Next Big Recognition Contest

Vote, it helps NBR :)

Friday 3rd - Friday 10th

Drum roll please........ and the winner of the Prompt Challenge #1 is consciousdreamer1!!!! Congratulations!! If you haven't already read consciousdreamers1's amazing short story "Faded Friend" in Rain & Things, hop on over and check it out. And thank you to everyone who participated, there were many amazing stories and we look forward to your entries for prompt challenge #2.

Comment Topic: Chapters must move along smartly, but they cannot be too much in depth or too vague. Comment on the detail the author used to create immediacy. Are you hooked right away? If not, how can they improve?

---

Author #1: QuinnTrestavell

Book Title: The Masked Thief

Specified Chapter: Chapter One

Summary Thus Far in Book: N/A

Author's Note: First, thanks to everyone at NBR for keeping this club operating. I am very grateful for such a fantastic opportunity. It's mind-blowing that all of you, who are so much more talented and 'up there' than me, are reading my story!

1) Can you easily picture the universe that my story is set in?

2) What do you think of Mira so far?

3) Is this chapter intriguing enough that you want to continue reading?

Thanks for your time, and feel free to be brutally honest. I want to improve this chapter, so show no mercy!

Genre: Action

Rating: PG

Winning Comment: Let's get right into the critique, shall we?
The Masked Thief: Chapter 1 Critique:
1. Picturing the Universe:
Honestly, I had a hard time orienting myself to her universe. This was mostly because you did so much telling and so little showing. You're telling us all about these inventions, but you go so fast and include so much that the reader never gets a chance to really immerse themselves in the world. I understood maybe half of what I was reading, and even that was too hazy to really let me feel like I was living in her universe. You need to describe the important details and let the other, lesser details slip by with a brief mention instead of making everything a brief mention. That way, readers have a good, firm grasp of the important stuff that they wouldn't know about from their own lives, and the rest isn't overwhelming it. It's all about the balance between telling and showing. You have to know when it's alright to tell, and when something really needs to be shown...
2. Thoughts on Mira:
I feel as though she's falling flat. By the end of the chapter (I did finish, by the way), I still have no concrete idea about who she is, what she wants, and why she behaves the way she does. I don't understand her at all, and I don't feel like I'm even beginning to. She's just a bunch of words on the page with few realistic feelings or emotions. I think you could improve this by adding some internal thought. Not dialogue between her and her friend/helper... That doesn't help. It's nice enough to establish her connection to this other woman, but it doesn't tell us what she's feeling or thinking really. People rarely say exactly what they think/feel in its entirety, and many times they're trying to hide that from others for one reason or another. If you show internal thought, it lets the readers feel as though they are seeing everything, not just what she decides to tell them through her first person narrative. It also allows you to communicate what she's actually feeling better. It makes the world of difference. Secondly, I feel as though you don't quite understand what's motivating her, or you didn't when you wrote this chapter. If you show internal thought, it lets the readers feel as though they are seeing everything, not just what she decides to tell them through her first person narrative. It also allows you to communicate what she's actually feeling better. It makes the world of difference. Secondly, I feel as though you don't quite understand what's motivating her, or you didn't when you wrote this chapter. If you know now, go back and edit with an eye to what you know about her now that you didn't before. Use that information to really bring her to life. If you still don't know what's motivating her or what her goals are, you need to do some more work to figure that out because she'll never be as life-like as she could be if you don't.
3. Interest Level in Reading On:
Currently, I'd say that, on a scale of 0-10, I'm at a 1 or maybe a 2 in terms of reading on. I wouldn't rule it out completely because I do like sci-fi, and it seems like that's the genre you're writing, but this chapter completely failed as a first chapter. I'll explain why in a moment, but I really don't feel inclined to read on due to this and the lack of interest that the chapter garnered overall.
4. NBR'S Topic of the Week: Details, Immediacy, and Hooks:
You lack immediacy, details, and hooks. Let me explain further. You lack immediacy because everything simply flies by in the same blurred perspective. Nothing ever stands out as more important than another thing, and you hardly spend enough time on developing the world, characters, or plot line. The chapter seems to entirely lack purpose. I know nothing more than I did about the book before reading the chapter. Instead, I'm left in confusion with more questions than answers, and I'm wondering why the chapter was even written... As a first chapter, it lacks the detail and richness necessary in terms of world building or characters. The first chapter ought to set up the preliminaries of the world and main character very clearly in the readers' minds. The second and third chapter may be used to accomplish that purpose as well or to clarify things that need clarification and to introduce any other major characters who weren't in the first chapter. As a general rule of thumb, by chapter five or six, you ought to be into the swing of things and well under way with the plot. By chapter three or four, the readers had better know all the necessary preliminary details about the world, characters, and story. Anything that comes after in terms of world or character building ought to be:
A) Minor tweaks or details to the world that embellish the main framework you've already built
B) Further character development that results from the character's response to their environment and the changes that they're going through due to the events around them.
Really, there's not much else that ought to be done to characters or world building after the fourth (And, maybe depending on the book, the fifth/sixth) chapters.) chapter. Now, if something catastrophic happens to completely alter the world or a character who's central to the story, then you'd better stop to set up the new world or to show the readers how the character has changed due to this catastrophe. If you don't, then you're still failing. Finally, hooks... These are what makes the readers interested in reading further. They are the parts of your story that make a reader say, "Just one more chapter tonight... Just a few more pages to find out what happens... It might be midnight, but... I have to finish this." A first chapter absolutely must have some sort of a hook that is strong enough to make a reader, at the very least, continue to the next chapter and want to know what happens. By the third chapter, most readers will stop reading, myself included, if there is no hook to solidly get them into the story. Most readers will stop reading at chapter one (maybe chapter two, if you're lucky) if they're not engaged by your hook. A hook can be anything from a cliff-hanger to a mystery woven into the story. It could be that the character becomes the hook; I've read books for no other reason than liking the main character so much that I just had to finish it. There have been books that are way out of my usual sphere of genres — typically teen romance or the billionaire and his girl kind of stories — that I've read, not because I really cared about the plot or even liked the type of story, but because I had to know how things went for the character or because I loved the character so much that I wanted to see more of them. So if you have a very compelling character, you may be able to draw readers who otherwise wouldn't be terribly interested in the story. This does not mean, however, that you may ignore the other elements of a good story (plot, good grammar, style, or minor characters' developments and world building) in favor of creating an extremely compelling MC. If you do that, many, many readers will quit reading despite the fact that your MC is compelling. Especially if they're common readers of the genre. They will know you skimped and are relying heavily on the character to make it through the book, and they will not appreciate it. (cont.):
So make sure you don't neglect any portion of the story's elements when writing.
5. Miscellaneous:
This is for anything that didn't fit under your questions or the topic of the week. One such thing is the name of the POV character at the beginning of the chapter. At first, I thought it was part of the story itself. That's especially problematic on 抖阴社区 because you don't have a lot of ways to separate it from the rest of the story. I suggest you place it after the chapter number. So like this... Chapter One: Mira. It lets the reader know immediately whose viewpoint the chapter will be in.