✨ Blind Critique 2024 ✨

Story Number Four

Hello Writer Number Four, here is your feedback for Blind Critique

Good descriptions throughout. That said, it's almost too much description all at once which feels like an info-dump. I would recommend breaking up some of the description by moving up some of the dialogue to space out the description.

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The descriptions of the scene and characters are great in this. They do a good job at conjuring up a gloomy and yet elegant atmosphere. The balance of character description vs. scenery description is good as well. I'm guessing this is the first time this character appears so the minute detail is probably appropriate here, but just an overall note really to keep an eye on that throughout the rest of the story. My only point of critique is the simile 'like a river of death'. It just seemed a bit on the nose to me and imagery where it wasn't necessarily needed as the rest of the description was impactful on its own.

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First paragraph draws you in immediately, but it could be cleaned up.

Replace that "or" Typo to "of", change "pure white" to "stark white" which invokes a stronger scene, and pick between either "slim" or "slender" for the glass, both is redundant.

3rd paragraph is absolutely beautiful and easy to imagine, but the first half of the first sentence leading into the description of the gramophone could use more show and less tell.

Just to note, this gave me a Vampire story vibe. Not sure if that's what you're doing, but it might help to know that.

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I like the setting you've made. Its detailed, you've clearly thought this through a lot! but I would say, it did make for a heavy read mostly because you'd rather show these details than tell them.

You've repeated a few descriptions like 'colourless chin' and 'his skin lacked any pigment of colour'. 'slim slender glass' basically gives the same picture to the reader, so maybe you can cut a few descriptions down there. 'pure white shirt' still gives the picture of a white shirt, the word 'pure' doesn't necessarily add anything to the object.

I understand , as writers, we want to show our readers everything that we've built and how the scene looks in our heads, but again too much of description tends to make the story quite draggy.
Aim for bringing out what you want the reader to notice in between dialogue, just like you've done in paragraph 5 and 6.

Apart from these, this sounds interesting, the MC seems like a noble, and clearly he has more to him than meets the eye. I also love the two names you've used. ;D

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4.
I like the haunting mood I'm getting from this opening. There's a clever use of ambiguous visuals that took me from oh, this is a dead man to oh, he's probably a vampire vibe. I love the classical wordless beauty and the shadows shifting and swaying in the candelight.

For me, this opening packed too much description all at once. I would have preferred just to see what is essential to the scene and get the rest of the details weaved in later into the action, on the way, especially the minutea of what the guys look like, which is not important to the scene.

I find the first two sentences problematic: if the stream runs like a river, then there is a lot of liquid leaking, resulting in a lot more than a mere stain on his shirt. I can't tell if the liquid is wine or blood, but that might be your intention. There is no need to mention what age he appears to be, it is redundant, because a few paragraphs down we get to hear exactly how old he is. Another redundancy is slim slender glass. Slim and slender conveys the same meaning, so choose one and get rid of the other. Watch out for tense confusion: you're writing in past tense but [has] combed back is not.

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This was a great introduction to your story. I really enjoyed your descriptions and how you managed to build the characters surroundings in such little words without overloading it. It was slow and it built up the story which I enjoyed and think its an effective way to write.

There was one thing that let it down and an easy fix in the first sentence was in the first sentence it say river or death when I think its suppose to say of death. As this is the first sentence is sets of the rest of the book as the reader looking for spelling mistakes but I didn't notice anymore. It's an easy fix and otherwise I thought it was a great start to your book.

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Two lines into this, and I knew: Vampires. And even without mentioning the character names I would have probably known who wrote this... As far as the scene goes: I feel a bit off about this, and I don't know why. Somehow the build-up of the scenery is just too much for me - every single item in the scene has an adjective to it, which makes it dragging. But that's just me, I'm sure.

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I adored the use of language descriptors to set the scene. Their use fully immersed me within the setting and the characters, allowing me to picture it all very well. However, the paragraph describing the character could be improved upon to make the flow more fluent. At the moment, it draws my attention away from the events the chapter is trying to convey. To improve this, you could draw attention to these details in two ways; through sprinkling details about the appearance throughout the chapter through character actions or by using colourful language through the use of literary devices to illustrate the appearance of the character.

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Great descriptions! I definitely felt hooked from the start. I would suggest removing "or death" from the first sentence has it halts the flow of that sentence, but that's just a small suggestion.

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The one thing that immediately jumps out at me is the cinematic descriptions that take up the majority of this passage. There's room in here (I believe) to let the reader's imagination take over, driven by active language, something evocative or implied rather than a detailed account of the setting, attire, and staged elements as exposition in the first three paragraphs.