If you would like to nominate your page for a future Page Critique Event, please enter it in this thread in the Forums. Also, I'm offering personal consultations and edits if you're interested in that.
First I'll present the page without comment, then I'll offer my thoughts and a redline. If you choose to offer up your own thoughts, please be exceedingly polite and remember the sandwich rule: Positive, constructive advice, positive.
Random numbers were generated, and thanks to ria, whose page is below:
“We have damned the world,” Adriel said.
“Come again,” Zachery said.
They stopped at the pond, where Zachery fished some crumbs from his pocket and tossed them towards the ducks. Overhead, the shops and homes of the upper city clung to the walls of Drieh’s three lofty towers. A few rays of morning sunshine dove through chinks between the buildings only to flounder in the gossamer fog among the trees.
“I’ve felt ripples of energy,” Adriel said. “Here on Altara. And in the netherial. I picked it up a few months ago, and it gets worse every few weeks.”
He hadn’t felt anything of the sort, and his work relied on the netherial. “And what does this have to do with us damning Altara?”
“I traced its energy signature back as far as I could and it originates with the Calamity. Something we did back then is building up to... something.”
He let crumbs fall from his fingers onto the water’s surface. “This makes no sense, Adriel. No one else has felt anything. What you’ve described is impossible.”
“I only brought this up because I thought you’d care. And I thought you might have felt something in your portals.”
Zachery looked across the pond. A portal rose between the trees at the far end of the park, two slender pillars of dark rock curving toward each other with an arch of pure magic suspended between them. Anchor and focus, two simple elements that made up one of the most complex constructs on Altara.
There is some great writing here. This: "A few rays of morning sunshine dove through chinks between the buildings only to flounder in the gossamer fog among the trees" is just an awesome and evocative sentence. And the slender pillars of dark rock are also intriguing and mysterious.
I'm afraid I'm a little less sanguine about the dialogue. Here's the challenge of beginning with two people talking to each other: the reader has zero context to understand what they're talking about. They don't know who the characters are, they don't know what world they're in, they probably don't understand the references the characters are making to each other.
It's sort of like attending a dinner party where everyone makes veiled references so you can't understand what they're really talking about.
It's not impossible to begin with dialogue, but even if it starts that way it's extremely important to focus on making sure the reader feels very grounded in the story.
With a little more patience and anchoring the story, the dialogue will come alive.
Here's my redline:
“We have damned the world,” Adriel said.
“Come again,” Zachery said.
TheyAdriel and Zachary stopped at the pond, where Zachery fished some crumbs from his pocket and tossed them towards the ducks. Overhead, the shops and homes of the upper city clung to the walls of Drieh’s three lofty towers. A few rays of morning sunshine dove through chinks between the buildings only to flounder in the gossamer fog among the trees.
“I’ve felt ripples of energy,” Adriel said. “Here on Altara. And in the netherial. I picked it up a few months ago, and it gets worse every few weeks.”
HeZachary hadn’t felt anything of the sort, and his work relied on the netherial. [More here on what Zachary is thinking about what Adriel just said in order to help give the reader context, as well as what the netherial is.]“And what does this have to do with us damning Altara?”“I traced its energy signature back as far as I could and it originates with the Calamity. Something we did back then is building up to... something.”He let crumbs fall from his fingers onto the water’s surface.
“This makes no sense, Adriel. No one else has felt anything. What you’ve described is impossible.”
“I only brought this up because I thought you’d care. And I thought you might have felt something in your portals.”
Zachery looked across the pond. A portal rose between the trees at the far end of the park, two slender pillars of dark rock curving toward each other with an arch of pure magic suspended between them. Anchor and focus, two simple elements that made up one of the most complex constructs on Altara.
Art: Reinier Vinkeles by Charles Howard Hodges
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