Next Big Recognition Contest

Round 19

Comment Topic: Based on the chapter you just read, what do you feel will make this story unique?

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Author #1: juli_monae

Book Title: Fyra

Specified Chapter: Chapter 1

Summary Thus Far in Book: N/A

Author's Note: Hello! I'm super excited to be spotlighted this week! This is my first story on wattpad (or that I've written in general), so I can't wait to hear any advice! I can take constructive criticism, so please feel free to point out anywhere I can improve.

A few questions:

1. Is this a good place to open the story?

2. What do you think of the length?

3. Did you enjoy it?

Thanks so much! -Juli Monae

Moderator Rating: PG

Genre: Fantasy

Winning Comment: Hi,

I'm jotting down notes as I go so please do not hesitate to ask me for clarification if some doesn't make sense:

"Darkness knelt in the corners of her cell..." You're animating an abstract, don't. Get us into the protagonist's POV first. We need to feel her pitiful state first before we can empathise with the fact that she feels mocked. How, exactly, does darkness mock someone? And what makes her state pitiful? Eg "She watched the gloom in the four corners of her cell – cellmates, all, they seemed alive; and they mocked her. For being mortal, for being afraid, cold and pathetic, sprawled out on the floor of her prison, shivering so hard she could barely scream to find her bearings on reality."

How is cold a lack of feeling?

"Fyra had always found comfort in warmth, found a home in the flames that had also brought her downfall." I really don't get what you're trying to say here. Can you expand? Where did the home in flames come from in the narrative so far? What are you referring to?

"She didn't even have enough moisture left..." who is the "she" that you are referring to now? Fyra or the girl friend ("That girl had never allowed...") that she lost? And then who is the "him" that she should have just left alone? Oh, I see, did Fyra just call herself "that girl"? You've got too many things happening here, you need to list them out and pace them, not mix them all together. I think it's a good device to make the reader aware of how mixed up her thoughts are, given her condition, but you have to prep the way for the readers to know that it's all jumbled up because she's losing touch with reality. As it is, at the moment, it looks like it's jumbled up because the writing is all jumbled up.

I suggest something like "She found it hard to keep lucid. Images of her mother being drowned in freezing waters came to the fore. When they took Athan, Fyra remembered that it was the night of the first fall winds. She remembered because of the cold. Fyra hug herself further into her foetal ball of nothing, the ground seared through her skin and into her bones, an icy scythe. But it kept her sharp. It kept her alive. Even if she had to live through the pain, again, of their faces fading away from her, taken and killed because she had interfered.

Athan. She curled and sobbed tearlessly..." ... something like that. Just have the past interspersed with what's happening to her physically. Link her present physical discomfort with her painful past reminiscing and be lucid about the order of the person you're describing and what happened to them, even though the mention might be short and choppy because she's phasing in and out of reality. Take control of the fall from lucidity here. Don't let it slip away from you. Also, you mentioned the mother but then all her pain stemmed from losing Athan. Not much mention of her grief over losing her mother after. Not sure how you can adjust that but I thought I'd just bring that to your attention since the loss of her mum seemed to be one of the main catalyst in her life yet there wasn't much importance placed on that event here.