All Comments on 'Silvertree Chronicles Bk. 01 Ch. 07'

his thugs are about to get a rude awakening. A couple of days in a town, and Eldar has significantly cur down on the criminal element; they should give him a medal, or name a school/hospital/park after him! LOL

Continuation of an interesting, and unique tale; you've created a solid, well crafted world for your story.

If there was anything I could recommend it would be to watch mixing verb tenses and/or watch for mixing up pronouns in a sentence or passage. It's a challenge to edit these types of errors because spell check won't find them, and it takes intense concentration while reading to catch them, especially self-editing.

The real challenge is when a writer reads their own work, the brain will play tricks on us; it will substitute what we WANTED to write, for what we ACTUALLY wrote. There is only one technique I have found to work while self-editing; reading one's work aloud. There are additional benefits to this technique, as well.

Read your work aloud, as if you are reading to an audience, project your voice, add appropriate emotion; truly 'perform' the reading. Obviously, you need a location where sound pollution for others will not be a problem. But, if you can fix a location, and read aloud, you will improve your self-editing 2-3 fold in efficiency and effectiveness.

I was lucky enough to be taught this technique in my early 20's, and it honestly transformed my writing quality. The reason it can have such a dramatic effect on self-editing is the act of performing an oral reading requires much more brain power than simply reading silently to one's self. Make the brain work harder, and it can't play tricks on you. It's really that simple.

The added benefit(s) are derived from creating a simple notation system marking the manuscript. It's best to print the copy you are reading, then mark it with pencil, for later revision/correction. Then, you don't interrupt the flow of your 'performance'.

ANY time you stubble, stutter, stammer or pause, while reading, make a notation. To help yourself later, devise a coding system for the type of issue which caused the interruption in the flow of your 'performance'. It may something as simple as needing a comma, or it may be more complex, needing more extensive re-writing.

With practice, you will gain the ability to immediately recognize the issue which caused the stumble in your reading.

What you'll find is your overall writing will improve; it will flow more smoothly, and create a rhythm of its own, as it is read. Your character dialogue will improve, and become more natural sounding.

Something new writers discover, with time, is people rarely speak in full sentences, or use full words. We are inherently lazy talkers in informal situations, contractions abound, inferences are plentiful and phrases dominate.

The desired skill is learning to write dialogue more naturally, with all of its structural and grammatical shortcomings, but still have it comprehensible to readers.

I've also seen, in these first 7 chapters, a problem common with many writers, mixing up to/too. The way to remember which is correct is to think about 'too' having 'excessive o's'; inherent in that, is the meaning and directive for how to use 'too vs to'. Whenever the intent is to express additional, more, extra, et al, of ANYTHING, 'excessive o's' is the answer.

Hope my thoughts and suggestions help in your ever progressing development as a writer. I feel like its the least I can do, to share what I have learned through a lifetime of writing and editing, as a payment for the hours of reading Lit writers provide.

Thanks for sharing your imagination with us, and thanks for all the hard work it takes to put together a Lit submission.

GeoD

I thank you for the encouragement and constructive criticism. Something I can look into. I use the free version of Grammarly and have a reviewer editor who reads through these as well. The Traumatic Brain Injury I have makes this even more of a challenge.

I am working on a revision of this and will the reading it aloud ideas you mentioned but it is hard at times as my sleep schedule is unpredictable times and my wife is asleep at times. Last year I did an Enhanced Edition, which you just read.

This year I am doing a Dragon Wars Enhanced Edition to tie in the hooks from the prequel I am writing called Dragon Wars (Obviously). It is 10 times more complex to deal with. Books 1 and 2 are each in 3 parts and each section is 35,000-60,000 words each. I am still in the review process with my editor/reviewer.

I had a couple of messages sent to me about the timelines in my story being off, and I am working to try and fix that in this edition as well; dates being messed up if you will.

I am working to make all of this feedback and make some changes, though I do not see myself as a professional writer. I do it all as a form of therapy and to work my mind.