Tell Me About Your Story! [ONGOING]

The Darkness In Her Destiny (Critique)

Critique of The Darkness In Her Destiny by DmSaskia.

Spoilers below.

As I mentioned in the critique for White Wolf, I don't know much about werewolf stories. However, I do know a bit about romance and danger. I'll do my best with this critique, but I must be honest: I stopped reading about halfway through.

You started with action; it was great. A little bit confusing, but great. A bit later Artemis gets kidnapped. Okay, cool. Then she (almost instantly) falls in love with her kidnapper. Not cool. Then she learns about her father. Wut. She got roughly kidnapped by... her father? Then all of a sudden they're weeping an hugging?

This all happens much too fast. I think you have an interesting story in you, but you started so fast it tripped and fell. Make us care about your character before you try to throw a curveball. You are at a great start, but we need more.

There are also things we need less of. The paragraph in which you describe her outfit is something I find immensely boring, and not just in your story. Any time I see this I encourage writers to remove it. You're not writing a fashion article, you're writing a story with action. Describing appearance in this way has no action and does little to move the story along.

Another thing you need less of infatuation. I don't understand... Artemis went from hating this guy to trying to make him jealous in twenty-four hours? If you give your story proper time to grow, this problem might fix itself. As of now it just clouds the main plot. A bit of infatuation is absolutely fine in an adventure story like this, but the way you have it now is like you shoved it in there so you could call this a romance.

A final point of issue is on the technical side of writing. You have a few quirks, but I think you will get better with practice. One is comma abuse: that means you put commas in the wrong places. Another is paragraphing: this goes along with the first one because you use commas in place of periods, confusing the length of a sentence, and then you often have one "sentence" as the entire paragraph. Finally is homophones, or words that sound the same but are spelled differently. Like I said, these things should get easier to identify as you practice writing and reading. If not, consider having an editor walk you through some things, or take a writing class.

As I said before, I think you have a great start. I think you can go far as a writer. Don't give up on your craft. Just keep practicing and learning. Everyone has to write a million words of garbage in the process of writing their first good novel. Keep up the great work!

(I think I'm also in the midst of one million words of garbage.) ;)