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Review by Jonny Hyams Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 18+ | (3.0)
I'm enjoying the continuation of the story. It's a creepy idea, and I'm looking forward to seeing how you continue this in the future.

I was initially a tad confused about how exactly this followed on from the previous part (was it immediately after? the next day? a few days later? etc) but once that was made clear I settled into the story again. You might want to clarify this earlier on in the chapter.

In this review I want to focus on characterisation. You have two characters in this story so far, but I'm honestly struggling to remember who is who. This is partially due to the similarities of their names. David and Gavin have the same number of letters, the same number of syllables, and the same three letters in the center. This makes it very hard to differentiate them. As a rule of thumb, you want your characters to have very different names, to help your readers keep track of who is who. Consider changing one of their names to something very different.

Deeper than that, there's little to differentiate their personalities. David shows some initial signs of a wry sense of humour in the beginning of the first chapter, and I think you could perhaps do well to carry this through a bit more, as it would help separate him from the serious Gavin. Really think about the two character's personalities, what really differentiates them from one another, and then let these personalities bleed into the story by letting it colour the things they say (and how they say it).

As a final note: I'm not sure about the whole 'soon' thing. It feels a tad heavy handed. It may be worth seeing if you can think of something a tad more subtle (but still scary/disturbing) to end this chapter on.

Keep on writing! You have something good coming along here.
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Review by Jonny Hyams Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 18+ | (3.0)
So you've got a fantastic idea here, that could do with a little bit of tweaking to really make it shine.

First is the science. I adore the idea of a high speed camera capturing images from a horrific alternative dimension, but you have one glaring fault: cameras that runs at a couple of hundred thousand frames per second already exist in real life, and have yet to capture any frames of parallel dimensions. This is an easy fix: make your camera take in excess of 1 million frames per second.

Second of all, I think your writing would benefit by letting your dialogue breathe a bit more. As it stands right now, every piece of speech is surrounded by speech tags (he said, he asked, he interrupted), and actions and description. Sometimes an exchange of dialogue is at its most effective when left on its own, with nothing else getting in the way. Less is more. Go through your prose and pick out anything that doesn't tell the reader anything they don't already know, and delete it. I'll get you started: "a skeptical tone in his voice" in the first line is not needed, as we can already tell from what David's said that he's skeptical.

I look forward to seeing where you take this story. I'm about to check out the second chapter now.
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