I'm not much of a critic, but I'll try and analyze this as best I can. I'm not much of a grammar or spelling person. In the first few chapters, you start off a lot of sentences with I or we, or some other subject, and it sort of broke the flow. This is a common pitfall of writing in first person, it seems, where it's not as obvious that you could adopt an overarching narrative style. First and third person are more interchangeable than most would assume. First person can be told from a more omniscient narrative style and third person can be told in a way that makes it seem more personal. Nevertheless, your flow begins to improve in the more recent chapters as you adopt a more varied narrative and descriptive style. If you think this is a problem, one tip If I may give it, would be to determine exactly when and where Spectre is telling this story, and possibly to whom he thinks he's telling it. From there you could get to figuring out what he thinks about what he's writing or telling. One of the joys of first person is that you can really let loose with the point of view's opinions and impressions of things. The story is pretty good, and if there are any errors they didn't detract from my reading it. One thing that kind of got me lost at times are the columns of dialogue. When you have the attention span of a gnat as I do, you could get lost and forget who is speaking which lines when these columns start getting tall without any narrative breaks to show who is saying what, until it starts to end. But that's just me, I doubt anyone else reading can match my attention deficit. I'm curious as to Sapphire and Vernes' motivation in following Spectre, as they did seem rather quick to fall in step with him. It makes me wonder if they see a gain in it or have ulterior motives, or just possessing gratitude in Vernes' case.
Thanks a lot for the reply! Looking back as I do (I like to re-read the whole thing sometimes for the fun of it) I did notice the change in my writing style as you noted. The one thing that I do have trouble with, however, is the tense of the story. While I'm writing it I might slip and change a word thinking it wasn't correct and it would end up making the sentence seem out of place. What I was going for is that he's not recollecting the events but living them at that moment, which is confusing to some people as I said above. (There weren't many (if any) grammatical or spelling errors because I'm a spelling nut who likes to have everything spelled correctly) With the conversation "columns" as you call them, they are a bit weird to read sometimes but I try to keep them between two people, if another person interjects I tend to say the person who was talking. (It looks a bit weird when two characters are talking back and forth while I'm using 'said' 'gasped' etc on every line. It's more of a personal thing really) As for the motivations, if you haven't already figured them out, Sapphire knew Lily before Spectre even met her, as explained in the story, and decided to help him.(Also, I didn't mention in the story but he flew to the station on Lily's ship, which Sapphire noticed) And if you read further she has the only way to read the starmap, so it sort of made sense to have her come along. As for Vernes... You'll just have to stay tuned!
I can relate to the tense changes, as it's something that's always plagued me myself. It's hard to keep that straight when you're writing off the cuff and for fun.
Sorry for the increasingly lengthy hiatus, life has been a bit rude to me and refused to allow me to have the time or the drive to write more, hopefully it ends soon, things can only get better, right? Oh, and thanks for the 500-some thread views, to me this is a major accomplishment!
Got my mojo back! Expect a new chapter and an update to the first (non starbound) mini story on Sunday! BE THERE, OR BE SQUARE!
Hey guys, I just updated the mini story. Sadly, I didn't have the time to get anything typed up on the main story. I will definitely have an update ready for it tomorrow! (as always enjoy!)
Again, apologies for the lack of an update, college is taking it's toll. Hopefully I'll be able to get a new chapter up this weekend for you fine people.
When I started reading this comment, I was about to ask why, then I saw the bit with the bananas... I'm glad you liked my story! Oh, and 900+ views, hells yeah!
Wow, a thousand views... and for you impatient people I will be putting up a new chapter later today!
I tossed it in a word counter: 43,603 characters, 8066 words, 469 sentences and 287 paragraphs. Yup, thats a lot, and it only includes the actual story not my preface.
Love it!!! It has a great plot and endearing characters! Overall five star rating!!! It was amazing!!!
