Okay so because you seemed eager for it[@Retired] I wrote up some thoughts on your posts thus far. Like you've been saying to others this isn't a judgement on you as a person and this is purely based on my reactions and thoughts on your writing. It's also always easier to give advice than live advice. So yeah. Feel free to take or leave my comments and suggestions. [hider=Prologue] [b][u]Prologue[/u][/b] No major grammatical errors, certainly nothing inexcusable. But to me your post feels extremely labored and clunky if I'm being honest. Your word choice seems very polished and technical, but this is honestly as much a detriment as an asset as it feels unnatural to someone used to slight human errors and vernacular. It felt dense and laborious to get through. Another thing I noticed is that while you're very liberal with your adjectives and descriptors, the ones you chose didn't feel like they added much, to my mind? I barely felt any of my senses engaged with your prose style except sight and the end effect was a very shallow reading experience. For example you call the material Kori is wearing 'odd' but you don't go into any detail about what makes it seem odd. Is it just that it's purple? If so, why? Is it the shade of purple? Is the apparent texture of it unusual? Is it made from a material Elijah's never encountered before? This is a layer to his thoughts and your world that I'm missing. You just say that it's 'odd'. You actually do this better when describing the spaceship instead, so you aren't incapable of it. Although again there, descriptors that engage more than one sense would've been welcome. You abstract the process a little too much with the way you describe spreading black marks from the heat of reentry, making it purely visual. Consider streamlining it more like: 'Its once pristine silver surface now marred with dents, scratches, and increasingly charred from the flames/heat of reentry' it's a little less verbose, but to my mind the action of charring has more sensory depth to it than black marks. Besides, the shorter phrase lets you feel each adjective more so that the dents and scratches can take on more tangible weight with the reader's mind freed up, imo. Your description of Kori was alright though, and you give a fairly complete picture of her appearance. Although, you rely a little too much on some very samey adjectives to describe her initial language without any real comparison or substance and it leaves a weak impression of what it must sound like to a listener. It all gives me the sense that while you're a very technically accomplished writer, likely moreso than myself, there's sort of a disconnect in your style when it comes to creating emotional and sensory engagement for me as a reader. That makes it difficult to hold my interest when combined with the density and formality of your prose.[/hider] [hider=Chapter One] [b][u]Chapter One[/u][/b] Again, from a technical standpoint there's not much in need of correction. I'm still having issues with the way you choose to describe things though. For one, you tend towards a lot of tautologies when one descriptor will do. Charlie doesn't need to laugh in 'modest humility' because those descriptors function identically. The same applies to Garfield's hair being both 'disheveled' and 'badly in need of a haircut' to a more limited degree, as while the latter could apply solely to length it can also convey the same sense of messiness just fine already. Once again your narrative voice also feels like a bit of an obstacle here. It's highly formal and combined with your verbose writing style it comes across as jarring, to me. For instance, phrases like 'The various individuals surrounding Garfield began to dwindle as they neared their destination.' and 'Charlie's once honey-dipped words were now marred with crude vulgarity ' legitimately take me out of my experience of the narrative while I double-take. It's a style of writing I'd expect from a much, much older time period and while both are perfectly understandable sentences, they feel so dry and formal yet simultaneously over-the-top that I can't enjoy the feelings and events they're meant to convey. It comes across to me as far more clunky than you probably intended. You do get into some better sensory description with Garfield suffering from the knockout dart though, it gets overshadowed by other elements for me. Again except for the tautologies you're mechanically excellent, but your narrative style's occasional overblown language, dryness and density makes the experience less enjoyable for me personally. [/hider] [hider=Chapter Two] [b][u]Chapter Two[/u][/b] You're more readable here so this will be shorter, your narrative voice is a little less overblown and your writing style is a little more streamlined. Again it just feels like there's this extra layer of abstractions over the things you describe that makes it harder for me personally to get invested? You do well with Elijah's motivation for heroism, but because your narrative style is so formal and precise prior to that it feels like it's just being read to me from a transcript of his brain, not like I'm feeling the weight and pride and responsibility he feels. Your problem with tautology in description also shows up a few times here too, with Elijah for example wanting to fight against 'evil injustices' which while technically different things are similar enough that you aren't really adding anything by using both that way. A less onerous post to read but also not one that sticks with me very strongly after I'm done with it, in spite of it likely serving as a watershed moment for Elijah's character. [/hider] [hider=Chapter Three] [b][u]Chapter Three[/u][/b] Alright here you're showing some major improvements. I don't know if you're just hitting your stride or if it's because you have a much better grasp of Kitty's headspace or what, but I like it much better immediately. Comparing her moving through a wall to rising out of the sea is a wonderful bit of imagery. Bringing up the sensation of phasing means that for the first time, I also get to feel something your character is feeling and get my other senses engaged beyond the abstracted moment I got with the tranquilizers affecting Gar. You do it very well. There's still an issue of abstraction, and at this point I think it might be a matter of how often you avoid absolute statements and certainty in your narrative with a lot of 'potentially' 'maybe' and 'almost' whenever you describe something or have your characters think, combined with your very passive sentence structure. More often than not you use phrases like 'She had checked every back alleyway twice by this point, as well as having taken a stroll' and use a lot of 'she would do X' or 'having done X' and 'had beens'. while it may suit you and even be better from a grammar point of view (I'm not sure) it makes for a less engaging, more clunky reading experience. You don't always do this anyway, a few lines down where you begin with 'she stopped suddenly' the way your sentence is structured is much more immediate and attention-holding. You maintain this fairly well and your sentences get less clunky here, maybe because you're more focused on the action. There's still a little bit of clunk during fragments like 'she began to continue moving through the wall' when just 'resumed' or 'continued moving' or 'went back to moving' would have felt smoother. Also the 'had been' abstraction problem shows up again when you're describing the third figure's gender and it's really blatant and unfitting. It makes it feel like he had been a man a second ago, but she's not sure now. 'Was' should work fine here in my book. You re-engage my sense of touch and hearing describing her heartbeat here at the end which is good, and overall you finish strong re-telling Gar's kidnapping from another point of view. [/hider] [hider=Thoughts on story] [b][u]Some separate notes on story[/u][/b] A lot of my comments were focused on your writing style and how it engaged or failed to engage me as a reader, so I thought I'd make some space to talk about your actual story since it's such a positive. I like what you're doing, slowly introducing and assembling the Titans then sort of pairing them off. It lets us get to know each of the characters and their histories in miniature before we get to the team, so ideally we're invested in them as individuals and as a group. The world-building you're contributing to by tying them into ongoing metahuman struggles, the military and espionage world, and the more cosmic and interplanetary side of things among the four of them is something I definitely appreciate. The specific tie-in to Overwatch is also something I'm very grateful for, thanks. [/hider] Overall I think you would improve engagement with your audience if you streamlined your narration style a bit and used slightly more direct language and tenses. Don't be afraid to really try and describe what your characters are thinking with more emotional content when explaining their motivations and thoughts. Also try to engage senses beyond sight more often, like you did in the latest post with Kitty. On that note though, watch out for your tendency to use tautology in your descriptions, since they bog you down and add to word-count without adding meaning. You're a more technically proficient writer than a lot of people in the group, including me. If you can just remember that the goal is as much to have us empathize with your characters and react emotionally to your stories as it is to impress us with your writing, you'll go from good to amazing. Your third post is already doing better at it. I haven't read your latest post yet, I may add it in after I do.