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Getting a crit from someone who dislikes your story from the get-go is a horrible experience. (I’ve given some bad crits, too, but this post is all about me, me, me.)

After receiving a negative crit, it can be a pleasure to drive along a road with lots of roadkill and mentally swap one critter for another. Another solace is to imagine how those pesky vermin would crit Gene Wolfe. I don’t have to write in Wolfe’s tier to find the exercise curiously refreshing.

Crit: On Blue’s Waters by Gene Wolfe

Hi, Gene –

I just enjoyed reading the first chapter of your story. There were a few places where I got confused, most of them noted later in detailed comments. Continue reading “Critique remedy”

I was having a heck of a time reading this one book. The story was sort of interesting, but it dragged and dragged and dragged and dragged…

Well, no wonder. The writing was overloaded with repetition — pages and pages of the same phrases used over and over. I thought, well, this is a multiple viewpoint story. Maybe it’s just this one character’s voice.

For the heck of it I read paragraph by paragraph through three consecutive chapters that had different POVs. Gee whomping whillikers. After analyzing those chapters, even skillful use of repetition makes me wince.

For your reading pleasure, here are the relevant chapter bits: Continue reading “Anaphora excess”