Rate the excerpt above you.

D.N. Lyons: I'm intrigued! I'm not quite sure what's happening in your novel at the current moment, and I had a little trouble understanding what some of the creatures were, but I'm guessing all of that is explained elsewhere within your book. It's interesting, you've got some cool characters that I'd love to learn more about, and I'm guessing some important plot exposition too! I like your writings style as well, you have a very vivid way of putting things that makes it easy to picture in my head.

Overall, seriously good job!

(And a little bit of a warning for language in my excerpt. If that offends you, pass it on! I don't mind :D)

Ooooh! I really, really love it. It totally sounds like something I would read, and you've been mysterious enough that it makes me want to get my hands on the rest of it. I like the plot, too, it sounds totally crazy, which the literature world needs more of, IMO.

Please send me the finished manuscript?? Lol.

(I'm revamping mine to actually be an excerpt, so if it seems short and inadequate look again in a few minutes!)

ETA: Done revamping, enjoy !

Your opening is like 100x better than mine. Let's see, skipping the synopsis and diving straight into the (long) excerpt, I seem to notice a three-tier society (civilian, Hero, and Hero-Sidekick). I'm guessing something along the lines of classical superhero abilities? Only without all the flashy spandex costumes. And judging from the last line in the excerpt, I'm guessing they walked into a trap.

I like your excerpt and the writing style. I really kind of want more of it so I can get a better sense of the story, because to be honest your synopsis had me going "Oooo, this sounds cool," so I was hoping that the excerpt would have a bit more to do about what IS in the woods at night. What you posted though, if it were at say, the beginning of a novel, I'd keep reading just to find out what's going on with the discarded clothes and the pranking. :)

Well, exactly what "is" in the forest is intended to be a secret until about Chapter Ten when the MC becomes lost in it (short teasery version: he can't just walk back to camp after that night), but as for the pranking, one of the kids gets kicked out and sent home because of it. I'm writing that part now.

I agree with the person who rated above, it would keep me reading. The writing flows, which is important. I am intrigued by the synopsis.

You write dialogue easily, it seems. Some of your writing seems a bit cliche, but hell, what's an adventure without a romp through the valley of cliche now and then? I like it, the action is written with a nice eye for detail.

red.shirt.writer, tossed you a critique via PM so as not to disrupt the flow of the thread (accidentally clicked on yours and critiqued before realizing you weren't the last post!)

TheRaconteur:

I am curious which of the above characters your excerpt is written from. I'm guessing it's either the soldier or the refugee--curious if I'm right.

I like the tone of the paragraph, and find it compelling despite/because of the shortness. I like the ending phrase: "how the world came with me" in particular, because it adds a good mythic ring to the opener, as well.

Minor grammar quibbles: lying in bed, not laying--things lay, people lie; thinking, not think, and there was/dropped by, not there is/drop by.

kls81 – I don’t even have any critiques. Great use of detail and description (you obviously know your setting very well). The storyline sounds very interesting – I’m intrigued! I especially liked the way you showed what was going on in Johnny's head throughout the excerpt.

Kinsinger: I like the scene set at the tail end of a battle that has already unfolded before the curtain rises on this particular story. Given the immediacy of the action, though, I felt that the dialogue was a bit too much. Not that it was bad, necessarily, but that I figured you had crafted a "fight first, talk later" kind of situation. Perhaps if the bulk of the conversation occurs after Matthias is disarmed it would flow better, but that's just me.

Overall, though, it's a nice start, and it works really well as the sort of prologue where, if this were a movie, the action would begin for a few minutes, and then like in a James Bond film, the title credits would roll after the scene comes to the end. That's the mark of a nice intro, and wherever the story to takes place after the action of this opening scene, i think I would be pretty interested to know what exactly has happened to bridge the gap between the prologue and the rest of the story. Nicely done, this.

Bill C
Spies rule!
I kind of skimmed it...I wanted to get right into the action...see what kind of guy Icarus is.
There was a lot of backstory in there...but maybe a little too much at first. I want some ass kicking!!
I've learned a bit about his history, but not a lot about him.
Also I feel like he'd be unconscious at 34K feet...does he have oxygen?
It has a nice style and flow.
I'd love to see more of the action sections...what happens on the ground?
Let me know if you'd like an editor at some point, I'd love to read more.

For the next person: Warning! My excerpt contains strong language and graphic violence

Thanks for the comments, I'm not too worried about grammer... yet! After all, December is for editing. But the excerpt is from the view of the soldier, who becomes a sort of refugee.
I'll be back here soon!

Raconteur, your story has definite promise, and I like the concept.
I am going to be Devil’s advocate though, so don’t take offense.

For an action story, there isn’t any action in the first four paragraphs. Not even dialogue, a basic form of action. Where’s your hook?
I think when it’s time for revisions, your story would benefit by having the first bit of dialogue (anta) moved up to the head of the story. Leave the exposition for after the readers have had their first rush of combat, maybe even in the second chapter.

Love that argument, though. That’s good stuff. And the exposition interspersed works well with it.

Thanks! I just read through the excerpt, and realized that I owe those who struggled through all that an apology... hehe.
So, December, I'll flip it around. But thanks for reading, Ill get back to yours soon. I need to bump up my wc a little first!

I got skipped :'(

Iapetus:

Good, visceral, and (most importantly) clear writing there. I'm not sure about Alex Ross as a character name, since it's really close to Alex Cross (from 'Along Came a Spider' and whatever else; forget who writes those though I want to say James Patterson.)

A bit too many ellipses (...)--only use those when there's a trailing off of thought.

The excerpt is a bit hard to follow at first, as I'm not sure of the main plot, but you have good imagery nonetheless, so that makes up for it, and it fits together at the end. As far as blog posts, I'm not sure the conceit works as people might not describe ducking and rolling, etc., in detail in their blogs, but ignoring that conceit it works well as an intro--and good job leaving cliffhangers (several of them) in there.

Thanks :)
The ellipses aren't in the story...they're just to indicate that something was edited out for the excerpt.
Each excerpt comes from a different chapter/post. I do want the language elevated from what you'd see in a blog post...it is a story after all.

Next person please rate kls81, not me!
__________________________________
NaNo 2007 - "30 Days" (63679 words) WON

Participate in my Interactive Adventure Blogvel!
http://blog.dawnsrise.com

yeah, that was my bad, I just rated teh last poster w/o reading the rest of the thread till later...

it's confusing with all these people thanking each other...

malblogia.blogspot.com

kls81:

I rather like your story. It's got good flow, doesn't seem to be stilted, and is more realistic than many things I've read. Is it nonfiction? It sounds like it is. I love when you describe the taste of the wine, the office, and the solicitous nature of the jail worker. Can't recall what he was, but I know he's not the superintendent.

D.N. Lyons

You lost me completely for a while with that word.
Brobdingnagians.

o___o;
Though, I enjoyed the references to fungal things. XD Mycelium.
Then again, I might just be very confused about what's going on. Are everyone fungi in this story?

Rate: Intriguing! 8.5/10

D.N. Lyons: Deputy superintendent. :) It's fiction, but I spent summer '07 doing human rights law in Buenos Aires (toured a couple of prisons along with other things), so I have the concrete details pretty well at my disposal. Thanks for the comments! I'll toss you a review later, still waking up, so for the time being...

Next person, review D.N. Lyons or Supreme Edgeboy, not me!

Supreme Edgeboy:

Your story is extremely intriguing. I am curious to know more about these apparitions doing territorial marking. Somehow reading your exerpt made me think of Spirited Away. lol =) Random, I know. The diary format adds a nice touch of suspense to the story, as we're only getting the MC's POV. I've always enjoyed books written in that style for that reason. Some of the thoughts did not seem to flow well, but I suppose no one's thought ever do... =) Keep up the awesome work!!

Note: In my exerpt, my MMC does not have a last name yet. hence the (lastnamehere) tags in places.

^ soaringsoprano

I had to stop reading just a little while after (lastnamehere) and Ani got off the train.
But so far, I honestly thought it was brilliant. Enjoyed the descriptions, the eavesdropping, and the rest very much. I'll read the rest of the excerpt soon, definitely. :3 I really ought to take pointers from things like these and learn to add more description to my own writing, since its highly lacking in that department...

lapetus999,

Thanks! You're right - I really need to jump right into some extended action on this. That's how I intended to start it but I found myself setting up background, so I just ran with it since I don't have time to edit this thing as I normally would. When I go back and edit this thing, I'll start with the big action sequence and then drop all that background on people as my hero is flying home.

Answer to your question: Think of Brobdingnag, the land of giants from Gulliver's Travels. Brobdingnagian means extremely large.

Yeah, it was a little confusing at first, but I enjoyed writing it.

As for yours---

Alvy sounds interesting. Just how is he playing God? What is he doing, exactly? Summoning up apparitions? Because that's the feel I got from it. And the scribbled flowers and stars make him sound like a rather fun boy...if he is a boy. I may be totally wrong on that count, but he just felt male. I enjoyed it, and would read more in a heartbeat.

Wow. It's certainly interesting, DN Lyons, but I don't have that much to say, I suppose I haven't mentally digested it all yet. Let's see, giant humanoid fungus creatures, a language called "Common" ... fantasy elements, check. How somebody could be born as a "half-fungus" is beyond me (and it sounds silly to even say the term), but your diction is pretty good.

Is this one of those style novels where each passage/chapter is named after the person from whose perspective it is told? I get distracted easily by switches of perspective like that.

Me, I've updated a new excerpt today based on what I wrote last night. I wrote a freaking lot yesterday (5000 words) but I want to keep this excerpt focused on the main event, so I trimmed about half of the details out of the clip.

Stratadrake:

The writing is clear and not needlessly verbose or over-explained: You have a good tone. I did not get a good sense of how old the protagonist was, and I think that's crucial to understanding the excerpt: If he's about twelve, he'd react differently than if he were fourteen or fifteen, and I couldn't quite figure out how he should be reacting.

Werewolves aside, I don't know of any camp that would leave kids miles from its environment: I assume that's explained in greater detail earlier in the story, but I was a little surprised that they were miles away and so unsupervised that any kid could fall asleep, stranded.

I'd suggest you give more of a sense of peril in Brian's situation before the werewolf encounter, because such as it was, it didn't quite feel as scary as it ought. Have Brian confronted by natural dangers as well as supernatural. That would give his panicked reactions in the latter part of the scene a bit more validity. (This assumes, of course, you haven't included those details and then trimmed them to keep the scene short.)

Generally grammatically sound, but there are some slight concerns -- ie dangling modifiers a la 'Hardly any wear on the front wheel' and the 'with about one mile to the lodge he estimated,' et cetera. Try for simpler sentences when you run into a situation where you might have a dangling modifier.

Hope some of that helps!

Katgirlxx: When I heard the countdown, the first thing I thought of was a New Year's Eve party, but then the scene after that was obviously anything but. I was slightly confused about exactly why this happened, which I am quite certain is intentional, but I enjoyed how descriptive the scene was, as well as the great sense of feeling behind it. Well done.

Oops. I read this the wrong way. So kls81, here's your review.

I really enjoyed your description of the setting, and there were some surprisingly beautiful phrases in there ("warm wooden furniture" really gives a sense of the meaning of the furniture as well as how it looked). What I really enjoyed most of all, though, was the general feeling of the passage, first the anticipation, then the pure fear of it. The ending felt a little rushed, but all in all, I thought it would go very well in the story.

Man-eating yaks? Awesome!

In all seriousness, the names struck me as either being for comedic effect, or for a satire or parody of some sort. Dunno if that's intended. I guess it might be to show the kind of society that your characters live in. I like the concept of the excerpt though, about humility.

Although it seemed short, so my reply is short >_<.

Graham: Thanks!--and noted, re. rushed ending. It was rushed, because I was dealing with an unduly long chapter. Once I figure out how to break it or make it a bit more succinct, I'll be able to smooth it out (figures that during Nano, I'm worried about too many words. I hate irony.)

JacNynunan:

Synopsis: Seems clearly written, but I was thrown a bit by the phrase "The second main character"--it felt a bit of an awkward transition into the second paragraph. I'd give a few clearer details besides "unknown situations," "secret emotions," to grab the reader.

Excerpt:

Good use of concrete details in Lewis': chunk of food, puffs of dirt, et cetera. Gets across the hardships of Lewis' station without dwelling on it or becoming maudlin. Also, thank you for using commas properly!

Thoughts should be italicized, not bolded, in-print (and should be underlined when in manuscript format.)

In Ruin's: I like the ending line with the eleven officers (was waiting to read "All the officers showed up," on par with cliche, and was pleasantly surprised.) I get a feel of something 1984ish from this guy's side of things, and that's both a good thing--most readers will recognize your world--and a bad thing--easy to fall into cliche of red tape and Big Brother and the like. If you can eke out a well-done twist on it--and judging from the excerpt, you can--you should be in line for a successful and recognizable but not too familiar setting and story. Good luck with the twists!