posted
This is the novel I've been working on for the past three years and it's sitting at about sixteen chapters right now, or about 237 pages. I would love anyone who could look it over and get as harsh as needed, because I've really been starved for good commentary.
Without further ado, my 13 lines...
Saint Petersburg, Russia. November 1995
Maxim Krichevstov sat shivering under the glare of the shadeless lamp. A dark scrap of cloth was tied around his eyes and his hands were shackled to the wooden chair in which he sat. A musty smell assaulted his nostrils and the cold air stung each time he inhaled.
The room was silent, save for the rasp of his own pained breathing. He could feel the bruises forming on his chest, and a cut on the side of his cheek bled freely, warm blood trickling down his neck and soaking into the shoulder of his shirt. It didn’t take much to imagine the growing semi-circular stain on the blue fabric, a wet patch numbed by the draft.
posted
Also, when one asks for a summary, does that mean a full typed up summary or the short blurb used? Being one who's used to online stuff, I'm not sure.
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posted
Plausibility point - he's blindfolded, why would he (we're in his POV, right?) talk about the glare of a shadeless lamp? Maybe if you just switch the article from "the" to "a" it might work the nuance of whether Maxim is making this observation or you, the writer, are.
I'm on "ing" word patrol these days, so just heads up - your second paragraph has a number of them. forming, trickling, soaking, growing. Is there a way to strengthen those words? I think some are necessary in this case, because you're using...damn my poor memory for grammar terms - is it a present perfect/future perfect tense? "feel the bruises forming" - you're talking about something that's in process right now/will be present in the future. Anyway, I'm far from the grammar queen, but just something to think about - ing words are sometimes slower/less strong than verbs ending in -ed. e.g., formed, trickled, soaked, grew. Again, though, you're talking about somethign that *might* come to pass, so it could be these are the right verbs for the job.
posted
I've read in a few places (can't remember where) that using 'ing' endings (and a few other quirks and grammar things that I can't remember the names for either) gives the writing a more active voice, rather than passive one, because it makes the reader feel like the action is happening right in front of them rather than someone reciting it in past tense. ('ed' endings to words feel really clunky to me when reading outloud, which is how I smooth out wording. A personal quirk, I guess... I don' know. )
posted
I believe the closest genre would be International thriller set in the US, Finland and Russia with a small sci-fi element and it's sitting at about 96K. The blurb I came up with for it is as follows:
A fugitive hiding in the quiet anonymity of the American suburbs was the last thing that Corinne Lewis ever thought her unflappable classmate, Nicholas Kenyon, could be - until his mother and sister are violently kidnapped and she is unwittingly caught in the crossfire. Unable to return home, Cori is swept into a spine-chilling race against the time to save them from a ruthless power broker, who holds the means to unveil a secret that Nick’s family has been struggling to conceal for centuries. A secret that will place the fate of the world’s largest nation on the unsteady shoulders of a single man.
posted
> Maxim Krichevstov sat shivering under the glare of the > shadeless lamp.
Something about 'shivering' under a 'glare' struck my mind as speedbump, and I had to read again. I guess I associate 'glare' with heat, so it wrinkled the image for me momentarily.
> A dark scrap of cloth was tied around his eyes and his > hands were shackled to the wooden chair in which he sat.
I am wondering if this would be even more effective written present-tense. Put us there with him. "A dark scrap of cloth is tied around his eyes, and his are are shackled..."
Also, the "in which he sat" seems like a sandtrap for the reader, slowing me down.
> A musty smell assaulted his nostrils and the cold air > stung each time he inhaled.
"Assaulted his nostrils" seems a little cliche' -- I wonder if you can come up with an even more powerful and original description of what it feels like to Maxim. I like the second part of the sentence, and can feel the sting -- is it cold that stings, or chemical smell?
> The room was silent, save for the rasp of his own pained > breathing. He could feel the bruises forming on his chest,
Changing "could feel" to "felt" keeps me more immediately in the story.
> and a cut on the side of his cheek bled freely, warm blood > trickling down his neck and soaking into the shoulder of > his shirt. It didn’t take much to imagine the growing semi- > circular stain on the blue fabric, a wet patch numbed by the > draft.
Might just be me, but "semi-circular" took me out of the story and onto a geometry page, trying to picture what's being described. The wet patch numbed by the draft, I could almost feel--nice.
posted
I appreciate the critiques of the text itself, but one thing I'm looking for right now is someone to help me iron out the characters and mistakes in continuity. I know a few have been pointed out already, but I would like to hear about details I've missed and whatnot, so I can go back and correct them later. At this point in writing (I'm on a first draft for the majority of the book), I can't really polish the text to any extent, because I'm still switching things around and trying to finish the story.
Any commentary on the characters, setting and plotting would be a great help. I'll iron out the peculiarities in the writing itself later, when I have perfected the other things.
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