Err... critique?

Hello LuminousTyto,

Sounds like you are asking for beta readers, you can read more about them in the "Discussion" forums.

"Share Your Work" is for smaller parts of your novel.

You can also contact any of the forum mods, their names appear on the far right of the forum name.

Please read the FAQ of the forums and before posting in each sub-forum read the stickies. You're asking for beta-readers. Perhaps the mods will move this thread to the beta-readers section.

Now, posting your opening chapter (less than 5K) here in the SYW section can attract beta-readers and give them a sample of your writing--while also getting an idea of what a group of people think of the opening and writing.

Wow, 42,000 words is rather short for a fantasy and at any rate, if you just post your first chapter here, we can critique it. If you are looking for an entire read, post it in the Beta Readers section.

Oh, yeah. If it is SFF, 42,000 words would make it a novella, not a novel. I don't know of any SFF sub-genre that goes under 50K for novels.

mmallico said:

Wow, 42,000 words is rather short for a fantasy and at any rate, if you just post your first chapter here, we can critique it. If you are looking for an entire read, post it in the Beta Readers section.

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ditto this.

the advantage of a beta is they read the entire thing. conversely, the advantage of throwing a chapter up here is getting ten or twenty opinions on a single piece, instead of only one or two.

That said, other things to consider:

1. yeah, that is short. at least if you plan on it going onto actual paper instead of e-pub of some format.

2. when someone tells me "what to crit" I don't even bother looking any further...."I am worried about this" is one thing, "only crit these items" is something else entirely. I ain't special, don't get me wrong, just be sensitive to your message, and if you're already turning folks away with the very things you say.

Quick

quicklime said:

when someone tells me "what to crit" I don't even bother looking any further...."I am worried about this" is one thing, "only crit these items" is something else entirely. I ain't special, don't get me wrong, just be sensitive to your message, and if you're already turning folks away with the very things you say.

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I agree. I can't see any logical reason to turn away any advice which may be given. At the very worst you get feedback which you might disagree with, and can simply disregard.

What it suggests is that maybe it'd be a waste of time to help the author, as they do not want a full and honest critique.

LuminousTyto said:

Well I'm attempting to focus on certain areas before I get to the smaller things. I dunno, maybe that's a bad idea. I just feel like it's important to get the fundamentals down first before worrying about sentence level things.

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Those ARE the fundamentals.