Review of chapter "Chapter One" from
LunaI beta’d the first part of your chapter:
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Xander walked into the Council headquarters, exhausted from a recent red-eye from Cairo, and called out, “Honey I’m home…” He barely dropped his bags before he was buried under the bodies of the young slayers that he had found during his search of Africa.
“Xan—" greeted Madaha, a bright-eyed twelve-year old.
"Train with me!" Ebenita platinively asked as she tugged on his dress shirt.
"NO, play with me,” Sabra stubbornly demanded.
"But, I wanted to play with Xan,” whined A’sharia’.
The girls many voices cried out into the early morning air as they all tried to hug the life out of their beloved Watcher.
“Girls, give Xander some room. I’m sure that he will have some time to train and play with all of you once he has settled in and given a report. Now you all go back up to bed for an hour or so and then you can come down for breakfast and talk to him. Alright?” Giles intervened; shaking his head fondly at the sight of his adopted son and ‘his’ girls’ identical pouts. “Now ladies, off you go or you will train all day everyday for the next week.” Each girl made sure to make a loud noise of disagreement, but they all obeyed the Head of the Watcher’s Council.
“Xander if you will follow me.”
“Sure G-man.” Xander says, picking himself up and ruffling the heads of the youngest slayers, Kira and A’sharia’, who were both six, as he followed Giles.
“Must you call me that insufferable name?”
“At least once more as always G-man,” Xander replied, picking up his bags and following Giles back up the stairs into the main office. Placing them on the table he quickly glanced through them to find the one he wanted with the rest getting re-zipped and shoved off the table unceremoniously.
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My comments:
http://www.babynology.com/african-girlnames-s0.html was my source for the names. Crystal is not African, not unless she was the paler descendent of one of the colonists and even that sounds weird.
New topic, new paragraph – even if it’s the same person speaking.
If a new person speaks, *definitely* a new paragraph.
Remember proper punctuation -- “Must you call me that insufferable name?” ends with a question mark, not a period.
Remember proper punctuation for speaking. “How are you?” Xander asked –or- “My flight was crap,” Xander complained. Note the punctuation changes.
Do not use general overused descriptions like ‘one-eyed carpenter’ ‘white knight’ so quickly. It shows lack of imagination and you can do better.
You tense (present) is odd and usually doesn’t work with a story format. I changed it to past tense because that sounds better and is more proper.
Finally—“girls that he had rescued from the African wild.” -- ?? This sounds incredibly racist. Africa is a *vast* continent and unlike the population mindset, there is more than wild animals and mud huts. It is possible that some girls would come from small villages but other girls would come from cities. That’s why I changed your wording during my editing.
I know you were advertising for a beta and I thought I would help out, but I don’t have time to do the rest. Rather, I hope you can learn from my comments and take it upon yourself to proof your current chapters and fix them. Betas are good to have but with some effort you can get the kinks out yourself.
Happy writing!
Luna
I'm working on adding your edit into what I already have written and getting the six pages I already have typed up unfortunately RL is seriously getting in the way. I'm working twelve hr days three or four days a week.
Review By [
Luna] • Date [11 Nov 10] • Not Rated
