Next Big Recognition Contest

Round 63

I believe I said this before but I'll say it again, I'm a huge fan stories about Angels and Demons, so I'm really happy to see all the additional chapters that you've posted!! Ok back to the NBR review.

CT: Looking only at the imagery of the chapter... I believe I noted a few things about this in the inline commentary, but overall I think you could invest a little more words to paint a full scene (sorry).

In some places I found it difficult to picture what was happening, e.g. the way the truck was smashed in, the distance they traveled to the hospital, what they're surrounding were when they were looking at the hospital and even the interior of the hospital was somewhat glossed over. I'm not suggesting that you add a whole bunch of new sentences to build the scenes, but a few here and there I think might help. A lot of things can be left generic, like you replied to my comment they were looking at the hospital from the carpark, you can just add that into an existing sentence or make a quick new line for it. Also I've noticed that you've focused a lot on just two senses, sight and sound (there was a little touch too) but not a lot on the others. Just a suggestion... Smell is a very active sense and for example when zoe enters the hospital I would assume her olfactory sensors would be getting assaulted... I know mine do whenever I walk into a hospital so an angel with super senses must get like a triple dosage. Including other senses can help the readers paint a complete image in their mind. Anyway hope this helps.

Q1: OK so I just went back and read chapter three, funny how chapter four make so much more sense now!! hahaha

Right back to your question. At the end of chap 3 you built up a nice pace, it flowed well and I got this sense of urgency along with the Angels. But please don't hate me for saying this... it all kinda went away with the first few paragraphs on chap 4...

You mentioned that you wanted to keep the momentum going however I think all the focus on the dog is killing that for you... Is the dog important to the story? If not does the dog really need to be included? I think you only included the dog so you could show the angel's power over animals. If I'm right then I don't think you need to spend so much time introducing the dog to the story, just have it jump out and try to attack the angels or something like that and then Zach deal with it quickly and the dog goes whimpering away... something to that effect. If the dog is important to the story later on then I take it all back and suggest giving the dog a name or breed, more descriptions.

Also is the circle on the wall a portal? If it is I think you should make that connection more clear.

Carry on the idea of the ripple effect as well, when Zoe is doing her search make reference to it, I know we just read it in the last chapter but you should link the importance for the reader so that they fully pay attention, maybe you can reveal a little more information about what type of being can stop time, or maybe they discuss the last time something similar happened... keep building up the story along with the action.

The overall pace of the chapter wasn't slow, that's for sure. The tension is a little subdued though compared to the last chapter because there was quite a bit happening. I think when you described the crash scene and the police men talking the pacing slowed down quite a bit here.

Q1 cont...

Firstly because it wasn't clear that we were experiencing this through Zoe's pov, it almost felt like a pov changed here, so I would make it a bit clearer that you are revealing their super sight and hearing abilities. And secondly, the dialogue between the cops... seemed a little unnecessary... I would suggest instead of Zoe going to talk to the teens they over hear the required info from the police. I found the interaction with the teens while it was somewhat amusing, sort of drew away from the tension of the crash scene.