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Having just discovered she is a werewolf, Sara finds she must learn to use her abilities, to protect her loved ones from a power hungry vampire that wants to use her so he can kill humans without being hunted by Sara's Aunt who is the current Queen Alpha. A long lost relative wants Sara's position as the next ruling Queen, and has sold her out to the vampires.
This is just a rough draft, I know I have mistakes in this as I have not gone through and edited a whole lot. I am also looking to see if this is a book someone would find enjoyable to read. Thank you and I appreciate all the help and reviews thank you. I am lookin to see if you get the personality of the characters.
I have to stay that I am pretty much intruged with the story.
The way you wrote the first chapter -nightmare- the setting was perfect.
I think you should continue it, it seems like you could take this pretty far.
Your doing fine, keep working on it, it will be a very great soon as u edit more and put more chapters in.
The setting seems great, and the plot is still going. Keep up the good work.
Yeah it still needs work, but try puting more detailes in becase its one of the most best hocks.
I think this is the third book I've read in two weeks with a "dream" intro. I sucked it up and cut my first 10k words because it was a dream intro followed by waking up in the morning, and I know editors throw those away from the start. I started in on your second chapter, and I don't think you lose anything at all by throwing out the first. Right now it feels like it's tacked on to add excitement.I'm having a hard time reading this. The paragraphs aren't separated (which I know is due to Book Country being a little inflexible), but more than that this needs some serious editing. Also, I'm not into "hottie" guys, but that's more of a personal thing.I recommend going through it a few more times. Is the dialog something that you would actually say? Is what you're writing from the narrator's point of view or from the character's thoughts, since those should be different. Do you have the necessary punctuation? And see if you can do something so when it's uploaded to Book Country the paragraphs are a little more clearly noted. If you clean it up, let me know and I'll give it another try.
I'm having a hard time telling at this point. The time and date are obvious, but I'm really not sure where they are right now.
Too much seems to be run by dreams at this point, but I'll admit that at least a potion of that is because it's hard to read. Seems to have okay continuity, but it's a little hard to tell.
I've only read partly into chapter one to be honest, I've got very little incentive to keep reading. This is riddled with questionable writing, weak description and a plot that doesn't really grab.First and foremost, this needs a massive go over with your edity stick. There's all sorts of mistakes here. For example, we get the wonder of 'Sara collided with a very tall, grabbing..' at 5%. You really need to take a look over this.A common mistake you're making is that you keeping dipping in and out of perspectives. While the majority of this is written from a third person perspective, every now and then you're dipping into a first person perspective. Compounding this problem is the way you write your internal monologues. You need to include the tags 'she thought' and the like in the sentences, rather than segregating them into their own sentences. Try to treat this as dialogue when writing. It should look something like this:'Ouch, she thought'Rather than'Ouch. She thought'Your comma usage is all over the place. I'd really recommend that you sit down and look this up as you're making a lot of mistakes. In particular, we've got a lot of points where I'd expect to see commas and several overlong sentences that could do with being several. For example (from 7%)::'He had strong perfect features and held himself with extreme power, he exuded extreme self-confidence and she suddenly had a surge of instant dislike and fear.'Where it should more be:'He had strong, perfect features and held himself with extreme power. He exuded self-confidence and she suddenly had a surge of instant dislike and fear.'A lot of description is overtly simplistic. You tend to overtly focus on making sure that we have the colours of your characters, but not a lot else. As a result, we get descriptions like 'he was tall, but not as tall' which isn't really worth using. Instead, try to give us an impression, a sense of what he looks like, a feel for him more than just a snap judgement of his threat.Please Indent your paragraphs. This makes the whole thing considerably more readable as at the moment, it's a bit confusing at the moment.To be honest, not a lot of this really leaps out at me. Alongside the editing issues, the dream's not really very dream-like (and instead feels like reality mistaken for reality), the dialogue never really hops above cliched villain speak and nothing's really grabbing me. While a lot of these problems can be solved with a good going over, I'd really consider rewriting this differently so that you can come at this story from a more interesting angle.
To be honest, there's not a lot to say about this from what I've read. There's no real sign of what you're doing with the vampires and werewolves in this, so it's hard to judge. It is noticeable there's little or no 'grounding' to the setting. I've no idea where or when this is really set.
Again, having only really read the prologue and the start of chapter 1, there's not a lot of space for any issues to to pop up. I really wouldn't worry about your continuity at the moment.That said, It is very noticeable that there's no real connection between your prologue and opening chapter. I've no idea how soon afterwards chapter 1 is set and it feels a little disconnected as a result.not much to comment onlack of continuity between prologue and chapter one
I feel bad. I’m about to be mean and tell you lots of, “You shouldn’t have…” things. But bear in mind that nothing I say has to do with you, your talent, or, even the story. It’s about readers, problems, and the approach to telling a story on the page, as against verbally.To hit you with the biggie: you’re telling the story. By that I mean that you, personally, are speaking to the reader as if they can hear you. What you present is a literal transcription of you speaking the story aloud. In person it works. But by giving the reader what amounts to the script you would use, you place them in the position, not of reading the story, but of trying to duplicate your performance as you tell it.To demonstrate the problems inherent to that approach, read the line Sam speaks:“Jack, you are a real bastard.”How did you read it? As high praise? Deadly insult? Something between the two? How about a doctor presenting a DNA report? How about as I envision it? See the problem? If you were to be with me when I told the story you would know exactly how the line was spoken by the tone I used. You could tell, were you only able to see my expression. But the page is incapable of reproducing either sound or visuals, so unless I take steps to make you know Sam’ state of mind before he speaks the line you cannot match the tone I intended. You have the words, yes, but not the music, so to speak. Fully half our interpersonal communication takes place on a nonverbal level, using visual and audible clues that cannot be reproduced on the page.When you read the opening it works. But you cheat. You already know the characters, the situation, and, your intent. So when you read, the words act as pointers to images, ideas, and situations that live in your mind. But for a reader, the words act as pointers to images, ideas, and situations that live in YOUR mind. But you’re not with me when I read. And as people constantly tell me, my head is empty. So I need more. For you, there are tools that will give that picture to the reader, techniques that have been created over the years to maximize the strengths unique to the printer medium. But they must be acquired and perfected because they’re not intuitive, or something we get by reading. A good plot is a necessity, like the vision of a picture you would like to paint. But to stay with the painting analogy, is the vision enough? Don’t we need knowledge of perspective, brushwork, paint preparation and application, and much more? Talent is wonderful, but it’s only potential. Trained talent is what gives our work wings.As I read the story, it was a list of plot points: Mist is around her…she knows it’s a dream…she tried to move…a bird screeched…she felt afraid…she ran…etc. (and your POV jumped from first to third at random, but that's another issue and will be fixed when you learn more craft)It’s a chronicle of events. It’s not Sara experiencing them. As a reader I learn what happened, but that’s a history lesson. I’m informed, but not made to share her experience. The problem is that damn few people read history books as light entertainment. Fewer still are interested in the history of a fictional character.You have the desire to tell your stories. That’s great. You have the perseverance to carry it through. That’s a necessity. What’s missing is a knowledge of the unique compositional techniques of the fiction writer. And because they’re missing you’ve fallen back on the verbal storytelling skills we use each time someone says, “So how was your day?” You need more.The trick is that the reader isn’t interested in hearing that the character was afraid. They want to be made to be afraid. Think in terms of a roller coaster ride. Which is more exciting, to hear that someone went on it and screamed, or to experience it yourself and scream? No matter how much detail I use to tell you how I felt, it cannot match my making my description so real you feel it as if you’re riding. And providing that kind of presentation that isn’t a matter of detail, it’s presenting it through the senses of the one riding—which is a learned skill.In our schooling we learn many general skills. But can the math we learn make us mathematicians without more study? No. The same applies to history, biology, and writing, though they never mention that last one. We’re given the impression that writing is writing. But it’s not. We can’t write scripts without a lot more knowledge. Nor are we ready to work in journalism. For each branch of the writing profession more knowledge is needed.It’s not difficult to learn the compositional techniques of fiction—though perfecting the use of those techniques is anything but easy. People have been working on the problem for centuries, so a lot of help is available, on line, and at your local library. And the cost, even if you have to invest in a few books, is reasonable. For less then the cost of a Saturday night out you can own something like Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goasl Motivation and Conflict (http://www.gryphonbooksforwriters.com/home/gmc.htm) which is one of the best I’ve found to give you the basics of what a scene is, and how it works to make your writing exciting.Hang in there, and keep on writing.Jay Greensteinjaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/
Mst often you're ticking off the items you see, rather then making the reader "see' them.
This is almost impossible to judge with the story all telling as it is.
You have a very exciting beginning. There is a lot going on and I enjoy your concept here - a dream in which the dreamer is aware that she is sleeping - and feel you could do a lot with this. The tone changes slightly from 2% to 19%. You start off creating a fearful, dark dream-world, then your MC kind of rolls in with a little twisted humor and sarcasm. As this is from her perspective, there could be more continuity here. Because this is a first person POV, her voice should be clear throughout. There are a lot of characters that pop up in a pretty short amount of time and they all happen to be beautiful, well-muscled men. Not that I'm complaining (I would love to be in that dream!) but they are not very distiguishable. I picture Ken Dolls - all of the Kens I had growing up had different hair and eye color, but they all came from the same mold. Your prologue ends with Sara being shaken awake by her mother and then some information about her firends coming over and what Sara's plans are. In my (humble) opinion, you may want to stop as soon as she wakes up and leave the rest for a future chapter only because I really didn't see a connection between that and her dream plus, considering her dream, I kept thinking that she should have been more effected by those subconcious images. In other words, rather than think about what she was going to do with her buddies, she would still be churning over her dream.Overall it sounds like an exciting story with a lot of potential. Good Luck!
There really isn't enough information for me to offer any real feedback in this area. If you end up posting more of your story I will check it out and comment accordingly.
Dream settings are interesting because you can do absolutely anything with them. With that in mind, I like the setting that you've created but would love more detail. You speak of fog and trees but I like a lot of description. Plus, a well-described setting can help set the tone of your story. It's a great start thought.
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