Feedback/critique partners

[Busa]

Hello,

I posted the first chapter of my novel in the Stories, SIKA. I am looking for volunteers to give me feedback. The main info about the story is below, and just tell it the way it is.

background: I am not a writer, this pure elbow grease and my goal is to self-publish at the end of the journey. I added the book blurb too.

Thanks

Title: SIKA (means little one in Siderian language)
Author: Fabien
Genre: Soft Sci-Fi / Thriller ( I am not sure)
Status: Structural develoment rework.

[context] This is book one of a planned 3 books series. The journey from being an ordinary family to surving an extra terrestrial force sent to kill them.

[Blurb]
Moon’s ten-year-old daughter makes a miraculous recovery after a devastating crash. But that’s only the beginning of the strangeness to come.
Moon’s Black Hawk pilot training prepared her to fly into danger. It didn’t prepare her to watch her ten-year-old daughter’s lifeless body pulled from frigid water.
Somehow, Lilly returns to life. As she recovers, her irises flicker, strange markings spread across her neck and arms, and she dreams about woman without face.

Lilly’s blood draws the family into a silent war between the remnants of an alien legion and the traitors hunting them. Moon must protect her daughter from the conflict. But she cannot stop Lilly’s transformation, and has no way of knowing what it will mean for their family.

 

[TheSeveredWorldNovels]

So you want feedback here?

 

[Busa]

So you want feedback here?

Yes or by message. What best works for you

 

[TheSeveredWorldNovels]

This way other people can tell me how off base I am. This is the review for scene 1. I'll review the next scene in a bit.

• Paragraph breaking starts off a little awkward but then gets good about a quarter of the way in. Sometimes it seems like a paragraph runs from one thought directly into another. Example of where you might split: "...close to forty. Moon pushed..."
• There is no special treatment to distinguish the POV character's inner monologue from the narrator's voice. This may be an intentional stylistic choice. I stole the mechanism I use from Robert Jordan: italicize inner monologue/thought, leave narrator's observations (even ones derived from the POV character) in normal text. It ends up looking almost as if the POV character for a scene is narrating something that happened to him in the past and occasionally direct-quoting what he was thinking at the time. Again, I recognize that this may be a stylistic choice, but I stumbled over it.
  • I will say that I stumbled over it a lot less (if at all) when the inner monologue line was isolated in its own paragraph. Like when you had "And here we go." on its own line.
• I'm not sure it's necessary to censor "s**t" if you're not also going to censor “Fucking bitch.” Unless you are trying to convey that Moon was policing her own speech in one case and not in another. If that was your intent, it could probably stand to be more clear. My daughter will say things like "S-H-_-_" with pantomimed syllable motions for the two blank letters, for whatever that is worth. My son simply truncates the words.
• The dialogue proceeds quite smoothly. I had to scroll up and was surprised at how far I scrolled back down to find my place.
• Twice I came here to write a note and then found the note invalidated by the following one or two lines of the book. Once for the esoteric Dinosaurs reference (which you explain thereafter) and once for cul et chemise. I don't know if that would happen to someone who isn't in reviewer mode, though.

 

[TheSeveredWorldNovels]

Scene Two:

• Mechanical error: "f**k off..." should probably be "F**k off..."
• Again, I find myself confused by the on-again-off-again censorship.
• I find the following strange. I do not understand why Lilly says "That's not like Mom." In what way is it not like her? Does she have some experience of her mother's dating habits beyond the 8 years Moon has been dating Jacques?

“I think eight years or something like that.”

“That’s a fucking long time. What is Moon doing?” Keith said.

“That’s not like Mom. I just want a family like you guys have,” Lilly said. “It sucks.”

“That’s one hell of a long test drive,” Marcus said.

• The foreshadowing of Jacques having an alternate identity/motivation/skills set is just right (IMO).

Scene Three:

• The segue to this paragraph is abrupt. I have trouble understanding how it connects to its predecessor. Is it because the previous line ends with the word "movement"? Some kind of connective tissue may be in order. e.g., "That made her think of how Lily moved" or whatever.

Moon read her daughter’s mood at the first turn, because Lilly’s riding style mirrored her emotions. There were days Lilly rode like she was playing, others like she was thinking out loud. And days like this, when she wrestled with speed like they had an argument. Now it seemed she was playing.

• After reading a little further, I see that "We have movement" meant that Eric could see some or all of the children coming down the slope. Is that how the slopes work? I thought they were long and winding and you could not see the top. Anyway, again, I think something connective might make sense. For instance him gesturing up the slope toward the children.
• I'm also having trouble processing the following. I know what they mean, but I do not understand how "counting kids" fits into it. It feels like a completely separate thought. I'm also having trouble imagining what made him start thinking of Jacques while they were watching the children come down the slope.

“You’re gone, aren’t you?”

“Counting kids,” he said, and drank his coffee. “When Maggie told me you were seeing a French baker named Jacques, I pictured something else.”

• Who says “Marcus. Stop this s**t right now or I am coming up to break your neck myself.”?

Scene Three:

• "...like parents do on autopilot." is telling and they say you should show instead. I guess an example of showing would be something along the lines of "inventoried everything mindlessly as she thought of other things" or...I don't know...just something that allows the reader to draw his own conclusion rather than telling him what his conclusion should be.

Final Scene: no notes

 

[TheSeveredWorldNovels]

My review of scene 1 is awaiting moderation. Likely because of a particular direct quote.

 

[Busa]

Thanks this is really good stuff.