Hello! This is Dean Harley from your class ANV 200 at the Writer's Academy. This is a review of your assignment for Lesson Five.
Grade: C 2.5 (3.5 rating, one point taken off official grade for being late)
First thing, this is a great chapter with lots of action in it. I do want to mention some things about Point of View inthis review. We will cover more on this in a later lesson, but I feel it would be good to talk with you about it now.
You appear to use Omnipotent Third Person, meaning the reader can see all that is going on inside the all the characters head at any given moment. There is nothing wrong with using this type of POV but for me I feel that it would be much better to have the scenes in one characters POV and then in another scene switch to a different character. The way it is now, is fine, like I said, but it does mak for a difficult read when the reader is having to jump from one head to another, and keep up with who it is doing the thinking. It makes for a much smoother read if there is less switching, instead keeping with one character for a long period of time before switching to another. Again, we'll cover more about this is future lessons but I wanted to bring it to your attention.
The scene at the end was rushed. When Alex turns to the anatour, I felt there should have been a bit more tension before the calm conversation. Perhaps the anatour tries to move and Alex takes that as aggression but the anatour then begs for its life. This adds more dinamic to Alex's character in showing that he can be merciful.
I found a lot of puncuation mistakes in this chapter. Even in quotations, if the sentence is a question, it needs to end in a question mark or exclamation point.
“Everything’s… f… fine, I had another dream that’s all,” She (she) stuttered, caught off guard by the look of concern in his eyes.
The cabinets were made (of) strong brant wood cut from the forest around them.
‘Even rumpled and unprepared for the day she was a stunning woman,’ he thought. (You need to end the italics here - the rest of the chapter is all in italic)
I know you said something about a prophecy, but what could that have to do with my powers. ” (Question mark instead of period)
“Think about it, is there anything you can remember from your vision that can help you make a positive identification.” (Question mark instead of period)
“How are we going to get by the mist though,” *red*(Question mark instead of comma)
“Damien look out,” Exclamation point
“What,” Saphire screamed. (Question mark instead of comma)
“Damien, help me.” (exclamation point)She turned to see the nine-foot tall creature still howling and limping away. Whatever had her was invisible. “How can I fight something I can’t see,” (Question mark)
“Marcus how could you do this to us. (Question mark)
“Grandfather, what are you doing here,” (Question mark)
“Damien, get Saphire to your Grandmother(period) I will take care of Marcus.”
“You have not won. The war has only begun.” (Quotation mark is not needed) Be sure and keep your new pet protected at all times.”
“What is your name young one,” (Question mark)
The plot is moving along nicely and I look forward to reading more! I like the dinamic you have set up between Saphie and Damien but again with the POV it would be more mysterious if you stuck with one POV at a time. Like how does Damien react to her hugging the doorframe? As he would not know the exact reason why, what does he imagine instead? That sort of thing. It adds a lot to the characters as you can really bring up some amusing things and tell the readers how they think and feel.
Write on!
Harley D. Palmer |
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