Hello.
Your story is an entertaining fiction story, but I feel as though your efforts on following through with the title became a major flaw. One thing that really is off-setting is the use of a third person narrative when there are two perspectives and Vala's is shown in a subjective light particularly. Certainly, you can pull off two limited third person narratives, but juxtaposing them to each other every few paragraphs, repeating certain scenes and aiming for a different voice between them causes a learning curve to form in reading your story and muddles the pacing a lot. It seems like there is a better handle nearer the end of this passage, so maybe you should work on earlier areas to make them read more like it.
Otherwise, I enjoyed your writing style when I did not have trouble with the separate narratives and I feel that you could introduce the ideas, such as the guild, effectively, even while these concepts were not developed much at this point. Additionally, I enjoy some of your worldbuilding, as the nymphs have a unique appearance in being wooly and their behavior and group mentality are well illustrated. The fact that they could very well have lived in our world, sleeping in piles of leaves, is also nice.
A second issue, however, was the way you made things feel less genuine through cliches and improper nouns. Sometimes, you referred to nymphs and alfar as humans, such as the mother saying; I want you to grow up and become the brightest 'person' you can be. The use of the word "Moms" in referring to the other nymphs at all times feels weird too because 'mom' is a social word that would be used in conversation, and there is also very little we see for their roles as mothers. As for cliches (which can be hard to notice), saying something like "The pickings had been meager" shows a dependency on the cliched description 'meager pickings' and really feels ingenuine.
I feel that the last major flaw comes in the detatchment of the plot. First, Keta can sense the elements and gets an aura from Vala. Then, she is only able to say that she has 'potential' in learning so fast, but she should have been able to specify at least some kind of element. It just seems like there is very little magick showcased, when it seemed like the story would follow that path. Afterward, it feels like Keta is just living life and it is hard to see that training is taking place, making it strange when Keta decides that Vala should leave her mother for the guild. Following that, the progress of time (which you used as a joke) is very artificial, and it feels like the scene about her being naked breaks a lot of the emotion and the relationship between Keta and Vala seems superficial, but they act like they are also best friends at this point. |