A Chapter 1

The prose is wildly overdone. It seems like a combination of thesaurus-ing way too hard and trying to make your writing 'unique' and 'artistic'. It is so plainly laden with effort, which would be one thing if it worked, but it doesn't read well at all. Many specific instances were already picked out by the first person to comment, but I'll grab another one from the pile. Her "mandarin" hair? Cause mandarin is a kind of orange? Come on. To me it's a toss-up if that even works from a logistical standpoint, and either way the reader will be thinking, "Mandarin? Oh, they mean orange," and probably roll their eyes like I did. Beyond all of this however, is the poor grammar (badly constructed sentences and paragraphs, the wrong form of "your", etc) and dialogue that is jarring in how casual is it, especially contrasted against the absurdly flowery prose. They say "dude" and "freakin". What is the tone here? Is this set in the real world? Is it a fantasy world that shares our modern vernacular? This whole thing needs an overhaul imo

/r/fantasywriters Thread