Evaluate the above poster's excerpt.

Hmm. I'm not a good evaluator; I never see the bad things... But I really liked you excerpt, Bug. I hope you finish your book because I'd really like to find out what Chell would do.

My excerpt is bits and pieces from a large scene, so it should make sense with what I have :)

Octoba, i love your excerpt... people dont seem to like vampires very much, but ive never read any vampire books so im seeing this as something new and exciting :) my only criticism is that in the last paragraph you say Natty twice in the same sentence, i think it would come off better if the second time you said She instead :) keep it up, and good luck

I love your descriptions, Dib, and now I want to read more about the religious system you've put in place! Some of your wording is just really pretty withough being purple prose, which makes it quite fun to read.

The only thing I'd mention as a negative is that I'm having difficulty being interested in your main character, because all we've heard about him is that he's in love with some girl and nothing else. But that's probably just because it's an excerpt--it's hard to build an empathetic character in just a paragraph or two, after all :)

Gah. Sorry, I did a double post - look at the one below. Server is being weird

Tiashe_19 - I liked your dialogue, and I like how your emphasize how scared she was. I wish I knew more about the political system, and their relationship – it seems almost like she loved him. Your villain is wonderfully scary. Even in that little bit, how cold he was was absolutely terrifying. The only thing I have a quarrel with is the fact that she isn’t attacking him, isn’teven trying to defend herself. If it’s a part of her personality, then that makes sense, but I know I’d be trying to rip his eyes out if he hurt my family, not just waiting to die, so maybe you could add that in.

medusacascade — I like it a lot. Really dramatic. The only thing I would change maybe is to make the dialogue less obvious, more subtle and hinting at the things he's talking about. Then it seems more evil.

EDIT: 16,000 already? Damn.

HisnameisDave, yours sounds like it would be a very interesting read. I like the dialogue, and the very ending makes me want to read more. ^_^

Hey, AWritersFantasy!

Liked yours a lot, although it's bit short to give lengthy comment on. The rhythm looks good, though, and the naming's good (Naming is always one of my main concern. You do it well. Lucky bastard. ;P) But, yeah, loved it, and I'd certainly want to see who wins that contest (I'm rooting for Tristan, he has a cool name!)

AWritersFantasy - I remember reviewing you in the synopsis thread. :D Your excerpt seems to be off to a nice start, although there isn't much there yet. Your description was good, and you get a sense of the atmosphere and setting very quickly. Nice. :)

Edit: Oh pants, too slow. I knew this would happen to me. :D

Annalia - Very nice. It's obvious that you've planned out this world and know what you're doing. Considering so many people here like to write out of order I don't know whether this is the beginning of your story or a chunk from the middle, but either way you provided enough information for me to understand what was going on without getting frustrated or confused. Also a nice balance of seriousness and humour in there. :)

Hey there Bug,

Hopefully this doesn't post twice. Nano is being finicky. Anyway, you certainly hit the ground running last night. There was a momentary hiccup when my brain mistook which kind of "fan" distracted Chell's mother, but once my own stupidity got sorted out the prologue made a helluva lot more sense.

Anyway, I think you're off to a great start. I was pleasantly suprised that the Faces were real. I thought Chell's parents might be keeping him away because they were puppets or whatnot. You did a really good job describing the area of the city, and I'm looking forward to seeing what Chell finds on the stage when he inevitable escapes from his parents.

One question, do the actors live at the Theatre? Otherwise, how far would Chell have to go to get to it? And do they have guards or is it easy to access at all hours, assuming the ones coming in don't mind the things that go bump in the night?

Hey there Bug,

Hopefully this doesn't post twice. Nano is being finicky. Anyway, you certainly hit the ground running last night. There was a momentary hiccup when my brain mistook which kind of "fan" distracted Chell's mother, but once my own stupidity got sorted out the prologue made a helluva lot more sense.

Anyway, I think you're off to a great start. I was pleasantly suprised that the Faces were real. I thought Chell's parents might be keeping him away because they were puppets or whatnot. You did a really good job describing the area of the city, and I'm looking forward to seeing what Chell finds on the stage when he inevitable escapes from his parents.

One question, do the actors live at the Theatre? Otherwise, how far would Chell have to go to get to it? And do they have guards or is it easy to access at all hours, assuming the ones coming in don't mind the things that go bump in the night?

Thank you. ^_^ I will try to have something more that'll be better for rating sometime tonight.

Haha, thanks! As for Tristan, honestly? He's a filler character. >.> You (general you/the reader/whoever) probably won't be seeing a whole lot of him after that first scene. Funny what filler characters can do.
-------------------------------------

NaNo 2006: failed.
NaNo 2007: failed.
NaNo 2008: Kalevala: Wizards of the Sky, Book One

Hi, AWritersFantasy,

I really liked your excerpt. It was kind of short, but I really liked what I read so far. I loved your description, and I absolutely loved your names. I love it so far, keep up the good work. ^-^

ThePiper-
Great beginning. It's a great idea for a plot. I had trouble understanding the school mentioned at the beginning. I didn't understand what was going on, how humans wandered in, and what are the students if they aren't human. I hope that will be explained later in the novel.
Your descriptions were very short. In NaNoWriMo, you want to extend your description as much as possible for maximum wordcount. I don't know who Kat really is. I don't know her personality. I don't know anything about her brother, either, even his name. If she got on the wrong train, shouldn't he have as well?
Again, these questions can be answered later in the novel. But make sure you exploit every long-winded description opportunity to its full. Remember, it's all about quantity, not quality.

I got skipped! Oh noes!

Anyway, to Israel8491,

Being the mother of two children, I think you do a good job of showing the insanity that is daily life. Either you have siblings yourself or are just incredibly tuned in to what a toddler's mind is like. I found the billboard for the school for special children interesting, but anything with the words "government funded" tends to make me flee in terror.

I was a little concerned that she'd stop in the middle of the interstate like that. Perhaps just driving reeeally slow or pulling into the emergency lane might do better, in my humble and most easily deleted opinion. :P

Very interested to see who the person on the train is, what connection Cathy has to the "special" people, and if my suspicions of the government are correct. All in all, a great start.

midnightjade -- I like it. I don't really have that much negative to say about your excerpt that I would change, except for maybe technical things that kill the tension like using "nononononononono" as one word, and maybe the internal monologue going on could be replaced with action. But other than that it's cool :D

HisnameisDaveyoufool-

I loved it. It was really good, and I liked how you described things, but I think you could have described them more in depth and with more detail. Like, I had no idea how some of the characters looked, and what they were like. Overall, nice beginning. I really liked it, but I hope that you describe your characters and settings more.

thePiper: The way you write has a natural, relaxing ease. It was a lot of fun to read :) I do think I would read on, and I'm not a huge fan of modern fantasies, especially involving schools/academies of sorts. The story itself sounds like a lot of fun, with characters who will end up well-developed (and with all female characters introduced thus far, I find that to be extremely difficult but important). Your little prologue is short but sweet; I'm hooked and would love to learn more, and how the main characters relate to it.

I do think the "My name is _____ but you can call me (nickname)" was a bit annoying, as it was one after the other, and everyone had a nickname. To me, it seemed rather pointless to have the characters introduce themselves as their full names, but ask Kat to call them by their nicknames. If everyone called them Ru, just have them introduce themselves as such. If they receive a strange look, they could say, "short for Rulendria," or something to that effect.

Anyway, keep up the great work! :) Good luck this month!

Intention -

I loved it. :D Your writing flows quite nicely and wasn't choppy at all. It was refreshing to read. I love how, this far into it, you've already told a lot about Lindsay. I'm already curious about how the train ride is going to turn out, who the boy is, why he's somewhat unresponsive., where they're going. I can't wait to read more. ;) Did I say I loved how your writing wasn't choppy? I think. But the words all seemed to fit together brilliantly (something that just does *not* work out for me.) Good luck during the rest of November and great job!

-Mai

Well, if it helps any, I've updated the excerpt (because I finally reached 2k (total) tonight, yay), and there's a lot more for you to read. ^_^ I'm glad you liked it.

Creative Mai- I -really- liked that excerpt. It was just enough to draw me in with all of that description, and it's a nice, intense scene that makes me wonder what happened that made your character decide to try the Summoning spell, and whether or not he's going to survive.

AWritersFantasy-

I love it. Very nice description of the duel. Even though it was short, it was very well done. I really like good descriptions of action scenes. Raewyn sounds like an interesting character as well.

NinjaJedi, I liked yours, it seemed rather upbeat and easy to follow. Maybe I'm just being pessimistic because my novel's rather dark but I kept expecting something spectacularly horrible to happen, haha. The only thing that seemed out of place was how quickly Taeron's moods seem to change.. I can understand him getting all angry, but he seemed to go "Oh, okay *smilesmile, normal again*" too quickly/easily, at least IMO. Could entirely be in his character, but it made me stop and scratch my head. Otherwise, seems like the start of quite the epic tale. :)

And to whoever reads mine, note that it's only the prologue. :D

onyxserpent

Something I like about your novel already is that the familiar is completely unusual. I've never heard of someone with a familiar like that. From how you described -looks back at the name- Galphuchious, I can say I have a pretty clear mental image of it. Good job. I'm curious about how this turns out already. You're already on a roll, from the looks of it. I hope you finish it.

To whoever reads mine, I pulled my excerpt from the second chapter.

Elfdragon12: This reads like a cross between James Bond and Final Fantasy IV, and I mean that in a good way. Very descriptive of the characters, reminds me how I need to put such effective descriptions into my own work, and I never once stopped reading it due to boredom. In no uncertain terms it didn't make me want to wretch when reading it, apart from the heavy moral dilemma your hero now faces (or is it a heroine?).

TeenAuthor: Fabulous. Absolutely Fabulous. You give off a slight Terry Pratchett vibe in your writing, and I actually laughed out loud reading parts of Zoser's dialog. If you finish, I'd absolutely love to read your story. I honestly can not think of anything negative to say about your excerpt.

Which is weird, because I always spot the negative aspects of anything.

SaltedLimes: I love how real your characters seem. Like people I would meet in my own life, aside from the somewhat mystical quality of it, of course. Your description is wonderful without being overly descriptive, it sets up the scene perfectly.

Umm, i'm not terribly good at spotting negative aspects. I'm afraid that critique wise, I have no improvements to suggest. Wonderful scene.

SaltedLimes: This excerpt has a brilliant mood about it. It is absolutely no challenge to take the narrative and the characters seriously despite it fitting into fantasy with magic, and fantasy with magic as part of its world, especially when it's the real world, is pretty hard to do this with. I'm far more sympathetic for, and interested in Rebecca more than any fantasy protagonist in a published book I can think of off the top of my head. This has made me want to know how close she was with her last instructor and what the new one ever had to do with him, to say nothing of what else might happen, so I think it's safe to say you know how to hook the reader. :)

SaltedLimes: This excerpt has a brilliant mood about it. It is absolutely no challenge to take the narrative and the characters seriously despite it fitting into fantasy with magic, and fantasy with magic as part of its world, especially when it's the real world, is pretty hard to do this with. I'm far more sympathetic for, and interested in Rebecca more than any fantasy protagonist in a published book I can think of off the top of my head. This has made me want to know how close she was with her last instructor and what the new one ever had to do with him, to say nothing of what else might happen, so I think it's safe to say you know how to hook the reader. :)

I'll do both you guys since Aret was almost accidentally skipped...

Aret: Very interesting concept with the vocal commands. There are a few spots that seem a bit awkward - like the placement of the prepositional phrases (ie in the cold) in some sentences. I have to wonder though, did her unlock command also open every door, window, chest and little girl's diary in each of her neighbor's homes?

Alhazred: Ok, I have to say - Wind Mages in the military = awesome. I don't know if you're military or not but you have a good grasp on the terminology and lifestyle (you know the difference between an Airman and a Private! I bet you know Gunny isn't and AF rank as well!) You might want to do a little more detail on some of the military stuff just to draw in civilian audiences - for example spend half a sentence explaining why exactly and Airman is travelling with a Marine convoy, or is it a Marine travelling with an AF group? I know the branches aren't strictly separated on any base (I still laugh at my dad, an Army Colonel, having been stationed at a Marine Airbase in Afghanistan) but two guys from different branches assigned to the same convoy I don't get. Love the premise though.

Alright, any takers on mine? Tell me if it hurts your brain at all, I think it's a bit... well... you'll see...

Nekomedea, wow, I really hope this is supposed to turn into a high/epic fantasy novel, because that's what the intro is reading like. If this if going to be a Robin Hobb length book then great intro, if its not you might lose some readers. (I'm hoping for the Robin Hobb - I like the set-up)
The first section - great intro to war, but which war and which world? You've got some sand dragons coming up in the next section, so maybe just a couple of words in the first section that hint at magic or fantasy? Something to separate your world from earth? Oh and I can't read the first sentence without inserting a 'that' between violence and they.
Second section - this is where we are getting a long introduction to what appears to be the main setting of your high fantasy novel. If it isn't then maybe have one of your main characters walk us through the design? Something to make me feel a connection? At this point its a lot of well written explanation, and I think for a longer story, an excellent start. But, I really want to know: who's side is Nerum's army? Are they the one's inside the institute or outside?

Sorry for any major mistakes that may have happened - my cat just climbed on the keyboard and is now purring.