is going to understand that the character we are meeting is probably the one whose story is being told.

You do have a lot of info dumping, which in writing these days is commonly seen as a no go and although I think a bit of this could be cut I also think it fits your story. Your description, imagery, and writing style (which are all AMAZING) remind me of J.R.R. Tolkien. His books tended to have more info dumps and super in-depth descriptions and yet he was super successful.

To make up for this because if not done properly it can make a book slow and boring you need to make sure that you make your character and their situation interesting and unique. When you get to the second or third paragraph you start to get to this, but by this point, a lot of readers might give up. When I'm in a book store, for example, I will read the description and probably the first paragraph or page. If I had picked this book up I'm sorry to say that unless the description was awesome I wouldn't buy it because there isn't much in the first paragraph to really pull the reader's interest. The Hobbit by Tolkien starts with a description of the character home but makes it interesting because it is in a hill and that's not normal. Find what makes Everest special and it should be the first thing I read.
For Example, at the beginning of the second paragraph, you talk about how he is gaining independence. That is interesting and that will pull a reader in.


Anyway, let me say once again I loved this and sorry if it doesn't seem that way. I hope this is helpful to you and feel free to ask questions about what I said.


Sláinte -Junel

Hey Zelda,

Shady here with a review for you this fine evening! I see your A/N so I will try to be as comprehensive as possible in my review. My style tends to be to make comments as I'm reading about anything that stands out to me, and then give a general summary of my thoughts at the end. Let's get started...

Thoughts on the first paragraph

Okay, as you probably know, the first paragraph of your story/novel is vitally important. I don't know if I'd go as far as to say it can completely make or break you -- but I know, personally, I've been guilty of picking up a book at a library or bookstore, reading the first paragraph, and then putting the book down because it didn't catch my interest. And, of course, none of us wants it to be our book that that happens to!

But your entire paragraph seemed a bit... passive. The description was a bit flowery, but still good. But then we get here:

Everest, whose tale we follow, is this young farmer.

And then everything following it just feels really... again, like I said, passive. Like, yes, we need to be introduced to this character. But as of now, I have absolutely no reason to be interested in him or care what is going to happen to Everest. He seems like a boring little farmer with large ideals.

I'm assuming that's not what's going to happen, given as he is the topic of this story. But as of the end of the first paragraph I have no affections for him.

I'd suggest trying to make it a bit more engaging. Such as, rather than telling us that we're going to follow Everest's story -- just get started with it. Rather than telling us that the world seemed well from his eyes, /show/ us him experiencing that.

For example, something like:

"Everest rolled out of bed and pulled on the same plaid shirt that he'd been wearing for the past week. He wandered over to the window and looked out at where the pinkish hues from the sunrise were being replaced by the blue that would rule the daylight hours. All was right with the world."

You see the difference between that example and what you wrote? Your example everything was passive. The sky was changing colors -- he was observing it, etc. etc. Like there's nothing wrong with how you wrote it (and nothing right about what I did -- that was just a thrown-together-example), but if you can try to be a bit more engaging in your first paragraph then you've got a pretty good shot of capturing our attention and compelling us to keep reading.

I would also caution you strongly about describing him so completely all at once. I mean it's great -- I now know what he looks like and that most definitely helps me envision him and makes for good imagery. But... it's pretty info-dumpy. You're throwing all of these physical descriptors at me before I'm even really interested in his story, and it's just not likely to stick in my brain -- plus it really doesn't make for lively reading this way. If you scatter it throughout the next few paragraphs then it'll feel more natural as we integrate his appearance into our imaginations.

Thoughts on the second and third paragraphs

A lot of what I said above also applies to these paragraphs. You have a lot of info-dumps going on, which is to say, you're throwing all of the relevant information at us all at once, but not in an interesting way.

All of this is good, necessary information that should be revealed to us -- but part of the reason why people enjoy reading is because we want to figure all these quirks out. So you have him doing something interesting, throw in a little detail, do something else, throw in another detail -- and slowly but surely build it up so that your readers can piece together what's going on.

No one wants to just read a long account of what happened. That makes it more like an essay or newspaper article than fiction. We want the mystery and intrigue and thrill of figuring out important plot points -- your job as the author is to guide us along until we can finally put all the pieces together.

Paragraph five

This one is much better! By far your strongest paragraph so far, and really excellent descriptions and imagery to go along with it. I really enjoyed reading this and think you did a really good job here.

~ ~ ~

Okay! So, I didn't mean to be discouraging with this review. You are posting only 5 paragraphs of your story so I assumed that meant that you've been over this story carefully already and are looking for in-depth critiques that can improve it even further than you already have on your own.

I do think you have a really interesting concept here, but there are definitely tangible ways in which you can improve your writing style in order to make it more interesting to read about.

I would almost advise you to edit paragraph 5 a bit and then use that for your first paragraph, and then work in the other information in the next paragraphs to follow. The plot info you gave is definitely interesting -- and the line about living in a fantasy world in his head is good. It's just not interspersed super well.

If you have any questions let me know! Keep writing!

~Shady