Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
140,517 Literary Works • 673,285 Reviews
Hey Vox! I noticed that this has been up for almost a week with no response, and so, even though I haven't read anything else besides an excerpt way back, I thought I'd make this less lonely. Poor piece.
Since I've only read an excerpt and a bit of the first chapter, I'm a bit lost about what's going on, but I managed to follow along fairly good despite that. The dialogue helped a lot, since I was able to figure out who was a bad guy and who wasn't through what they said and such. Which is the best way to do it, so, great job there.
On that note, though, I think your dialogue can stand on its own without the adverbs in the tags. You could make everything a simple 'said' or an indirect tag, even, and the reader would understand you. “Come here,” Jonalla commanded her., for instance, is already a command, so saying that it was commanded is a bit redundant.
My other thought for right now is that I'd love to see more detail, especially so deep into the novel. More about what V's doing, some of her thoughts. More about the world. Not too much, of course, because description can get boring and infodump is evil.
But, this chapter is almost entirely dialogue. Which isn't a bad thing, necessarily, in a genre typically dominated by page-long monstrosities. Even so, the details you choose to include say a lot about the world these characters are in, and that in turn says a lot about them. Adding some meat to the dialogue frame you have will add meat to the characters in turn, and that adds drama and tension to the plot (the more we like a character, the more invested we are in what happens to him or her), and the more a reader is into a story, the more likely they are to take something away from it.
In other words, I'd really suggest adding a few sentences and lines here and there! Remember all five senses, and for side characters, try to pinpoint (and then describe) what it is about that character that makes him or her who she is. If Jonalla has a particular habit (other than just being awful) that makes her clear in your mind, convey that to the reader. Maybe it's her posture or her tone or a sneer she has. I dunno.
Just some thoughts! Let me know if you have any questions!
Rach