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It seems we are at an impasse. heart

Hmm, well that's good. I'm working on rewriting part of the beginning. It's turning out to be more of a challenge than I thought... partially because my computer has decided to be mean and keep giving me reasons why the part that I just wrote couldn't be saved. Battery dies, something crashes, random updates. Also I'm either at camp or practicing nine times out of ten, and then the other one time I'm probably roleplaying, but I swear its getting done. xDD Damn I'm lazy. But it is going to happen, trust me. I'll have the second chapter posted as soon as I'm done with my camp. =]

Long time lapse is long!

Wow, the edge of a cliff. THAT'S not cliche. Even so, gah, what's Wyatt gonna do?!
A few long and weirdly-worded sentences during this sequence.
Ouch.
Remember, short, to the point sentences with action. You don't want his fall to drag.
Wyatt's thoughts are really just rehashing what we already know.

"He could hear the howling of wolves, the hooting of owls and hissing of snakes. He couldn't help fancying that every sound he heard was out to get him. He would jump when he heard..." These sentences are suddenly passive and jump right out.
"the possibilities or who" should be 'of'.

"They were soft voices, whispered," Whoa, whoa, what? Where are we now? Huh?
Oh of COURSE, Rabies wolf. What ELSE can go wrong tonight?
'perceive' 'seem' -Why so passive?

"He held his breath, not daring to breathe." Dude. Duuuuuuuude.
This part is way too drawn out... Best to keep it simple.
Beast, beast, beast-another reason to keep it simple. You start saying beast thirty times in a row. It's wild, it's mean, it's ugly, I get it.
Lot of awkward wording. It's kind of confusing.

Fast pace whiplash, zomg.
Hmm... How much evil could these guys be up to...?
No way. Too fast.
Levi? You've got to be kidding. Too much, too fast, too soon.
Rehashed thoughts and sentences. When you edit, you'll want to simplify a lot of it.

Ugh, Wyatt is the epitome of 'you suck'. sad Well, you can only go up!
You'd do well to take out descriptors like 'cruel knife wielding youth'. I have to trudge through some many words to get to the action, you see.
The boy, the weapon, the youth, the unnecessary modifier that I find vaguely annoying...

Yeah, you're going to have to breather episode something. WAY too much going on.
Some of the language is pretty stilted and formal. Again, too many complicated words to trip over as you read.
Who is this other guy? Tarem...?

On FAIYA?


I have an idea as to what would help here. He could sit and think about his world and surroundings or something. I found myself going 'Wait, where's this castle at again? Where's the town? Where ARE we anyway?" A little bit of that sort of exposition could slow things down a little, I think. =3

Castle part
*reads first sentence* Let me guess, those guys from before destroy the castle?
The peaceful night didn't usher anything. 8U It was just hanging out! Also, peaceful appears twice in two sentences, and calm and peaceful mean the same thing.
Unarmed yet they held weapons? Do you mean unarmored?
This whole thing is extremely telly.
What? A surprise attack, at NIGHT, but they had a whole battalion armed?! Are you kidding me?
Spell under his breath? Yeah.

I'm seeing the weirdest images in my head of this.
They have a spell for heart attack?
"Open fire!" *Imagines everyone with machine guns*
They had ARCHERS even? WUT. Shooting into a melee?!
Him? His? Men? Confused plz.
A bit purple...

You've named him. You can call him Ratio.
Colored coded for my convenience, eh? So many people...
"The one in white cloaks' should probably be 'in the white cloak'.
"Out of the crowd one, brave looking young man with a sweat stained face broke from the crowd". Well, jeez.
ARROWS INTO A MELEE. They must have some great sharp shooters. So confident.

I keep falling out of this scene. Probably because I just don't know how this pertains to Wyatt. There's no connection or drama keeping me in, but I suppose that's the point...
Arrows don't twang. But bowstrings do.
A SURGE OF HEAT AND LIGHT! Paging Mr. Repetitive of the Department of Redundancy Department.

For the love of God, if it's Ratio, say Ratio! I'm so confused by all of these characters hopping about...
Please don't say things like 'the one named Seven'. If he's going to be called Seven, it's fine to say so.
What... WHAT ARE THE PEOPLE DOING?! WHERE ARE THE ARCHERS?! Talking is a free action, apparently?!
Huh. Like I really care about this archer dude. Where are the others? Too scared by the summon? STAY AWAY FROM THE SUMMONER!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txgjAiw8Rew
Seriously, he just say some guy kill lots of people and summon some beast or something, and at the END he's all like ZOMG THEY TELEPORTED AWAY!!!!1111! like it's this super amazing thing. I'd have thought he'd be a bit more concerned about the beast thing.
Also you left out the puncuation at the very end. =/

This scene is a bit more purple than previous scenes, which give it a different feel. Not sure I like it. The first scene though--the stuff in the first post--is totally awesome. I'm probably not into the second half because of my personal preference. Also, it's jumpy, lots of stuff going on--bit too much.
Not sure who I'm supposed to be following in the last part... Not sure what to feel there, if I'm really supposed to.
But I like it. =3 I'll of course continue. I just think you tried too hard to make it epic.
Sorry this took so long! heart

Ah, alright. I guess when you're trying to make action flow it's not always a good idea to lapse into "WOOT DESCRIPTION TIEM =DDD!!!" Good, then I need to trim some of this stuff down too. It will happen. Make it so.



Oh crap, I'm in passive voice? Hmm, that's not going to do either. Should be more like 'wolves howling' ect. right? A lot of this is getting changed anyway. I really don't like how the pacing works at this part.



The evil rabies wolf is actually getting cut completely I think. It just kind of screams 'lolol random encounter because I have no idea what to put here'. There are better ways to fill space than that, and I'm really starting to think it was a pretty tacky way to go. So, sorry Star Wolf, I can't let you do that.

And yeah, Levi comes back. I don't think I'll take that part out. I was thinking of adding more padding in between the two encounters, and the second time it doesn't have to be a hostile one. I wanted to give Wyatt the chance to strike back a little bit here, but it doesn't necessarily have to happen that way. It might give the story a different tone if I made Levi actually come back to help Wyatt out instead of try to kill him again. That could be interesting and might make Levi's character less of an "I'm so freaking evil!" sort of character.


Wyatt sucked a whole lot more during my first draft too. I tried to make him suck a little less, but eh. He does get better from there, though. There's a long way to go.

Yeah, I guess I did try to go a little all out with the modifiers. It just looked weird when I had Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt Wyatt written all throughout my paragraphs (Of course that's what the word 'he' is for. Condensing things down and making my paragraphs more concise might help to eliminate that problem too.)




Hmm, yeah that's the feel I'm starting to get. Seeing as it already feels like its two chapters, do you think I should split it up into two chapters or try to pear some parts off and leave it as is?



Hmm, that's a really good idea actually. That leaves room for a bit of exposition that could explain the world better while making the flow seem a little less filled with action scenes. I think I could work this. =3



Hmm, yeah actually that is kind of ridiculous. I wanted a fight scene, but I guess I've already got enough of those. What do you think, should they maybe try to infiltrate the castle using stealth (y'know, there are only five of them) and get caught in the act. That might work. I might need to rework this scene. It was originally a prologue, and I moved it down because I didn't like the placement. Still doesn't quite work where it is though, does it?


Wasn't sure if I should name the characters in the beginning or not. When it was a prologue I wasn't going to. I changed my mind about half way through, but I guess I kept more of the structure than I thought. I played around with keeping them anonymous for drama's sake, but I decided to give them names in the end.



Eheh sweatdrop I guess this is why you DO need other people to read through these things. This was one of the first scenes I wrote for this draft, which might explain why it doesn't seem to fit. In fact I think I copied it out of my last draft because it flowed much more nicely than the rest of it did (which definitely says something about my last draft. I had some very good reasons for scrapping that one. XD) I guess here it's a little more out of place, and it's a bit more clunky than the rest of the piece. I might have to just redo this scene. Or scrap it. The point is to introduce the rest of the Brotherhood (Or at least the main players.) so that it doesn't seem like I just rushed in and threw a bunch of new characters at the audience.

It might make more sense for this to be stealth. It would explain why there were only five people in the active group (definitely not FFT inspired. stare ).

Heh, yeah and the reaction is a little disproportionate. The archer at the end is actually important later on. (He's the squire of the main villain.)



The last part was supposed to feel different, but not so jarringly so. I think the fact that it was copied out of an earlier version might have something to do with it. I wanted it to be a little more flowery because the scene is technically from Ratio's point of view (though very limited) and since his personality is much less down to earth than Wyatt's is I thought I'd change the style a bit to fit the character's views a little better. I probably need to be a bit more subtle with it than I was, or else, just be forward about it and make it blatantly obvious that the voice is supposed to be different and just run with it. Staying in between can make things awkward, so I guess this just has to be one or the other.

Anyway, thanks so much, your ideas are really REALLY helpful actually. (I really needed someone to go through and do something like this, because there were parts that were driving me crazy and I wasn't quite sure if they would work from an outside perspective or not. When you know the whole story, you look at the work differently than you would if you were going in with no knowledge about the characters, the time, setting or conflict, or how things turn out in the end. It can be hard to tell if things really make sense or not.)

Thanks so much though. Now I'll be revising. Probably won't post chapter two until I've revised chapter one (since doing so might mean changing some of the later dialogue slightly, and there's a scene I wanted to add in to avoid falling into the same trap as before.)

=3 Thanks so much again, I really can't say that enough! heart

I had an idea to break up the action. Maybe you could have the intial action and the storming of the castle broken up to two chapters and have the beginning of the second chapter dealing with the aftermath of the breakin?

[quote="Serenity Reed]

@Pichu
Yay! I helped! =D
Which FF is this based off of again? I'd assume Tactics, since you've mentioned it before...


Actually it was supposed to be based off of FFI. Somehow... the FFI part of the story kind of got lost while I was writing it. The Brotherhood was only supposed to be a subplot, but it completely hijacked the story. XD I just play FFT a lot, so five man parties make sense to me.



Well that's good. I'll try to stay as objective as I can with these sorts of things now. =3



Yeah, I'm pretty sure I didn't need Courage Wolf in there. He was filler. And he's gone. Or as soon as I'm done writing him out he's gone. =3 Sorry wolfie.

Hmm, actually that would fit Wyatt's character really well. After a while you learn that he's pretty paranoid. That would actually illustrate that part of his character rather well. =3 Ohh, goodie, gives a bit of a breather AND some character development. I like it. =D



Well, y'know. He'd swear it was a one time thing. I think he's lying though. =D

Hmm, that'd probably be a good place to make a split. I don't think I could just cut the chapter straight and leave it as is. I want a little more closure if the chapter is going to end there. Cliffhanger might work, cheesy as it is. XD



Hmm, I actually am starting to like that idea a lot too. It makes more sense, the motivation is right, justifies a lot of points and can still make for a very similar outcome. I like it! Now to write it out.

=3 Alright then, I'll have to do that more. Maybe the entire Brotherhood doesn't have to come out all at once.



Maybe. This'd definitely make for a good closing of the first chapter without making it seem too chopped off. I think I see how this could work out too. I'll have to play around with it a little bit. It'll change some of the outcomes around a bit too, but that's alright. I can work with that.