deleted

by fight4whatisright

Published July 12, 2011

In Deleted Stuff

...

Comments & reviews · 2
User avatar
Nate
Review
Nate wrote a review Review · Jul 31, 2011

This is pretty good, but there's a couple things you can work on.

First is some of the dialogue. This seems like a fantasy story, so reading this was very odd:

“O… M… G…” Zeda breathed, her hand flying to cover her mouth.

No fantasy character says "OMG." Indeed, the only people who would are those who probably wouldn't be interesting to read about. Moreover, it completely degrades the rest of the scene. If someone came across two dead bodies in real life and their first reaction was "OMG," I would think they didn't understand the gravity of what they were seeing. That is, you say "OMG" to light-hearted stuff that doesn't matter. So using it in this context ruins the work.

Secondly, you don't leave enough to the reader's imagination. Take your first paragraph as an example:
The crescent moon hung low in the velvety sky, casting an eerie glow through the canopy of the trees. The warm summer’s night was far from silent as Kasia strolled through the life-abundant forest, her siblings of sorts walking at a much slower pace a few meters to the right. An owl hooted from far above and bugs chirped all around. The teenagers conversed loudly, but not so loud that with their super-human hearing they couldn’t hear the scurry of vermin in the undergrowth or trickle of the stream three kilometres away, and not so loud that Kasia couldn’t hear their thoughts, conscious or not.


There's too much description, and as a result, most readers are just going to skim over it. Not only that, but this paragraph serves as a deterrent to anyone reading the rest of the work. Instead, first take out everything I crossed out above, then try to condense the rest.

Overall, you have a good draft here. With some more polish, it could be great.



You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot stop Spring from coming.
— Pablo Neruda