[ai652213]

Hi, I started a blog fiction to test my writing abilities. I'd have to say that it is a fantasy genre since I will be including supernatural things such as; vampires, witches, were's, etc. My story takes place during the witch hunts in Europe. My plan is to make a very fantastical version of real history. Anyways, here's the link, any feed back would be awesome!

http://danieleshkolartifactfoundation.blogspot.com/

[kmtolan]

I would suggest you look at your work through the filter of Elements of Style by William Strunk. It is a how-to on basic grammar. The least exciting part of writing is the mechanics - and yet it will be the simple things like poor grammar that flip the reader's "off" switch first.

Let's go through and hit the highlights of what appears to be a mostly narrative piece.

1. Your first paragraph has how many "it"s in it? Beware too much repetition. It also introduces your first grammar oops in the last sentence where a "had" is missing and I'm not sure why you are using ";".

2. I can see the look on Hassan’s face.. I wish I could see it too - there is no character description here at all for anyone.

3. Ambiguity is a problem - Of course I did not intend for him to experience such a night as his first. is a good example. His first...what? Lots and lots of "it" to make things more obscure.

4. Did I mention grammar? One usually doesn't start a sentence with "but" and rarely with "With". Very passive writing here. You don't capitalize a dialog tag either It was you who voyaged to exotic places!” She exclaimed. and while we're at it, with that exclamation mark is there any need to even bother with "she exclaimed" ? The short answer is no. Same issue with I aggressively replied

5. Nothing says embarrassment like a spelling error. With a longer work it may be somewhat understandable (my version of Word won't auto-spell after a couple hundred pages) but in a shorter work there is little reason to expect it - even if the word itself is legitimate such as your use of the word "sung". This means you might need a second pair of eyes to help you catch such things that may easily slip by.

6. Stilted dialogue. This means that it sounds more like your characters are reading off of a script rather than showing real emotion. How about “If you ever speak to me as you have just done again, I will tear your balls off and feed them to Ephram’s Shepard.” ending up as "Accuse me like that again and I will feed these to Ephram's Shepard!" Notice I didn't bother saying what she will feed to the dog - uh, she's got things well in hand and in this particular case it should be obvious to the reader. Oh, and you do have a grammar issue with that leading sentence.

Okay, I think I've gotten your attention with this rather hard review - I'm not trying to slam you here although that may be hard to believe with all the literary blood on the editing room floor. This is how I do my wake-up calls - a cold dash of reality before you launch off into a lengthy project that I don't think you are ready for. The hard truth is that you have not learned how to write to the level of success your expectations will demand of you. You need to learn the basics a bit more. I would encourage you to take a creative writing course, or/and consider the following books:

The fore-mentioned "Elements of Style".

A great book on character presentation by Orson Scott Card called "Elements of Writing Fiction - Characters and Viewpoint".

You can do short works to bring your skills up, and leverage reading groups and such to help you down the path. Obviously you have talent enough to present a scene, but only half of the writing profession in my opinion is art. The rest of it is unforgiving science - the mechanics of presenting a good scene and proper sentence construction. The foundation blocks of building good characters. That sort of thing. Don't get discouraged - get busy. You've an exciting trip ahead of you.

Kerry

[Lotus_Meristem]

First of all, I love the visual design of the story- handwritten letters and pictures, signitures and the whole idea of blog fiction. I think it's a great way to develop your characters and give the reader an understanding and a glimpse into their souls.

The translation notes, however, are really really distracting. If people don't know what an iris is, they can understand it from the context of your writing. It won't hurt if people don't immediately know what ottomans were or what is the capital of Syria - if they won't look it up they'll hear about it later and go "Oooooh, so that's what they were talking about - cool!". Don't be afraid to leave your readers in the blind once in a while, it'll only add to the feeling of genuine-ity (if there's such a word). If you're worried your readers might think Damascus is a made-up name that's a part of your fantasy world, then that's not your problem. If you'll write good enough you'll tickle people's fancy to read a bit more about places and they'll find things out on their own.
In any case, little numbers in the middle of the text are really, really, really distracting.

Hope that's OK and I didn't come off harsh. I love archeology and know a wee bit about the area described so far from living in the neighborhood so it's really cool to follow up on.

[Lucanus]

Creating fiction or fantasy out of real history has been done so I don't think I'd call it new but it is definitely a cool take on the genre. I'm doing it myself. Good luck with it. You picked a great setting.