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Hi. My name is Max. I found your story on "Please Review" . I enjoyed reading it and wanted to share some thoughts with you about it.
Item Reviewed: "Chapter One - The Moon Crab" by ImaLukewarmPizza
Reviewer: Max Griffin π³οΈβπ
As always, these are just one person's opinions. Always remember Only you know what is best for your story. I've read and commented on your work as I would try to read my own. I hope you find something here useful , and that you will discard the rest with good cheer.
What I liked best
One of the joys of reading fiction is encountering new worlds, cultures, and characters. You've built a detailed fictional world grounded by interesting characters, and added just enough of a soupçon of mystery to be intriguing.
Opening
Openings are critical in any work of fiction. Some editors and agents will decide whether or not to read your submission based only on your first sentence.
Your opening is your best opportunity to draw readers into your fictional world, to induce a dream-like state in which your words guide their imaginations. The readers become the author's active partners in imagining the fictional world, in a state of suspended disbelief. In crafting the opening of any story, it's the author's primary task to launch this fictional dream.
Your opening paragraph orients the reader in time and place tells us quite a bit about the narrator. It's good information to have, but it's all narrated--told--as opposed to shown through the words and deeds of the characters. Showing this information would be much more intimate and immediate for your readers. Since you have a first person narrator, "words and deeds" can also include his sensations, emnotions, and thoughts, but even here showing is better than telling.
Secondly, it's almost always good advice to start in media res, in the middle of action. Thus, your story really starts in the second paragraph, when Eduardo wanders through the desolate village to the coffee fields. The information in the first paragraph is good to know, but it doesn't draw the readers into Eduardo's head nor into the story.
Characters
We learn a bit about Eduardo, but, as noted above, a good bit of it is through narration as opposed to through his words and deeds. However, we are missing some essential information.
Compelling characters generally need to want something, to have a goal. The goal gives them something to care about. The goal has to matter: something bad should happen if the character doesn't achieve the goal. Those are the stakes. There are plenty of potential goals laying about, but none of them seem to matter to Eduardo, so the stakes are not apparent.
Finally, there needs to be something preventing the character from achieving their goal, an obstacle.
Conflict arises from the dissonance between the goals and obstacles. The outcome of the conflict matters--the characters care about the outcome--because of the stakes. The end result of goals, stakes, and obstacles is tension, which is the engine that drives your story and keeps readers turning the pages. Authors increase tension by expanding goals, raising the stakes, or adding obstacles. But it's tension that keeps the readers reading.
There isn't a lot of tension in this chapter, and that's because the goals, stakes, and obstacles aren't clear. There are plenty of potential candidates for all three. For example, it's obvious that Eduardo's mother is being abused. The problem is that he doesn't seem to care. It's also obvious that he's all alone, but again it doesn't seem to matter. There's the mystery of Juiia, and he does seem to care a bit about that, but it's all pretty subdued.
Now, I'm not saying you need to set your character on fire in order to have goals, obstacles, and stakes. But we do need to have a sense of what Eduardo wants. Once we've got that, readers can cheer for him, which helps to draw them into his head and hence into the story.
It's pretty clear to me that you DO have in mind goals, stakes, and obstacles for both Eduardo and Julia, so I don't think this is a significant flaw to your novel. But we need at least a preliminary view of these in the first chapter.
That said, I'm not suggesting that you drop everything and re-write this chapter. On the contrary, in fact. First chapters often go through several revisions, so you can always come back later to revise this. I'm often 40K or more words into my novel before I figure out what needs to be in my first chapter, so I'll write as many as twenty chapters before I go back to my first chapter for a revision. It's not uncommon for a first chapter to undergo a dozen more revisions as the author learns more about their characters and their fictional world. So, for now, stick with this chapter and keep writing the rest of the novel. You can always tweak this later.
Plot
Goals, stakes, and obstacles are the basic building blocks of plot. It's too early to say what the plot will be here, although the relationship between Eduardo and Julia will clearly play a fundamental role. See my remarks above about revisions--go ahead and write more about your characters. There's plenty of time to come back to your first chapter and clarify things, and it will be more productive to do it when you're more familiar the myriad details that come to life during the course of writing.
Hook
The most compelling hooks are disaster, dilemma, and decision. Ending with a goal, conflict, or reaction is weaker but can be effective, depending on the situation.
You need a hook to keep the pages turning.
Style and Voice
First person, in Eduardo's head. I think I saw one place where you told us what was in Julia's head, so be careful to indicate these instances are tempered by saying things like, "She seemed to smile in spite of herself," or "a hesitant smile flashed across her features," so it's clear that it's Eduardo concluding her state of mind rather than the author hopping into her head.
Referencing
I liked the way you revealed things about the village and the socioeconomic situation through Eduardo's interactions with his environment rather than narrative interludes. Good job avoiding info-dumps to get this information across!
Scene/Setting
See above. Good work using the scene to only orient the readers and stage the characters, but to reveal things about the social context.
c:lgrey}
Just my personal opinion
One way to think of telling a story is that it is a guided dream in which the author leads the readers through the events. In doing this, the author needs to engage the readers as active participants in the story, so that they become the author's partner in imagining the story. Elements of craft that engage the readers and immerse them in the story enhance this fictive dream. On the other hand, authors should avoid things that interrupt the dream and pull readers out of the story.
I enjoyed this chapter and meeting Eduardo. You've created a detailed and believable fictional world, populated with three-dimensional characters. The desolate nature of the village, the mystery of Julia, the conflicts at Eduardo's home, all have enormous potential for a compelling novel. Keep writing, as I can tell you have a great story to tell us! Thank you for sharing.
Line-by-line remarks
Your text is in BLUE.
My comments are in GREEN.
If I suggest a re-wording, it's in GRAPE.
The conversation made me uncomfortable, My Comment: Tells us heβs uncomfortable as opposed to showing it through his body language or other actions/sensations.
"I like to look at the mountain. My Comment: Initially, I thought this was Eduardo speaking, so a dialogue tag would be helpful.
She smiled in spite of herself.My Comment: How does he know itβs in spite of herself?
I only review things I like, and I really liked this story. I'm a professor by day, and find awarding grades the least satisfying part of my job. Since I'm reviewing in part for my own edification, I decided long ago to give a rating of "4" to everything I review, thus avoiding the necessity of "grading" things on WDC. So please don't assign any weight to my "grade" -- but know that I selected this story for review because I liked it and thought I could learn from studying it.
Again, these are just one person's opinions. Only you know what is best for your story! The surest path to success is to keep writing and to be true to your muse!
Thanks again for sharing this item. Keep on writing!
Max Griffin π³οΈβπ
http://MaxGriffin.net/
http://MaxGriffin.net/blog/
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