Hi Matt,

I am Joey C and I am a member of "Invalid Item" . I am writing you, offering my review of your work "Invalid Item"  as part of your review shower.

I will first tell you that while I have had some personal successes in my own writing experiences. (Some that I even made money with) I do not consider myself an expert in the field of creative writing. On the contrary, the more I research the subject, the more I find that that creative writing, more specifically fiction writing, is a world of subjectivity. By this, I mean there are many opinions as to what the rules are. I will share with you the one, I have found to be the most correct.

Rule number one:

#1. There are no rules for writing Fiction!

This means that no matter what you may write, it can be neither correct nor incorrect by someone else’s standards. There will always be those who will rave about your work, and someone to rail against the same. (Save for a mother’s opinions, which are always correct, at least in their presence.) If you are to be a serious writer then remember not to let the opinion of others dissuade you from your endeavors or conversely over inflate your perceptions. My offering to you is just one of the many opinions you will receive in your writing career. It is perfectly OK, to say “Joey you are a daffy bugger, and I think your brown eyes indicate you are full of it.”

The above statement notwithstanding, there are things that make a work entertaining, and popular. (And sometimes commercially viable). I am an engineer by education and experience. I as a matter of course have written thousands of reports, studies, manuals, and even some patent applications. I have been blessed to have been recognized in my field of expertise by my peers and even been privileged to be published. But, nothing prepared me for the abrupt differences between the worlds of technical writing and fiction.

With all this in mind, here is what I found that I like best in your story . Your tale seems very original, at least to me, I believe this a plus for your endeavor. You have chosen to start the tale in the modern world. This can be good and bad. Good in that your reader does not have to stretch too far to understand the surroundings, bad because most folks that read this genre do so because they want to escape their normal mundane environments and explore the unknown. You have chosen a young male as your protagonist, which I am told is the most successful choice for a hero. Your hero is orphaned also the most common trait for a fantasy hero. You have mystery, and action. Those are all things I found as positive points. This is not to discount one the second most important thing needed to write this kind of story; you have what appears to be an excellent imagination. Next, you have shown absolutely the most important thing needed, determination . . . you have already written three chapters. Most would-be-writers are stumped long before the point you have already reached.

Remembering that there is no right or wrong I will attempt to explain some of the issues I would do differently if it were my story.

I have, for the last six years, been trying to learn what makes a good fiction story. One thing I have learned is that while it is a very popular genre, fantasy is one of the most difficult sub-genres to be published in. It seems that everyone who has ever seen Lord of the Rings, or any other epic tale, fancy’s themselves the like of J. R. R. Tolkien. Few actually know that the professor’s works were written over a number of years starting in 1937 and were not completed until 1955. Fewer still understand the small nuances that go into making a story successful. There are many media types for conveying a story or an idea. It is said that a picture speaks a thousand words, television and movies give us combined, and sometimes-overwhelming stimulus in telling a story. In person, a good storyteller can entertain us for hours. They use their voice and its inflections, they can use body language, where they jump, hoot, and wave their arms in circles to help you understand the story.

Then comes the written word, you might think it disadvantaged. After all, you must convey your concept to your reader with some twenty-six funny looking squiggles on a plain white piece of paper. (Assuming you are writing in English.) But, if you arrange them in just the right order, your reader is transported with sight, sound, taste, smell and touch. If you are really good at your craft, you will show them that they have a sixth sense as well, that being intuition.

This written media is not handicap by comparison, on the contrary, it is much richer in possibility (Though with the advent of computer graphics, video is fast catching up.) C.G. not withstanding, there is nothing that can compete with our minds ability to create new worlds, wondrous creations, and mystical happenings. Because if an author is careful in his crafting, each reader sees something unique and special. You see the author steers his reader in a general direction and ignites his imagination, so the exact vision of a highland troll can be different to each reader. But you must give the reader enough of the pieces to allow them to picture the fellow for themselves.

If you want them to give your wonderful world their undivided attention, you have to take their minds away from the other distractions around them. To do that you must fill all their senses, just hearing your monotone voice tell something will not work for long. Don’t get me wrong this doesn’t mean you cannot have passive dialog or narrative. No. . . ‘tells’ are our time machines, without them our stories would become real time and then they would be far to long, competing with our real world.

So the biggest issue that you may want to look at in your story as it is presently written, is the bane of a writer’s existence; it is the mantra that you will hear from your critics, no matter if the work is your first, or your one-hundredth. You will here it repeatedly; you will learn it for yourself. Still you will need to be reminded of its power. It is the saying of ‘Show don’t Tell,” its basic meaning is that we must convert our words to actions and other concepts that involve the senses. Doing so pulls the reader deeper into our tale. There are several static pieces here on WDC and on the internet that explain the concept in detail. If you are like me, you will need to read several different postings to get a handle on the concept. You can find them by typing ‘Show don’t tell’ in the search box of WDC or even Google.

I did not think your story tracked as concisely as it could. (You say, “Joey what the hell are you talking about?”) One of the traits about fantasy that I have learned, is that the plot is considered more important than characterization. That doesn’t mean characters are not important, no it means that your reader is more likely to remember the light saber fight scene between Count Dooku and Yoda, then they will the introspective of Luke fighting the dark-side of himself in a dank, root-filled cave on Dagobah. We must build strong characters, but it is secondary to plot concerns in fantasy. Information and events that don’t have a tie to the action or directly move the story are a distraction to the flow, and will give your reader a chance to slip from your grasp. So unless something happens in his bed, there is no need to tell us your hero when to sleep, and then woke up the next morning.

I know you have shared only just a few chapters. But, I wonder if you have a clear idea of your story progression, if you are going to turn it into a novel or novelette, then I highly recommend that you stop and make an outline, it is not as difficult as you may think, you already have a beginning, have you thought of an ending. You need to picture one now, then start filling out ideas of what you want, or think may happen along the way to that ending. Writing and creating is five times harder then working with an outline, sometimes it even becomes impossible, if you don’t know what the end goal is. Writer’s block is a good indication that the writer didn’t do an outline.

When writing dialog where there are only two people you do not need many moniker tags. Most times the reader can keep track of who is talking, and even if there are more then one, there are many tricks that can be used to help the reader keep track of the speaker. Like when you are using a third person narrative point of view. Often this narrator is anonymous and omnipresent, these traits often lend themselves to a more proper speech pattern, so if you simply restrain from using contractions in your narration it help set it apart from the character dialog. For instance consider the contrast between your more proper sounding narrator and say a street punk that was using colloquiums like “you ain’t gotta do dat.” Adding these kinds of speech anomalies to a character often works well. Another example in the American quadrilogy of ‘Lethal Weapon’ the character of Leo Getz almost always started his conversations with “OK ...OK … I, so you didn’t need someone to tell you the next statement was coming from Leo, his tag was part of his dialog. I recommend you do some reading on ‘Creative Dialog syndrome.’ I have no doubt you will find some great ideas for new “beats” which is the name for the corrective action for this aliment.

Redundancy is also a distraction for the reader, in your first chapter you have 3,153 words written over some eight pages, you used “Nathan” seventy-nine times in those pages that’s 9.8 times per page. It’s OK to use more pronouns. I am told that it is best to try and limit repeating a word within two adjoining paragraphs, and that we should never repeat them in the same paragraph. There are always exceptions, conjunctions don’t count.

Ok, I am at 2,100 words and I am sure you are tired of listening to me drone on about stuff, and you may think that my review is negative, but I assure you it is nothing of the sort. I think you have within you the makings of a very good writer. And frankly I wouldn’t waste the time to put down 2,100 words if I didn’t think so. You are already at age sixteen, miles further down the road to understanding the art of fiction. Then I was at age fifty.

I will share why I write; it is not for money I retired at age forty-nine after selling my business to a very large corporation. I write because one night after the fifth or sixth time I revised a page I was working on, I read it back and I said to myself “Wow that was really good! Oh my god that is really good and I wrote it.” That is when I knew that my passion for the rest of my life however long or short that time might be I am going to be a writer. And It doesn’t matter if I ever get another word published. You see I write for myself! If others happen to like or want to read something I scribbled down, well and good.

I also will share that I play a game with myself, whenever I go somewhere, I pay close attention to my surroundings, I look for thinks that stick out, what is the most distinguishing characteristics, then I think to myself, as my wife drives along, how do I describe that in words. About nine out of ten times, I stumble over a very descriptive phrase or interesting combination of words. I pull my notebook out of my pocket and write then down. If you try it, you may find yourself pleasantly surprised.

Matt there are many good writers here on WDC. take advantage of them as much as you can. And I will offer another thought in this posting, read, read, read (another rule that doesn’t exist says that placing this word, three time in a row, in a single sentence is not redundancy, it is dramatic effect.) what makes the best author is being an avid reader. Study their style, their tricks of the trade; from them you will develop your own style.

I hope that anything I have offered is something you may find useful, if so, you can ask more anytime, if I don’t know the answer I am sure I can find someone to make something up for you.

Write on brother, the world needs real authors with passion for the craft.