Forums » Writing Workshop » Read Thread

Helo. I was wondering if someone would be willing to look at my current (and only) project that I'm working on from time to time and provide suggestions and the such. I will say I do not have much and I'm not sure of how often I can work on it but I when I do I tend to wear myself out in burst of paragraphs and such. I also made a post detailing the history of the world that said project is taken place in.

The help would be greatly appreciated.

Are we supposed to review the material you wrote a year ago or did you just forget to put your story in "sneak peek" mode?

I think it's this one http://chooseyourstory.com/story/new-hydra. I'll take a look as soon as I'm able too, Avrus.

oh, my bad. I thought we could sneak peek from user's profile.

You can. You have to go through his EXP points and click on the title of the story he created.

I was confused until I realized I had the cys extension so games are automatically linked on the profile page if sneak preview is enabled

Yeah I have the extension but I'm on mobile right now.

Opening page: The title is spelled wrong. I do like the intro scene though. It catapults the story forward and sets the stage.

“The Broken Forge was a rowdy bar, that attracted many that shared an aversion for the Machines and Enhanced.” No need on the first comma. There are a few sentences throughout the opening pages that have commas out of place, although I don’t think it’s a big issue for something in draft phase.

You should read your writing out loud. I came across several clunky sentences that didn’t flow well. The below is an example:

The crackle of electricity that jumped off the rails drowned out the sound of the train as it pushed forward along the tracks. The sound was accompanied by the actual bolts of lighting sparking past the windows which wasn't quite comforting, even if the train had protections in place.

I think you could afford to trim it down a bit:

The crackle of electricity surging from the rails drowned out the steady screeching of the train. Lightning bolts sporadically flashed by the windows making the passengers uneasy, despite the electrical protection the train possessed.

On the second page I really enjoyed the use of images. I haven’t read too many stories on this site that include pictures and I thought they fit well. Also, D&D has amazing art and it would be a shame to not include it. In my D&D experience, the adventuring party drives the story (although maybe I’ve just had shitty DMs) and I liked that right away you introduced a group of diverse companions. Plus, the reader gets the option to choose which character to play. Hell yeah.

Good start, man. It’s clear that you’re invested in the story. Keep working on it.

 

Well, Ninjapitka has already pointed out most of the things. There are many typos but you can easily fix those. One thing that annoys me a lot is tense shifting, so keep an eye out for your verbs too. As for the general structure, it's still a bit disjointed as it is just the introduction but I like that we can choose which character to play as in the party.

Thank you for the input on the very little material that I have. I was aware of some of the grammatical errors but was going to review it when I finished the chapter. As for the tense shifting, I will try to keep an eye on that. I will continue to work on it when I can. Also I had originally planned to allow the reader to choose any of the four but quickly realized how complicated that could be.

I'm actually a lot less interested in the world building or typos and the like than the plot itself.

'The character is going to be a new member of a guild in a capital city that works with the Forged Militia. I'm debating using Orsini and her cult, with Orsini as a magitech enhanced lich.'

If that's all accurate still, that and the fact the MC is hopping a train to get an adventurer's license is still all we know.

Two character choices is ambitious though...herding a group of adventurers around at all can be a handful even with just one POV.

Do you have plans for the amount of branching there will be in their stories or will it follow basically the same path?

I do have a few ideas for branching. Right now I'm not trying to branch out too much.