serious doubts about the future of reading on the Internet in general.
Please. The Internet will always be a place for people to deposit their works, especially things they know won't be picked up by publishers. And people read a great deal more than they comment on.
Sturgeon's Law is in full force, naturally.
Well, then maybe I should rephrase my sentence - "serious doubts about the future of my reading on the Internet in general". Because it would appear that the vast majority of literary works on the Internet sucks. I mean isn't the lack of replies in a writing thread an indication of its quality? If people liked the writing, they would have said so, right? But if they were just too lazy to speak up, then what's the point of posting your story? Of course, because you are a charitable person, and want people to enjoy your writing. But how're you going to know if it's enjoyable?
Or, I guess, I didn't read deep enough into your reply. What you're saying is that the Internet is a big dump, and people are going to keep dumping their writing without any regard for its value?
I guess my rephrase still stands. Or I could say it like that even - "I've got serious concerns about the future of writing on the Internet.
Well,
cganya. I may have one advice about increasing the activity in your thread - increase the frequency of your updates. First, it's going to appear more often in the Recent Topics, second, you'll have to break your chapters into shorter segments, and people with ADHD won't have to suffer so much
The breaking down will take some finesse, though.
Another piece of advice which promises no impact on the readership is, watch your tenses. You chose to narrate in the present tense, but apparently through the power of habit, you write dialogue tags in the past. Frankly, I didn't notice it until the middle of the second post (that's why it won't have any impact on the readership), but if you look out for this mistake it'll save you a ton of editing afterwards... Er, yeah, read further - watch your tense.
About chapters. It might be silly, or it may end up silly, but generally division into genres is numerical, that is, up to 10,000 words it's short story, up to about 30,000-40,000 it's novella, after that novel, and I'm not sure how reasonable it is to divide a short story into chapters. What's in your thread now has clocked at around 4,500. Well, if you keep up your chapter size, and hold to your promise of 8 chapters, it'll run over the short story, but if I were you I'd refrain from chapter designation. Although it may be that the word "chapter" just has a special meaning to me.
I guess your thorough editing stage is in the future, and for that stage I've got an inconsistency: in the last update you write that the soul mending happens in some spirit world, but you kind of miss to introduce it. It's just "she reached deeper into the girl's body", which is, err, pretty oblique, considering you later describe it as if the spirit world possesses some pretty physical properties where people have bodies and can walk or fly (which is a physical action, despite not being easily possible in our world).
In general, your writing could use some more description. Like a few epithets for the bad guy. And for the protagonist, too. Right now they seem pretty generic. I suspect, though, that you're writing with a generic good guy (girl, whatever) and bad guy in mind. And we might as well call the protagonist Mary Sue (because it's easier to pronounce, obviously). You seem to realise it yourself. Well, it probably takes some skill to redeem your omni-guy (girl) in a backstory, or it's not possible at all. Anyway, I don't think the flashback works as intended. A conflict that is in the past, is in the past, it's another story. Fortunately, your story has a conflict, which is difficult choices of commander Anya. For some reason you choose to side-step into backstory, and it's going to seem nonsequitur, unless you connect it to the main conflict, or expand your story to a full-blown novel. Also there is an opinion that in a short story characters don't need so much character. So you might not bother with redeeming Anya. In a short story you've got just enough space to explain your idea, and it's in a novel that you let your characters to play with it.
So, you've got a good idea going, but there's some confusion with what you want to do with it.
Damn, I wanted to finish on a good point. Oh well. Also about your dialogue tags. That is, about your dialogue tags and action lines. A dialogue tag is a part of a sentence where speech is, and so should begin with a lower-case letter. When a verb in the "sentence" after speech denotes some form of talking, like "said and shouted", it's a dialogue tag. If it's some other action, like "shivered, smirked" or what have you, it's action and a different sentence, and so should begin with a capital letter.
Er... Like I was saying, you've got a good idea, and a good personal conflict, what's more, enough drive to produce regular updates. And not worry too much about editing right away, which is a healthy attitude. Er... Yeah, keep going.
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