I just received my first review! YAY!

Now I see I might be in need of some help.

I was told the reader wasn't picking up on any excitement/nerves or anything ominous (paraphrasing) from the first chapter, which is about 2400 words. Only part of the chapter focuses on the ritual itself.

I am going to share what I though was showing emotion over the ritual. Have I missed the mark? How can I improve?

Onto the excerpts:

Excerpts:

1 The dry summer air, or perhaps my nerves, left me feeling overheated. I lifted my hair away from my neck and back. As if in answer to my wishes, a cool breeze swept through our glade. We’d chosen the perfect night.

2 As I centered my thoughts, the white noise in my mind stirred, using anxiety as a catalyst to increase its strength. Not again, please not right now. Go away. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with pungent forest air, and willed the noise to fade into a distant hum.

3 At the conclusion of my call to Odin, the glade’s breeze amplified. Wind rushed at us from all sides, toppling the offering bowls, and extinguishing the candles with one last fleeting gasp.

4 The glade grew still in its wake, leaving behind a silence pregnant with unspoken possibilities and beguiling portents. Vicki still clutched my hand, her eyes wide, her stance wooden and fearful. Tabitha’s face drained of all color, turning her olive complexion to an ashen pallor.

5 My heart beat with an uneven palpitation, my breath oscillating as fear and wonder prickled my flesh. From beneath the fear, a thought surfaced. Isn’t this what I wanted? Something tangible, a sign, to confirm our magic worked? The calm ebbed, as if my muscles had melted like candle wax and chilled back to stiffness.

6 A rustle in the bushes distracted me, and I gazed across field. Shadows hung from the aspens like curtains, concealing whatever creatures lurked nearby.

7 As I tucked the last few candles into my bag, the underbrush stirred and muffled voices crept from the shadows.

8 Tabitha pointed and I swept my flashlight over the ground. A dead raccoon, its body twisted and bloodied, slumped against a tree. Disgust bubbled in my stomach as I noticed several more animals discarded a few feet from where we stood. They had been torn apart, blood matting their fur. Finding prey of another animal in the forest was not uncommon, but I'd never seen so many sprawled out in one place. The blood glistened, their flesh tainting the air with a saccharine-sweet odor, absent of the rancid, musty scent that accompanies old death.

9 I looked back to Tabitha, gauging her reaction. "Hey, Tabs, are you with us?"
Her brow creased, and her eyes stared past me.
“Are you okay? We need to keep going…all these animals—” I began.
“No, not the animals.”
“What?”
“I… thought I saw something.” Her voice sounded far away, lost beneath uncertainty.

10 The buzzing noise in my mind intensified, drowning out my fearful thoughts.



If I've missed the mark, I need to know! but I also need to know how to fix it

If you call yourself Ipaintwithwords, then maybe think more in terms of visual arts and brushstrokes for the picture you want to create. Impressionistic rather than realism, seeing as your genre is non-naturalistic. "A,B&E", "Not In My Name" and "52FF" (flash fiction anthology) all available on Amazon Kindle

"How a psychopath makes sweet love. I can get you ringside. Royal box even."

I hope I wanted to create the idea that something was "happening" and also that someone was "watching them"

Some of the emotions I wrote were visceral responses. That is when the emotions control the body. It's the body's physical reaction to the emotion, not a physical action you can control.

example: punching someone in the face is a "show" of emotion. It's something in your control.

example 2: heart pounding in your chest is a visceral reaction. That is where the real emotion is--the response your body makes that you can't control.

I take a lot of different approaches to showing emotion. Sometimes less, sometimes more.

I was just curious if others could see from these excerpts that my MC felt nervous, that my character felt afraid, and that there was something ominous going on.

I know I shouldn't take one review this seriously. I'm also on authonomy and inkpop and a member of critiquecircle and since my revisions I haven't had anyone say anything like this. So I'm wondering if people are just being nice, or if this review was something I shouldn't be taken seriously. (i can have 100 people say something is great, and then 1 person says it's wrong and I question it)

thing is, I only question it. I don't make changes without looking into things to make sure it's really what it needs. One person might be able to see a weakness others did not. At the same time, when someone is looking to say something is wrong, they'll find it. This is why when I read/crit for people I only mention the errors that pop off the page at me. Sometimes a rule is broken it works, or sometimes you have to break a smaller rule to follow a bigger one. I pay a lot of attention to my craft.

I also pay a lot of attention to my character. For example, my main character in this story tends to notice more about her setting and her emotions than other details. In another book I'm working on, the MC doesn't notice about things around her. It has a lot to do with their personalities.

But, long story short, I got this review and simply wanted to know if others felt those excerpts showed nerves, fear, or something ominous going on around the girls, or not.

On a final note, the second passage is referring to something that is "wrong" with the MC. It's mentioned in an earlier passage, but the MC is tying what is happening to her emotions.

Thanks for your time. Still trying to figure these things out!

I think the problem may be my skin is a little too thick! I consider ALL advice as valid, and maybe sometimes I shouldn't, but you just never know if that one person is catching something that someone else missed.

Believe me, this critique was far from picking my work apart. I have a team of vultures. I have had my work ripped to SHREDS. And I LOVE it. But, I've also been lucky enough to have people who point me in the right direction on how to fix things, or give me advice and examples.

www.critiquecircle.com has been great for that. I've had people write 2000+ words of critique on chapters that are only 1800 words :P And because of that, I've come a LONG way.

But that is a neat thing about the removing a review. Yes, sometimes people don't get someone else's work. I'd like to think that didn't happen on the first review I got though :P So I'm trying to see what maybe made the reviewer feel that way and see if there is an area I can improve. If it is that she just overlooked these things, I'd like to know that too. That's why I posted the excerpts. I thought maybe I could get some opinions on the subject from people here without anyone having to read the whole chapter

But yes, I agree with you. Thick skin is very beneficial in this industry. I recommend everyone get some.

I remember one of the harshest crits I got. i admit it stung a little, but I was better for it. The reviewer told me that my chapters (3500 words at the time) poured out at a snails pace.

Ouch, right? But when I edited with that in mind, I cut over 1000 words! And my story was SO much better because of it. I don't remember what he said in the rest of the crit, LOL. All I remember is that one ending line. I'm sure he had other good advice too but I'll never forget that. It was something that helped me improve not only the chapter he critted by my writing as whole.

And you know what? He was the only one to tell me that. Everyone before him said it was great. But when those people saw the new version I'd edited with his commentary in mind, they found it much improved. So, sometimes I think even if only person says it, it's something to consider. Not saying to just use it off the bad, but look into it. Ask other people for opinion on the problem they saw specifically, or read some resources that tie in with what they said, or just look at your own writing with their advice in mind.

So yeah, maybe my skin's a little too thick if it's wrong to consider advice so quickly, but I do look into things first before making changes, and I think for that reason it works for me.

I've got a bad habit of changing something after every review, whether they mentioned a point or not. However, I think I have or almost have got the chapters to the standard I want. The only thing I'm not sure about is one character. A couple of people want to know more about the nun, but she is supposed to be part of the mystery. Her character has to be drip fed to the reader, as each new thing they learn about her gives a clue to who is the murder/s. Plus she is just an Obiwan type of character. I wanted to kill her off, but unfortunately (or fortunately) people seem to like her in my different versions.