Next Big Recognition Contest

Round 64

2. When Victor tells Mia about his parents' other form of abuse, does it feel unrealistic that he says so little about it? Before it had been longer (basically a speech), but I felt it was too dramatic and unrealistic that way.

In-line Comment Preference: Welcome

Genre: Paranormal

Rating: M. (There's gore and a brief, non-descriptive mention of sexual abuse.)

Winning Comment: #NBR [First:]

Hello! Congrats on both the spotlight and the Wattys award! I'm sorry for the late (well, barely-on-time) review.

Comment topic: I thought you did a good job in portraying Victor's character! I'll focus a bit more on his body language and dialogues, and then I'll mention other aspects of his character (and maybe some other characters too), if that's alright with you. (Wait, scratch that. I'm going to do that anyway--whether you're okay with it or not xP)

You've made use of dialogues pretty well, both portraying Victor's emotions and his story through them. "I get nervous" is an example of this. Victor then goes on to tell Mia his story with his father, and this also shows the reader about his past.

One thing about the way you format the dialogues rather than the content of them: you tend to begin some dialogues with "...". While an ellipsis is good for pauses in between or at the end of a dialogue, at the very beginning, it just takes the place of a sentence like "He hesitated". In some of these places, I didn't even feel like a pause was needed. I'd suggest going through all the places where you've used an ellipsis at the beginning and then deciding if it's really needed

Coming to the content of the dialogues, there were a few things said which made it hard to believe that Victor is 12. I don't think it's what he means to say that makes him sound older, but the way he says it. Take "I am" for example (said in referance to him being hungry). When you think about it, a 12-year-old would be more likely to say something like "Food! I need food. Food is good." Basically, they'd get excited over the prospect of food and would say more than the simple "I am". Just go through the chapter once, and try to format what he says in a way that you an imagine any other young(er) kid saying. The would almost entirely take care of any problems you may be facing regarding his age.

#NBR [2nd:]

Sebastian too has a dialogue which sounds much too old for his age. "I look forward to moving in tomorrow". Perhaps he'd say "I can't wait", but I can't imagine a 10-year-old saying "I look forward to".

One thing I really liked about the dialogues in this chapter was how they were all rather distinct, and you could tell one character apart from another simply by reading the dialogues!

Coming to his body language, I thought you did a pretty good job with that. You show things like him jerking his foot away and other movements regarding his body which portray to the reader what he's feeling. I didn't spy anything related to his *body language* (the way he holds himself) but that's all right--I think you've managed to make the actions work well enough. Though, there was one point where I thought you could have shown him hang his head or rub his eyes, right after the dream, to show that he's still sort of scared or musing. I believe I mentioned this in the in-line comments.

Also, some of the times, you added in a lot of dialogue tags which kind of hindered the flow. And a fair amount of them where "said". While "said" is the most inconspicuous dialogue tag, if you use it enough times, it'll become pretty evident too. I'd suggest going through the chapter and trying to remove some of the dialogue tags. If you need to show who's speaking, try adding in an action before the dialogue.