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Ambrosial Promise - Detailed Feedback

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What Didn't Work:

My main recommendation is to do less telling over showing. Many times you'll tell us how a character feels, like in chapter one there are many lines like "Determination courses through my veins" or "A spark of hope ignites within me" or "Yuri's voice is filled with genuine affection." Individually, there's nothing wrong with using these lines, and there's nothing wrong with using telling over showing as long as it's not too much. However, all of those lines are in close proximity to each other, and throughout the entire chapter, there are many other lines like that where you tell us how a character is feeling. The lines about determination are also a bit repetitive at times since you say the characters are determined frequently.

Another example is: "I can't leave my comrades behind." This line is the one I really want to focus on since I felt it was a moment of unnecessary telling over showing. I say that because the line right after it is "We can't abandon them! We must help!"

So the dialogue of "We can't abandon them! We must help!" is already doing the job of showing a character trait of not wanting to leave comrades behind, so repeating it in a more telling way (in this case, "I can't leave my comrades behind") made it feel a little unnecessary, in my opinion.

While on the topic of telling over showing, I would suggest not using as many dialogue tags, especially since you use almost exclusively tags that aren't said or asked. My father gave me a piece of advice called the 50-30 advice for dialogue, and I think it may help with your telling over showing. The advice states that of your dialogue, 50% or less should be tagged, and of that 50%, 30% or more should be said or asked. The reason is because tags have the sole purpose of telling over showing by telling you who is speaking, so the more you're doing it, and the more you're doing it with tags that aren't said or asked, the more attention you're drawing to the tags and the more telling over showing you're doing.

There are some chapters where you do a good job not using as many tags, like chapter 18, but there are other chapters where there are a lot of tags, like chapter 23. In chapter 23, there are about 34 lines of dialogue. Of that 34, there are 21 tags, maybe 22 if you consider the "I blushed" line a tag since it comes right after the dialogue. Not bad, but that's around 61% of your dialogue having tags for a conversation between only two people. I can understand having more tags for a convo between three or more people, but between two, readers naturally know who is going to speak next without needing to be told, so you can rely less on tags and more on speech, descriptions, actions, etc.

This 50-30 advice doesn't work for everyone, but it is something to consider if you are interested in limiting how many dialogue tags you're using. I encourage you to find what you think will work best with your writing style.

I would also recommend not using actions as tags. Like this, also from chapter 23, "Sheira," Eamon nudged me gently...

The "Eamon nudged me gently" is an action, not a tag, but because there's a comma after Sheira, it is formatted like a tag. It's debated whether or not actions can be used as tags, but in my personal opinion, they don't really work since dialogue tags are meant to tell us how someone is speaking, and you can't nudge words, which is what "Eamon nudged me gently" is implying. That's why I personally don't think they work and I'd suggest not using them as tags. You can still use the actions, just instead of using a comma after Sheira, use a period/full stop. That way it isn't a tag, but it's still there.

The grammar is overall solid and I didn't notice many consistent errors; however, the consistent error I did notice were tense issues. You have tense issues where you flip flop between past and present tense incorrectly. You're writing present tense, so past tense is used very rarely, like to describe events that happened in the past in the story's timeline. Sometimes when things are happening in the present, you're using past tense verbs. For example, in chapter 3, the tense flips between past and present incorrectly a few times. I hope that makes sense.

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Summary:

- Nice start to the story

- Overall good job starting chapters

- Strong character relationships

- Good protagonist

- Consider doing more showing over telling

- Consider using less dialogue tags

- Consider not using actions as dialogue tags

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Overall:

Ambrosial Promise is an entertaining fantasy narrative with heartfelt character relationships topped with an emotional core through its protagonist, Sheira. If you are someone who enjoys reading fantasies, particularly those with familial issues/themes, then I recommend this book to you.

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