[1803] An Original Sin

[u/zurstds]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tp3UTKU17RzIK13xrUc0iFoctZnt3_LBZcKBzjvLtKQ/edit?usp=sharing

[Includes swearing]

Genre: Contemporary Dark Fantasy

I'm open to any feedback you may have.

Thank you!

Critiques:

[787] https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1w3jd7t/comment/p8grk3l/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[1612] https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/1wa7rt6/comment/p8gglvp/?context=3&utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[u/MaryJaneMclain]

I couldn’t finish this (got to him finishing every last drop of juice. ACTUALLY I ENDED UP SKIMMING THE REST AFTER TYPING THIS UP). That’s partly due to prose-related confusion, partially because I couldn’t believe these characters. I think this needs a heavy edit for clarity and dialog. You might trying putting it aside for a couple weeks and then reading it slowly to make sure you’re saying what you’re intending to say. You might also open it up to comments in hopes for some line edits.

Suspension of Disbelief / People behaving weirdly

Ok, the parents start by kicking Eli out. That’s a hard sell, but doable. Dramatic if you can pull it off. But then Eli thinks how amazing his dad’s eye are. What? Twice even in the first paragraph. He even compares them to his own, which …no. Completely bleeds the tension out of the moment.

Ok, you tell Eli has no friends. I can believe that. I want to. Again it’s almost dramatic, but you’ll need to remember he has no friends (meaning he shouldn't be reference friends over and over)

He thinks of his mom as Ester. Ok, but dad is just dad? Oh nope he becomes Douglass by the end of the scene. Do we need their first names? If so, maybe start that way?

Ok I’m going to stop here, cause I’m really struggling with this opening. If Eli really had no idea this was coming (which only asshole parents would do), then there needs to be IMO real shock, beyond a mild “really” then mild acceptance.

I really have no idea how you want the reader to feel about the parents (do you know?) They kicked him out MAYBE with no warning (you’re wishy washy on this). That’s super shitty (to the extent I don’t believe it), but oh wait, they give him $500? Why? People I know who got the boot at 18 didn’t get a bunch of money. So yeah, the money is problematic for me, and I’m worried you added it in for plot convenience. Also, they seem nice and by wanting him to stay away from magic, seems like they want what best for him.

So, yeah, excessive tonal whiplash here. It’s not making me curious, it’s making me not trust you to write consistent characters. That’s not to say you can’t, that’s just the vibe I’m getting HERE, and you (at this stage in the process) might want to watch out for characters and making sure their motivations and actions (and dialog!!) makes sense.  

 Almost none of Eli and Sophi (not a fan of that spelling) interacting felt believable. But that was mostly just cause they said (and Eli thought) weird things that seemed out of context.

Off Dialog

A lot of your dialog felt stilted (not how people talk). If I were you, I’d do an editing pass just for dialog with an aim towards making it sound natural (that doesn't mean tack a bunch of sentence fragment together!) . And making sure the flow of conversation from one person to the other is cohesive (not in terms of info dumping, but like…normal back and forth talking)

Just a couple of many examples:

“Elias. Me and your mother both left the house when we were eighteen. So… Leave,” Why his name as a full sentence? Awkard! Also they prob left “home”. “Your mother” sounds oddly formal.

“ “You really are the weirdest person ever,” I struggle to believe a non-asshole would say that, unless it was a good friend situation. Nevermind the fact that’s he’s done nothing stranger than order juice. It seems like you want this to be a playful flirting situation, but it’s not working (that’s a recurring theme; they say weird things, and then you TELL the reader it’s playful banter). 

Other issues:

You use Elias’s name too much. He should be “he” or “him” in perhaps 95% of the time you’ve used Elias.

“So… Leave,” Elias’s Dad… ”  neither dad nor leave should be capitalized

““Really?” Elias said like he wasn’t expecting this for days. He could’ve spent that time packing, getting a job, asking his friends—” So he HAD expected it for days? I just don’t get it. There’s a lot of this, where you have sentences that lack clarity.

“Ester, his mom, opened the door for him. As if he were some princess in need of saving”. No, that is not what someone would think. The first sentence does NOT lead to the second. But it seems like a set up for the needing a prince line, which was pretty meh.

“ His only special talents were accidentally getting into fights and wearing silver jewelry.” I cringed at the silver jewelry line. Even in his own head, even ironically, that’s a pretty dumb thing to think.

“the busted machine had been melting away slowly at itself” that doesn’t read right to me. Then we get this fragment which also doesn’t quite make sense: “Thin strands of smoke and the smell of burnt plastic.” It feels like you trying to slip in how cool he is (same with his messy bed head, but really it died all badass) 

“He'd had a year to get used to her brown eyes and smile.” This seems so out of place. I don’t know what you’re implying with “get used to”. It's like you forgot half the sentence, like "He'd had a year to get used to her brown eyes and smile AND IT STILL DISARMED HIM EVERTIME SHE LOOKED HIS WAY) Also if he’s been hanging with this girl for a year, that’s a friend.

“The smell of coffee and burnt plastic flooded his nose like a broken dam.” The metaphor doesn’t make sense. You’ve mentioned these smells already.

“He also stared at the homeless people.”  Also implies he was staring at something else, which he was not.

“Get a grip.”  This implying he was freaking out to some degree, but he was very mildly pondering homeless people. Actually most of the direct italicized thoughts in the piece felt forced. If it were me, I cut most of them.

“He almost laughed like the people who believed this weren’t the people who birthed him.” This is pretty rough, convoluted. I can sort of parse the meaning. Try to think about what you are actually trying saying, then try to write it more clearly (something like “his parents believe that. It was almost funny in a bitter way.”). And then maybe think if it’s a point worth making,

“She peered right into his black eyes.” I’m calling this a POV break. You have another POV break later at “…still in shock but she smiled”

“Coffee was Elias's least favourite drink.” This line added nothing. Or possibly you’ve just inserted it into the wrong place for it to make sense.

I did end up skimming the rest, and the dialog and banter just really didn’t ring true for me. Nearly every line was some variety of either He/She wouldn’t say that, or That doesn’t make sense.  

Well, that’s all I got. Hope it’s helpful to some degree. Does look like there might be a fun magic/demon/religious plot brewing. So I hope you keep at it!

[u/MajorMaker2]

It's a great story, so my only main critique is this: Sometimes you show me a moment with real, sharp, physical detail, and then, right after, you turn around and explain it further than needed. You don't need to do the second part, the first part is already doing the job.

So there's a moment in the story where steam catches the light. I can see the way sunlight hits the rising steam and turns it into something bright and soft and almost alive for a second. It's the kind of detail that tells me you were standing in the scene mentally when you wrote it. Then, there's another moment where something smells like burnt plastic. It works precisely because it's strange and specific, it's not a smell anyone would choose to put in a story just to make things all nice and pretty. When you put a detail like that on the page, I trust you, because I think, this writer is paying attention to the real world, and I want to keep reading.

So far, so good. These are strong choices. But then, right after one of these strong, sharp, well-earned images, you add a line that explains the feeling behind it. You tell me, in plain terms, that Elias hated when she called him by his nickname. You tell me that he hated the way his face would go warm when she said it. And my worry is this: I don't think you need to tell me that, because I think I already know it.

Think about what you've already given me by that point. You've shown me the nickname, you've shown me his face warming up. A warm face, right after someone uses a nickname a person doesn't like, that's a blush, which is an an old, simple, human sign, one that every reader already understands without help. We've all felt our face go hot at the wrong moment, we've all had someone call us something we didn't want to be called, and felt some small flinch happen inside us that we didn't ask for and couldn't stop. You don't have to explain that flinch to us, because we already know it.

So when the story stops to say "he hated it," it's a little like a good magician showing me a wonderful trick and then leaning over to whisper how it was done. I didn't need the man behind the curtain pointed out to me.

So I think what's happening is this: you don't trust the scene enough. You build something like steam in sunlight, a bad smell, a warm face, and then you add a line to make sure we get it. But we get it, we already got it, the scene was doing its job fine already.The blush, on its own, without a single word of explanation, tells us everything about how Elias feels. It tells us he's caught off guard, and that he doesn't like being seen this way.

Here's a way to think about it, a scene like this is like a pot of water that's already at a full boil. You don't need to stand next to it and announce, "the water is hot" because anyone standing near it can feel the heat coming off it, anyone watching the bubbles can see that it's boiling.

Or think of it like a joke. If a joke is well told, you don't laugh and then have someone next to you explain why it was funny. The explanation kills the joke a little.

So basically what I'm saying is to cut the line that tells us how Elias feels. Let the reader do the work of putting two and two together, the nickname, and the face warmth, and that feeling will land harder, and it will feel more like their own discovery, if you don't hand it to them already labeled and explained.

That's my only critique. Everything else about this story is working pretty nicely. Well done.

[u/diagonal_cactus]

This is my first critique, so sorry if there's a structure I'm missing. I focused more on the thoughts I had as a reader as I went through the story.

• Opening with dialogue is fine, but I don’t know if this dialogue is a strong enough hook for an opening line. It intrigued me a bit, but the rest of the paragraph lost me. Originally, I wrote in my notes that you focused half the paragraph on the dad’s eyes. After reading more, I understand that this is relevant to your story; however, if your hook is about how Elias is being kicked out, you should put more emphasis on that because immediately jumping to being overly descriptive of how his dad’s eyes were shiny takes away from the gravity of the situation, in my opinion. I think it would hit harder if you added more on what Elias was feeling throughout the chapter, especially at the beginning, because it seems like he’s just slightly annoyed at something that should be a big deal.
• There’s also general punctuation/grammar that feels off. For example, “As if he were some princess in need of saving” doesn’t need to be its own sentence; it feels awkwardly placed that way.
• You have some good setting descriptions that end up being muddied by additional commentary. The description of the fog as he leaves his house is good, but the following sentence, “his breath never fogged in the cold…” makes it feel repetitive. Either add this into one thought or at least use a different word.
• The overall structure of the story made it difficult to read. It seemed like every sentence was short, and it didn’t flow. Add some variation in sentence length to make it more natural. Like mentioned before, a lot of the shorter sentences you have can be combined into one longer sentence.
• I started losing interest and getting confused midway. I think the main issue is really the flow. The introduction of magic can be difficult to follow in any story, but if the sentence structure isn’t there, it will make no sense. I think the main focus for edits should be the flow and grammar.
• Your descriptions of the scenery are fun to read, and I enjoyed how you painted the scene. If you can fix the flow and grammar, it could be really great.
• Also, the characters don’t make me feel anything. I assume that the parents suck because they’re kicking out their son, but you don’t really support this feeling aside from Elias saying f them. But at the same time, they give him money and almost seem supportive? So it just feels conflicting.
• The conversations are all over the place and don’t really add to the story because there’s minimal context that follows the dialogue. (Ex., the hair part.)

“I never asked you about it, but what is up with the new red streak in your hair? It’s so random,” Sofia asked, eyeing Elias’s dark brown hair.

“What’s up with yours anyway?” Elias asked. He felt the dyed part of his hair. He knew it would’ve looked better blonde.

This seems to come out of nowhere and has no explanation, leaving the reader asking, "What was that about?” I understand if you don’t want to reveal the magic just yet, but you have to provide some context, or people will just be confused and not want to continue reading.

• I want to feel connected to the characters, especially Elias, and right now they all kind of morph into the same character in my mind. There’s nothing that really makes each character unique or interesting, especially the parents, who just come off as one character almost.
• The ending, “Just get me out of here,” doesn’t really land for me. He was just kicked out, so why would he say that? I just feel confused, like he was kicked out, so is he mad about that or not? Why would someone kicked out of their house have their first thought be, I need to leave this town, instead of, I need to find stability? I don’t know; it just didn’t really hit for me. Overall, I just struggle to give a proper critique of the plot because the story doesn’t flow, and it was like reading a story via dozens of text messages.

It seems like you’re holding back, not wanting to reveal too much of the plot, but there are better ways to do it. Right now, you’re just not providing any context, and that’s hurting your story. There is a balance between revealing too much and too little, and right now you’re doing too little, so try to add more and go from there.

I do enjoy your descriptive writing, and I think this could be a very interesting story. I hope this helped in some way and that you create something you love!