I've read a lot of fanfictions here and I want to write my own. I'm only 12, so mine might not be as good as some other awesomeness fanfics I've seen. I want your thoughts about my writing. If you think it absoloutely sucks, seriously, tell me! xD I want your true opinion. And so I'll give you a what might be a piece of the story. _________________ "Come here," said a black coated man. From the sound of his voice, the two young girls could tell he was Saix, but they didn't dare say that out loud. They instead stood silent and still, their faces showing signs of anger and fright. When the bars imprisoning them dissapeared, the younger-looking one stepped forward. "No," her sister said, plain and clear. "You would rather die?" asked Saix. "No! But I'm not going with you!" her left hand glowed with some kind of power, and a sword appeared in it. She lunged at Saix, slashing at him, but in a flash of grey and black spikes he had a weapon of his own. __________________ PLEASE, even if you truly think it totally sucks and I should get like ten times better before I even consider posting my story on here, then tell me what you think. (I haven't actually written the story yet lol)
For a 12 year-old, I must say I'm impressed with the tone of your writing. It could use some improvement, but with you being as young as you are, it's hardly worth complaining about, and I'm certain you'll only get better if you keep at it. Your narrative skill is definitely notable, but your accuracy is lacking a little. For example: If both people present in this sentence were male, you'd have a classic case of 'ambiguous reference'. So although you could easily pick out he as Saix because your other character is female, had a male been the one to lunge at Saix, the reader would have to think twice about who exactly is the one possessing this newly introduced weapon. It's only common (and pretty much law) that we group dependent clauses together with independent ones, but the problem here is that you have two equally independent ideas--that is, someone lunging at Saix, and Saix taking out a weapon. These two ideas oppose each other in an equally important manner, yet your sentence structure is biased toward your independent clause and leaves your dependent one with much less emphasis: this is how you make your 'reference' ambiguous. Easily fixed, just rewrite the sentence (or make two separate ones if necessary) to address both thoughts/ideas equally: The other bit that I felt lacked in the sample sentence I quoted was the lack of symmertry. You stated that 'she lunged for Saix' to slash him, *but* 'in a flash of grey, Saix had a weapon of his own'. "But" implies that 'her slash' is negated or cancelled out by the proceding action or description. Now by your narrative, we know that Saix's weapon evidently causes 'her attack' to fail, but we don't know how. Logically, even though you blatantly state 'but' to assure the reader that Saix remains unharmed, the linear thought process would be that Saix summons his weapon, but still gets slashed by 'her attack' anyway. Thus, I took the liberty in assuming that Saix's weapon blocks 'her attack', and as such provided the additional information to describe such an event. Although it's a common literary device to leave ambiguity around your writing when you want to leave something to interpretation or not give something away that you want to reveal later, it's also important to accurately describe each exchange that happens between people. This is so your readers know exactly what is going on and aren't confused or surprised when Bob suddenly drops dead because they were unaware that he had taken a fatal blow to the back minutes before. Hope this helps, and I apologize if you didn't need me to tell you some of these things. EDIT: One last thing, and this is just mechanics now, you didn't need to capitalize the 'a' in Asked in your dialogue tag. I know you probably thought you had to because the quote ended with a question mark, but I'm pretty sure it's allowed.
=D Thanks! Maybe my lack of art and writing over the summer is why I'm always so bored... I'll probably start writing the story this weekend. I'm in a hyper mood right now, and although this is irrelavent, I couldn't help but giggle at the use of the name "Bob" xD It helps a lot! Thank you! That was something I was really trying to avoid. I almost intinctivly do that. Also, one more thing, What does emptive mean? xD
My mistake, it's actually supposed to be preemptive, so cross out that hyphen. If that still doesn't help, preemptive basically means to perform an action that will in turn disable your opponent from acting they way they probably wished to.
