Bittersweet Candy Bowl

Extremely short on criticism, positive or negative, so as a last resort I’m wondering if anyone who be willing to give me the criticism I need. Anyone care to sludge through 7 pages of an unfinished novel?

I would be willing to, but unfortunately, I am not a very good critic…

Go for it; I recommend posting a link rather than posting it here though.

http://rapidshare.com/files/430704453/ Untitled_1.doc

Carch: Try posting it on fanfic. Rapidshare is quite the vicious bitch as of late.

I can’t read it. Something about flooding the server.

It’s not a fanfic.

Deleting and trying somewhere else.

DevientART? A blog?

http://paradigmslide.deviantart.com/art/FALLEN- preview-186080997

That is very very good. If you could post, I don’t know, the rest of the book so I can read it, that would be great.

Not bad at all. I hope to see more soon.

Fucking sweet man, you better post more

Certainly an interesting read.

Not too shabby… Not perfect… But better than allot of stuff I see.

You can probably cut down on allot of that simply by being a little less wordy. You go into agonizing detail about every single sight, smell and movement, and it really slows down the pace at times. (Lines like “The fur on his cheeks grew long and wild” could be omitted entirely)

Also… Recognize confusing terms and minimize them. Where you say that Lynx kicks the man in the Muzzle, the way you worded it made it seem like he had kicked him in the end of the man’s gun (the muzzle) and broke his own foot in doing so.

One final point of contention… Is this really a prologue? Or is it just the first chapter? Are these events taking place long before the actual story? Are these characters not the ones we will be following through the story?

Prologues give the reader a sequence of events that set up the framework for a story, but that are not actually affecting the main plot. As an example… If this were indeed the prologue, then I would expect the bulk of the story to be about the main character Lynx having failed at this mission, and it’s now 2 years later and he’s retired but he gets called back into action. Or perhaps that these events are a different squad to the one we’ll be following in the story, and these guys stumble upon something amazing, and are never heard from again, leaving the real main characters to go on a mission to find out just what happened to them.

A prologue is not chapter 1. It’s what happens before the story starts.

Just something to keep in mind, as you may well know all that and be using it properly. But I just wanted to assert that you are indeed using it right.

Beyond those few things, there isn’t really enough going on yet to dig much deeper, so I’ll have to reserve any further criticism until I read more. But you definitely seem to have at least a decent grasp on writing prose, you just need to refine yourself down a little so that you don’t risk putting the reader to sleep during an action scene.

Listen to whatever Maverik says. He is one of the best writers you will ever meet.

Thanks Maverick, that’s exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for. Actually you’re not that far off—it is a prologue, and it has very little impact on the story, so little in fact that neither of your guesses actually reflect the plot. The purpose, rather, is to introduce how the unit operates, as well as lay a vague background for the rest of the book.

Everyone else, thanks as well. I plan on posting the rest of the chapter (along with the revisions I made) later on today (Central US time, so it may be tomorrow for some of you). Those wanting the entire novel will be disappointed—at most I’ll post the first two or three chapters.

Seems everyone has a DeviantArt profile or something that lets them read the story. Oh well. Good luck nonetheless Carch.

http://paradigmslide.deviantart.com/art/First- Chapter-Fallen-186144924

In the middle of editing power went out. File went bye-bye. The old chapter title is used here—I made a couple edits before I posted last night, and they’re gone. Thank god for backup drives.

I’m not a good writer by a long shot, but I can nitpick very finite details. Here we go.

Paragraph 9: reads “The suspect open fired” it would flow and sound better if it was replaced with “The suspect opened fire.” Later on in the same paragraph, you say that the victim’s skull was decimated. It sounds very flashy and graphic, but my nitpickyness asks if the bullet really did rip apart 10% of the perp’s skull.

Like I said, storytelling, prose, and all that aren’t my strong points. Those two very small things I found show that this is pretty good.

So when can I see more?

Why criticize other people’s work if you can’t do it yourself?
Sorry, just something that bugs me. carry on ^_^

@Hannibal
The decimate thing is a complaint that has always bugged me as it is a nitpick that is constantly brought up by people who seemingly have never actually looked the term up, and have just heard that bit of trivia somewhere.

It doesn’t even technically translate to “One tenth of” or 10%. It means “to select by lot and kill every tenth person of”, as it referred to mutineers in Roman armies.

HOWEVER. It also means “to destroy a great number or proportion of”.

Double check your sources before you try to correct someone. Especially if you’re nitpicking.

@Carcharocles
I haven’t read the rest yet, but I will post my thoughts when I have.

Official first chapter (non-prologue).

Sorry about taking the others down, I don’t like to keep things uploaded to dA for long.

i liked it, but you should upload at least the first 5 chapters to get a panoramic view of the story and posibly, deduce how the problem or antagonist is going to clash the protagonist. this 1st chapter left enough questions to keep reading, but it looked kinda long to me. maybe you put too much effort in this 1st chapter ? im not really sure its just my opinion, but it looks great in general to me and ill gladly read future updates.