Next Big Recognition Contest

Round 63

Additional, my suggestion would be to shorten the crash scene part and spend more time in the hospital, building up the tension there and the scenes. The hospital scenes really starts to bring the tension back up! So good job with that (just careful with that little info dump about the watcher teams).

Between action and background description, it won't hurt your pace to throw in a few more descriptors to help build up the imagery. E.G. at the "police had sectioned off..." para you could extend this out with something like... From the shadows they watched (observed) the police standing around the debris. Barriers had been placed, sectioning off the side or the road all the way up to the gym... Even from x feet away, over the gaggle of noisy witnesses crowding beyond the yellow tape, zoe zoned in on their conversation. The cops could be commenting on the fact that even with all these witnesses it's unbelievable that no one saw what happened... or something like that. Oh and if those teens that Zoe talked too at the crash aren't important to the story then maybe you can cut them out this way and spend more time describing the two teens that we bumped into at the hospital.

Anyway ultimately these are just my opinions, completely up to you what you do with them :-) Hope you got something helpful out of my babble though.

Q2: Characterization of your three watchers? Hmm well I think I would have to agree with squirrelg. You've focused more on the plot and pacing and so the characters, while they are likable, haven't really started to develop that much yet. We know basic things about them, Zoe is the hunter, Zach is the potential leader? I guess (that's what I got) and Muriel is the brains.

Zach seems to be a bit more laid back though, or at least he can make a joke and he even swore in the last chapter! Was surprised to see that. But Muriel... I haven't got much of a sense of her.

I would suggest spending more time on your main characters instead of non-essential characters(e.g. the teens at the crash site). The action is great and I like the plot but you could redirect some of the focus back to your main cast so that we can start distinguishing between them more. Maybe add in some gestures or habits or facial expressions, these can help reveal a lot about a person's personality. E.g. a smirk, a frown, folded arms etc. Or maybe they have a favorite saying. I'm sure you've done a character sheet/ questionnaire already for these three, but don't forget to draw on what you've written about each of these characters and think about their individual reactions, based on their personality and try to make that come across more in the chapters.

It's a slow and difficult process I know, just gotta locate those star moments to weave in those little pieces of info that will keep building in the reader's mind. Good luck, you've got a great story shaping up here, I'll poke at some more chapters soon :-)

-Maya

Network with this winner: mokbook

1st runner up: PassengersofWind (Stephanie, Rachel, Alison, & Clary, formerly GirlsCanRockToo)

2nd runner up: AhsokaJackson

Final Author's Note: Hi everyone! Wow, it was so hard to choose winners. I had so many amazing comments. In the end I chose Maya because she gave a strong review, provided extensive in-line comments, and also provided additional support for the chapter. Thanks, Maya! You are awesome! However, I wanted to also thank the following people for their strong reviews: the3dreamers, Claudia_Witter, KillYourDarlings7, PackerBacker2, TimothyMarsh, and Hayleyautumns.