Ch 1- Alex: Fox hunt I sat in my car, melting in the heat. The first day back to school, and my car's ac was busted. Lucky me. The light seemed to sit red for an eternity, and I was not exactly happy about it. Blurred lines was on the radio, and as I did with every time it was on, I struggled to find the sexist part. Yet again, I did not succeed. The light turned green and I sighed in relief. That was the last light before the school. As I turned onto the road heading down to the parking lot, I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. It was from the forest, so I shrugged it off and kept driving. I kept noticing the movement though, as if it were following me. I kept choosing to ignore it. I parked, grabbed my backpack, and started up to the school. A guy in a black hoodie which hid his face pretty well was walking behind me, and I couldn't shake the feeling he was following me. Halfway to the school. I slowed down a bit to see if he would pass me. He didn't. 3/4 to the school. The path split and I hoped he'd go the other way from me. Nope. At the doors to the school. I opened them and stood there. As he passed me he said "thank you" very politely and continued on, making me feel very foolish for having thought he was following me. As I turned to head through the door, I heard the sound of leaves rustling from a nearby tree, and I looked instinctively. Sitting in the tree, plain as day, was a fox-man. Humanoid, but covered in orange fur, with a tail and a snout. The whole anthro package. He saw me, waved, and leapt towards me. I turned to run, but he grabbed me in one arm, and jumped so hard I passed out. ((This is the first chapter of this thing. I would appreciate criticism. To a degree obviously.))
Three things I noticed immediately. -AC should be capitalized. It took me a second to realize what you meant. -3/4 should be written as three-quarters. Writing the numbers seems a little bit lazy. -Not everybody knows what an "anthro" is. In this case, "Anthropomorphic" might work better. Plus, anthropomorphic is great word. Anthropomorphic! Other than that, it was well written, and grabbed my attention with the first sentence.
Ch 2- Eva: Spite My mother floated about the kitchen, cleaning every shelf, door, and crevice she could get too. She loved cleaning. My father was out doing something far more important. He was hunting wolves. I wish I could have hunt wolves, but no. I'm female, so I needed to learn the roles of the maternal. I always felt closer to male, but mom would have none of that. Vampires are proper. Transgender is a human thing. I hated her. I wished she wasn't in charge of the entire species. We'd been at war with the wolves for at least a thousand years. The last two leaders almost made peace, before mom came in, killed them both, and claimed rule of the vampires. I sat and watched her clean, as she explained all the little aspects of dusting and other pointless things. "Mom. Can I go play on the computer?" She just turned to me with her usual creepy smile and shook her head no. She seemed to never let me use it. I had friends on the Internet. As royalty I'm not allowed to communicate with anyone besides royalty in person. Very limited pool. I hoped Alex was okay. Last I talked to her she was killing herself over how hard college was going to be. The light in the linoleum kitchen was starting to hurt my eyes, so I snuck out. I looked out the window of the next room over. It was a beautiful day. Pouring rain, lightning, and the water down the cliff was crashing waves like nobodies business. I wish I'd gone for a walk. I continued through the castle for easily 10 minutes before I got to my bedroom. I left the light off and instead lit a candle, leaving it floating above my bed. I grabbed my laptop and my copy of the mechronomicon. I had to use magic to connect to the mortal's version of the Internet, as always. I clicked open skype and was very disappointed to find Alex offline. She must have started school already. I scrolled through my list of friends and saw no one was on. As I grumbled angrily under my breath and moved to close the program, someone came online. Someone who I hadn't seen in a very long time. Alex's brother. So. Chapter 2. Probably a lot of grammatical errors, or misjudgements of what words readers might understand. (Mechronomicon is a joke on necronomicon etc.) Each chapter is 1 character's perspective. Also, this character is, by far, the most complicated one I've ever created. Being royalty, a vampire, transgender, and a magic user, all wrapped up in one very dark package. It should be a fun character.
Ch 3- Danny: Pushing daisies "Hello, darlin." "Danny? You're alive?" "No. I'm long dead. I have been for a while now. What was it, 3 years ago? Doesn't matter. We have bigger things going on right now than my death." "But... But you are dead! How are we talking?!?!?" "Magic." "Magic?" "Yes. Now back on topic. You have the mech book thing right?" "Right next to me... Why?" "I need you to E-mail my spirit to Alex's phone." "What?" "Use a spell to download my spirit, then e-mail it to Alex." "Ok... I guess I can do that? I haven't tried any spells besides going on the internet. Wait, how do I know you're actually Danny's ghost?" "You are a transgender vampire who is in love with my sister. Your favorite movie is the spongebob movie because she loved it and you have kissed pictures of her butt." "............ Ok, you're him." Eva's a weird character. Danny is too, but that's cuz he's dead. Yup. The other characters top even that. Still, hoping for constructive criticism of any kind.
As all criticism of this story that I would give out has already been given... [video=youtube;jofNR_WkoCE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jofNR_WkoCE[/video] I'm sorry, that's all I could think about... Anyways, your writing skill is fine, a little dramatic for my taste but that's just taste. You don't have many errors worth mentioning. :3
I dunno. Something about the narration style. It's difficult to describe. But I don't mind that much. :3
Well, as each chapter is narrated by its own main character, some of the styles will be different. Danny's chapters will be very dark sounding, while another character (not introduced yet) talks on a 3rd grade level at best.
One thing you seem to be doing pretty well is character narration. However, I think you might actually be selling your characters short. Here's my real advice: breath some more life into your story. It's there already, you just have to push a bit more. These are short segments, and if you plan on making this a short story that doesn't sound so bad. But there are certain bits that you could improve. My advice is to add more, much more to every piece. Don't go overboard with details; a red car can just be a red car, for instance, and I don't need to know what the inside of the engine looks like to understand what the red car is because I already have an image for it in my head. Then, after you've added immensely to the piece, shave it to the bone. Cut out the parts that don't work. Kill your darlings, as they say. Here's some more specific advice: We already know that our perspective character is not happy about it. To come out an tell us that doesn't really help your story or scene along. If it felt like an eternity, if you use sarcastic tones ("lucky me") or if your character sighs in relief, we know what's going on. We've figured out what you're saying; three times is fine, but there is such a thing as too much repetition. In this case, cut the most boring expression. This seems a bit random. Do you want to go on a tangent about "the sexiest part" or why your character gives a damn, or better yet, why we should cares about what your character thinks? If you want to, then do it. But this is a case of not enough explanation (which makes the meaning of the sentence confusing, among other things) and is the perfect opportunity to beef up this chapter. This feels like a cool piece of action because it's so unexpected. We've got some action right in the beginning of the story! I like it. But what do you mean, "jumped?" Because quite frankly, I'm confused. What sort of physical action is taking place here, and why would it cause your character to pass out? And if you want to know go deeper, how does your character know he/she is passed out? Are we being told this story a long time after it actually happens? Or is it happening right now, and we're following along (keep your tenses in mind)? Also, we don't know if your character is a male or female (Alex could be a boy's or girl's name). Don't get too fussy with details, but some bits of knowledge are essential. Mention this at some point, even if you don't want to immediately. I love that your characters are emotionally deep! But you gives us reason's not to like Eva's mother, not to mention a fair explanation of why Eva resents her. So why come out and say "I hated her?" Well, obviously Eva does! You communicate your character's feelings well enough without needing to blatantly restate all of their feelings. Don't let some glossy extra words bring down the strong points of your piece. There are even more tense confusions here, as well. You say "hated" instead of "hate." Is this happening in the present or past? The reader must know! All in all, I hope that was helpful. I love fiction and reading yours was very refreshing. I especially liked the fact that you used dialogue to tell the story of an entire section. Dialogue is a powerful writing tool. As long as you don't confuse your reader, you can show entire scenes through dialogue. I think you have a story buried somewhere in your head. Don't hurry through it and forget to uncover all the awesome parts along the way! (Ridley Wolf gave some good advice as well.) I encourage you to continue to work on this piece. Keep in mind: what story are you trying to tell? More specifically: what's the situation? Who are these people and why do they matter? What is it about them that you do/don't like, and how do you want us to feel about them? Keep your eyes on the situation and its characters, and you should do just fine.
Wow. That's a looooot. Thank you, first off. I'll try to look into doing this in the future. However, some things you mentioned were intentional. Leaving Alex's gender as "unknown" in the beginning was one for example. Alex is revealed as female during the conversation I believe when Danny says "my sister." Eva blatantly stating "I hated her" even with all the reasons why shown afterwords was also on purpose, if only to show how much she really hates her. The red light and blurred lines... Yea I dunno. It does seem kind of random, even to me. I still like it there though. And the time perspective is kind of in the future? Not really sure. I'm just better at writing past tense than present... So that's how I wrote it, even though it's taking place as you read it. Which is actually a fact that comes into play "soon"
