Travion's Writing: 2nd Draft Chapter One ADVICE PLEASE

[Trey]

Hello, people. First novel, chapter one, draft two is complete and I am calling for your help. I need some honest thoughts and criticism. Please don't pull your punches. I need the brutal true, its the only way I can learn. There may be some grammar errors and typos, they will be buffed out in draft three. The link to the doc is below.


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxGf...

[Iesha (In east shade house at...)]

First off, I'm not an editor nor have I taken many classes in writing, and my writing experiences comes from learning a lot of the stuff on my own and practicing here on Goodreads, but here's what I saw.

First thing I saw on first glance at your work. Detail-you did not describe how the parents looked to the readers in the first scene where Krow is waking up. Krow also need to be described a little to give there readers something to envision in there minds.

[Trey]

Iesha (In east shade house at...) wrote: "First off, I'm not an editor or have I taken many classes in writing, and my writing experiences comes from learning a lot of the stuff on my own and practicing here on Goodreads, but here's what I..."
Ok, thank you. Is there anything else that stood out?

[Iesha (In east shade house at...)]

The dialogue-there may be too much of it. Only put dialogue that will move the story forward in. For example, if the small talk at the beginning-at the table-isn't revealing something about the character or plot them consider taking it out. Write conversations that's meant to push the story forward not useless stuff.

I just saw that you had a lot of talking in the beginning with no details.

[Alice]

I agree with Iesha 100 %. There seems to be a lot of extra dialogue that is just slowing down the story too much. In the first scene especially, you need to grab the reader's attention and make them want to read more.

Also, I feel like all the characters are too stoic and don't really have that much personality. Maybe you, as the creator of the characters, have a good idea in your head of what they look like and what their personalities are like, but in reading the first couple of pages, I was unable to connect with any of the characters. Try to put more emotional cues and background information into your writing to establish separate personas for everyone in the story, and also make them each have different voices to emphasize their different personalities.

Another thing is that I had little idea of what the actual world of the story was like. It seems to be set in a different world, but there weren't enough clues in the setting descriptions for me to be sure. Is this set in medieval times? Or is it set in a fantasy land that you made up (If so, definitely build up the world more substantially in the story; world-building is crucial to make a good sci-fi or fantasy story seem real)?

Overall, I think this has a lot of promise, and I commend you for sticking with the story. It's obviously well-developed, and I could tell you really made a lot of effort into the writing and dialogue. I wish you all the luck on publishing! :)

[Trey]

Hello, I'm back. I have done some reading and I've started chapter one again. I would like you to take a look at what I have so far to make sure I'm on the right track.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxGf...