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Discussion of "Home." by Sunshinegirl10165


1 Aggeloi 1 month, 1 week ago Reply

Hi! I enjoyed reading chapter one, and I enjoyed reading chapter two, too! :-) You've established the setting and characters very well, and given us a feel for what kind of people they are, and their relationships to each other. Well done!
Do you mind if I make a couple of suggestions? First, in terms of punctuation, it's proper to punctuate the quoted statement inside the quotes as well as punctuating the entire sentence. (Example: "I did it," I said. - as opposed to "I did it" I said.) It seems nit-picky, but that kind of stuff can wind up distracting your reader from the story.
And one note on content - directly addressing the reader is another thing that can be rather distracting. (Like the 'By now, if you haven't figured it out...' line.) I know it's tricky to make sure the reader gets the essential information, but it's stronger to leave it out. That sentence, and the one that followed, struck me as largely unnecessary. I did already know her ability from your very good first chapter, and I'd assume that I'll find out the others' talents through the course of the story. Your sentence about Kana's powers was much more straight forward. Still a bit on the 'telling' side as opposed to 'showing' (for instance, we can see that she's just telekinetically moved Kane, and if, later on, we see her flying, we'll say, 'Hey, cool, she can fly, too!' There can be much power in letting the readers discover information as they read rather than feeding it all up front). Similarly, the 'Okay, I can't wait...' line was cute, but unecessary. It's stronger simply to write, "Kane can time travel, through the future and the past." The paragraph certainly flows fine with the story, since it explains the previous paragraph about their knowledge of history. Again, these might be stronger if saved and revealed a bit later (show them having a remarkable knowledge of history, and perhaps later revealing the secret to a new friend or something), but it works as is, too.
The 'We of course are 18' line bugged me a bit, to be honest. Why is it 'of course'? It might be stronger to relate it to the topic you were discussing, such as, "We'll blend in at the high school just fine, since we're all 18," or something to that effect.
On a similar note, the last sentence of this chapter threw me off. It felt perfectly natural to end the chapter with them walking out the door. The comment about Kana's height making her look younger felt out of place. It might have fit in better with the earlier comment about their age.
Please understand that I'm not trying to pick on you or be mean or anything like that. I'm loving the story - the concept is a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to seeing where you take it. (And I just love the main character's way of waking up Kane - incidentally, we don't know the main character's name yet, do we?)
Anyway, I hope my comments can be of help to you. It's a fun idea, and I enjoy reading your work.


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