Firefly -> RE: Moving at Last: The Epic of the Qingslayer Comment Thread (10/12/2008 22:18:13)
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Heh, sorry for the wait, I've finally finished reading the prologue of your story. I lacked the time of line-by-line, but I hope my overall comments would help you. The best part of this piece, imo, was the dialogue. I liked how to played the talk between Thomas and the Examiner. It sounded very human, and you managed to convey info without infodumping. The math was fairly simple, so even a math-detestor like me managed to understand fairly easily. Or maybe it's because I used to play AQ a lot and familiarize myself with those terms, so it's simple for me. If you need an opinion of the clarity from a non-game-player, make sure you find someone else, lol. Anyhow, the dialogue was well done, realistic, and you have a great balance of speech tags, knowing when to exclude them, when to use said, when to use other words, ect. almost perfectly. Plus, you don't have no actions or too much exposition mixed in, ect. I really applaud that. ;) The flow of your sentences was fairly well done. You've got a good sense there, as well. They did drag on to be a bit wordy at times. Try to trim when possible. In my opinion (simply my viewpoint and experience), is something is one of the following, it might need rearranging/trimming: 1. If you have to use a lot of things like "which" to join the sentence. 2. If it drag on for more than three or four clauses. 3. If you're using more than one -ly adverb a sentence. (more on that later) 4. If you're stating something that is unnecessary and could be deduced without stating. For example, if "she took his hand" is understandable, it's not really unnecessary to way "she took his hand in her own." Just a few general points off the top of my head. Something to keep in mind if you feel it's helpful. I find your way of battle interesting. Uncommon, but not at all bad. The way he managed to win in the end was great; nice and logical, exactly the way I like 'em. Hooray for being unique! A bit more description might work. Instead of "He killed the three enemies" you could describe how he carved a blow in the head, a stab in the chest, ect. That's personal preference in ways, but being the kind of writer I am... Eh, you don't have to listen. Since you're influenced by Chinese history, especially, since I know those books don't describe fights blow-for-blow. I suggest it here simply because the fight is an integral part of the prologue, and since you describe the mechanics (math) in such detail, it feels a bit unfitting to not give the actual movements the same careful treatment. In terms of grammar, there wasn't really a lot outside of a few typos and missed commas that can be fixed with a few more revisions. I did notice the following, regarding dialogue that runs on for longer than one paragraph: quote:
“Good day, Cadet. I am Professor Bushodo Hikaru, your examiner,” the school official stated, “If I got myself correctly, you are the only cadet from the School of Applied Combat of ours to have passed the Single Combat Tactic exam with maximum score this year. I congratulate you on that result.” “But that doesn’t guarantee that you would pass this exam safe and sound,” Professor Hikaru said, after a pause, “You know what happened to Jonas McDonald last year, don’t you?” In the books I've read/observed, in the first paragraph of dialogue that doesn't end/switch speakers, there is no closing quote. You're correct in putting an opening quote in the next paragraph. So, essentially, you might wish to take out the closing quote after "result" Also, in direct thought, you seem to use both regular double quotes and italics. A more comma format is either italics and no quotes at all or single quotes and no italics. This could be personal preference, but both quotes and italics together... well, it's not really necessary to have both, imo. In description, you do a fairly good job, but I think you can try more colour imagery. There are parts when the description wasn't particularly interesting (a lot of the setting description) and when it got repetitive (the Thomas description). You've got the amount down; I suggest you try to put it in the right parts: adding more here, taking away there, ect. Also, more colour, more vividity. Describing the shape is good, but the colour makes it more vivid in the mind's eye. You've got quite a bit of colour, but more can't hurt. ;) As a side comment, you might be overusing -ly adverbs. They're not the strongest words around, and can mainly be replaced by stronger verbs or simply taken out due to lack of unnecessity. Things like "ran quickly" could be "raced" ect. Visit this link to see more on that. Finally, there are only two things left that I noticed. One, I don't think you mentioned much/all about Thomas's parents in the prologue, but you do have him thinking about murdering Qianlong. To readers who might not read/pay attention to your summary (and that might be more than you think [No, not me!] =P), this might be confusing. Oh yes, they should be reading the summary, but a story is more reliable if it can stand on its own without the summary and author's notes, right? ;) Secondly, what kinda irks me, perhaps more than any other aspect since this is what I care about most in stories, is Thomas's character. It might be just me, but he doesn't seem to show a lot of personality outside of revenge (and is glad when he gets closer to his goal) and an enthusiasm in answering questions (and happiness when getting the right). Yes, I'm sure you'll probably bleed more personality later on, but currently, I don't have a good feel of him, I don't feel enough empathy... He seems a bit flat, like revenge and question-answering are his only traits atm. They don't go together all that nicely, and it makes me feel little for him--no like or dislike. It might be just me, but if you can do anything to endear him to the audience more... Just think on it. ;) Yeah, so that's all I have to say. Great dialogue, description amount, and flow. Work on character development, description format and placement, and transfering what's in your summary into the prologue, or take out the kill Qianlong thoughts and give that info later (we've got enough other stuff already). Please note that these comments are my perceptions, drawn from my beliefs and experiences. If there's something you disagree on, feel free to ignore. I won't be offended at all. ^_^
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