WHEEE.
More of Citroen's story! The very last few pages need more work before being made available for public consumption, so it might be a while before you get the end...
( But you have to read the rest of the middle first anyway, so here you go. )
( But you have to read the rest of the middle first anyway, so here you go. )
Overall you have a very clean crisp writing style. I have no trouble following what's happening and don't find myself having to double back or what-have-you, which happenes a lot in stories due to sloppiness and stuff on the part of the author. None of that here. The character of John is pretty well-defines as being deeply angry and hugely dissilusioned with the world. He's clearly suffered at the hands of his family and father (probably sexual abuse, no big leap to make that assumption) and is dealing poorly with the world, but trying hard. Taniqua...not sure about her. Kind of the femmey minor character, a little too perfect in the down-to-earth motherly way, so I'll wait to see what develops there. Not saying she's bad, just there's not much there yet. Hmm. Sean is a sort of plot device, I guess, serving to advance things and provide John with a means of existing. Can't say much about his personality.
Citroen is fun. Um. Clearly the story is about John, though, so there isn't much to say about Citroen, he seems to act as a sort fo sounding board for John's issues, which is fine, but as the story wears on people might want to know more about Citroen's personality and what drives him, etc.
As for the one major critique I was able to dredge up for this, I'd say it could stand to be a little less wordy. I admit I'm easily distracted and have a short attention span, but I get the feeling that there are just more words than are really necesarry to convey the events of this story. It's a style that a lot of authors use in which they make the words the star of the story, and I don't think you're trying to do that--but I do think a bit of that is leaking into the text in terms of the way the words are laid out, giving them a little more importance than they need.
Um, yeah. You could probably trim some here and there without sacrificing anything vital to the storyline.
Incidentally, in the process of doing that some more of the overall plotline could probably be laid out so the reader ha a sense of where the story is going. Not giving it away, I mean, but I didn't have a clear idea, when finishing this up, where the previous parts and the most recent have been taking us. I don't know how much longer this is meant to be...I suspsect that John's issues are the core of the story and that they also make up the resolution, so maybe more attention could be paid to those, somehow, without bludgeoning the reader over the head with said issues. You've done a fine job of describing John without flat-out telling us, "he's depressed, he's pissed, he's got major issues", but at the same time they're almost so well-concealed as to be easily missed. So it'd be nice to see the drive of the story made a little more pointed so the reader can get a handle on where they've been and on where they may or may not be going.
Yargh! This is too long! Anyways, hope this helps a bit. I'm sleepy so I can't gaurantee that anything I wrote makes sense. And feel free to ignore all of it. It's just one person's opinion.
Reply
Leave a comment