Jenna's Nightdream

[Sweetcherrie]

Righty, first things first...

 

Woohoooo!! That's some story start you have here *grin*

 

I was grabbed and dragged along straight from the beginning, and definitely want to read more!

 

However...

 

There are some things that I found slightly confusing.

 

First the reaction to the news of her mother's death. You have described very lively how Jenna reacted, and the way it is written is pretty well done, but I was thrown of by the fact that she reacted immediately. Somehow I had expected a slight pause before her brain had registered and translated the message.

 

Something as small as blinking with her eyes when she hears the news would already give it a more logical transition.

 

Than Max...I have already formed an image of him in my mind, so this part is pretty well done. Except for the fact that you have given hardly any further description of him.

 

This is not such a bad thing, but I think that if you wait too long with establishing a character's physical looks, and relationships with the other characters you can throw the reader off when you do and it turns out to be entirely different than the image they had formed already.

 

Other than this I saw two small typos..but I sorta have trouble finding them back (must be because it's 1 am here )

 

Seriously though, great story start, and I would love to see where you're going to take this

[evesilverthorne]

Thank you so much I was rather nervous when I posted that I have more if you trhink I should post it... might answer some of your questions.

[Appy]

Yes, post more please!

 

I also was grabbed by the throat and not let go until I read through. You have a very good concept here and I can't wait to read more.

 

There were some typo's like Sweet said, and a few missing comma's or sentences which could do with another look. If you wish, I could go over it again with my editor's eye and give some tips? I figured I should ask first because it usually means I give someone their works filled with red ink.

 

All tips and changes to grammar would be subjective and merely suggestions for you to do with as you please of course.

 

And finally; Welcom to the boards! I'm glad to have you aboard

[Wyvern]

I like the five chapters that have been posted of this story so far, Lady Eve. :-) Your writing is very fluid and easy to read for the most part, and the premise of the alternate realities that Jenna experiences is already quite intriguing. The cliffhanger mental invasion ending of the fifth chapter definitely has me interested in the continuation, and the mentioning of Max's secret there makes me wonder if his mysterious father figure is somehow behind the psychic invasion.

 

I agree with Sweetcherrie and Appy that adding a few more details to the lives and appearences of the characters might draw the reader closer to them, particularly in the case of Max and his castle-reality alternative Maxwell. There were also points where I felt the text was heavy on expositional dialogue, which occasionally felt a bit stilted given the context of the conversations. A potential means of improving upon this might be to draw more from Jenna's personal impressions and thoughts, as not all of Jenna's history needs to be relayed to the reader through dialogue.

 

Very nice stuff, so far. :-) I'm looking forward to the continuation.

[evesilverthorne]

I agree with Sweetcherrie and Appy that adding a few more details to the lives and appearences of the characters might draw the reader closer to them, particularly in the case of Max and his castle-reality alternative Maxwell. There were also points where I felt the text was heavy on expositional dialogue, which occasionally felt a bit stilted given the context of the conversations. A potential means of improving upon this might be to draw more from Jenna's personal impressions and thoughts, as not all of Jenna's history needs to be relayed to the reader through dialogue.

 

Very nice stuff, so far. :-) I'm looking forward to the continuation.

 

Might you be able to give me a bit more information on your thoughts here. This work in progress is one that I hope to some day see in print. Any and all help would be welcome. thank you kind sir

[Wyvern]

This response is belated, but I wanted to expand on a few of my thoughts here at your request. In terms of expositional dialogue, there were points where I felt that the words exchanged between characters revealed a great deal of interesting history and detail, but didn't feel plausible in the context of a conversation. For example, in the first scene of the story, Jenna explains why she hates her mother to Elizabeth, who in turn speaks in Jenna's mothers defense. If Elizabeth is a friend and already knows Jenna's childhood, why would Jenna feel the need to explain it to her again here? A similar thing occurs in the third post, when Max asks Jenna numerous questions about her history under the pretense that they "never talk very much about [her] past," which didn't strike me as a very convincing reason. One thing to note is that, typically, when two people know each other, a great deal of their conversation becomes implicit and unspoken... it can be difficult for the reader to pick up on elements of characters when they reference events and names they know that the reader has never heard of, but it can ultimately be more rewarding to the reader when they pick up on what these events were over the course of the text.

 

As I noted, one simple way around relying on dialogue too much is to become more internal with the character of Jenna, and to offer her more thoughts and flashbacks. For example, the long blocks of dialogue where Jenna details her history to Max might work better as a flashback of sorts. This would avoid the inplausible aspect of Jenna narrating a mini-autobiography on the fly to her close boyfriend, and would also allow you to go into more detail on the events of her past without it feeling strained. :-)

 

Anyway, I hope this elaboration helps a bit more. :-) On a side note, I liked the sixth chapter that was posted after my post in this thread. The disturbing vision with Maxwell and the jeweled dagger is intriguing, and I'm interested in seeing if it connects to her relationship with Max in the present in any way. Good stuff, keep up the nice work!